The second adolescence…

It’s odd experiencing adolescence in middle age. Since coming out, the constraints and mores that have circumscribed acceptable behavior for my entire adult life seem to have dissipated like “a breeze through the oak.”

In their place pulse a sense of wonder and amazement, courage and audacity, vigor and power, sensation and sensuality, urges and compulsions that are new and, candidly, on occasion, overwhelming. It’s as though I’ve entered a brave new world and am again confronting the mysterious first signs of manhood, the deepening voice, the thickening body, the pangs of desire, and the apprehension and trepidation that make the unknown not just a bit frightening, but even more importantly, enticing.

I’m sure all of this creates awkward and even embarrassing moments for my friends (i.e., when I told the straight waiter at a coffee shop we frequent that I thought he was beautiful and that if he weren’t gay with looks like his he should be. And that I in fact would be willing to take one for the team and be his first male lover should he desire to take one. (The waiter was flattered and responded good-naturedly. My friends on the other hand rolled their eyes and scattered to the far ends of the coffee shop as quickly as their Niked feet would carry them.)).

But for me, these new feelings and forces mean that I’m finally alive. After spending a lifetime bound in a chain of my own making, I AM free; I AM invincible; and I AM destined for something great.

And what great thing am I destined to accomplish? I am destined to share love…real love…and with that love the intimacy of spirit, mind and body that binds two beings together and makes them wholly one. This I believe is the zenith of human existence and the prospect of sharing intimacy like that with another human being forces me to exclaim without reservation, “I AM GAY AND SO LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. NOTHING WILL MAKE IT OTHERWISE!”

Because this is true, anything is possible.

So I will sing. I will dance. I will give love and take it in return. I will revel in the newness of my life and cherish the joy of discovery. In the end, I will take comfort in knowing that I have lived and loved and met the full measure of my creation.