"The Truth About Who We Are..."

Steven, San Francisco
by thegaymenproject
photo by Kevin Truong

Steven, in his own words: "I grew up in Kansas in the 1970’s and ‘80’s in the same town where Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church based their hateful, homophobic “ministry”. Though they were an extreme example of this attitude, the general feeling toward gays wasn’t much different. Back then, nobody was out in high school. Even though several of my best friends and I were gay, none of us came out to each other until many years later. The subject was never discussed. When I got to college I felt a little freer to explore, but not much more than kissing a few boys. I was still in Kansas, after all. It wasn’t until I graduated from college and moved to New York that I felt free enough to release my inner slut. I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do.

I graduated from high school the same year that the first documented cases of AIDS were reported. This added an extra layer of fear and shame to my coming out. In the early years nobody knew exactly how it was contracted, so every sexual encounter was a potential death trip. My response was to drink a lot, do a lot of drugs, and have a lot of mostly unsafe sex. I think a lot of us back then assumed we were going to die soon, so we might as well have fun while we could. Carpe fucking diem. I was on a path of self-destruction which eventually landed me in rehab. There are many reasons that so many gay men developed alcohol and drug dependency problems, but for me shame and internalized homophobia were the original demons. Later on, survivor guilt and PTSD were the extra ingredients that drove me over the edge. After a couple of stints in the psych ward and three trips to rehab, I finally started to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Since I moved to San Francisco over twenty years ago, the city and the gay community have changed dramatically. I arrived in the middle of the Plague Years, during which a huge portion of my generation of gay men were wiped out. Anybody who survived, either positive or negative, will bear the scars of those years and that loss forever. When protease inhibitors appeared in the mid-90’s, AIDS was no longer an automatic death sentence. Some long-term survivors have been HIV-positive for decades.

Social media has changed everything. Grindr and similar apps have revolutionized the way that gay men connect. While cruising the bars was once the primary means of connection, now with only a few clicks and swipes you can have fresh meat delivered to your doorstep in a matter of minutes. And PrEP has changed the way gay men have sex. Barebacking is the only way to go for a lot of guys these days, especially the younger ones who weren’t around for the plague.

Like all subcultures, gay men have always had their own way of seeing and being in the world. We used to have to meet in secret and communicate in code. A green carnation on the lapel or a pink bandana in the back pocket spoke volumes. As the gay community has assimilated, many of the things that made our community special have disappeared. With so many gay men proudly proclaiming, “We’re just like everyone else”, much of the beauty and mystery of gay culture is being erased."