How a smart person made himself stupid is a possible summary of my life. A cold assessment that has left me optimistic after I moved into my seventies and looked back.

For my first 30 years, I hid, convinced that disaster awaited if people knew I spent my free time trying to suck cock.

So deep and misguided was my shame that I included gay activists among the people who shouldn’t know my secret.

The curtain in this dark closet was woven from many threads, only one of which was homophobia. Even in nursery school, I was the toddler who walked up to a circle of blocks and kicked them down. No way to make friends.

This hostility put me at a crucial disadvantage and cut me off from lessons that friends could have taught me. All children face confusion and tension. Most cope by changing the subject. They play with each other and push away stress with fun games. They don’t fret over their troubles; they put them aside. Having few friends left me alone to mope.

The uncontrolled anger gave me a bad reputation and made people stay away. From nursery school, it was off to a child psychiatrist who taught me that being rude made people yell at me. I had been the dumb child who yelled back. With therapy, life improved for me and my classmates.

As I grew up—like at 7 or 8—I grappled with a new problem: when I got into fights I couldn’t fight back. Boy fisticuffs were common in the 1950s and often led to friendship, but I didn’t play the game. I was stubborn, got into arguments that led to fights, but I wouldn’t punch back. I tried to tell my father, but he thought I was carrying “being nice” too far. Sometimes you have to “hit back,” he said, a useless answer since I knew that—the problem was I couldn’t. This frustration was a critical crisis during elementary school.

I harbor this explanation. Dr Stella Chess in helping me control my anger stifled it in such a way I couldn’t use it where appropriate. This explanation is not under discussion; my topic was my stupidity. I decided I was a coward.

A profoundly destructive negative identity. In college it led me to turn down an invitation to join the students helping African Americans register to vote in the Jim Crow South during the freedom summer. I cheated myself and missed a moment of history.

At age ten I became the neighborhood cocksucker.  It was no secret, and most boys knew it. My parents never did. I wasn’t out, but often I was an object of scorn, ridicule, or worse. I remember walking down the school hallway cringing as girls called me disgusting. To the boys I was a faggot.

Cringing with fear and beset by depression, I seldom recognized the students and teachers who were kind and supportive. I thought I was alone and nobody would help me. Another stupid conclusion.

I started a new life in high school. My history was wiped clean, and it became one of my highest priorities to keep my desires secret. Once again, I reached an extreme conclusion: secrecy was a matter of social survival, even though it haunted my friendships. I couldn’t talk to people I liked about what mattered to me and remained convinced if they knew they wouldn’t be my friend. This way I could go to parties and visit other boys but still feel lonely. I was certain honesty would bring disaster.

The 1950’s social atmosphere fed my fears. My family was left, and McCarthyite blacklists harmed family friends. A comic actor, who I loved, was forced to move to the west coast to become a banker. His departure remains a searing pain as he was a person who made me feel truly relaxed.

My family avidly watched the Army McCarthy hearings on TV. When the lawyer presenting the Army’s story puckishly asked had “pixies” supplied a doctored photo. Senator McCarthy rose to the bait and snapped to find out what was being said.

“I should say, I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy, shall I proceed sir? Have I enlightened you?”Senator McCarthy’s closest advisor was Roy Cohen a diminutive gay man. My parents and their friends roared with laughter and gleefully repeated the story for days.

My suspicions became fixed. They really thought homos were inferior, nay, sick. I knew they would say they loved me, but after the hearing, I KNEW what they really thought. I never worried they would throw me out. I was “sick,” and they wouldn’t disown a sick person. But the flip side of this conclusion was painful. It was a common belief that a person like me could “get well” and date girls. This hostile notion preyed on me for years.

Perhaps the biggest harm caused by clinging to this stupid conclusion that nobody could like me was a lost chance at happiness. Bright and cheerful, Jeff always treated me with warmth and good humor. It made me think he was a wonderful person, but my doubts stopped me from considering the possibility that he was acting this way because he wanted to be my friend.

This stupidity kept me away from Jeff. He and a girl who was also in my class tried to get me to admit I was gay. I listened only to the suspicion that they were trying to trick me. In fact, neither Jeff nor the girl would ever do that, and it was stupid of me not to realize they were trying to tell me Jeff was gay and wanted to date me. I lost a chance to have a lover who was a delightful person, who I could have brought home and dated.

Had I been smarter and dated Jeff, I would have realized that I could be gay and have friends. It would have been impossible for Jeff and I to date and really keep it a secret. This affair I never had would have turned my life upside down in a positive way. I would no longer have been able to say, “I’m gay. Nobody will like me.”

In fact, if I had dated Jeff, I would have learned that I was desirable and people liked me. The secret that my stupidity preserved from me even when the evidence pointed in the other direction. In other words, at eighty-two I truly understand that coming out is vital. This is hardly a new idea, but had I accepted it, I am convinced my high school years would have been happier.