As you are now aware, I am in the process of sharing my final thoughts with the world, one personal message at a time. This message contains my final words and thoughts to those who for some strange reason, and despite all the science that refutes it, still believe sexual orientation for people is a choice.
I want to tell you all a story.
When I was a young child, I was sexually abused and raped by a man.
But that’s not the story I want to tell you today. Today I want to tell you the story of how I tried, really, really hard to be at least kind of a little bit gay as a 30-something-year-old man.
Many years ago, without ever having dated a guy, and definitely without ever having had an adult sexual experience with a guy, I came out of the closet as bisexual to millions of people. I didn’t do it for attention. I did it because I was at the point of killing myself so that I would never have to face my truth that presented itself more and more frequently in my thoughts. It was the truth that…
Sometimes the sexual thought of being with a man just took over for me, and women became completely undesirable to me. It didn’t happen often, and only for a few days at most when it did, but that was my reality, and it still is to this day.
First, why bring up the sexual abuse?
I actually plan to discuss it later in my final message to those who have been sexually abused and assaulted, but it’s important to this conversation because it actually made my “bisexuality” really confusing for me.
After all, what if the only reason I had those thoughts and desires at all were because of the abuse I had experienced at the hands and cock of a man when I was just a few years old?
That is a question that absolutely haunted me for a very long time, and eventually a therapist really helped me by telling me this (quite some time after I came out to the world):
“Your sexuality is your sexuality, Dan,” she said. “It is far more complex than any one moment in your past. It is far more genetic than you could possibly imagine. And this question you keep asking yourself will do nothing but torture you for eternity if you keep asking it because there are no answers to it, and there never will be.”
My therapist said just the right thing to help me immediately stop asking the question that was indeed torture to me. To be happy with myself, I had to be okay with the fact that anything could be possible. My sexuality could be the way I was born. It could be the abuse. It could be a thousand different factors all wrapped into one messy little package. All that mattered was that my sexuality was what it was, and that I finally learn to be okay with it.
I then went on a discovery quest to learn how to “embrace the gay side” and prove to myself that I was indeed the bisexual man I presented myself to the world to be.
I started going on dates with guys, and lots of them. I started trying to connect with them romantically. I did all sorts of things to try and prove something to myself.
The problem is, the switch to being attracted to men was never switched into the on position when I tried to choose to be gay, and so over time I just felt straighter and straighter. That, in turn, made me constantly more desperate to prove to myself that I hadn’t outed myself to millions of people for nothing, and it all led to the night that I found myself in a bad situation.
Oh, I laugh about this night with my friends to this day, but it was actually one of the more traumatic nights of my life.
I was in Las Vegas with a group of friends, many of whom were gay. That switch that flips inside my brain, the one where I am suddenly attracted to men and only men, it was not set to gay during that trip. I sure tried to force it to be, though. This was a group of gay doctors and professionals. They had money and awesome lives, and if I should have been attracted to anyone, it should be these guys, right?
Keep in mind, I didn’t know enough about my sexuality at the time to know that for me it is a switch that flips, and that when it did switch it was switched back off almost as quickly as it started. I had spent almost twenty years of my pubescent life quickly burying every thought about it, so it stands with reason that I had never actually had a moment to process it for what it actually was.
Anyways, back to Las Vegas and this group of gay men.
They were all pretty awesome guys. We talked openly about where I was with things and how I had never tried anything with a man yet. All sorts of advice over dinner and wine was thrown my way. Much of it was advice to just go for it and jump in when the chance to be with a man finally did present itself.
After dinner, everyone went off to gamble and I hung back with one of the doctors. They knew I was financially broke at the time, and so this doctor kept buying me drink after drink. I knew what he was doing. I knew where it was going. I had anxiety through the roof, which I kept drinking to try and force it away. Eventually I decided, fuck it. I’m going to do this.
I followed him up to his hotel room, and tried to force myself to be gay. That’s right. I tried to choose to be gay. Just for one night.
After all, it is a choice, isn’t it? That is what you believe, isn’t it?
Let me ask you something honestly, dear reader.
If you are indeed straight, mentally put yourself in my shoes that night. Someone of your same gender gets you super drunk and gets your inhibitions as gone as they can possibly be.
You decide that you will be gay with that man in that moment.
Could you do it?
Could you follow him up to his room and just choose to be aroused by his touch and his advances, as simple as that?
Could you literally just decide to be gay for the night?
Because I sure couldn’t, and I’m way more gay than you are.
Fun fact to cement this point: while drinking with this guy, I snuck a Viagra that a friend had given me because I knew that we would end up upstairs, and I didn’t want anxiety to get in the way of figuring this out for myself.
Do you know how Viagra actually works? It doesn’t just magically give you an erection. You still have to be naturally aroused for it to work. Yes, it cuts through any anxiety, or prostate problems, or whisky dick, and it cuts through those things like a champion, but YOU STILL HAVE TO BE NATURALLY AROUSED for it to work. That’s really important to this story because…
And I hate to be graphic here, even though I do think it’s important to the conversation…
I could not get hard for a man no matter how <ahem> hard I tried. And I promise you, I let him try on me. He let me try on him. He had a hard, throbbing member because he was… gay. I had a mini marshmallow attached to my body trying to suck itself up inside of me because I was… Not gay. Not in that moment. Not that night.
I tried to let go of the stress of it all and enjoy it. I tried to force it. I fucking tried to be gay, just for one fucking night, and I just couldn’t fucking do it.
It wasn’t for lack of motivation. I promise, if anyone in the world had the motivation to choose to be gay for a hot second, it was me. I wanted it badly. I had come out to the entire fucking world, after all. LGBT magazines had published articles about it. My family knew. My friends knew. My neighbors knew. My followers all knew.
Holy shit, did I ever need that boner to happen, and I needed it to happen badly.
But, guess what.
You can’t fucking choose your sexual orientation. You just fucking can’t. I couldn’t. Gay people didn’t. Straight people don’t, either.
What will it take for you to believe that and finally be accepting of people of any sexual orientation?
And, guess what else. Your sexuality is also fluid. It can change over your life and it most likely will. Some people are as queer as a three dollar bill from birth. Other people are so straight you could hang a party full of coats on them. Most people are somewhere in the middle, leaning heavily one way or the other, but not completely locked into any one place on the spectrum.
And then there are people like me. By sharing my journey, I now know that there are more people like me in this world. I’m not alone in how my sexuality and my brain works.
Sigh. Look. There is nothing to me that sounds fun about the whole world knowing I’m weirdly bisexual. I get no kicks off of being different in this area of life, and my entire life I have just wished I was completely one way (and sometimes completely the other). Life would be so much easier for me that way.
I wouldn’t have to think that maybe I’m fucked up sexually because a man raped me as a child. I wouldn’t have to think that maybe I’m fucked up because genetics made me this way.
Please tell me you did not just nod your head at either of those statements. Don’t you get it, yet?
I am not fucked-up at all. My sexuality is not fucked-up at all.
Maybe that is what all of our real choices are in all of this.
I can’t choose my sexuality any more than I can choose the color of my hair, and neither can you. Sure, I can dye my hair to make you believe it’s something else. I can shave it. I can hide it. I can present it as something different to the world around me whenever I want and however I choose. But no matter what I do, that hair just keeps on growing, and the truth of what it naturally is takes a lot of work to keep hiding forever.
What I can choose for myself is whether or not I look at it as fucked-up or I look at it all instead as just… me.
I am as nature made me. I am as my environment made me. I am as my hormones make me. I am as my past has made me.
I am who I am, for better or worse.
And because of that, I long ago decided to choose to be that instead of trying to choose to be something sexually I am not simply because, throughout my entire life, well-meaning assholes loved to tell me that sexual orientation is somehow a fucking choice for me at all.
If you’re actually straight and still convinced that sexual orientation is a choice, don’t use argument or data to try and convince me otherwise. Definitely don’t spout “things God said” at me.
Instead, I want you to walk into a bar where gays are, I want you to let someone of the same sex get you plastered, I want you to follow them to their room, and prove to me that you can simply just choose something else. Prove to me that that’s even possible, in any universe we both live in.
That sick feeling you’re feeling in your stomach right now just thinking about it? That’s just truth telling you that your feelings on the topic have been wrong your entire life. That’s your biology telling you the thought you are having isn’t right.
That was the same sick feeling I had in my stomach as I followed the guy to his room.
I knew deep down I couldn’t do it. I knew it wasn’t right. I knew it wouldn’t happen once we got there.
But, meh… Fuck it, right? I was always taught that sexual orientation was a choice, so I went and got myself into a bad situation that I wish more than anything I could take back to this day.
Please stop preaching the gospel of “choice” when it comes to sexuality. Please.
You do not know where those obtuse and uneducated words of yours might end up presenting themselves somewhere down the road. You don’t know what bad situations they might just push people you love into. You don’t know just how bad the damage is you might just be doing to people you actually care about who haven’t yet told you all their secrets.
Thank you for listening. Now go and believe the right thing.
Dan Pearce | Dan Pearce Was Here (formerly Single Dad Laughing)
