Utah Pride: Redux

Basking in the after-glow of an amazing Pride Weekend, I am compelled to share one more post about this truly awesome event. The sense of community and, yes, PRIDE, I felt and feel after having participated in the parade and festival has left me soaring. At the same time, I am humbled by and grateful for the experience.

Utah Pride reinforced in a very real and powerful way what I knew already—that life, especially my life—is good; that being true to myself and to the God who created me brings completion and fulfillment, joy and happiness, satisfaction and peace. After years of merely surviving in a colorless world bound with the chains of fear and self-loathing, I am now thriving in a limitless universe of color and space.

When I think of the path I’ve traveled the last two years, I’m astonished. When I consider the love I feel for those who led me and sometimes carried me along that path, I am overwhelmed.

My life as a gay man is life worth living—every single second of it. It is precious, treasured, a pearl of great price.

In the brilliant light of truth, I now see that my closet never really was a closet. It was a prison, a cell, small dark and fetid, into which I will never return.

I can now sing with every fiber of my soul the words of gratitude that can only be understood with the emancipation of the spirit, "I'm free at last, I'm free at last. Thank God Almighty I'm free at last."

Get your dating game on, gay boys....

This afternoon I met a guy, good personality, decent looking, easy to talk to, who was really down in the dumps about his social life. It's been a year, he said, since he's been out on a date and although he is only in his early 40's, he is sure life has passed him by. He has a great career, a good job, plenty of money, but no one to share all this with. And as a result, to him his life is empty and for the most part meaningless.

My heart went out to the guy and I felt absolutely terrible, especially because I had one great date yesterday afternoon and two wonderful dates today (and it's not even the weekend yet.) I couldn't help but wonder why so many normal guys, like my friends and I, date regularly and why so many great guys sit dejectedly at home.

My freshman roommate...a story of love (Part 1)

Last week I had dinner with my freshman roommate. Let me clarify something up front. He wasn't actually my roommate. He lived down the hall and across the way. How we met, I don't recall and how we became such close friends is now a mystery.

I do remember clearly, however, the first time I saw him and the physical impact he had on me; the quickened breath, the weak knees, the touch of vertigo, the impossible feeling that I was standing in the presence of someone holy or perhaps divine.

Albert was his name and he was tall, lean, and well-muscled for an eighteen year old boy. His hair was dark, short, and his eyes were dark, deep. His face was calm, sincere, and his smile was simply radiant.

Upon seeing me, he eagerly reached out, took my hand and shook it firmly. That handshake broke my trance, but it cemented an infatuation that remained with me for years.

The need for friends...

Last night I had dinner with my freshman roommate. It was the first time we have had opportunity to talk since I began coming out nearly two years ago.

This roommate was my savior that first year of college. I was lonely, away from home for the first time, lost in the maze that was BYU. He was tall, handsome, brave, intelligent and kind beyond words. We became inseparable. His friendship gave me the courage and strength to remain in school and remold what would have been a dark and difficult time into what became one of the happiest periods of my life.