Is It Really Better?

Somewhat graphic, perhaps more than somewhat depending on your particular point of view.  Not intended to be so for prurient reasons, but necessary to make the ultimate point.  So, pass on this post if you're sensitive in this regard.  You'll get no judgment from me friend. 

I'm around 14 years old and have fallen very much in love with a friend without really even understanding that it has happened.  He is only a few months older than I am, but he feels much more so and I am yearning for a close relationship with someone older.  Without really understanding that it has become so, our friendship has turned sexual, of significant intensity for how old we were.  No, there was never any actual intercourse, oral sex or anything like that.  One might say it was anti-climatic (yuck yuck), but we would regularly fondle each other.  I have no way of knowing this, but I suspect that our level of physical play was similar to what a "normal" 14 year old boy and girl might engage in.  At least when I was growing up.  I have the impression that today's 14 year olds are decidedly more involved that I could have even imagined at that age.

One evening, my friend Larry (name changed to protect the not very innocent) was at my house.  We were up in my room and began playing our "game" - my personal favorite because it always ended with my hands "exploring".  Fortunately, the door was closed.  Unfortunately, not completely.  My older brother and his wife were over for cards ("Rook") with my parents, a regular occurrence in those days.  My brother had decided to sneak upstairs and see what we were up to - to surprise us.  Now, this particular brother was (and still is in many ways) a large kid, so joking around was in his nature.  I don't think he suspected anything untoward or was looking to spy on us beyond to the extent necessary to joke around.  

He ends up looking through the door, seeing me on top of Larry with his pants down and my hands in a compromising position.  He is shocked and bewildered so he quietly goes back downstairs.  I was so, shall we say, focused that I didn't even realize that he had seen us.  Later that evening, my brother takes Larry home.  He asks me to come along.  I decline because I was a lazy, thoughtless friend and had already got what I was looking for out of Larry.  Brother insists.  Fine, I sigh, and hop in the car.  

We drop Larry off.  On the way back to the house, Brother confronts me.  Explains what he saw.  I panic, am full of denial and anger - furious in fact.  It is impossible for me to adequately describe my feelings of desperation.  Either you've experienced them and know what I'm talking about, or you haven't in which case there's no way I can make you understand.  We get home.  I run up to my room.  My brother and I never speak of the incident again, although some time later he sees a fairly graphic joke note I had written Larry (during stake priesthood meeting even!) and gives me a puzzled look.

What might have happened if I had admitted all to Brother that night?  What if I had come out and talked to him about my feelings and activities with Larry?  I am not certain what Brother would have said or suggested or what his attitude about homosexuality was at that time.  However, I am confident he would have been kind.  In fact, looking back I realize that his confronting me over the matter was done in a caring and serious way, not in an accusatory or threatening manner.  I think he truly wanted to understand and help me.  But I can't be sure.  When I told my parents I was gay at 19, my mother's first statement was "don't worry, we won't tell your brothers."  So, there's some significant ambiguity. 

The past is the past.  I will never know what would have happened. However, I can't help but wonder whether some of the real insecurities, sexual difficulties and miserable mistakes that plagued my adult life would have been prevented, or perhaps mitigated, if I had trusted my brother and shared my feelings with him.  This was the 1980s and I was from old Mormon stock.  I have no illusion that I could have simply been open, out and proud.  No way.  But with Brother's help, maybe I would have been able to see who and what I really was and maybe, just maybe, my closet wouldn't have been so lonely with my brother in there with me from time to time.  It could have been a difference maker.  That's they way life is.  The thing that can make all the difference slips through our fingers before we even understand we are holding it.

Which brings me to my real point.  Is it truly that much easier for kids today?  I'm not sure I believe it is.  For all the gay-straight alliances, for all the YouTube coming out videos, for all the supposed openness, I still sure there's a lot of disgust and loathing from kids when it comes to their gay peers.  

It may be "getting better" on an incremental level.  There is no way in hell I could have come out in high school.  I can honestly say I did not know one single person who was openly gay in my four years of high school.  There was talk about a few people being gay, and their lives were made a living hell.  So, yes, I guess the ability to not be totally and completely alienated is improvement.

All in all, I still feel for my young gay friends.  I fear that at least some of them, way too many of them, will end up with my life.  Making stupid, foolish mistakes out of denial, ignorance and shame.  Enduring, if not the level of disgust from peers that the 1980s involved, at least a significant measure of condescension and disapproval and perhaps rejection as an "other" who doesn't belong.  I would hope it's better, but if I'm honest, I'm not convinced it really is.