I was born late in 1954 to very young parents who'd been married a year before, at sixteen and seventeen. My mother was the elder. They had been so focused on having a little girl that, amongst everything else, they had only picked out a girl's name. Although happy to have a healthy child, I'm afraid I rather disappointed them. I was a boy, and they had to scramble to come up with a name for me. They were so enamored of the name they'd come up with for their 'little girl', however, that the name they saddled me with was derivative of that.

I was born as the technological revolution was just really getting started. My father had followed in his father's footsteps and was sub-contracting to small telephone companies across the United States, from Ohio westward, to rewire houses and install the new telephones they were using to standardize their systems. As a result, we moved to a new town every time my father finished the town - or more often, the neighborhood that he had contracted to complete: about every three to six months, on average. As a result, my social development was stilted at best. I was reluctant to make friends I needed but would soon leave behind, and I became all too used to leaving them behind.

Affectionate in their own way, but being so young, my parents sometimes acted more like the young people they were rather than responsible parents - although to be fair, they were quite responsible most of the time. At three, just a year after my little brother was born, my father thought it very funny to stick me down in a telephone pole hole and take a picture of my frightened face. At six he had me hold the wires of an old crank phone, battery attached, and cranked it. Both parents thought my reaction very funny as I stood there hurting from the electrical shock, crying, and feeling betrayed. During that same job they bought my little brother and me a little white rabbit apiece, and made us leave them behind when we moved a couple of months later.

It is understandable, I think, that my relationship with my parents was colored by those events, though they didn't seem to realize it. I needed their love and affection, but couldn't wholeheartedly trust it. And they did show their support and affection in a lot of ways, but not so much, to my memory, in the way I needed most - touch. Hugs were brief, when given, and the times I can recall being held - even in a hug - while we watched tv or were read to are few and hazy: hazy enough that I wonder if they're true memories, or just wishful thinking.

Music was one of my loves, and my parents supported me in that - somewhat. At eight I joined a semi-professional boy's choir, where I sang soprano. At ten, in another town and state, I started learning the baritone - a small brass instrument resembling a french horn. Neither lasted long, of course, as we soon moved on to yet another job. And the instrument I most wanted to learn, the piano, was far too heavy and massive for our frequent moves, so that wish was never realiized.

Voice, however, was free and with me at all times, and I joined the choir in every school I attended. Even there, however, my parents quirky sense of humor wounded me. I was supposed to be raking leaves one time, and was using the rake as a pretend microphone. My mother saw that, and leaned out of the house window to tease me with a little light mockery. To me, though, music being so dear to me, it was like a blow to my heart. She didn't see it.

My mother and father had self-confidence to burn, and my little brother was an active little hellion: a normal boy. I was the quiet one - the one who, when he was active, preferred those activities to be quiet and ordered, though that could include things like climbing trees and boulders, and exploring caves and cliffs. I was the one who filled a lot of his non-active time reading - the one who was easy to overlook.

It was at about the time that I turned fourteen, maybe a little earlier, that I discovered I liked boys. I spent a lot of our travel time, and otherwise, guiltily fantasizing about this boy or that, and having to ignore the physical reaction to that while my parents sat within a very few short feet of me.

The fall before I turned sixteen, in Minnesota, my father bought me a used car that was a few years older than me. And then he ruined it by explaining that my little brother had always been his favorite, being more outgoing than I and enjoyed the hunting and fishing I didn't, so he'd bought me the car to compensate. A guilt gift. As usual, I didn't show him how that affected me, but accepted the gift and poured a lot of work into it. When we moved, he sold it because, he said, he didn't think it would survive the trip.

When my voice had changed, I became a bass. Quite a change from my boy soprano. And I was still good. Good enough that, when we moved from Minnesota to Oregon, our choir director decided I should sing in the inter-school competitions. But I wasn't good enough to pull off the songs dear Mister Pugh consistently picked out for me during the two years I was in that town: my last two years of high school. I think he was working with what he wanted to have, rather than what he actually did have. I was a bass, but I was not a basso profundo. And, of course, I didn't have the knowledge or self-confidence to suggest other pieces, instead.

My parents had decided to finally settle down, there in Oregon. I, however, wanted to go to college. The only way to afford it, though, was to join the Army for three years and have them pay for it. Bad idea.

During my last two years of high school I'd managed to fool myself into thinking I might be able to avoid having my parents be disappointed in me, when I dated a couple of girls, and even came to love one of them - Cary. 'In love'? That's another question, and I'm not certain of the answer. That relationship ended before the end of my Senior year. Joining the Army stripped the rest of that illusion away from me, and I had my first lover (although I'd 'fooled around' with a few other boys, before). That doesn't mean I was able to accept my sexuality so easily, however. I drove myself to the brink of suicide, helped along, unknown to them, by the attitudes of the religion in which I'd tried to find spiritual comfort, the attitudes of my father, the Army, and society in general.

I never had the courage to make an actual suicide attempt, but I constantly thought on different methods, and eventually collapsed of nervous exhaustion. I wound up in the Army hospital for a little over a week under heavy sedation - which only brought me to a level where I was able to function. I continued on large doses of Valium for the remainder of my time in the military: not that long, since the Army refused to move me from the high stress job I was in. I confessed my sexuality, and was given a discharge from the military - 'Under Honorable Conditions'.

That incident with being admitted to the hospital scared the hell out of me, and I resolved to never let myself ever get actively suicidal again. That didn't stop me, in later years, from having episodes of being passively suicidal, however - wanting to never wake up after going to sleep, and being disappointed when I did - although I'm now past all that.

Suffering from anxiety disorder after leaving the military, I never did get that college education, but continued to educate myself.

You've heard the phrase, 'Once bitten, twice shy'? Every relationship failure made it harder to try again, and it could be years between attempts, even though I had a few more lovers, including one very special young man whom I was dearly in love with - Cory.

Those names - Cary and Cory - are common enough that I have no fear that anyone will ever figure out who they were, especially as my own name is no longer the one by which they knew me.

I had severe emotional reactions to one night stands, to the point of becoming extremely nauseous afterward, and never did become totally comfortable with my sexuality. Accept it, yes; be comfortable with it, no, except in fiction.

When my parents finally did discover my sexuality, my father stopped talking to me entirely. My mother preached at me for years, in a 'sympathetic' way, how I was sinning by choosing to be a homosexual, as her religion taught that homosexuality was not something that happened normally, and therefore had to be a'lifestyle choice'. She finally, without changing her mind, accepted that such 'discussions' only led to fights between us. I still hear from her once every year or two. As for myself, I refuse to contact them, and even changed my name in reaction to their rejection. I have enough problems without subjecting myself to their attitudes and my mother's guilt trips.

Now disabled, my social outlet is through my stories.