More Gay "Red Flags"

Me, aged 13.

All through my high school years and right up until I was 20, I was lacking in self-confidence, painfully shy and rarely voluntarily uttered a word in class. As well, I was very much a late bloomer in every department, especially sexually. I was awkward and clumsy, badly dressed and sported a bad "Donny Osmond" haircut by my father. My only saving grace was that I was pretty smart and was usually the top student in all my classes, but I had to work very hard at it.


Check out the horror of this outfit:

-70s leisure suit, home-sewn by my mother *

-100% polyester knit with a houndstooth checkered pattern of olive, brown and white

-‘clodhopper' shoes

-100% polyester dress shirt with ‘bat wing’ collar


* to the same wedding, my older brother wore a handsome store-bought corduroy blazer and nice dress pants....grrrr!

High School Gay Red Flags - I should have known I was bi/gay because.........

Opposite of Gay Red Flags (not sure what to call this list --- non-gay indicators?)

The biggest one: I didn’t date at all during all the years of high school, not once!! Later, I used the excuse of being a late bloomer, painfully shy and awkward.... but when that pattern continued into my 20s, that excuse was wearing a bit thin..... Although I excelled at individual sports like skiing, I grew to hate all team sports... apart from the fact that I was clumsy and bad at most of them, I really disliked the “macho male bonding camaraderie” that went along with team sports.      I sometimes often looked at guys bulges in those late 70s jeans....Jordache, Sergio Valente, Calvin Klein, Levis....err...didn’t everybody? Weren’t those jeans designed to accentuate a guy’s bulbous groin region? Wasn’t that the whole point? Wrestling:  my gay wet dream. (That’s it! To be honest, that's everything I could think of to put in this list...)

I never hung out with girls, or was ‘one of the girls.’ I only hung out with guys at school who were invariably on the football or some other team. I majored in shop classes at high school, and took the maximum number allowed: sheet metal, welding, woodworking, automotive, machining, drafting...I did them all. I was always treated very well by my peers and was a respected member of the class; I was pretty good at it and always helped the other guys in the class as needed. On weekend, my brothers and cousins did ‘manly’ things like hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and working at the latest family house-building project. The Reality:  wrestling in phys. ed. class. I hated wrestling in high school phys. ed. Having to touch another guy! Gross! Feeling a guy’s package mash up against you during a match....Double gross! I found nothing arousing in the boy’s high school locker room.... no one showered or even took off their underwear. I always averted my eyes because I didn’t want to look at their asses, not to mention their frontage. (By the way, I was never bullied in the locker room as some gay guys were... I was completely ‘under the radar’ partly because I was so shy.) My ethic group had a “Men’s Athletic Association” which my brothers, cousins and uncles went to regularly, from age 10 to about 20, and sporadically to age 30. Events such as swimming or skiing invariably wrapped up in the sauna / locker room. Group nudity was normal and we were surrounded by (I realized in retrospect) dozens of the hottest men imaginable; mostly blue-eyed blondes. All were hot young men; many were, had been or would be national level athletes in many sports such as hockey and cross-country skiing) Despite all these flopping penises around, I never even noticed them... never had the slightest stirring in my nether regions. (I know I would find it very .... exciting... now.)  For a latent gay boy like me, this lack of interest in these hot, naked athletic men now puzzles me.