What you get is what you get!

I'm a grandfather; partnered; a homeowner. I live in a small village in a rural area. I'm a gay male country dweller

Most of my friends are not gay least as far as I know, though I do find I socialize with an awful lot of "straight queers" (y'know, what they call metrosexuals nowadays).

I just don't fit in with most of the other gay folks I've met in my life. Maybe it's just that I don't have the right genes. Gawd knows, I've tried! But truth of the matter is that, contrary to popular cultural stereotypes, I lack some important "gay culture" criteria. To wit:

• I'm basically a slob
• Don't know a show tune from an aria
• Never been a member of a Royal Imperial Drag Queen Court
• I'm no gym bunny; I've got a beer gut [oops, that gets into the area of "bears" ...but that's a different topic altogether]
• I've got the fashion sense of a flea

True, I’m more fond of men, more comfortable with another man (and feel inherently right in saying so) than I am with a woman. And I’m comfortable saying –for I believe this- that I was born "that way." I have consciously known this since I was about 5 years old. For the most part, I am completely at ease with this reality. Not always, mind you. After all, I was wed to a woman for over 6 years and sired a boy-child from that union. Mighty glad I was able to do this too! But this didn’t last. I got divorced for reasons quite unrelated to my sexual misadventures (and no, I won’t tell you about it. It’s none of yer damn business. Don’t even think about asking me about it)

But that you ask if "I’m homo" has some curious connotations as well. Particularly considering what I do and where I work. Being "homosexual" was once decreed to be a form of "mental illness."

And the very term "homosexual" was one born out of clinical terminology. Part of the real slimy part of the mental treatment industry/system is that folks in the field increasingly refers to it as "behavioral health."

Now, the evolution of same sex couplings from something that no one gave second thought about, to the medicalization of these same actions/affections/inclinations, grew out of a late 19^th century unnatural coupling all its own. Namely, it was the union of preachers (those self-appointed standard bearers of moral correctness) together with a cadre of scientific types [not scientists they, mind you] (these latter with intentions of creating for themselves a cloak of professionalism to disguise the fact that all they really wanted was to maintain social control over other human beings).

And in the process, they made same sex unions "aberrant" by announcing them to be so. In and of itself, the assertion of something doesn’t make the premise valid. But I digress.

Once I eventually became comfortable with this facet of myself, (that I am a real queer) I never tried to pretend to be anything other than what I am. Sure, I didn’t fit the social construct of what a homo should "look like" [choose one- (a) limp wristed mincing fairy who knows every Bette Davis movie script by heart (b) hyper masculine Neanderthal with big muscles, a big penis (or the fantasy of having one) and an ego large enough to think that any and every other guy on earth is fair game for having his fudge packed lemme know how to get in touch with this one]. This made things somewhat more complicated. But I never hid.

I don’t go around wearing a sign, for gawd’s sake, but if anyone asks, I ain't gonna lie about who I really am or what makes me tick.