This is nothing hugely important. Just some thoughts. Feel free to do something more valuable, like watching a pot of water come to boil... As of this babbling, er, writing, I'm at 1, 983 posts. And it occurred to me that number, read as a year, corresponds to 1983, a year that is hugely significant for me... Even better, this post count number comes up in November, which was when the EC significant period of 1983 started! November, 1983 brought the start of seventh grade PE. And even on the first day, I was very interested in the other boys. It might be nice to pretend that I was interested in them because they were intelligent, and had keen insight of the world. I can't--for all I know, some of those boys could well have been so stupid they'd have made a fruit fly look like Mensa material. No, my interest was, ah, er, an entirely physical thing.:icon_redf If only I had understood what was happening... But...this was 1983. I knew little about sexuality--my knowledge was, in fact, pretty much this lecture: a man meets a woman, they fall in love, marry, and have a baby when the man puts his penis into the woman's vagina. The possibility that a man might fall in love with a man was something I never heard. I also had no real clue that sex was anything more than procreation. I heard insults that referenced being gay, but all I really knew was that, say, "fairy" was an insult word boys used on each other. If things had been different, I would have understood a key fact about myself back in 1983, rather than 2013. Maybe I shouldn't say understood. Well, understood might be the right word for me as a near-13 year old. As a 42 year old--my age when joining EC--it was more a case of acceptance. I knew I had some sort of same sex attraction. It had been a regular thing ever November, 1983. The only "understanding" I lacked at 13 was an intellectual understanding of what was going on. But...as I gained that knowledge, I also learned how much society hated gay people. Which gave me incentive to deny reality for many years. Denial is powerful. There were moments I'd question...but they didn't seem to last very long. Another "post milestone" that has me sort of shaking my head in disbelief is 1, 977. 1977 is a possible target year for action in an unfinished novel I started around 2000 (also in November!). That novel has 2 characters who are gay. I had amazingly powerful denial to write thousands of words, from the first person viewpoint of a gay man, and still think: "I'm not gay!":rolle: At least, I can take comfort in knowing I'm not alone, as LGBT Later in Life shows. Many of us have similar stories about the years of denial, or not understanding that which--in retrospect--should have been quite clear. And, as I said before: it was what it was. And I suppose this period of self acceptance has been a period of growth, which is a good thing. But, even so, I do wonder. What would it have been like if in 1983 I had understood my feelings about other boys? And what if the world had been more tolerant of LGBT then? What if things were different? Unanswerable questions, I know...but still something I wonder about.
I remember 1983 as well, and wonder what things would have been like if... Also. I was not aware of my sexuality. I had some very intense friendships with other boys. I assumed at the time my interest was friendship. Looking back now, the warm fuzzy feelings that came with it were probably more. However, I was bullied quite heavily for years for not being masculine enough. And was called gay (and other terms). I was determined to not be what they called me.
Yes, denial IS a powerful force. When you think about the lengths to which people have gone in order to keep the truth from others AND themselves, only then do we have some understanding as to the real nature of denial...
1983, I was older and much more deeply in denial. but you did make me think about 1969, Freshman year at an all boys Catholic high school. that was my first time naked in a locker room full of boys in the full bloom of puberty. Nobody prepared me for that, and for the fact that I would get a big erection that wouldn't go down, even in the showers, even standing around talking as we got our clothes and got changes. Or for the pleasure that I felt in it. eventually, I learned how to preemptively take care of it, but not until the end of freshman year. and if you think the world was homophobic in 1983, imagine 1969. and I remember sophomore biology in 1970, watching a film strip (anybody remember those? BEEP!), and what remained in my mind for all these years is that when the film strip explained the anus, the narrator went to great pains (giggle) to emphasize that the anus was not a sexual organ. Hmmmm. I wonder if anyone told God that when he put the prostate in there (more giggles). Anyway, sorry that I'm not really talking about 1983, but I just wanted to share those events from a different year but from more or less the same stage of life that you were in back in 1983.
Great post! in 1983, I was thirteen. And rather just looking at boys then, I was actually physically exploring my sexuality with them at that point. At the time, I thought it was just "experimentation". I should have known better!
November 1983, I was... about 10 months old. :eek: The denial wouldn't come until later, obviously, but I can very much relate to it all the same. I think for me, once it was obvious that there was some same sex attraction, the next natural question to raise to oneself is "what does this mean?" Except the answer to that question is so straightforward that you can know it almost before you even ask the question. I think for a long time I just wasn't ready for the answer so I simply refused to ask the question of myself. I disconnected (as much as I could) the same sex attraction from any deeper meaning because I didn't want, or wasn't able, to face that reality.
In the summer of '83, I was 23 (one of the perks of being born in a year that ends in zero is that you just follow the years with your age). That summer I went out with a French girl, Véronique. I even spent the month of August in France with her and her family at their vacation home (most people take August off in France) and she introduced me to the nude-friendly beaches in the area. Needless to say, on that beach we were surrounded by gorgeous French women au naturel...but guess what I was noticing... That was a bittersweet August in fact, one week into that month she decided she didn't want to have sex anymore...it is the very definition of awkward when you have to spend the remaining 3 weeks with a woman who just shunned me at every turn while being with her very welcoming family...I called her many years later just to say hi (her then 18 year-old son answered...), and she apologized for treating me so badly. Maybe I should call her now to update her on recent developments...:badgrin:
November 1983....I was in my last (5th!) year of college and my 3rd year with the roommate I had been crushing on for years. We decided to move to a different dorm for fun, and it was a disaster. The floor we were on was full of homophobic jocks who never liked us. We did everything together but really weren't a "couple" in that sense. Neither of us were out, and he steadfastly denied being gay, while I was more wishy-washy and thought I might be bi, and nothing ever happened between us, even though I desperately wanted him to be in love with me as much as I was with him. Except one night when he was way more drunk than I, he demanded that I give him a blow job because "You KNOW you want to!" I did want to, desperately, and took the chance. He passed out in the middle of it and then ignored that it even happened for 2 weeks, after which he dismissed it and told me that "if" he was gay, I wouldn't be his type anyhow, and I shouldn't take it as meaning anything. Our conversation the night of the event was a little too loud apparently, and after that night, one of the jocks in particular would mutter "Faggot!" audibly whenever we walked by, while glaring hatefully at us. I had been bullied throughout middle school and part of high school for assorted things, but this was the first time I really connected it with the possibility of being gay, and it terrified me to the core. Then, a few years after I graduated, the roommate came out and immediately found a boyfriend who was nothing like me, and I was terribly hurt because we had done everything together for years at school, and he really had never found me desirable at all. That was one of the larger planks that went into building my closet walls. I was insecure and thought, if he could spend all that time with me and not find me at all attractive or appealing, then I wasn't not likely to find any guy who would. It was a stretch and not logical, but I was panicking. I dated a few girls without much enthusiasm, and then several key family members died and I found myself fearing that I would be alone, and I became friends with a girl in the church choir whom I eventually married after a complicated courtship that included singing and playing the organ for her first wedding, and protecting her from an abusive alcoholic husband. Yep, it was quite a significant year....
I tend to associate years with movies that were released in that same year. That is, unless something of "import" occurred in my life. I think 1983 was fairly vanilla for me. The only movie that comes to mind of 1983 vintage was "The Big Chill." It was about a reunion of college friends. Some of the cast characters were likable and some were not. Kevin Kline is in that movie. In my opinion, he is a great actor who turns in consistently good performances. I'm going to have egg on my face if I got the year of that movie wrong!
