Growing Up Black and Gay

A fellow blogger recently wrote a post that I found extremely moving about his experience growing up black and gay as well as the abuse that he sustained. I think it was especially moving for me because I related to exactly half of what he had to say.

I too grew up black and gay (duh). Although my teenage hormones raged incessantly, my brain still had not yet come to terms with my being gay. How this is possible given that I fooled around with many of my friends from the ages of 12 to 16 I'll never know. As is true with most gay youths, I grew up feeling that something was seriously wrong with me. Because of this, I became outwardly very asexual. During my college years at a religious university, I would go through cycles of buying porno magazines followed by repentance, yet still half of my brain had no idea that I was gay.

My whole life I've been very into sports including basketball, baseball, football, cycling, tennis and just about every other type of sport. Outwardly, I was your typical boy, so no one really suspected that I was gay. One of the reasons that the post spoke to me was because I understand the parts that spoke to the hyper-masculinity expected within the black community. Now Although I can be equally turned on by both masculine and feminine guys (see related posting), my masculinity helped shield me from torments that could have been. Later, after coming to grips with my sexuality, I too had a period where I was not sure how to relate to black males in spite of being raised in a black neighborhood of New York.

What I could not relate though was the abuse that the posting described. I was never a part of the in-crowd, but frequently the most popular kids wanted me as their friend, so things were pretty easy for me. His post was like living through one my worst nightmares of what might have been. Hearing a story like this it makes me ache to comfort the little boy inside and tell him that there is a better world out there that will accept and love him. It hurts me that I cannot comfort him and wipe away the tears for his pain is all of ours. I am glad that the Internet has arrived though. At least it provides the gay youth of today some outlet to know that, wherever they may live, they are not alone.