My mom had a good job, but every time she got a promotion we had to move. I was always the new kid. In rural NC, that was bad enough. If anyone had suspected I was gay (*I* always knew) I can't imagine how much worse it would have been. If the new kid was held in contempt, being gay would have been about a death sentence.
I could. Not. Wait. get get out of that kind of hellhole. So what did I do in 1975? Join the Army. I felt safer there than I ever did in school. It was a couple of years later when I deployed to Germany I figured out there were quite a few gays in my company. (Par-tee-tiiiiime!) MI and special forces contain one helluva lot more gay people than anyone would ever admit (and a lot of those SF guys are HOT hehe). I never looked back, no more closet.
Like Fearless, I always "passed". I was never big or muscular until a lot later (I was a slow bloomer), but nearly always when someone meets me they have no idea. If someone asks, though, I tell 'em right out. If they've got balls enough to pry, I've got balls enough to give them the right answer.
And there's a reason I hate stereotypes. LG's run the gamut of mannerisms and appearance. It's part of our beauty. I hate "oh, you can't be gay" as much as anyone else hates being "pegged"; like I had made some kind of "choice" to be gay. As far back as I can remember, I *was* gay. There's a REASON we have a rainbow as our symbol. Not every femme boy is gay or tomboy girl a lesbian -- and I'm here to tell you (Fearless, back me) not every masculine man is straight.
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