The Mark of Infamy

My father said he would kill me if I ever turned homo.  I was 14 years old.  I wonder how much this has affected my sexual development.

That evening I swallowed half a bottle of aspirin.  I knew they were painkillers.  I was not in pain.  I think I was foreseeing the pain that was to come.

I didn’t know much at age 14.  I knew practically nothing of personal identity and even less about sexual orientation.  I was simply me.  But I learned something important that day:  A homo doesn’t deserve to live.

I didn’t think I was a homo.  I hardly knew what the word meant.  In my teenage mind, the word homo meant “like a girl.”  I was a boy.  So to be “like a girl” was abominable.

I could have been a thief, a liar, or even a murderer, and my father would have forgiven me.  But if I was gay, I deserved to die — to be killed by my own father.

To be bisexual was even worse.  That was the ultimate disgrace, the most perverted thing on the face of this earth.

I was bisexual.

The mark of infamy was on me.  I didn’t deserve to live and I didn’t deserve to be happy.   And if I was to ever succumb to my sexual desires, it would be the end of me.

I don’t think I ever got over it.  Even now, decades later.  My father is dead.  I am free but I am not.  He left something in me.  The mark of infamy.  I wish I could pluck it out.

How can I be bisexual and proud?

I AM proud of myself.  But I am not proud of myself in regards to THEM — my family.  Bisexuality is not something to be proud of according to Christianity.

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