[Bigi] Coming Out Process 2: Junior High

[Thadd Liszkowski]

Reflecting back on my last post, I do seem to recall that puberty for me
was actually in Catholic junior high school. Up until puberty, I had been a
true believer, but when they told me that it was against god's will to
masturbate, I realized that there must be something horribly wrong with the
Catholic church :) I'm still trying to figure out how to be excommunicated:
I figure I have sinned enough, having later overcompensated in true
"recovering Catholic" style, so I think all I really need to do is write it
all up in a letter to the Pope.

My parents, being severe Catholics, did not display much affection, and
certainly none of the sexual variety. This lack of role models combined
with the laughable sexual code of a Catholic school upbringing left me on
my own to chart a sexual identity.

I was not allowed to date "until you're 18." I will not detail the
repressive tactics of my parents, they are unremarkable in that they are so
similar to many others raised Catholic I have spoken with. I was allowed to
hang out unsupervised with my male friends, however, and once we tired of
fantasizing about the girls in our class, I proposed on occasion to my best
friend that we play strip poker, and "just pretend" that there were girls
with us. Another time, I recall role-playing as a girl with another of my
friends.

I suppose that's when I realized that I was turned on much more by the
physical availability of an actual naked boy than the mere fantasy of a
girl, which was for me completely unattainable in psychological terms. This
prejudice for actual physical contact over fantasy continues with me to
this day. I am not into cyber-sex or porn much: I like to say that it's
like talking about a cheeseburger or perhaps even watching someone else eat
a cheeseburger, it just makes me hungry :)

Unfortunately for me, I continued to be sexually represesd for a very long
time. I never actually touched another person until the last two years of
high school. On the plus side, however, having rejected the only model that
I had (celibacy), this did give me ample opportunity to develop a
philosophical basis for my sexual identity, instead of settling on a
pattern of sexuality based on prevailing cultural norms or the caprice of
supply and demand market availability and calling it my "natural" identity.

Stay tuned for my next chapter, Coming Out Process 3: High School!