Backstory: 2007-2008

In January of 2007 I was introduced to something, the mystical world of Wikipedia's Sex portal.  Yep. My pornography addiction began at 17 with Wikipedia. I'd made it through middle school and most of high school, completely unscathed by either pornography or masturbation, and then gave in, three months before my 18th birthday, with Wikipedia. Pathetic, no?

I remember it happened when I was doing research for a history paper, using the 'pedia as a primary source. I have no idea what it was about, but one of the hotlinks in the page I was reading went to something called a menage a trois, an expression I was completely unfamiliar with, so I clicked it. That page opened and had still more expressions I didn't understand, so I clicked on them, and so on and so forth until I learned something I'd wondered since I came out to myself the year before, how gay people had sex.  Boom, hooked. Now you know.

I graduated high school in 2007 and worked part time that summer at Express.  Yup.  A gay guy whoring working at Express.  Except I was a total fish out of water. My denim came from Old Navy, my button-downs came from Target, and my underroos came from Wal-Mart.  Customers judged me so they threw me in the stockroom, thank goodness. We got Pac-Sun's music back there, and Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz were way better than MIMS and Kanye West.  Also, our mannequins had penises.  Little, blobby penises paired with equally sized and shaped testicles. If anything could have made me straight, it would have been those misshapen genitals.

Alright, that sidetrack over:

I started my university schooling somewhere far away and exotic.  When they read my college choice at the senior banquet, the auditorium let out a collective, audible "ooooooohhhhh...." My first month there was epic. I had this awesome group of friends, whom I'd met at freshman orientation.  We took a trip together for Labor Day and spent the weekend in this swanky hotel and baking in the Pacific sun. I bought a longboard and started skating with my new buddies. We cooked meals, ate in the cafeteria together, stayed out till 3 am watching kung-fu movies, all of the lame college cliches.

Little freshman romances budded.  I had total eyes for this babe in our group. She actually came from a town just a few miles north of my own, which seemed like fate, given that we were in a foreign land 3000 miles away from home. She was beautiful. She had flowing brown hair that was always, always perfect, even if she'd just gotten out of bed and thrown it in a pony tail. She was this ultimate girl-next-door, completely charming and kind, but totally unaware of how desirable she was. So, even though I'd just come out to myself a year previous, I knew I wanted her. I had a mission in my way and she was actually waiting for a missionary of her own, so I never told her how I felt.

Well, after a month being away from home, I started getting homesick. I think we all did. The tensions of being on our own started getting to us and before long, our friendships had broken up. I still hung out with the hypothetical love of my life, but even that became infrequent. I began to get despondent. The porn addiction, which for a few months had been relatively controlled, came back.  Worse was the masturbation, which was rendered near-impossible since I now had a roommate and bathed in a communal shower, so in addition to all this emotional and sexual frustration, I also had no privacy.  I became enraged easily and my roommates hated me, with good reason.

[The cool thing about living near a beach is that it makes every instance of pondering and self-discovery feel like a seminary video]

One night, I was so pissed off that I decided to walk down to the beach and throw shit in the water.  Once that got old, I knelt down and prayed. I poured out my heart and wished desperately that things would change, that I would become a "good kid" and that I could just be happy.  I felt like I knew being gay was a sin, and I felt like such a wicked creature for what I did in my spare alone time.  All of a sudden, over the waves, I heard this distinct voice say, "You're okay. Be okay. It's all going to be okay."

At that, I stopped crying, got up, and went back home and to sleep.  I woke up the next morning, still a little rainy from all the emotions the previous night, but it was going to be okay.  About a month later, I decided it was time to talk to someone.  I called my sister, my one not-replaced-yearly best friend, and my bishop and told them that I was gay and I needed help being happy.

Each one of them responded with so much love. My best friend, who had just been called to Nicaragua on his mission, gave me all the support he could muster. My sister (probably my real best friend) said that she loved me, no matter what, and would encourage me to do whatever it was I felt was best. My bishop listened to my past indiscretions, reassured me that I wouldn't be excommunicated, and gave me a few books to read that reminded me that the past is past, and the only thing I should worry about is what decision to make, right now.

So there it was. My first coming out and it went great.  Life was on an upward trajectory and my freshman year finished great.