Newly Out

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

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The Benefits

I came out three years ago at 52. I felt finally free. The monkey on my back no longer had any power. I was free. My children supported me unconditionally. My wife's family disowned me. Most of our married friends ran for the hills. The coven instantly formed a band of support around my wife. I was free, I was finally out of the house, but a long way from knowing fun, fulfillent or a life beside watching Queer as Folk. It has been a slow, pleasant journey to accepting and LIKING who I am. I am in a very tranguil space when I'm alone with my mind. I met the perfect partner and he has allowed me to learn the foilables and nuance of intimacy and has been patient with me as I grew up and erased the multiple tapes of the past. Dignosed with terminal cancer, just two months into the relationship might have been a deal breaker, but it has brought us closer.
I am looking forward to more healthy time, but if I were die tomorrow, it is without any regrets and grateful for knowing, I had it all. I was loved.
Kelly
 
Am I out?

Sorta.

Some of my very close friends know, but that's about it. Still trying to figure out how to break the news to Mom. I suspect she'll get the message when she sees me making out with Keith in the den!

But even though I'm still mostly "in", I accept myself and rather like it, to be honest. I mean, what's not to like about men?

Last week, Keith and I had dinner with friends of his--Paul, and his new boyfriend Scott. The other three guys all had been married and had children. I had neither, so I was the gayest guy in the room!

veg
 
Veg,
Do you think that those people "already know" about you? I remember when Ellen announced to her friends like Joe and Audrey they kinda went "Oh, well" as if they had "figured it out". But I think some people have "figured it out" and don't want to believe it.

Exploder I read that you lived in Asheville, doesn't Clay Aiken live there? Have you seen him on Larry King and other shows? Oh, why doesn't he just come out! or would that not be a good place to do so?
 
I live about 35 min outside of asheville.. Have no clue if Clay Aiken lives here, but if he did i might try to peak in at him.....
Its wierd here... There are tons of religous nuts here..
Now i am very very sorry if this offends any one, and please forgive me as this is my own personal thoughts and if bothers you bad enough, let me know...
We have tons of Southern Baptists here.... They are THE worst for gay bashing... However, every week, i go by the adult toy store and see what they have in just for something to do.. Never usualy buy anything more than incence or what not, mainly just looking, plus i know the owner.. I know alot of people here and i have seen quite a few male members of two local churchs here in the video arcades, one including an assistan pastor... It urkes me that these people go around being homophobic, yet there they are, in the scummy video arcade, getting it on with another dude... They have trophy wives and kids... I have seen it all to often... I have seen two marriges broken up over this and it's one thing to deny it a long time, but then you need to go through the coming out phase... One guy, got remairred had 2 more kids, got re divorced and is narried for the third time with 3 more kids.. He has 8 kids with 4 women... The only reason he works for the construction arm of the company i work for is he is buddys with the foreman (who is his current friend, i won't go into how i know this, but i do)..I just don't get how these people are so confused and don't have more sense....
Maybe it's just me...
Like i said, i am very open minded.. I have smoked pot once and hated it.... But if thats your thing fine, just don't involve me with it..Hardcore drugs are a hole nother thing that i think people should be arrested and hung for, but thats for another time..
I hate being here sometimes, because you have to be very careful around people.. I have had clients who wanted to pray and be very evangelical and i had to fake my way out of it, because i am not like that.. Had one even offer me there daughter (which btw, she knew i was gay when she shook my hand)...
On the flip side, we have alot of transgenderd and cross dressers here... Which just flat out confuses me... But again thats what flotes there boat, fine, just don't involve me, i think its repulsive... I have found it very hard to date here and i would like to find Mr.Sombady half decent...

Sorry to go off on the religous boat... I just wanna go someplace where i can smooch a guy i like in public and it doesn't cause you to be arrested for public lewdeness (yes that has happens here). Also having any form of sex with a man is punshiable by 1 year of probabtin and or prison and possible sex offender stuff, cause its a crime against nature....
 
As Nancy Grace would say: "Elephant in the Room"!

I think what I was trying to say about Clay Aiken is an issue I have to deal with, eventually it is hard to hide the fact that one is gay, it just eventually "seeps out" but people deny it like the Elephant in the room. Perhaps one reason is that the southern states are not the best place to "come out"?

When Clay Aiken was interviewed by Diane Sawyer, after he grew some facial hair to try to be more macho, he got so red it looked like he could make more steam than General Electric Boiling Water Reactor - "I don't know why you want to know!!, Yeah I think it's rude of you to ask!! OK, I'm done with it! People take pictures of my house wanting me to come out!!"" He was saying one thing but reactions speak louder than words.

Later he was on Larry King and Larry asked "If you say Yay or Nay people won't wonder and the issue will go away" He got steamed again, "Why do you want to know Larry?"

I think Larry was probably trying to give him some fatherly advice.

Once I met an exchange student from Sweden, she said people talk about "he's gay, she's gay, who cares?" Perhaps not such an issue in Europe?
 
I think he's hot, i wouldn't mind maken him do some aiken, so to speak, but i never pay much more attention to him than that....

Sorry to have gone off on my tangent.... I just got off the phone with an old friend who is wanting to try things (which i promptly told him no) and he is married.... He is very lost in life... Oh well
 
The Bible Belt Comes Off Pretty Fast

I lived in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia as well as 7 other states. I had more opportunities for gay sex in the Bible belt than anywhere else. That said, all you need to do is attend a fundamental church or church camp or retreat anywhere in the USA for all the gay sex you want. A lot of them are on their knees and it isn't to pray, unless you count, "Oh, Jesus, I'm, cumming!"
Kelly
 
Profiles

Erik (WasherTalk) said:

A blank profile seriously cuts into ones image. It seems insincere.

Erik, first off, congratulations on your coming out. It's good to have that behind you and best of luck to you!

I suppose I can explain a few things about the profiles. Each group has their own feel and customs. For example, one of my friend's teenage girl, who has an account on myspace, was told by her friends that her friends' "friends" on myspace were freaked out and telling them not to talk to this girl because she did not have a picture on myspace so "she might be a predator" -- now, if you stop to think about it, anyone can grab a random pix of a teenage girl from the internet and stick it to myspace whether or not they are predators. I suppose you could also say that the only teenagers on myspace might be the people who do not have a picture posted, who knows. Lord knows that you can bet good money that the only women on phone directories are the ones that have initials and last name, most of the men have first name and last name.

Be that as it may, that's the point I'm trying to drive across. This group, since it was first established on Yahoo!, has been victim of people who come and go, and post tomes about appliances they have and, when we ask for pictures of the person with the appliances, we get millions of excuses. They are just pretending to be huge collectors to get "respect" from the group. And you don't even have to go that far, it has happened at least a couple of times in the last year or so. One of the guys apologized and seems to be doing just fine, the other one did a nasty thing to our own webmaster and seems to have disappeared. My point is that one shouldn't take the state of a profile to be anything, sincere or insincere, as an empty or full profile means nothing or at least it shouldn't mean anything. You need to know the people involved.

My own experience has been mixed. Most of the people (most as in 99%+) here are very nice decent people who just want to make friends and interact with everyone. But there are (or maybe I should say there were) a few people that only bothered to interact with collectors, and I should be glad they didn't talk to me much, because they were just poking fun at everyone, saying that this machine or that brand were garbage etc. One of them, who seem to have been gone for a few years, used to call anyone that had a stainless steel appliance a snobby yuppie and worse, just because they dared to have something they like -- mind you, that person never bothered to ask if you got it as a gift, if you got it at the scratch and dent etc and, to be honest, it shouldn't matter if you paid a million bucks or got it for free, it's your home, if you like it get it.

So, in short, my empty profile means that I am not a collector, I try not to poke fun at other people's choices and would like them to interact with me as a person with ideas (good or bad) and not by which appliance(s) I happen to have, and that I am tired of getting spam so I only list my yahoo email. And yes, once I start interacting with people, they do get my real email address. I have met a lot of people from this group at conventions, wash-ins and random gatherings and I like most people who post here (and even some that don't post regularly but I've met in person). I would have loved to have attended some more gatherings, like the ones by Rich and Chuck, but unfortunately I've been busy when they happened and chances are I won't be able to attend the next one on the 9th either. :-( Other than that, we live in the same state, so there's no reason we can't meet for coffee someday and you'll know (like other people here) that I'm very real and very sincere, empty profile or not.

And I'd like to add that I'd be happier if I could spend more time in this group and that I consider myself very lucky to be here, it's a wonderful group of people.

Cheers,
-- Paulo.
 
Clay Aiken

I don't know anything about him, but I will agree that up to a certain degree, I think he's right -- it's his private life, people shouldn't be prying, they'd hate it if we set camp in front of their homes and shot pictures, looked at their garbage etc. One should live one's own life and let other people be, that's the foundation for freedom.

That having been said, I do understand the curiosity, and I agree with a bunch of people that if tomorrow morning people woke up with some magic sign or something telling everyone and their brother-in-law what orientation they are, if they stole something yesterday, what kinds of drugs they do etc, a lot of people would be shocked to find their own family embroiled in the things they claim not to do. Like say, hire escorts and get drugs from them, not to beat a dead horse again. For most people like me, it would be just, "oh, well, why is everyone so surprised? Let's move on to better things..." and that's it. For most of the world, it's not really that interesting what orientation etc people have, it's more interesting to know if they are embezzling money from their place of work and if we can put them in jail for it.

Cheers,
-- Paulo.
 
Earthling, I'm not sure how putting up a profile proves my sincerity level one way or another, but I complied with the request simply because it was a harmless-enough request to comply with, and because washertalk seemed very sincere himself, even though he didn't really explain why it was so important to him in very much detail.

Paulo, one thing you mentioned I am curious about. Do the contributions of collectors carry more weight, whereas those of us who just love washers and laundry culture seen as sort of wanna-beish?

I DO confess to more or less staying off the Imperial forum because I'm not knowledgeable, but sometimes it bothers me that I have questions that may seem foolish and uninformed, and I don't really have anywhere to go to for answers....
 
Scott:

I agree with you that the request is harmless, and hey, it's a free country, if you wanna do it, go for it. All I'm trying to say is that one should not put much (if any) faith on the profiles. For now, I'm keeping mine the way it is.

I don't think (in all the years I've been in this forum) that being a collector gets you anything more than being a non-collector. From what I've seen here, you get respect from two things, respecting other people, and the information you have. Information has a fun thing to it, that one might know absolutely nothing about appliances, but get here and tell their story and sure enough, someone in their family had some appliance that the poster has details about -- that helps everyone here, because sometimes it's hard to get info like that, many of those appliances, user guides, tech notes etc have been lost over the years.

I'd say the reason collectors end up with a high standing here is because they tend to know better than say, me, how hard it is to find, restore and maintain the appliances they have. And hey, first hand experience ends up resulting in an awful lot of useful information. But I've seen people who are well respected here that don't collect and were not technicians either.

I'd say go ahead and visit all forums, I know I do. I learn an awful lot from them and I'm very grateful for all the info. And heck, if you have a question, by all means ask it. I'm sure people who have the info will be happy to tell you all about it.

I'm not sure I'm answering your questions... I guess mostly I meant to tell Erik don't get burned by what you see/fail to see in profiles, they can be deceptive. Take your time to get to know the folks that make this forum, you'll realize most of them are wonderful people and in time you'll learn to recognize the folks that only cause trouble. I would be happy to be able to tell you how to spot them, except that I can't, it's mostly gut feeling, you recognize the patterns of the good vs the fake people, it's like gaydar or any other field of knowledge really. And one or two people could have fooled me except that I'm not a collector and I'm not here often enough to have taken advantage of their "offers", so I was safe.

Cheers,
-- Paulo.
 
All agreed... Why lie to make thine self look better????

Kelly,
You are very correct about the bible belt coming off so eaisly... Once church is over, Jimmys store will be packed about two or so... Most married as well.. And yet its always a big shock when one does come out either repent (i think thats what they do) or actually comes out and go on with life...
 
Scott, I've said this before and I'll say it again. NEVER NEVER EVER be afraid to ask questions on the Imperial forum. That's the only way you are gonna learn about anything. Yeah, it's 99.909% sure the question has been asked before, but there are always new people coming and going here who may just want the additional knowledge form the question answered. The worst question to ask is the one you dind't ask at all.

'Nuf said,
Bob
 
I caught you first post about flavors and was think of the flavord rubber life savers, not the candy... Then i saw the second.. Lol
 

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