Is it easier to be "out" younger?

I know, the question seems counterintuitive, what with teen angst over being GLBT(Q) and the very real problems sometimes involved (getting kicked out, beaten, even killed), but bear with me.

What I mean is this: is it easier to be part of the queer community if you realize your true nature early?

I ask because, frankly, I have a really hard time meeting people of my orientation in day-to-day settings (or I'm very bad at discerning who is and isn't queer). I know few gay/bi men, for example, and I live in Venice, CA, not far from West Hollywood.

Now, I'm not into the bar scene (I've heard from those who know that it's "all about what gym you go to, what water you drink, etc"), so that easy way of meeting people is gone.

I suppose getting involved with activism somehow would alleviate the problem, in which case I ask any queerfolk activists in the Los Angeles area (especially Venice/Santa Monica) to share their experiences.

I guess I just feel lonely, because the only gay boys I know live in VA and dang it, I want to meet people who I can be myself around. (For example, I had to close this window while writing, because people at work who don't know I'm queer were nearby.)

Anyone else ever found it awkward/scary to be a late-outer? I came out 5 years back at age 26 and still feel disconnected from the community.

Any ideas, comments, complaints?

To everyone except for some elderly family members.

Most of my gay friends, who have come out in a pretty repressive Catholic enviroment, all use the net to find and meet people because of the same reasons you have listed.

(Not that I think you troll hook-up sites!)

(they do exist)

I was the school "fag" since the 6th grade. It seems everyone else knew before I did. But if I had come out, I don't think things would have been easier. But that was then. Now, there a Gay-Straight Alliances popping up everywhere. Queer visibility nowadays pales in comparison to where we were even a decade ago.

Is there a GLBTQ center near you? They have many groups and events that don't involve drinking and posing. Above all, just be true to who you are and you'd be surprised what will come your way.

It's becoming embarrassingly clear that I'm very new to all this - I didn't even think to check. I do most of my reading online at work, so I don't read much in the way of gay sites.

I hear you on the whole "everyone knew" thing. Thinking back, *I* should have known - I had "funny feelings" for Lancer/Yellow Dancer (that's a shout-out to Robotech fans) back when I was a kid. I think I denied my sexuality (pansexual, I suppose would be the way to say it) all during my youth, even while I was experimenting with my inseparable little 'boyfriends'!

When I told my mom I was bisexual, she thought I meant 100% boys-only gay and said "well, it's not a shock". She's very supportive, btw. Dad doesn't know.

I'm a mess, aren't I? :P

I came out at 23. I never really felt disconnected...first it was the bar scene, briefly, and that scared me enough to get clean/sober just because I was so obviously out of control. When I got around gay people who weren't using I got in a tight group and felt really at home for years. In my early 30's when I started trying to deal with my bi issues that completely fell apart and I haven't really found my footing since then, but I don't have the need for community now that I did when I was in my early 20's, which is a damn good thing considering I no longer feel like I fit in anywhere but I'm less and less willing to 'pretend' to be full-on when I am not. I gave it my best shot and even went through a five-year period of celibacy to try and 'purge' myself of the undesired feelings. This shit is such a pain to deal with, lol, I'm getting annoyed just thinking about it.

I guess I am blessed because I had around ten years of bliss of feeling like I had found my 'home' in the gay community and I really felt acceptance. I was blessed to be a fucked-up drunk/addict though; a weird way to put it, but it did put me in the company of some amazing people I wouldn't have met otherwise. The recovering community was my community, that's where I found mine, not in the bars at all. I did meet up with a clique of young gay people when I started out in the bars and got tight with them really quick but I remember very little about that or those people, needless to say.

I think the community is where you find it. I know alot of the men that I knew that were clean did work with AIDS projects and stuff like that. I had a harder time finding a community of women that wasn't full of drama and bullshit so I mostly hung out with gay men but I do better with men in general.

I've already been married and divorced, with a son, all before I turned 24!

Good points about community. I guess I should get off my ass and get involved somehow!

We tell others to accept us because we're different.

Unfortunately, if you're different within "our" community, you may as well be in a desert. Especially if you're bi and male. Or anyone who doesn't fit the stereotype (which includes the "straight looking and acting" garbage.)

I'm heavy.

I'm pansexual - I would date anyone, regardless of gender, if they are the right person inside. I can be, and have been, attracted to all types.

I don't do gay bars, or any of the stereotypical-but-still-true 'scenes'.

Damn. I'm screwed! :D

If they're right inside, that's all that matters. :)

And we're only screwed (and not in the good way) if we don't try and find that special someone and it's never easy. But it can be done.

some people don't seem to have a problem with it and some people do. I know gay people who are like 'no labels' and it doesn't seem to phase them and for me it was like my worst freaking nightmare.

I relapsed over it. That's how painful it was for me when I started realizing I was attracted to men as well as women. I mean, I didn't even think about men for 10 years, and then all of a sudden I woke up one morning and it was like my body said 'you aren't queer anymore'. I wasn't unnattracted to women, just all of a sudden I noticed there was in fact another gender again. It was horrible. It's so ridiculous to express it this way, but for me that's how it was. It is absolutely no big deal to some people...a friend of mine said he thought alot of people are really bi, he said he thought he was too but in his words it was too 'intense' so he just had to "pick one". I can't live that way, but for me being bi is like being on a permanent acid trip or on mushrooms or something were you are constantly surfing in and out of these dichotomies and paradigms depending on who you are around and it is exhausting...like I can feel the het energy and meet it with a part of my self and then I can be around full-on gay people and that part of my energy meets their energy and then I'm around other people and I change back and it's just fucking exhausting. Not because I'm false but just because I have all that inside me just in different parts and it comes out depending on what energy I am around but neither one of them is a lie, they are both the truth. I hate it. I would have been perfectly content to live the entire rest of my life as a lesbian, had I been given the choice.

And I agree our community does not handle difference well. I know what motivated me to relapse was the grief of feeling like I had lost the community that was the first place I ever felt like I belonged. I watched a friend go through it several years earlier and I knew what comments were made toward that, and she married a guy and very few people went to her wedding, and I'm ashamed to say that I was one of them, and then it happened to me... But I didn't 'go back in' 'on' somebody, I was just being honest with my feelings.

All of this is probably TMI...I'm in stream of consciousness right now.

I seem to "flux" a lot, too.

It's like being on drugs. That you can't get off of. For me anyway.

I think its the hardest thing I've ever dealt with.

Zhade, and idgiehkt. I appreciate your candor and your honesty. What you both say makes a lot of sense, and is very touching. I have no answers for either of you..... just :hug:

I'm sorry the world makes it so difficult for you just to be you. :(

:hug:

I'm just kinda lonely and want to meet a nice guy, I guess (compounded by the fact that I have feelings for a wonderful-but-unavailable woman).

The "choose one" issue has come up with me as well. I simply say "either we go out or we don't. You already asked me a bunch of questions and I've asked them truthfully. Why not give me time to prove my mettle?" The women I've talked to in the past don't like bi guys, neither do the gay ones I've approached. Those who approach me either ask me a bunch of questions then vamoose, or vamoose when the "B" word comes up.

Bi does not mean promiscuous and that stereotype is damn irritating.

Those who ask all sorts of questions about monogamy don't get it either. (I don't cheat, period. What part of that can't they understand?? I know enough of the human condition, never mind diseases, to know cheating is a very bad thing to do!)

Others refuse to converse at all; simply proving they will never be able to be in a relationship; so it's so much the better.

Sigh. I'm destined to be single. Doesn't stop me from trying, because there is somebody special out there. Gotta keep trying. and if somthing real is there, we'd both know about it.

I haven't dated since I came out, partially because of the very things you mention!

:pals:

Can't change it, it's in my make-up to be that way. Would that I could, because I sure should have cheated on some bitches over the years, lol. But I never did.

Since we're having a kvetching session with for me it's like with women they are afraid of the 'boy germs' that lesbians don't have to worry about and with men it's just like the whole lesbian thing, and will they get a three way out of it(not that they wouldn't, lol, but like me first...), and I never know whether it's about me or that. And then as much as they eroticize the bi female thing, deep inside alot of them really can't deal with it. It's like initially it's a turn on but then the prospect of being up against that all the time isn't so appealing after further reflection. Flabbergasting.

I honestly wish I could just find a nice straight married couple to adopt me and then we could all be happy. Seriously. Because grappling with these issues gets really old for me.