Hello, Anita.  Thank you for asking.  I went through an emotional time around last Fathers’ Day, and started writing out my feelings on my laptop.  Ten straight days writing (it’s a first draft) — online just as I posted it in July.

My brother’s death was 48 years ago, around the time in July that Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.  That’s a blank for me.  My memory instead starts from the morning his mother found his body.  The police told us that it was an old revolver, and that the bullet had been struck multiple times by the firing pin.  His death was therefore definitely intended, not accidental.  The only thing I can remember from back then was collapsing at the funeral.  I never found out why.  My mother kept it from me, and later, I moved out on my own, and she moved West.

But this July, as I was figuring out things about myself, and my sexuality, it suddenly dawned on me that Allan’s desperation was from trying to deal with his.  My God, he was gay, and I never knew, but should have.  And the Stonewall Riots in NYC were only the month before.  And that’s why he bummed rides to get out of the house.  And that’s why he ran away from home one time and I had to drive to NYC to pick him up at a police station.  And….  Boy, was I dumb.

Allan would have turned 18 in less than two months. My hope is that someone like him will read my blog in time.  Maybe sime day I’ll read a comment on my blog that he (or she) decided to go back, and try life again.  Those who care will be spared yet another sad funeral — and never know it.

I was eight years older than Allan.  I recently watched the movie “Stonewall” about the part of NYC that many teenagers fled to in the 1960’s for the gay culture/lifestyle.  That’s where he went.

Why do I think he was gay?  Many things came to mind once I started thinking about them.  Most significant were his clothing choices.  I didn’t pay attention back then, but remembering things like that now proves how I was living in a fog.

But I never thought about gay stuff.  I was turned off by years of rape and beatings.  For 72 years, I thought I was heterosexual, married twice, adopted a baby girl, but this past July, at 73, my brain woke up.  For the first time, I began to question my sexuality.  I started writing, and it turned into a blog.  I was hoping to get my answer about what I should be by the end of my writings, and it would be the end page. It didn’t take that long, and it became the fourth page of my Blog.

Memories (some suppressed for 50-60 years) intruded my thoughts when I let them.  I always related to boys, never to girls.  I had crushes on boys, but held my feelings back.  I paid no attention to girls, and they never approached me.  In high school, I was marked, somehow.  They knew what I was, even if I did not.  Dances, Senior Prom?  Not for me.  I never dated anyone.

The year after Allan died, I moved out on my own.  One day, a co-worker invited me to dinner at his house.  It was a setup.  His divorced daughter was there.  Uh huh.  Sex followed.  It felt great, because it was my first time.  A virgin at 26, but finally, I was “normal.”  After seven years, a no fault divorce followed her cheating on me.

I got married again, to a wonderful person.  She died (after  29+ years), after an eight-year battle against lung disease. For those eight years, and the four years (alone) since, I’ve had a lot to think about.  It all came together in my head in July.

Once I told people and obtained their understanding, I finally became free of my horrible past, when I confined myself by hiding everything because you’re supposed to hide.  From whom?  Think of the abusers out there, guilty, and hoping to escape punishment.  MILLIONS of them, dear Anita.

Numbers that I have seen published indicate that one out of every four females is in some way, a survivor of what was done to them as a CHILD by an ADULT.  Boys?  One out of every five is a survivor, I’ve read.  I am one.  Allan took the easy way out.

We’re called “victims.”  Such an inadequate word.  Brutalized, terrorized, made to feel worthless, because the abusers want it that way.  So we’re afraid to rat them out.  So we’ll be quiet.  Because, guess what?  Some really stupid people put the blame on the CHILDREN, because MAYBE they asked for it.  Maybe they even enjoyed it.

I was FIVE years old, in a darkened corner of the garage at my grandma’s house, watching my cousins playing in the sun outside, the first time.  I did not “enjoy” myself, but my sadistic rapist did.

Well, as you can see, I am no longer hiding.  I am hoping my Blog will reach enough people to save kid in time.  I was hoping to stay anonymous, but don’t care anymore about that.  So I posted here, and sent out a Tweet.  At the current rate, perhaps 11,000 people a year will click on my ANTI-suicide Blog.

Allan is still with me, in a way, and his death was not for nothing.  I’ve seen to that, I think.

Since this past Fathers’ Day, my compressed memories — not “suppressed” as I thought all my life have been expanding, back into the conscious part of my brain.  Not bragging but please remember that I’m a member of Mensa, and I’m “different” (smarter yes, better no).  So after writing here yesterday, I think of something I wrote yesterday that is VERY important.

The Stonewall Riots.  Today, you have to Google it.  When it happened, I was 25, and a survivor (stupid euphemism: victim, OK?).  Why do I say survivor?  Because Allan and I went through the same childhood terror.  I have lived to 73, he died 48 years ago, at 17.  Your math was correct, Anita.  He’d be 65 today if…….

The Riots.  This was the 60’s, when many US cities experienced violent uprisings that make today’s stuff look like nothing.  The History Web site has the details, but I can’t handle that right now.  Worth a look, maybe later.  It’s just that the present overwhelms the past for me, which is a good thing, I assure you.

I have to be honest.  Well, I am anyway, but although I know now that I always was homosexual, I lived a straight life for more than 40 years.  I just figured it out: getting married (my first sex, remember) made me “normal” after a very abnormal childhood that I hated.  Think of the timing.  July one year after Allan died.  I was in mourning, and vulnerable. I go to dinner at a co-worker’s house and six weeks later, I’m a married “MAN.”

So the Stonewall Riots were just another headline to straight old me, but had to be a dagger in Allan’s gay heart, no doubt about it. OMG, he’d been there the year before, hung out with people, and…..  I don’t want to think about the “maybes,” R.I.P Allan.