Originally Posted by GingerV

Larry, Hon, how do you do it? How on earth do you fit so many big questions into so few words? I'll take my best shot, but I can't hope to cover a fraction of what seems to be spinning through your busy busy mind.

First things first....I don't think I'm speaking just for myself when I say "cease appologising." Two reasons....first, you're wrong. We share the good times here, but we also gear up for the bad ones. Your issues are in NO way inappropriate, what the hell use is an open and accepting site like this if it turns away folks who aren't 100% stable yet. Second reason....if you're anything like me, you're not appologising for what it sounds like you're appologising for. I appologise for bizarre and inappropriate things sometimes...had someone point out to me it was a remnant of a time in my life when I thought I had to appologise for taking up space on this earth at all. Learning what I am and am not responsible for has been a big thing for me, and part of it is learning when I should and shouldn't appologise. If that sounds at ALL familiar....use this as a opportunity to grow. You shouldn't appologise for being yourself, here or anywhere....stopping the behavior is a way to remind yourself to accept yourself.

OK, pop psych over and done with.

The main course of your crisis seems to be an issue with gender issues, if you follow my meaning. And I join Lil in hoping Tes gets his/her lovely ass to a keyboard soon. Till then, I can offer you what little experience I've got. When I first got to Pixies, someone asked me...purely out of curiosity I'm sure...if I was bi. I gave him the most honest and open answer I've got....I don't know, and I don't think it matters a lot if I am. I do so enjoy sex with women, and I fantasize about it one whole hell of a lot....more since I got all monogomous with my guy. But I don't tend to fall in love with women...looking back, as much fun as I've had, and as much as I've loved them...I've never been in love with them. So, in a very real way, I'm straight. And in another I'm happily bi. And in the most important way, I think all those titles miss the point. I'm just me...I like what I like, love whom I love, and I'm not the least bit concerned that no-body has a title for me. Well, hedonist comes close I guess ;).

I mean, really. Who the hell got up on a tall rock and announced that people had to fit a category? ANY category? Take a good long look at history, sexual categorizations are changing all the time. They're not absolute, not an objective truth, so in a way....they're not real. The way I see sexuality, it's more like a continuum. Girls on one end, boys on the other....and everyone's personal tastes fall somewhere in the middle. Some guys just don't get turned on by women. Some do. Some do both. Some are mostly turned on by women, but occasionally get an itch for a guy. Some of them may be straight as a rod...but one day trip over a picture that just confuses the hell out of them. Are they gay because one day they got a hardon looking at gay porn? I know no gay men who'd say so. They just got a hardon...and if they're lucky, they enjoyed the damned thing while it lasted.

Are you gay? I think you have to get more than a collection of blowjobs to qualify, by the standards of my gay friends. Hell, you'd have to do more than just have experimented in college to qualify. They don't think of gay the way we think of virginity. It's not the result of a single act, it's a standing preference. I don't know what goes on in your head...but you might ask yourself if you fantasize about men, if you ever want to give head as well as receive it, if you prefer it to "straight" sex. It may be that you just like blowjobs, and that the gay scene makes them much more accessable. I dunno. I think it's entirely possible that you fall into a much more complicated category...which is good and bad. It means you don't have to live up to anyone else's standards, but it also means no-one else has pioneered the answers for you.

As far as your life to this point being a waste because you're now questioning who you are and what you've done....Lil makes a great point. Go right now and reread it ;). I'll just add to it that it may be that you needed everything that's happened in those 53 years to get you ready to ask the questions you are now. Or, if you know that you asked them before....maybe you weren't ready to deal with the answers in your 20s. It's all too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you're second guessing decisions made by a different person several decades ago. As hard as it is to let go of the worry that you've wasted time, I think the only potential waste of anyone's life is focusing so hard on the past that they fail to realize that they still have their future to come. If after much retrospection and possibly some experimentation you realize that you are...well...celebrate the fact that you got there in the end. Some people never ever get to a place where they can even ask the question.

And I've rattled on more than my 2cents worth, I know. Hope it made some kind of sense, and possibly helped at all. I'm around and about if you want any kind of clarification...or even just a virtual hug. It sounds like you're going through a rough time....hope you find peace soon.

G