The Three Stages of Gay Acceptance

Way back in 1981, I was living in Washington, DC, with my first lover. I was only three years into my new gay identity, had only begun sleeping with men at the age of twenty-seven and was still battling my way through internalized homophobia. Falling in love with Michael helped, but he was not out to his Black family in rural Maryland, although he certainly enjoyed dancing at the numerous gay bars near Dupont Circle. 

Coming out was, for me, a jagged and stuttering process. Some people I told fairly quickly; with others, I stayed closeted way longer than was necessary. I had not learned to introduce the subject casually, so the "revelation" took on the shameful coloration of confession. Also, being out at work was not advisable. AIDS was just spreading into the gay male community, and *that* certainly complicated the possibilities for acceptance. However, it was from a colleague at work that I learned about the three stages of gay acceptance.
 
Roger was an attractive young man who projected an ambiguous sexuality and didn't seem concerned about what others might think. In our enclave of the federal bureaucracy, all the gays knew one another, and I was the beneficiary of some valuable professional mentoring. Roger was not a mentor, but he wore his homosexuality in a free and easy manner. I asked him about it one day. How had he come to this enviable equilibrium?
 
"I went through three stages," he explained. "O God, is it me?" I nodded in recognition. My denial had been so pervasive that I didn't even recognize that I was attracted to men until I was nineteen. "The second stage was, 'O God, it *is* me!'" I knew that one too. I had spent *years* in that stage. From the age of nineteen to twenty-seven, I continued to sleep with women or remained simply celibate, all the while burning with lust for the attractive young men my expatriate years (Africa, then Paris) threw my way. Then Roger divulged his third stage, "Thank God, it's me!"

That flummoxed me. I was gay, but I didn't want to be gay. When some unenlightened acquaintance opined that being gay was a choice, I said, "Why would anybody choose a sexual orientation that was viewed with such disdain, that alienated one from friends and family, that so drastically reduced the pool of sexual partners?" Gay pride? Thank God, it's me? It took me *years* to get there.

Am I proud to be gay? No. Why should I be proud of a sexual orientation or identity which I didn't choose, which forced itself upon me? I'm not proud of being Jewish, of being male, of being American. I didn't choose any of it, so why should I be proud to be gay? However, I am *grateful* to be gay, and that's i where I concur with my friend Roger. Thank God it's me!

Why? I never had to hew to the heterosexist nonsense about the value of masculinity, monogamy, or how men can't truly be friends with women. As shallow as I might find the imperative to cultivate and maintain physical beauty, it kept me physically active, attentive to dress and grooming, and led to many hot encounters. I've had *far* more sex and at a much later age than had I been straight. And the *fun* I've had at gay events, at the clubs! Call me superficial, tax me with a lack of gravitas, but I'll be seventy-five next year, and for most of those years, I've had a *great* time!

And finally, I doubt I would have stumbled into my career as a filmmaker, public intellectual, or snarky contrarian (after all, you're still reading this, aren't you?) had I not benefitted from the launchpad of queer identity and culture. 

It is ironic that the identity I struggled so hard to understand and accept is so *boring* these days! A gay cis male whose pronouns are he/him? Is there anything to talk about here? However, you'd be surprised at the number of unnecessarily closeted men I meet even here in the Bay Area, so I guess it can still pack a punch for the fearful, the bearers of bad faith, and those in denial.
 

"O God, is it me?" If you're even asking the question, you're already at stage 2. It *is* you! Let's hope you can make it to stage 3 so you can live with some kind of authenticity.