A recurring theme in ancient Greek mythology is that you cannot outrun your fate. I think about that idea when I look back on my life and how, throughout it, people assumed that I was a homosexual. In grade school, a woman who lived across the street from my family was hired by my parents to prepare lunch for my siblings and me when we came home from school. I recall how she said that I would end up a confirmed bachelor. A confirmed bachelor was code for a homosexual historically. In middle school, I had a fleeting romance with a girl. When my seventh-grade teacher learned of our liaison, she expressed surprise; she never imagined me being interested in girls. In high school, I asked my brother if he would sound out a girl I fancied to see if she was interested in me. He reported that when the girl realized what he was up to, she retorted, “He’s a fairy!” When I joined the Canadian Army as a Reservist at eighteen, I entered the classroom one day at the Armoury and found a caricature of me as a pink bunny drawn on the blackboard captioned with anti-gay slurs. To their credit, the other recruits told me it was intended as a joke–that they liked me. Still, I wondered why people thought I was a homosexual.

As a boy, I liked the toys and pastimes associated with boys. I played with toy guns, yearning for the day when I could own a real one, toy construction equipment, and my favourite was electric train sets. My dream as a small boy was to drive locomotives. I still get a thrill when I see a freight train roll by. I loved the outdoors, natural history, conservation, hunting and fishing my whole life. I played road hockey and ice hockey as a boy. I enjoyed the company of other boys in my preteen years–there was nothing sexual in it. I wanted to fit in and be friends with the popular boys. There was nothing unusual in that. It was not until my adolescence that I felt the stirrings of same-sex attraction. I did not understand; it was confusing. What confused me the most was my revulsion with the idea of heterosexual sex. I tried my best to ignore and suppress these feelings. Yet, others saw me as gay.

During the years I studied at university, the sickening realization that I was a gay man took hold. Yes, I accepted my fate grudgingly. I did not like it and tried to ignore it. I kept it to myself. Again, it did not go unnoticed by those around me. I saw in a fellow student’s room in the residence a letter to a friend that he thought I would be the most likely to die of AIDS. I confided in a professor at the Theological College; he was a Russian Orthodox priest who became my friend and confessor. When I told him that I was gay, he said to me that he had already guessed. When he saw my anguished expression, he added that it was because I had a gentleness about me. I never heard that term used to describe me before. At least not directly. I recall when people were surprised to find that I am an avid hunter. “Funny, you don’t look it,” was the typical response. That and “You seem the more intellectual type.” Yes, I am a thinking man, but why should that preclude me from being a hunter?

Following my graduation from university, I went to work in the Library of the National Gallery of Canada as a contract employee. Imagine my astonishment one day when a secretary asked me point blank, “Are you gay, Geoffrey?” In response, I said, “Don’t you think that’s rather a personal question?” Looking back, I think she was sounding me out for one of the Curators who had seen me and saw something he liked. So, what is it about me that makes people guess that I am gay? I wish I knew. By gentle, does that mean others think I am not manly? I am masculine, not a man’s man, but neither am I effete. I can take care of myself. I do not go looking for trouble, but I have thrown a punch in self-defence. I am much better at diffusing a tense situation. I prefer to talk things over rather than come to blows. I have a thick skin; I withstand the facile provocations from difficult people. I think keeping my temper and avoiding escalating confrontations is not a weakness. Yet, somehow, my agreeableness and ability to reason are seen by others as soft and meek–what some might call a feminine temperament. It is frustrating as, growing up, I faced prejudice because of the presumption of those around me that I was a homosexual. You may not outrun your fate, but at the very least, why cannot those around you grant you the benefit of the doubt?

Posted by Geoffrey