If only I had a better title...

*gasp!* It's another coming out story!

After reading so many of your stories (which helped a lot) I’ve decided to bore you to death with my own.

Before I came to this country, I had never known what homosexuality was, let alone knowing what sex is. In elementary school, I had always had a very small group of friends, which was mostly made up of girls.

So, when I came to this country, I was in the fourth grade, and I felt horribly awkward. I had no friends, and each day I would sit alone. Eventually, a new student came to my school, and he had no friends either, so I went to him, and we got along nicely. We spent a lot of time together, and I often went to his house.

One day, he brought a picture of a half-naked woman to school, which, being a fourth grader, I found strangely arousing (I knew nothing about sex at the time). For a while I was clearly attracted to these women. My young curiosity eventually led me to looking for pictures of men. Though, the only ones that I found were of gay men. For a reason I didn’t understand, I found these more interesting; how was I to know that the men were gay?

Excited at my new discovery, I went to my friend to tell him what I found. His reply was something along the lines of “Dude, that’s gay!” So I made up some excuse about finding the pictures by accident, and we pretended as if it never happened.

For about six years, I told no one about this, because I had learned over time that being gay was wrong (don’t worry, I no longer believe that ). So, year after year went by as I felt ashamed of myself, wishing that I had never seen those pictures so that I might still be attracted to women. A couple of years ago, we moved from San Diego to San Jose, CA.

In the spring of my ninth grade year, my French teacher told me about a yearly “French Camp” in which a bunch of schools from our area participated. Basically, a group of students taking French and their teachers would spend a weekend in some mountains speaking only French. So, I went there, and I had fun. I met a guy who went to another school, and we talked a bit. Eventually, he gave me his AIM screen name.

I decided to message him a few months later, and we got along very well. Our conversations were very long, and we always had something to talk about. One night in the summer, our conversation got to something slightly sexual. I eventually told him “You should know something…” then, after hesitating for a bit, I typed to him “I’m gay.” He took it really well, saying that it didn’t matter to him, and then we got into philosophical discussions about homosexuality and religion. I think it actually made our friendship stronger.

After this, over a period of about a year, I came out to three other people. Though, this post is already getting too long, and I will stop now.