1. Introductions and Beginnings

As you may read from the extended series of Inside the Closet blogs, I am a gay Christian, and this is my life experience. This particular blog, (From) Inside the (Water) Closet, will be an episodic account of my interactions with other men.  I chose the title based on prevalence of bathrooms in the stories I have to tell on the subject.

I have always considered myself to be a virgin.  I have neither penetrated, nor been penetrated.  I have never dated.  I have never kissed.  I have only held hands with a man outside my family on two occasions.  Until recently, this has been enough for me, and I never questioned my belief in this aspect of my purity.  When my campus newspaper ran a sexuality issue, one of the questions sparked an uneasiness in me.  The debate was whether participation in anal sex resulted in a loss of virginity.  Upon discussing this matter with a friend, we agreed that this kind of legalism was short-sighted, and that virginity represented a certain amount of innocence and lack of sexual exploration.  This debate over the mechanics and selection of orifice misrepresented the issue.  Grasping for a premise to place my opinions on, I deferred to the lessons I learned as a debater and defined sex as "extended consensual contact with the genitals of another person regardless of pleasure or climax," because I wanted to include all forms of sexual contact without giving ground to the typical loopholes.


This analysis calls me to question my own virginity, because despite the above list of "have not's," I certainly have experiences that qualify as a loss of virginity under the definition I previously described; a definition I believed in but had not put to words; a definition I clearly had not considered carefully enough.  What will follow here and in subsequent posts is the honest truth, and I seek to tell an unedited truth.  This means my exposition will be frank and complete to the exclusion of only that which I have legitimately forgotten.




The beginnings of this must open from my first sexual experience.

I must have been three, and certainly no older than four because I know we had just moved to the town that I would spend the next 13 years of my childhood in.  It is a small town that lay 45 miles into the shadow of a much larger city that served as a Mecca for many domestic necessities, including the nearest shopping mall.  I don't remember the occasion, but I as children inevitably do, I eventually exceeded the capacity of my bladder.  Upon reaching the restroom, my father happened upon an acquaintance.  Despite my insistence for his accompaniment, he assured me I would be fine alone, and sent me off.  I have no recollection of the specific dialogue, but my emotional anguish has never dimmed  This moment was my first understanding of the word abandon, and this memory rises in any present case of rejection, so my recall is as fresh as that of my family's faces.

Someone else was less inclined to let me remain alone.  Of the molestation that occurred, my strongest recollections are of pointed cowboy boots under black jeans that lead to a belt which needed one of the largest buckles to hold down a thin white shirt that desperately stretched over his grossly expanded frame.  To this day I have wondered about the unknowable impact this event has had on my life.  Reflecting on the details as I did as I teenager, I feel certain there is a definite connection with my general distrust of my father, my initial prejudice against the overweight, my abhorrence of clothing from "Western" stores, and the events in bathrooms that took place during my late adolescent years.  That reflection cemented the growing realization within me that my father was ultimately unconcerned with my well being when compared with his smallest whim.

Less than a year later, again, in the same shopping mall, I was again alone in the restroom.  As I stood urinating in one of the stalls, another child, no older than 8-9 came and stood behind me.  He did nothing more than watch over my shoulder.  At one point, I looked back up at him, but I had no explanation for why I felt uncomfortable, and at that age I was not of the nature to confront him.  He leaned over me in such a way that his ragged breath was deep within my ear.  It hesitated coming in a staggered set of inhalations as if he could not control his diaphragm, and he exhaled after only after long pauses.

I have noticed this same pattern of breath in myself when I cry.  The same painfully inhalation where my lungs are sore from both exertion and lack of breath.

I left the bathroom and forgot about both events for a time.