Jeff

Jeff, age 7

Chestertown, Maryland (1970)

I grew up in a small college town surrounded by corn fields and dairy farms. 
If you threw Colonial Williamsburg, Mayberry RFD, Norman Rockwell and "Deliverance" into a blender, you'd end up with Kent County, Maryland. Every year there was a Halloween Parade and most of the kids from town would dress up in their in costumes and follow behind the high school marching band. 

I really don't remember wearing this uniform (but I did like playing with GI Joe dolls and my friend Gretchen's Barbies too), so maybe my parents were probably trying to butch me up a bit? But as you can see, my queerness overwhelmed the intended machismo of the uniform. Nowadays I have a bit of a uniform fetish, so maybe this is where it all began?!

My home town, though quaint as hell, was sometimes a scary place for a young gay boy to grow up. Most of the kids in school were nice to me, but a handful of jocks made my life miserable from Jr. High all the way through High School. 

I can remember being call homo, queer and fag and being puzzled why they were calling me these names. When I was 11, we were square dancing in gym class and one of the jocks told me that I was dancing like a fag. I was upset that, once again, I was being called a fag. And so I asked myself, 'What is a fag?'  

The gay rights movement was all over the TV news at the time and I remember seeing a shot of two men kissing in the streets. As I was doing a dosy doe to some corny country song, the image of two men kissing was making me very excited. That's the exact moment that I realized that I was gay!

It would take another 8 years before I would finally comes to terms with my sexuality, but it was at 11 that it became pretty clear to me why I had crushes on some of the guys at school.

Once I was safely cloistered away in Art School in Baltimore, it was much easier for me to meet guys and figure out just who I was. Living in major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles gave me the freedom to live an openly gay life, decades before we became a part of mainstream culture. 

As the years past, I became interested in gay history and learning about what it was like for earlier generations of gays and lesbians. In the 1980's, while shopping at antique shows and flea markets, I began collecting vintage photos of men hugging or holding hands. This ultimately inspired me to create my website Homo History, which re-appropriates vintage found photos of same sex couples, who may or may not have actually been lovers. 

What started first as a hobby and a personal collection ended up becoming a popular gay history website with over 3 million page views! To this day, I continue to add to my personal collection of vintage photos.

And I'm very happy to be able to share this vintage photo of the little gay boy that I once was.

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Click here - "Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay" book
Click here - "My First Gay Crush Blog"
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Jeff

Jeff, age 10

Wichita, Kansas (1971)

I can't remember a time when I wasn't attracted to other guys. Lucky for me, my little sister had a Barbie Dream House and a stack of Tiger Beat magazines.

"I loved Abba!"

In grade school, I hated sports. The other boys used to make fun of me for preferring art class instead of football.

I finally joined the track team, to please my mom and convince my friends that I was somewhat masculine.

HATED IT...

Being gay was completely unacceptable in my family in the 1970's.

So I spent my youth hiding my true feelings, and trying to please everyone but myself.


In my late teens, I was wracked with the desire to be with another young man, but had no idea how to go about it without blowing my cover.

Luckily, I had met a gay man when I was 17. He spent the next three years trying to convince me that I was gay, despite my complete and utter denial.

I accepted his invitation to visit California that summer, and landed right in the middle of the gayest place in the USA! I came out at the 1983 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. I will never forget "What A Feeling" by Irene Cara, blaring loudly from a parade-float full of shirtless men in the middle of Market Street!

Jeff's first, famous-person same sex crush:

Donny Osmond

His black hair and pearly white teeth filled me with such desire.

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Click here - "Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay" book
Click here - "My First Gay Crush Blog"

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Jeff

Jeff, age 4

Emmaus, Pennsylvania (1966)

Here we are in Trexlertown, PA when my grandparents came to visit, and brought my cousin Rhonda along. We lived 4 hours apart, but saw each other often enough to feel really close. We always knew we shared a special bond, but we wouldn't know why until much later. Yup, my cousin Rhonda is gay, too.

That day, we all got to pick a hat from the gift shop. I'm 2nd left, wearing the red felt cap with a white feather - a Swiss Yodeler style, I believe - and I'm holding a daffodil. Rhonda chose the rebel soldier hat with the cross-guns emblem on the front. She was a few months older than me and was always my protector, amid the rough and tumble moments when all the cousins got together.

Our family is ultra-conservative and has never accepted that we're both gay.
To their credit, they've accepted us within the context of their rules, although they judge us and look down on us. Those "rules" were never pleasant for us, and over time, I realized those rules primarily ended up hurting them. My partner of 11 years is not welcome in my family's home, and that's truly their loss.

Our family views our being gay through the caricature of their beliefs, so they don’t really know us: we're just "the queer cousins." But she and I have made the best of it, and we're lucky because we always had each other, and still do.

Jeff's first, famous-person same sex crush:

Tom Selleck

I clipped out the Salem cigarette ads he did, which was a bit hard to explain.
Rhonda crushed on Olivia Newton-John, setting the course for her life/loves.
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Click here - "Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay" book
Click here - "My First Gay Crush Blog"
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