I am well-prepared for the eventuality that most of you readers, on partaking of what I have to tell you now, will think of the narrative as utterly incredulous.

There are good alternative reasons for that: you have taken your own relative normalcy(childhood, growing up etc) for granted. Or, you have suppressed the quirks and dark corners of your own life into the unseen recesses of your psychology. Let's metaphorise it as the family sofa for a moment, shall we? Oh, that wonderful plushy sofa! So aesthetically pleasing, so inviting to needs a good rest for the 'ol behind.

And so full of accumulated dust, lizards tails,and dead cockroaches in the gaps between.

I have maintained silence on this issue for thirty years. A lifetime of achievement for some people.

I have been emboldened by the courage of others to lay the cards before the world.

To end my self-suffocation. To end my dead man walking, and to begin to live the way I am inside.

The way I always was.


With the quantum of emotional and psychological trauma that I am on the receiving end of, it's a big surprise to myself that I'm not an alcoholic or an overweight slob,(or both) drowning his sorrow by clutching at the straws of gluttony or stupor to escape a sensation of drowning.

Drowning in a life that was chosen for me. That I wasn't asked whether I wanted to live.

It's not like entering a deli and being asked : "Would you like a chicken frankfurter or a salami?"

"I'm happy...mom," he said, tentatively.

After an awkward but brief(though it did seem more prolonged) moment, she blurted out:

"Well, that's what gay means, doesn't it?"