My Straight Jacket

By Mark Meade

The compelling story of a gay dad, confined, living a straight life for 39 years. Discover how he endures living the heterosexual life, as a closeted gay man. Follow his journey from a child to a man as he learns to deal with and accept his true sexuality. Experience the joys and troubles of coming out to his children, family, and friends. Gather the insight as he takes a look inside himself

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Meade
• Release date: Jul 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452318462

Mark Meade

By profession I am a Software Project Manager. I have been in the software industry for 26 years. I have written numerous technical documents throughout my career. This is my first book for publish. I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University.

Book preview

My Straight Jacket

Mark W. Meade

Published by Mark W Meade at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Mark W Meade

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Prelude

Upbringing

The Married Life

Pre - Coming Out

Coming Out

Religion

The Future

Bibliography

Prelude

As I look back on my life I can see that I have been gay for as long as I can remember. In fact I definitely believe that I was born gay. Some may argue this theory but I believe it to be true. There were plenty of signs along the way. I chose not to accept them and I chose not to allow myself to be honest. It took me 39 years to understand who I really was. In some respects I wish I had the courage to admit that I was gay when I first realized it, but I didn’t and that is what has made my life what it is today. This book is my story of how I came to terms with my sexuality.

As I sit at my desk staring at a blank computer screen I think about how to start my task at hand. Contemplating, I turn and look out the window and I notice what a beautifully mild November day it is in Columbus, Ohio. Preoccupied a bit, I turn back to my computer and I start writing this book.

I’m not a known writer, artist, politician, or celebrity; I am just an average guy that wants to share a story with an important message. I feel compelled to write this particular book in the hopes that my message will be heard.

I am currently 40 years old (although some think I look much younger… and for some strange reason I really like those people). I have two beautiful children, both boys. I have a great job, a fantastic home, and I am in a great relationship. By the way, I am also gay! I came out on 1/1/2000 at age 39. It was an extremely important day in my life and this book explains why it took me 39 years to come to terms with my sexuality.

I have a lot to say about my journey and maybe a little about life in general. Some of my friends may disagree with me, but one thing is for sure, I have always been known to be a talker. Now I have an opportunity to talk as much as I want (well, actually write as much as I want, but those are just semantics). The subject is easy to write about because it is all about me! Okay, enough with the arrogance.

During my journey I read various books that inspired me and maybe my book will inspire others to write their own book. Some of the inspirational books I have read were about gay life and others were not. However the books that stand out in my mind all had one common theme that touched me. In general I would say the theme could be described as ‘life lessons’. More often than not it was when a person realized what was most important in their life. It was not about a new car, a big house, a fancy vacation, or how much money a person makes (oddly enough we all feel happier with more money). It was about learning how to understand yourself as a person and being comfortable with who you are. It was about strong trusting relationships. It was about making friendships with people and enjoying the time with them. It was about caring for people and the environment. It was about acceptance, openness, honesty and integrity. It was about real life issues. As I read these books I myself was struggling with the question of who I really was, and they helped become a part of my coming out experience. They helped me to accept myself for who I really was.

I wanted desperately to find books about gay dads who came out to their children but I was not able to find much at all, if any. I wanted to know what other gay dads went through and what issues they had to deal with. I wanted to know if their kids accepted them for who they were. I wanted to know how they told their children they were gay. I wanted to know many different things. It was not easy to find answers to these questions. I just wanted to know how others dealt with the situation before I had to deal with it myself. I wanted to learn from their experiences. And so I am writing this book in the hopes that someone else can learn from my experiences. I may not have all of the answers but I want to share my experiences so others can learn from them.

I feel it is somewhat of a mission in my life to educate people about the life of a gay man and that it is not so out of the ordinary as one might think. I mean when you really think about it we all think we are normal. No matter what life you lead you think it is normal because that is what you know. For example, a child raised on a farm feels that the country life is a normal way to live life and in contrast a child raised in a large urban city feels that the city life is a normal way to live life. One may be used to waking up to the sound of roosters crowing and the other may be used to waking up to the sound of taxis, cars, and trains. Each child grows up thinking his way of life is normal. It’s only when the two children would meet each other would they realize there are differences and/or similarities between the two of them. At that time they could begin to think of reasons why to dislike each other or why the other is not normal and not want to accept the other child (in my humble opinion that would be the wrong thing to do), or they could learn and share ideas with each other and get to know each other and grow as individuals (in my humble opinion the right thing to do).

In general we tend to think people that are different from us are the ones that are not normal. So what does being normal actually mean? That is a question that only we can answer for ourselves. However, if we each look inside ourselves and open our mind and heart to different people we might find that they are really not so different after all. Maybe they are normal as well. They just may have different interests and beliefs than you. And what is wrong with that? You might actually learn some valuable information from a different person. We might find out that we are all just normal people in this world trying to cope with life in different ways. Keep this in mind because I will refer to this throughout the book.

I hope you enjoy reading this book. I hope that gay men reading this book who are facing some of the same issues I faced will learn from my experiences and apply them to their own situations. Women that have dated or have been married to gay man may learn to understand what a man in that situation goes through. I hope others reading this book will develop a better understanding of gay men (well, at least one gay man) and learn tolerance and acceptance. I will however caution children from reading this book because it does get explicit at times.

Disclaimer: The experiences in this book are true to my account, but the names have been changed to protect those that may not want to have their name known.

Upbringing

Boy thoughts

I grew up in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio. My parents raised me along with my two sisters in a small three-bedroom ranch house. I am the middle child. My sisters and I are each two years apart from one another. As the middle child, and being the only boy in the family, I felt as though I was blamed for everything. Granted I was ornery and full of energy, but there were times that I took the blame for things that were not my doing. I guess it was just the way things worked themselves out.

We didn’t live a very extravagant life; in fact I would say that we lived a typical white middle class life in a typical small mid-western suburb. Diversity was not a word that I could relate to when I was a child. In fact if there was diversity (whether it be in the form of race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, etc), then it was recognized as strange, or not normal. I only knew one life style and that was the one I lived with my family.

My parents were both Methodists and I too was baptized Methodist. We would go to church the obligatory twice a year, once for Easter and once for Christmas. However in my teenage years I did attend the church youth group every week. Overall though religion didn’t really play a big part in our lives but it was there. To question it was wrong, to accept it was right.

As a young boy I can remember being a bit different from the other boys, not in all situations but in some. For instance, when it came to sports I didn’t like to play the typical American sports such as football, basketball, or baseball however I did enjoy swimming and gymnastics. I didn’t like many of the aggressive sports because they scared me and I always thought I wasn’t good enough to play any of them and I was in fear of getting hurt. I enjoyed just hanging out and playing games like kick-the-can, tag, and hide-n-seek. I had a blue banana seat bicycle that my father helped me put together and I rode that all the time. Early on I also found that I was fond of other boys and I liked being around them more so than being with girls. I think this is normal for any boy. On the other hand I liked playing with my sisters and their friends too. We would play house and use the easy bake oven and make clothes for our troll dolls. My grandma taught me how to sew by hand and with a sewing machine so that skill came in handy when making the clothes. I also had a GI Joe doll that would mingle with the Barbie and Ken dolls that my sisters had.

As an adolescent I would think a lot about other boys. Some of the thoughts I had I believed all boys had whether they were heterosexual or homosexual. It is part of adolescence and puberty. In any case one thought was prevalent with me and it was the male genitalia. I found that I was fascinated with penises and I yearned to see other boys (and men) naked. I wanted to know the shape and size of their penis. Was it just like mine or was it different? I wanted to know if their penis was larger or smaller than mine (you know how guys are always comparing themselves to other guys… I guess it starts at a young age). I wanted to know what an uncircumcised boy looked like. I had only known what my circumcised penis looked like. I wondered what it would be like to see another boy with an erection. As a young teenager I would spend everyday during the summer at the pool. There I could see a plethora of other boys in swim suits, always wanting to see more to satisfy my curiosity.

During the school year while in gym class I would always try to take a peek at the boy next to me as he was undressing. I always felt very nervous about this for fear that someone might catch me looking, so I tried to be as discreet as I could. If I couldn’t get a good view then I could only image what his penis looked like.

If I couldn’t see the real thing then a picture would be the next best thing. Magazines were another way to sneak a peek at a penis. I remember looking through old National Geographic magazines hoping to see a naked man. Thank goodness we had piles of them in the basement for me to peruse through. I can thank my grandma for them too since it was her subscription that ended up in our basement. I would spend hours at a time in the basement by myself looking and looking for something to satisfy my curiosity. I would even look through Playboy’s hoping that a naked man might be with a woman. Playboy was a good magazine to view when you were with other boys so they would never suspect anything, even though I had my own agenda. The thought of other boys (or men) was constantly on my mind, just as the thought of girls would have been constantly on a heterosexual boy’s mind. This was my human nature.

Being ignorant to outside influences lead me to believe that these thoughts and actions were quite normal, but as I entered Middle School I soon found out that my thoughts were not quite the same as the thoughts of the other boys. I would hear comments from the other kids about fags, homos, and queers. The fag or homo was always the brunt of some joke or ridicule and all the kids would laugh. I was confused because I didn’t truly know or understand what a fag was, however I knew it had something to do with boys liking boys and that it was not good and therefore I did not want to be one. Realizing that I did in fact like boys I was extremely interested in knowing exactly what it meant so one day I went to our basement and got out my dad’s dictionary and I looked up the word ‘fag’ (yes I used a real dictionary … remember the internet was not around when I was a child) There were a variety of meanings, one meant cigarette, which totally confused the issue for me, and another meant homosexual. I wasn’t sure what that actually meant either so I looked it up as well. Even after looking up homosexual in the dictionary I still did not completely understand what it all really meant. However it did lead me to believe that my thoughts and actions that I had been having might make me a fag or a homosexual and this also lead me to believe that it was not normal based on the comments I had heard. I wanted to be normal just like any kid does and so this was very frustrating for me. Ironically the dictionary never mentioned whether a fag was normal or not!

I struggled with all of this new information and I continued to wonder, "how could I be a fag or a queer or allow myself to be a fag or a queer if it wasn’t normal"? I always felt like a normal child or at least I had a strong desire, as all teenagers do, to be normal and fit in with everyone else so therefore I concluded that I could not be a fag or queer since it was not normal (according to what I had learned). Does that make sense? I know it sounds confusing but it makes complete sense to