Even though I had come out to my wife when we first met twenty years earlier and spent the early months of our budding relationship talking about my same-sex attraction, we had not talked about the topic for years. Continue reading
A common refrain I have heard from older men, coming out later in life, after marriages to women, is this: “I have found the man of my dreams. I’m so happy.” That is, of course, until a few weeks later, when I hear, “It was incredible until he broke my heart. I’m devastated.”
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My wife and I were both in our later 30’s when we married, and she was thirty-eight when we began trying to conceive. As we tried to get pregnant month after month, soon with drugs and shots to help fertilization, the limitations of my attraction made sex harder and more emotionally challenging. She finally did have a pregnancy that went to term, a few years and a few miscarriages later, and we ended up with a wonderful baby boy. She was never able to get pregnant again. As the years went on, it became more difficult to have sex with my wife, and over time I pulled back from any kind of physical intimacy. Continue reading
When I first heard the song, A Fine Romance, sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, I was blown away. Who wrote this song? Was it a woman married to a gay man? I am not sure we will ever know. Continue reading
Whose life is this anyway? I went from living my new gay life with a sense of freedom, joy, and fun to caring for my wife who was dying of cancer, caring for my father who is dying of old age, caring for my college-age son who found himself accused of hazing and working with my siblings to clean up my father’s estate, which is a mess. Continue reading
What alters our sense of self? How do major life events make us feel less ourselves, and at times, have us lose sight of who we are? Continue reading
On Tuesday my wife got a port put in her chest for the two chemo drugs she started yesterday to treat her cancer. The procedure, which took place at a local hospital, was expected to last an hour. My wife and her parents were at the hospital for six hours. When I heard how the day was going I offered to make them dinner so they could sit down to a hot meal immediately upon their return from the hospital. I knew they would all be exhausted. Continue reading
Last Saturday my partner came over to the house that I moved out of three years and nine months ago, to meet my wife and her parents for the first time. This gathering was a long time in coming and was driven by my desire for my partner and my wife to meet. The timing was precipitated by my wife’s increasing decline from terminal cancer. She soldiers on with a new chemo regiment that begins today, with the hopes of slowing down or shrinking the tumors that increasingly inhabit her abdominal cavity and lungs. These new drugs may only slow down the inevitable, but they will not stop cancer. Continue reading
I remember in college, when I would feel the need for sexual release as an explosion that needed to take place, my destination of choice was the baths. I would arrive driven, nervous, with butterflies in my stomach. My first destination, after paying the fee and getting my towel and locker key, was the bathroom, where my intestines would explode with a complete emptying of my bowels.
As I have tried to navigate my wife’s cancer, I have struggled to get answers and have an honest conversation with any of her oncologists. Today I had an honest conversation. Continue reading
