BEING GAY (AN INTERVEIW)

Would you choose to be straight if you had the choice?

I have noticed this question being posed several times on the net. The answer was always ‘No!’
For myself, the answer is the same and the reason is simple. Being gay is an integral part of who I am and all through my life renewal and expansion has come through my love for boys. The memories of all these boys and the feelings that they inspired are precious to me.

So, what do you think caused you to be gay?

For me I think part of the cause was in my surroundings when I grew up. I was living with three women and had virtually no connection with male energy until I began school, an all boy’s school. I had a thirst for male closeness, nothing sexual really, but when I awoke to my sexuality it naturally connected with the intense interest and attraction I had to my school friends. I liked girls well enough and felt at home with them, but I was not attached to them and did not wish them to be attached to me. When a girl was in love with me, it was flattering in the beginning and maybe even a bit exciting, but after a while it felt restricting and I lost interest.
There are so many shades of gayness-bisexuality and I think they have different combinations of causes. Someone else might have grown up in circumstances similar to mine and not have become gay, who knows? There might be something else in my character that disposed me towards the way I developed.
As a believer in reincarnation and karma I think the ultimate cause lays there, so you can say that you are born to it, which is another reason that I would not wish it otherwise.

When did you first become aware of your gay feelings?

I was around ten years old when I fell in love for the first time. He was the cousin of a boy who lived on my street and he came the first summer I lived there and stayed for a while. I was totally in love with him. There were both the bliss and the despair of passionate love. When I slept over at his place and we were in bed together, even though there was nothing sexual, I remember the happiness of being warm and close and cozy. But one time when we played in the street he said something nasty to me and I ran home in despair. I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom with tears running down my face, when a light sound made me turn and I glimpsed his eye in the chink behind the door. Others did not seem to have that kind of feelings; I knew they were exaggerated, but there was no denying them; I could only try to hide them.
There is another memory: playing with my best friend from school, I reached over him and as my body pressed against his I had an erection and I noticed the pleasant feeling of it. But these memories stand alone and unconnected. It was not until my first orgasmic experience with Poul when I was twelve that my sexuality came to bloom.
Poul was the grandson of an older couple who were friends of my mother. They lived in a small town and when we visited I was lodged with Poul’s family where I had him and his sister as playmates. Poul, the youngest, was two years younger than me. At a visit when I was twelve, we were put in the same bed at night and his sister on a cot next to us. While she was asleep Poul and I fooled around with each other, and for the first time, being not alone, I came, while Poul was still too young to have an orgasm.

How did you feel about being gay?

Well, I didn’t think I of myself as homosexual. I had heard very little about homosexuals: it seemed that they were effeminate and so a bit ridiculous and also sad and lonely. That was not me at all. I knew how I felt, but I expected to find the right woman some day and I would be like everybody else.
I did find happiness in the close friendships of youth and during the teen years this closeness included mutual masturbation with Poul, whom I didn’t see often, and also with my best friend in school. The noose tightened when they didn’t want this anymore. I tried out with girls but it never went very far. Still, my way of dealing with it was to not think too much about it.
I was more or less waiting for a solution to appear, and when it finally did, I had no hesitation in accepting it. I was gay and there were others who felt like me.

So, how old were you when you came out?

I was 25. It was an incredible release to come to a conclusion and I was very happy. The energy that had thus far been used to fool others and myself as to my sexuality now became free to be used in a constructive way and I began a new life as an artist.

Did you find a mate?

That was quite another thing. This was 1950 and there was not much of a network to support gays. My first lovers were not interested in long-term relationship, or available. There was one club for gays and I went there and found only effeminate and sad older homosexuals that I didn’t feel any affinity for. All that was left was cruising and I was not very bold and also quite specific in my tastes. I seemed to fall in love with straight boys and more or less continue in the pattern already set.
I did finally find a mate when I was 28. He was ten years younger and moved in with me, but it was not all happy harmony. He was not into monogamy and it lasted less than three years and left me rather depressed. After that I had only shorter affairs; it seemed to be difficult to combine the sexual with the emotional aspects.
Later I lived near a cruising place, a small forest where gays came during the white nights throughout the summer. The Danish summer is so short and the weather is unstable, so I didn’t go that often, but I had some gratifying encounters. There was something romantic in the mutual pure lust given free play in the silent summer night.

What are your specific tastes?

Oh, they cannot be categorized. Maybe I can say that they often duplicate my early attractions. There are so many levels of attraction, from the intense love–at-first-sight to the slowly ripening interest. I have a hard time separating the emotional from the sexual and the sexual from the spiritual in my relations with boys. It’s all expressions of the same, but it is impossible to explain.
I could say that my specific tastes in the visual department are shown on my blog BOYS I LIKE.

You started a discussion of boy-love on that blog. Are you attracted to younger boys?

Yes, sometimes. And I really sincerely believe that there is more abuse out there, in relationships among adults, than there is between men and boys. To me, the worst thing our society does to the young is denying their sexual nature and their power to know what they want, and trying to ‘protect’ them by lying to them and concealing the truth.
For many people this issue is totally taboo, there is nothing to discuss. Well, I think there is a lot to discuss. For one thing, just as there are men attracted to boys, there are boys who are attracted to grown men. There is a balance in things. And we don’t choose our attractions, so we should respect how others feel. The feelings are god-given and how we act on them only God can judge. But there are people who profess to know what God’s intensions are and what God wants, and they are not open to any form of discussion.
In many cultures boy-love was the very definition of homosexuality; it was part of learning how to be a man.

How is it to grow old being gay?

I think each age has its advantages and its drawbacks. It was never easy to be gay, emotionally, but maybe it’s just that all human relationships are difficult. I have more peace of mind now than before and that is the most important, isn’t it? And I still have young friends around who are a source of joy and keep me alive.

What do you think of gay marriage?

I don’t think gays should imitate straights, really; I think they should have the same rights as everybody else. Marriage seems to be in decline anyway, so what’s the point? It’s just a word. But gays want to be respectable and to fit in. The gay movement was not like that in the beginning. I just read about Harry Hay who was the first to organize a gay movement, the Mattachine Society; I think it was in 1950. He was trying to define the role that gay people could assume in the future society from the roles they played in the cultures of earlier times. He was radical. I think it’s sad when gays become as closed-minded as their bigoted pursuers. I wish we could go back to the times when the word homosexual didn’t exist. It was just something some people did and some others didn’t, no big deal.