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kleinbl00  ·  4664 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When your seven-year-old son announces, "I'm gay."
It's funny. My mother insists that she nailed my type when, at the age of 2, I sat entranced watching the teacup in the telecast of L'Enfant et les sortilèges:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

(the profound effect that opera had on my tendency towards anthropomorphism is a whole 'nuther matter)

And of the two Swiss sisters who babysat me at the age of 4, I had a definite preference for the younger, hotter one, despite the fact that her games weren't as fun. At the age of 6, there was a little girl who definitely had a crush on me and it wasn't at all yucky. She was way too overt about it, though, and brought down the wrath of the playground upon us (and destroyed my ant farm, dammit). She moved away by 3rd grade, only to come back sophomore year in High School. I came over to study once, walked upstairs and saw her mom naked, then spent the evening watching Handmaid's Tale under a blanket and studiously not sleeping with her because, dammit, she was still too needy - for whatever reason, I just wasn't attracted to her. What kind of weird teenage boy passes up sex on a Wednesday? One of my friends later slept with both of them at once. Mother and daughter moved to Florida and contracted Lyme Disease, last I checked.

A male friend made a pass at me in 6th grade; we had a mutual friend who had invited him to go to his parents' cabin and the two of them had had sex in the hot tub. The idea seemed really pretty revolting to me but I wasn't mortally offended like I should be so I kinda wondered if maybe getting over the revulsion was just something you did eventually (never mind the fact that the bra strap of the girl who sat in front of me was the majority of my attention that year). He's happily married with four kids now.

I started to internalize just how straight I was when, at 16, I looked over at my best friend's ass in jeans and found myself thinking "his ass would look great on a girl." Then at 17 I got a great deal on a bright yellow ZX-1000 Ninja with Yoshimura pipes and a 230mph speedo. Simply sitting on the stupid thing made me feel so masculine that I decided the whole dilemma was bloody ridiculous. I blared The Cure and pranced around like a little girl. So much of our identification of "gender" and "masculinity" is external and peer-driven.

My sexuality has been atomic-clock constant since my first boner. I have a cousin, on the other hand, that would rediscover her lesbian tendencies every two years like clockwork. She finally married the most effeminate man I've ever met and they have two lovely children. Some people figure it out early. Some people never do. So long as we're all happy, what does it matter?