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.