To find himself, man takes the long road

to his office Christmas party; he’s going to take a woman.

“Society doesn’t allow us to be our authentic selves.”

Ethan was born in 1961, one of five children in a Catholic family. He went to Catholic schools. “There was a lot of fear of sex in general.”

He says many of his friends tell him they knew they were gay when they were as young as 3 or 4. He didn’t, although he does remember feeling uneasy in the men’s locker room at the swim club when he was 6 or 7.

“There were some furtive glances. I was strangely uncomfortable.”

He dated girls all through high school, although he was attracted to football players. “I realized that probably wasn’t a good thing, so it wasn’t something I’d talk about. But I didn’t have a lot of angst over it. I took girls to all the dances, but I was never interested in them sexually. It was platonic.”

Ethan continued to date girls in college. He says he never allowed the lack of sexual attraction he felt toward women to register. “If I would have acknowledged it, I would have had to accept that my whole life and all the assumptions that I had made about it were wrong. I would be going in a whole different direction.”

Ethan had his first sexual experience when he was 23. It was with a woman. Throughout his 20s, he continued to date women and to buy Playboy magazine when they had the Sex in the Cinema feature so he could look at the men in the photographs. His only sex with men took place in the dark in arcades. Next, Ethan gets married. Are you a heterosexual involved with a gay or lesbian person? Or vice-versa? Send your tale, along with your questions, problems and rants, to cheryllavinrapp@gmail. com. And check out my new website, askcheryl.net.