My life has been one non stop ball of confusion.
Am I gay, straight, bi, gender queer, asexual?
Who knows?
I sure don’t.
I don’t think I’ll ever figure this out because I don’t think this confusion was solely mine to begin with. It was kinda a group thing if you know what I mean.
Going by the number of sexual encounters I’ve had with women, I’ve had maybe 3 female partners, you’d assume that I have very little interest in women.
Going by the number of men I’ve had sex with in my life ( not including the sexual abuse), I’ve probably had about two to three dozen partners in my life, you’d assume that I’m homosexual.
Yet, every time I get intimate with a man, Captain Totzke pops into my head and starts admonishing me about my mental illness called homosexuality and that if I didn’t like the abuse on CFB Namao then I wouldn’t have allowed it to go on for so long. And then there’s my father whom also pops into my head and starts reminding me that I allowed the babysitter abuse my younger brother.
And of course, just growing up on military bases in the ’70s and ’80s would turn any queer child into a self loathing human.
And let’s be honest. I’m 50. I’ve really only had two long term “partners” in my life, and I’ve never really had any interest in a partner. This in itself probably stems from the way my father viewed his relationships and how little joy or pleasure he seemed to get from them. He was forever complaining how much his relationships were costing him in time and money and how much he had to do for the other party, so maybe that had an effect on why I’ve remained single my entire life.
My depression and anxiety couldn’t have helped much either.
Was it the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao? What I endured and what I saw happen from 1978 until 1980 have more than likely affected me for life.
Was it my involvement with the military social worker Captain Terry Totzke, who for nearly three years had drilled into my head that I was showing “homosexual tendencies” due to what had happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao?
Was it my father’s reactions, which were in no doubt guided by Captain Totzke and the military’s view of “homosexual activities”?
Was it the sexual abuse on CFB Griesbach?
I have no doubt the sexual abuse prior to my 13th birthday probably helped to form my opinion on sex. I didn’t have my first orgasm until after I had turned 13. So sexually pleasuring those abusing me was a one-way street.
Was it the sexual abuse on CFB Downsview at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens? Earl knew that I was a military dependent. As he was a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces he also would have known that I would have been in a deep trouble if anyone in the Canadian Forces, whether it be the military police or even my father, found out that I was having sex with men.
Was it the sexual encounters I had with the much older teen in the summer of 1985 when I spent the summer with my grandmother?
It’s really hard to say.
But I would say that these events obviously have had some effect.
Looking back I’m pretty sure that being loner and on my own set me up for a lot of the abuse. And with what I’d gone through on CFB Namao, and the counselling that I endured from Captain Totzke meant that I pretty well thought that being abused was something that I was something that I was to be blamed for.
And when you’re not getting any type of love and affection at home, when somebody sexually abuses you, at least they’re paying attention to you, right?
In my life I’ve had boyfriends.
In my life I’ve had girlfriends.
My first boyfriend was on CFB Griesbach of all places. The place where Captain Totzke had warned me about homosexuality being a mental illness. The same place where Captain Totzke said he had the military police watching me.
He was a boy my age. He lived two houses down from mine. His father was a sergeant in the Canadian Airborne Regiment. It was nothing serious, and nothing sexual. We liked to kiss. And hang out together a lot. His father caught us kissing once. My father nearly killed me. Said that he never wanted to hear again, especially not from a sergeant, that I had been kissing their son and that if he did that he’d “break my fucking neck”.
Megan wasn’t really a girlfriend. We did like to talk and hang out a lot. And there was the clothes swapping thing. Definitely nothing romantic.
In the aftermath of Earl Stevens I started to believe that I was gay. Earl had impressed upon me that men will pay for sex and that sex was always supposed to be meaningless except for the person paying.
I frequently got beat up bad in grade 8 for being a “queerboy” and a “faggot”.
I had a boyfriend in the late ’90s. It didn’t really last too long.
I wouldn’t have sex with a woman until 2002 when I had a relationship with a woman. We met at the local motorcycle hangout. Not a biker club or anything like that. It was the local Starbucks where all the weekend motorcyclists would hang out after the rides. We both had our reasons for liking each other. Mine was primarily so that I could get people to stop wondering if I was a fag or a queer. Her’s was that she wanted to have kids.
I have absolutely no interest in having kids or raising kids. She did. And even at the start of the relationship when I wanted separate beds, she wanted the beds together.
I guess my primary reason for getting together with her is that I thought that it would get a bully manager off my back at work. He kept referring to me as “Freddie” or “Liberace”. He kept telling me that if I didn’t do things the way he wanted that he’d out me to the board of directors.
In 2003 I took her up to meet my father. He wasn’t buying it, and neither was my stepmother.
Even when I got mugged in July of 1995, the attending VPD officer was adamant that I was a homosexual and that I had been beat up in a “trick gone bad”. Even when I was able to produce proof that I had been where I said I had been and that the man and woman who mugged me had followed me from where I said they did the responding officer, a VPD Constable, wasn’t listening. I was a male prostitute as far as he was concerned and until I admitted such the investigation was going nowhere.
Another thing that may have hindered my ability to form relationships is I really hate being touched. This was something that was noted in the aftermath of CFB Namao. And it’s something that persists to this day. I don’t like holding hands. I don’t like being touched. The wrong touch in the wrong place can upset me and turn me off like a light switch. Even at work I don’t like being patted on the shoulder.
I guess there’s something about a person’s mannerisms that marks them as “not straight”.
What it is, I’ll never know.
Is it the way I talk?
Is it the way I walk?
And if I am in fact gay / queer / homosexual why don’t I enjoy homosexual relationships?
Did Captain Terry Totzke and his desire to cure me of my apparent homosexuality set me up for life to be a self-loathing homosexual?
Was it the sexual abuse in my youth that taught me that sex in just a base act that one does to pleasure another person otherwise you’d get in trouble?
Did growing up in my father’s household teach me that intimate relationships are not worth the effort?
Another issue that could be at play is the complete lack of the ability to form emotional bonds. In my household, relationships were of a calculated nature.
As I said at the beginning, I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to come up with an answer for this.
Single for life it is I guess.
Beeshive 