A place to start

Every story has a beginning.

I was born in September of 1970 in Salt Lake City, Utah at LDS Hospital. My mom and dad were thrilled for the arrival of their first son. I was lucky to have two older sisters waiting to coddle and care for me. Two younger brothers came after me, rounding out the 5 children that make up our family. I had a very happy childhood. My parents cared for us, showered us with love and gave us what they could. I know that we weren’t rich, but we had what we needed, we were safe and we had each other. My dad earned his living as a hard working truck driver. I always admired how hard my dad worked and how many hours, sometimes a week at a time that he put in to support our family. I think my mom worked outside the home when we were younger but I think she must of quit to be a full time mom after all the kids were born. Among many things, my mom is a talented seamstress and made many of our clothes. Because of my dads job, I remember him being gone a lot, leaving my mom to care for us most of the time. I have vivid memories of my childhood, (which is strange because most days now I can’t even remember what I was doing 5 minutes ago), I remember my friends, our neighborhood, our home in Salt Lake City, Utah and the chapel where I was introduced to Mormonism. I sometimes wonder how my childhood would have been different had we not been Mormons. I wonder if we would have lived in the same place, associated with the same people? One thing I did know was that the church was important to my mom and she made sure it was a part of our lives. When I was young my dad was not active in the church, but by the time I was 7 things must of changed for him. When my brother Shon was born, my family set off for the iconic Salt Lake Temple to be sealed as a family for eternity. I recall cradling Shon in my arms on the altar as he was an infant. I can imagine the wide eyes I must of had that day wondering what exactly was happening. I was 7.

I am often asked “when did you know you were gay?” The educated, adult answer to that question that I would give now would be “I always knew, I was created this way even in the spiritual form, continuing into my physical body”, however you chose to believe or not. My first conscious memory of feeling attraction for other boys was when I was very young 5 or 6 years old. I had some close friends, Scotty, Brady, Mark and Kyle. There were instances, common for boys that age to be curious about others bodies and showing each other and giggling. It seemed that on some occasions when we were alone, we were in some form of undress, skinny dipping in a yard pool when parents weren’t around, or just being crazy, innocent boys. Nothing sexual ever happened, we were only 6. We were discovering our bodies and I remember loving what I was discovering, Without really knowing why.

My family moved from Salt Lake City to a small town in southern Utah when I was 9. This was a huge adjustment for me and I found myself in a farm town of 100 or so residents and very few kids my age. The ones that were close to my age happened to be girls. I loved my girlfriends. I got along with them so well and from that time on I remember always preferring to be close friends with girls rather than boys. I loved my new home and the freedoms that came along with living in a small farm town. Since there were no stores in this town and the nearest store was 30 miles away, the Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Ward Catalogs became some of my favorite books. I loved picking out my school clothes and wanting to look as dapper as the male models looked in those catalogs. I remember vividly telling my mom about an outfit that I wanted so badly, it was a rust colored pair of corduroy pants that came with a matching corduroy vest of the same color. I was in love with it and she let me order it and I wore it with pride. I also remember being teased because of it, kids at school teased and poked fun as to why I would wear something so “gay”? I didn’t understand.

Me and my beautiful mom at Kolob Canyon in Southern Utah…unsure of why it looks as if I am levitating off the ground (circa 1975)

Growing up in the country ended up being one of the best things in my life. The beauty and freedom of living so far away from a city and gaining a love for nature, animals and the few friends I had. As I got closer to the age of puberty, I recall becoming very aware of the changes in my own body and becoming what I would call very sexually aware. This doesn’t mean I was having sex with anyone, it means that I was aware of arousal, I was fascinated with what my own body was becoming and I started to notice others too. With the discovering of my own body, as we all do, I discovered masturbation. One of my earliest recollections of a worthiness interview with my bishop was when I was 12 years old. Bishop Walker was his name, and I recall him asking me if I masturbated? I told him I didn’t know what that meant. He told me to go home and ask my dad. Instead I went home and pulled the “M” volume of the encyclopedia set that we had. I learned very quickly that this was something that was not acceptable in the Mormon Church, so as with anything that they forbid, I learned quickly how to hide it, lie about it and suppress it. Along with the hiding comes shame and guilt for something that it turns out is completely natural and normal and that everyone else is also doing just lying about it. So that is what I did, I began lying about it, denying I was doing it and feeling more and more shameful as the years went by. Guilt, shame, suppression. Lies.

One of my earliest memories of attraction to both sexes was from this period of time. I saw beauty in all people, to me it didn’t matter if they were male or female. In the 70’s we used the word “Foxy” to describe someone who in today’s language would be called “Hot”. There was a guy who came to our small town for the summers, his name was Mitch. It turns out that all the girls in town thought he was foxy, but so did I. One day I verbalized my attraction by saying to my sisters, “I think he is really Foxy”, and I was quickly corrected and scolded that I couldn’t say that about other boys. So, as I had done with the masturbation issue, the suppression of those feelings began. Guilt, shame, suppression. Lies.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but from a very early age, I was being conditioned to be someone, something that I was not. I was learning behaviors that were contrary to the very makeup of my DNA. As a young boy this was incredibly confusing and damaging. The most confusing part for me was that it seemed that these contradictions were coming from a place that I had been taught was my refuge, my safe place. They were coming from my church.