Love can arrive at the most inopportune, inconvenient, and unexpected time. The great love of my life happened that way. Not sought out. Not planned. Not hunted for. Love organic, with no notice or forethought.

But before that happened, I did have another love. A love that I wanted to make work. A love I spent time thinking about, planning, and looking for. My first marriage to my wife.

A “straight” marriage, it would be called.

I met her when I went out of state from the Midwest to the Redwood Forest of Giant Sequoias in Sequoia National Park. I still remember the first time I saw her. My immediate thought was, “That girl has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen!” She was bubbly, fun, engaging, and pretty. Long, beautiful hair of the 70’s style. I was most definitely attracted! You can’t fight a tidal wave.


However, the undertow of my life was my sexual identity. My identity and innocence had been hijacked by terrible child molestation when I was very young, to the point of being hospitalized. That experience was never discussed or explained to me, thus began a long period of denial and confusion as I became a young adult.

I had shut out all of those memories. I actively began to seek a marriage partner, because having no reference to what being gay even meant, I had no knowledge that the gay world existed, or that any other boy or man I knew had ever had the same feelings I had about men. This was the southern portion of the Midwest.

Gay didn’t exist.

No lasting high school relationships and no sexual experiences during high school left me unprepared when confronted with my sexuality with this beautiful young woman. I was in my last year of college. She had graduated. Sex worked.

So, ok. I'm straight, I thought, the struggle I have had with being attracted to men can be conquered and pushed back...