What gay things did you do as a kid that you had no idea were gay?

I'd be all, "ooh...Mehhhhh.rray" like TV's Jackée Harry as a joke, but also not a joke.

Whoever you are, your memories just gave me a much-needed, laugh. Thank you!

Starting in middle school, I sometimes referred to my female classmates as, "Honey". That came from both Marla Gibbs on "The Jeffersons and Ja'net DuBois on, "Good Times".

I loved coloring books and stickers and would obsess over Disney ones in particular.

I joined the Basketball team in order to impress my Dad with my butchness. Turns out I shot the ball like a girl. When I ran my arms flailed, again like a girl. My feet were narrow and I would cry because I had to wear ugly shoes in narrow width.

R2 OP here. I did tons of gay things in regard to Wilona Woods. Remember the one where that girl and Shirley Hemphill tried to rob the family? JJ knocked the gun out of her hand, and money went flying everywhere. Wilona scrambled to get the gun, and yelled "FREEZE!"

Of course the studio audience went crazy. I YELLED out, very loud "wil-OH-na!" And my mom came in the TV room and said "what is WRONG with you?"

R6 OP here. Yeah, I dunno. I never had the compulsion to put a dress on. But I did like doing things that female characters did on TV.

There was an airplane commercial that wanted traveling execs to bring their wives on business trips so all the wives would be singing Take Me Along from Take Me Along and I'd go around the house singing that.

[Reply 1] Thank you for the smile! I never missed 227 but one of the things my ex told me he would do is Saundra's baby voice"Marrryy" Also him asking the lunch lady "Where's the beef" Him telling me he wanted a canopy bed as a kid. I also wanted one. As for just me...oh man? Do we have time? Doing the cakewalk and lots of windmill motions and as my finale do the splits Like baby June for my grandma. Coming home from lunch to make sure I taped Mama's family! Flopping on the floor to watch The golden girls on Saturday night while my grandma called them old whores. I was big into crafts. Making big motions while singing I won't grow up from Peter Pan around a piano as my class looked at me funny. Spinning around like i was Wonderwoman/Julie Andrews.

[quote]Sure, I would act campy sometimes as a kid for fun - but emulating and associating with female characters on tv seems trans, not gay.

They were emulating behaviour, not the way the women were built physically.

R5 LMAO. Like Rhoda, Wi-LOH-nah got the best lines. I used to enjoy singing the hell out of the theme song, prompting my parents to ask if I act that way outside of the house.

OP, I just laughed so hard at your examples, I woke up my husband!!

Sucking other boys off behind the playground.

Years ago a cousin told me, quite naively, that she had walked into the living room and her 4 year old son was standing in front of the TV wearing a pair if her pumps....watching The Wizard of Oz. She thought it was funny and cute, which it was. I was thinking, that boy is gay. I was right.

I dressed Tickle Me Elmo in leather chaps, a harness and used a cucumber for a butt plug. My sister was NOT amused.

R6, none of this stuff makes anyone even close to being "trans". Boys can like pink and play with dolls. Girls can like train sets and play with trucks.

I preferred Legos and wanted to be like Bruce Willis in the Moonlighting. And the Miami Vice guys.

Collecting stickers & sticker books I guess.

There were also some times when my neighborhood friends would stop by asking to join them to play some basketball/baseball/football, and I was in the middle of baking something with my mom and declined.

As an elementary school aged child, I had Barbie and Ken and G.I. Joe. Barbie didn't get a lot of action, but Ken and G.I. Joe certainly did. And at the end of their day's activities, I kept them together in their own shoe box. Always naked. Even in elementary school, I knew that's how it should be.

Another "Bewitched" item: I stole the expression "Oh my stars!" from Sam because I thought it was so fabulous and ran around using it all the time as a gayling. My parents were simply bemused.

I also took the part of Catherine Chancellor when playing Y&R with my (girl) cousins. I'd slam back Frescas and shake my head and scream, "Brock, BROCK!!"

Oh and I used to put my mothers tampons up my butt.

I believe R6 was being sarcastic and mocking the Rush To Trans children

[quote]Boys can like pink and play with dolls. Girls can like train sets and play with trucks

No shit, R16. My comment had nothing to do with anything saying otherwise.

No reply I saw mentioned pink and dolls, but they all do seem to be about some form of emulating women - which falls into the trans-spectrum imo.

A lot of the older ladies in town would crochet, so I decided I would take it up too in the name of Women's Liberation.

It made sense to me at the time.

R20, he wasn’t mocking anything.

He’s an idiot.

I loved Spice Girls, Britney Spears, and Brandy (her Cinderella was my fave).

I played with dolls, Barbies. But I really loved Disney princesses and even went as Cinderella once for Halloween.

No, I wasn’t and am not trans. Fuck that idiot above.

R21. Well, your opinion has no basis in research. Longitudinal studies of little non-gender conforming boys indicate that the vast majority of them identify as gay men not trans as adults.

R24

Oh and I loved the A*Teens (does anyone remember them?) and had a huge crush on Amit.

I watched shows on Lifetime, "Television for Women." (Particularly The Golden Girls and Designing Women.)

At the height of Valley Girl, I couldn’t say a sentence with out either “Oh My God,” or “Like” in it and was told point blank to knock it off.

"Bewitched" was my favorite TV show

R6, that's false. Gays and lesbians are mutilating and destroying their bodies because of these trans lies. I identified with Divas as a teen, but never for a moment did I not want to be a woman, the vast majority of gay men would agree with me, I'm sure. Gender dysphoria is a real psychiatric issue, but nowhere in the numbers we have been seeing in the past four years. Something very horrible is going on that so many young people think their bodies are a lie and that they are a mistake, to be rectified by surgery and chemicals for the rest of their lives.

Trans women are not women and trans men are not men, and they never will be.

In sixth grade, my best friend and I bought cheap sunglasses and would decorate them ala Elton John. White frames, blue lens and matching glued on blue sequins. And we wore them to the mall. I don’t think it got gayer than that in flyoverstan in the late 70’s.

Go work out your issues somewhere else, r30.

I presented hole to every hot boy

And some not so hot, I’ll bet.

@r33, I was more interested in their older brothers and fathers

Oh and I used to put my mothers tampons up my butt.

that's not funny, that's disturbing

I blame Paul Lynde as "Uncle Arthur" and Charles Nelson Reilly as "Hoodoo" for making me gay.

Not that I'm complaining...

my favourite show was The Nanny, I would make grand entrances down our staircase like Fran, and pretend to be Niles and CC replaying their catty lines.

Thank you, R10 & R16.

A few examples from my own life:

Around the age of five, I broke one of the ornaments my parents had during their first Christmas together. I cried. Not because I thought I was in trouble, but because I was genuinely sorry for the loss of a relic from my parents' first year together.

In kindergarten (at age five), I got a pair of brown cowboy boots. When shopping for those, I saw that they also had black, and grey versions. I pressed my parents to get me both. They eventually did.

I cut out holiday imagery from the newspaper (along the borders & headers), & made my own little scenes by taping them to the kitchen window, and usually added lights at Christmas.

My father was decidedly unimpressed by the plate of ladyfingers I’d baked for tea time.

[quote] In kindergarten (at age five), I got a pair of brown cowboy boots. When shopping for those, I saw that they also had black, and grey versions. I pressed my parents to get me both. They eventually did.

I don’t see anything gay in this.

The kid had a boot fetish that is a strong predictor of one day opening a profile on Recon.

Wholesome thread

For elementary school, I went to a catholic school that was run by nuns. My sister and I spent our childhood wearing towels on our head and carrying canes and pretending to be nuns.

After seeing Cabaret at age 14, I went around calling everything “divinely decadent.”

Way to bury the lede R19! 🤣😁😉😜

I deliberately changed my native New Jersey accent to talk like Angela Lansbury from my favorite childhood show, "Murder She Wrote."

And Angela Lansbury deliberately changed her British accent to talk like someone from New Jersey. Go figure.

I WAS Little Orphan Annie, except when I performed as Annie Lennox.

I begged and pleaded and cried when my parents said NO to letting me watch Madonna's "Blonde Ambition" Tour when it broadcast on HBO. I got my way in the end, but the caveat was that I had to turn it off when "Like a Virgin" came on. The whole reason they said no was they had seen the headlines about her fake fingering herself on the bed and deems it inappropriate for a ten year old. They were usually horrified that I was way into Madonna.

Performing a STRIP SEARCH on my GI Joe doll.

r39, your Christmas ornament story reminded me of my own story: I PURPOSELY broke the spire-type tree topper that, as a five-year-old, I thought was ugly. I wanted an angel for the top and figured the only way that was going to happen was to destroy the other one.

He's trolling you R23

He knows that there are a dozen posts a day on DL that express the fear that the sort of effeminate boys most DLers were as children are now having their penises cut off and being turned into women.

I have a Christmas ornament story too. I was obsessed with Days of our Lives as a kid and I wanted individualized Christmas ornaments with our names on the ornaments like the Horton family. Since my Mom would not cooperate, I got a black magic marker and wrote names on the Christmas ornaments. My Mother was pissed, but somewhat amused at the same time. I became rather upset when I could not get everyone to cooperate in having an ornament hanging ceremony with egg nog and Christmas songs like on Days. Fun fact, my Mom still has those ornaments and they hang on the tree every year. She died this year, so I will have to snatch them up.

Being into Judy, Barbra, Liza, Cher and Bette. No idea where that came from, certainly nothing in my upbringing or early environment.

R1 I did “ooooo Meeehhry” too. I still do it occasionally and nobody ever gets it.

Continuing the Christmas theme, one year for presents I crafted homemade wealths made out of salt dough just like the one below for my grandmothers and favorite aunt. I especially loved the use of cloves for the bottoms of the fruits and included the real shells of walnuts as well.

1- I liked to wrestle my cousins with a full-on boner protruding from my pants.

2- I preferred the company of my girl cousins. I remember one time my uncle redecorated my cousin's room and I was so fascinated by the pink walls and all the pink furniture.

3- I would wrap towels around my head and pretend that me and my super sleek silky hair were in a shampoo commercial.

I used my meager allowance to buy tea and ginger snaps for an after school snack. These would be consumed while watching Leave it to Beaver and The Munsters.

Choir instead of baseball. I will throw in Speech and Debate team.

I would impersonate George Jones, Buck Owens, etc. The show stopper was me plugging my nose and singing Making Believe by Kitty Wells.

It always struck me as strange that my gay uncle and I never got along. He obviously recognized it, but was really dismissive of me. As I grow older, I assume he didn’t want a nelly bitch like me stealing the show. I guess we did kind of compete for the affection of the older women.

In the mid 1960's you could not avoid the Louis Armstrong recording of "Hello, Dolly!" If you were not there, you can never know what a huge hit that song was. So, even though I was about 8 years old, I knew the song. And I knew Mary Martin from the annual showings of her television production of PETER PAN. So, naturally, when Mary Martin came to my city for a week on the national tour of "Hello, Dolly!," I was DESPERATE to see it. I just had to know what this was all about. I was beside myself about this.

I staged a full court press to get my parents to take me to see "Hello, Dolly!" We were not well off and theater tickets were not in the budget. The newspaper ads each day trumpeted this glorious event. I had never seen a play, but I was sold, anyway. Each day, the ad started with "5 More Perfs!" Then "4 More Perfs!" Etc., etc.

Every day that passed, as I feared it slipping away, I got more wound up about this. My parents must have thought their little boy was out of his gay mind. I never got to see Mary Martin in "Hello, Dolly!" and had to wait to finally see a play.

But when Florence Henderson came to town in a stock production of "The Sound of Music," you can bet your gay ass that I was back on it with a vengeance. And this time, I won. I don't think the parents wanted to risk again the aftermath of the "Hello, Dolly!" debacle. The heartbreak and the anger at them lasted a good long time. And I was... 8? And gay. Definitely, definitely, GAY.

This is an update of the "Dialing the Phone With a Pencil" thread---isn't it?

Sucked the neighborhood Priest cock.

R44 I too had a thing with nuns! I'm wondering if that's a catholic thing, or was it the cultural? There was Sound of music (with nuns), The Flying Nun, etc., paired with seeing them at school all the time. I was borderline obsessed with wanting to emulate them.

Lmao OP.

I was a kid in the 90s. Had to be Princess/Peach in all Mario games, Sonya in Mortal Kombat, Chun Li in Street Fighter, Xenia in Goldeneye, etc. The Pink Ranger was my favorite. I loved the Spice Girls. My parents seemed to be pretty oblivious, but I bet all the other dads knew and shook their heads.

Looking through my mother’s clothes catalogue and lingering at the men’s underwear pages.

R64 hey just run with it baby, you be you! I always had to be Chun LI. In the later versions of Street fighter I would also be Cammy.

As for me, I probably picked this up from Dynasty.

If any guy grabbed me by the arm I would scream "Stop, you're hurting me!" In my best Fallon Carrington tone (PSM, of course)

So I was at a toy store with my parents and brother. And I guess we had to leave but I didn't want to.

So my brother grabbed me by the shoulder and I screamed "Stop you're hurting me!" The usually loud toy store suddenly became quiet, my brother and parents just glared at me. I kind of expected what was going to happen when I got home.

R60 That "Hello Dolly" record, YES! I loved it. My parents had the 45. I loved the opening bars, ukelele or something?

[quote]Looking through my mother’s clothes catalogue and lingering at the men’s underwear pages.

Looking through the catalogues and wanting the women's dresses to wear.

I used to fantasize about being the woman in the Sheena Easton "Lover in Me" video who had water poured all over her. I had a crush on a fellow classmate and used to envision him pouring fruit punch all over me while I writhed on a table.

I also used to sit on the desk in my room and practice dangling my mother high heeled shoes off of my feet. Cross legged of course. Sometimes while smoking candy cigarettes.

Oh, and I memorized all the MacKenzie Phillips One Day at a time dances to a tee.

i knew ALL the words to THE SOUND OF MUSIC and MARY POPPINS .

My oldest sister is quite a few years old than me and remsmber obsessibely looking through her senior yearbook to find the most handsome senior. Still think about you Paul Houser, class of 75.

Me at r70 sorry about the typos

i was an old soul , even as a small child ...I DID A MEAN RENDITION OF BLANCHE DUBOIS .

I was obsessed with The Supremes. I used to move the floodlights from the back yard flower beds, run them up to the second floor of the house and in through my bedroom window with long extension cords and place them across one side of the room and use them as footlights and pretend that I was Diana Ross.

[quote] because when Marla Gibbs did it, I liked it.

I loved Florence.

I used to invite the boys in the neighborhood over to swim, and then lure them into the pool house where we'd look at my dad's Playboy and Penthouse magazines and jerk off together. That's pretty normal hetero-boy behavior, I suppose. But then when Danny Dupont asked if he could come over alone and then asked if anyone had ever sucked my dick or if I'd ever sucked one, and I got a little penis quiver...Well, I knew something was different.

"Suck me off, Daddy".

[quote] some times when my neighborhood friends would stop by asking to join them to play some basketball/baseball/football

at least they asked

Of course what gay boy didn't imitate Sandra from 227 and all the pop culture divas (me included)?

But also, I grew up poor. One day I found my 12 year old twin sister crying in her room because my mom said we couldn't afford to get her the new faddish haircut for picture day. I had been to the beauty salon with my mom many times, so I told my sister "I think I can do it." She said "ok."

Several hours later I proudly stood at the bottom of the stairs and introduced my sister as she strolled down the stairs with her freshly cut bob (which she absolutely loved). I was so proud of my accomplishment!

My mom was furious because she thought my sister went to a salon behind her back. When she found out I did it, her anger turned towards me (my mom and I had an interesting dynamic). My dad and little brother were hooting, hollering and clapping and saying she looked great. Although my dad did subtley shoot me the "side eye" -- he always had "suspicions" that I might "turn into a sissy." Little did he (or I) know, it was already too late.

Surprisingly, my dad talked my mom out of punishing me.

About a week later, I ended up doing my mom's hair (which drastically improved our relationship), and the hair of several women and girls in the neighborhood. I cut my little brother's hair too sometimes. Of course my continued styling of women's hair had to be kept from my dad or his "suspicions" would have become a 4 alarm fire!

R78 is Edward Scissorhands.

[quote] that's not funny, that's disturbing

Are you male or female, R36?

Just curious.

I used to put T-shirts, towels, etc., on my head to pretend I had long, flowing hair.

I used to love singers like Britney Spears, The Spice Girls, Shakira, Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavigne, etc. I even had action figures of Baby Spice and Britney Spears.

My uncle was into pageants and was going to enter me into one. For the talent portion my first idea was to perform either Crazy or Oops I Did It Again. I knew you couldn't find the red, shiny costume she wore in stores, though. So it probably would've been Crazy since a plain, green shirt and black pants would be a lot easier. I ended up just doing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in the end.

When we went to McDonalds or something and got a Happy Meal, they'd ask if we wanted the "girl toy" or the "boy toy" and I'd always choose the little Barbie doll over the "boring" Hot Wheels or Transformers or whatever was in there.

That’s such a sweet story, r78.

First Ioved Abba then Eurovision Song Contest then Barba and Patti then musicals figure skating gymnastics. And I thought I was the only one. Turned out I was the usual gay kid.

R66 roflmao

This thread is gold.

I was about 9 and was watching the Miss Universe contest with my family on TV one night. Suddenly I started criticizing the way the contestants lacked elegance and grace, then stood up and sashayed around the room the way I thought they "should have". I knew from the horror in my parents' faces I shouldn't have done something but I wasn't sure what.

[quote] Sure, I would act campy sometimes as a kid for fun - but emulating and associating with female characters on tv seems trans, not gay.

Gay little boys act like that all the time.

What sort of expertise are you pretending to that allows you to psychologically diagnose over the Internet someone's harmless solitary comment?

In short, WTF is WRONG with you?

r52=The Bad Seed

I got a talking to for gadding about like Mrs. Howell and saying "Oh, my stars!" like Samantha Stevens. My parents meant well, but it probably would have been healthier to allow me to have riden out the phase, or full out blossomed into it. I learned to shut down and become inpenetrably stoic.

I idolized Charlie's Angels. I would collect their trading cards. This lovely old man would special order them for me at the candy shop he owned in my neighborhood. I would talk all my male friends into playing Charlie's Angels. So fun.

R89 In a similar vein, I adored totally spies, which I feel is the millennial/zoomed version of Charlie's angels for us gays.

I used to love making this sort of fantasy flowers where you twisted wire into a petal shape snd then dipped it in this thick colored liquid that would dry to a clear bright color. Then you take all your petals and form them into a flower and wrap it in green floral tape. I loved doing that crafting with her.

Then I would go around my neighborhood selling them door to door.

Sang and danced to Copacabana by Barry Manilow at the 6th Grade Talent Show. This was in the early 2000’s so naturally nobody knew what the fuck I was singing or what going on. Can’t believe I was ever so bold!

R66 I just realized, is this a spelling show thing? Donna Martin said the same thing when Ray threw her down the stairs.

R63, I think the nun emulation is common in all catholic school kids. They nuns really were the powerful adults in our lives. I mean, even our parents just wilted in front of them and meekly accepted any scolding.

[quote]No reply I saw mentioned pink and dolls, but they all do seem to be about some form of emulating women - which falls into the trans-spectrum imo.

Trannies hate their dick or pussy. That's all it is.

R90

Same!

I used to beg my mother for a white sheer curtain and when she gave it over I'd run around outside using it as long veil and horrify the neighbors. If only I'd known the lyrics to I Feel Pretty ...

Because my dad liked beauty pageants (the old dog), I invented a game with playing cards and paper cutouts in which I would become Miss America. Then he might love me.

Love all the trolls trying in vain to turn this thread into Anti-Tranny lamd.

I would call my friend Greg on the phone every Friday night after the latest episode of Wonder Woman 👩 was on - NOT so we could discuss how hot 🥵 she was but just to regale each other with the campiness of the latest episode- not that I knew in 1978 what CAMPY mean.

At about age 4 i was in the Bathroom and decided to try on my Mom’s stockings. She burst in the door and busted me. My excuse: “my legs hurt!” I still like stockings,lol.

This is a retelling/remake of the Dialing The Phone With a Pencil thread, of course.

But there IS room for both the Addams Family AND The Munsters. So, I approve.

Carry on.

I used to give the neighborhood kids copies of my Classics Illustrated comic books, and I would direct them in plays on our side porch. I did A Tale of Two Cities, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Romeo & Juliet. Eddie and Roseanne were stellar as Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette.

I would wrap a towel around my head and "be" Cher in "I Got You Babe" and "Baby Don't Go." She was my diva long before disco.

My mother and I made this Christmas castle on a cookie sheet, from marshmallows, glazed ice cream cones, and an old suit box. It was from McCall's magazine.

"Bewitched" was also my favorite TV show. I played piano, liked baking, didn't play sports, watched ballet on TV, listed endlessly to my mom's 8-track of Barbra's Greatest Hits. I can't believe no one guessed.

I've shared this here many times before, but whilst watching 'The Facts of Life', I'd prance around with my hooded towel on my head (I was 5 or 6) and pretend to be Blair flipping her hair.

[quote] I used to invite the boys in the neighborhood over to swim, and then lure them into the pool house where we'd look at my dad's Playboy and Penthouse magazines and jerk off together. That's pretty normal hetero-boy behavior, I suppose. But then when Danny Dupont asked if he could come over alone and then asked if anyone had ever sucked my dick or if I'd ever sucked one, and I got a little penis quiver...Well, I knew something was different.

Yeah, I was invited when it was "look at the magazines" and so on but once they realized that, when they jokingly said suck my dick I actually WANTED to, they shunned me.

In retrospect, sucking dick was a dead giveaway.

What a naughty six-year-old you were, r106!

In 1st grade I had this big black lady as a teacher, and she always worse big hop earring. I would go on and on to her about how much I loved them. Then, she introduced me to her friend, and I would compliment her lipstick everyday.

In 2nd grade gym class, I would prance around the gym with a basket that was used to hold supplies and I would pretend I was selling girl scot cookies.

When Madonnas Human Nature video came out, I was about 8, I would wrap myself in tefillin and pretend to be Madonna. And, I’m not sorry!

I admired michael Jackson as a small kid-he was a few years older, so I thought he was immensely cool. I got a blue suede velvet pimp coat with a belt, and wore high heeled boots. Walking to school I had no traction going up or down the hill to the school. But I looked fly like MJ in my mind.

When I tried out for the baseball team instead of showing off my powerful arm I threw the ball extra soft so I wouldn’t hurt anyone.

R91 That is just so funny to me. Bless you!

Unrelated, but how do I quote?

R111 If you go to the Help tab there's a thing at the bottom of the drop down menus about post formatting

Read Mommie Dearest when I was ten.

I used to put towels or long pillowcases in my shirts and pretend they were capes and run around like I was a superhero. I didn't have tights but I wore shorts.

I also acted out scenes from Batman (TV) with sounds like Blammo! Ka-Pow! Boff!

OP, I'm a boomer too but I never really watched F Troop. I just HAD to try and find an example of Wrangler Jane's walk. This was the best I could do, at 1:23. Was this the perky stride you were emulating?

Jesus, r108, I think we were heavily distracted by those things.

[quote] I used to put towels or long pillowcases in my shirts and pretend they were capes and run around like I was a superhero.

I think every kid did that. Who didn’t want to be a superhero when they were kids?

Kathie Lee Gifford was my style icon when I was a young gayling in the late 80s. In homage to her, I once fashioned for myself shoulder pads using first aid gauze. My mother, who just didn’t understand fashion for anything, would not allow me to go to school with them on under my shirt.

I brought the Original Cast Record of Camelot to choir practice and played Julie Andrews singing “The Lusty Month of May” for everybody before practice started.

I took my sister's barbies and drew (tasteful) lingerie on them with black and red marker, inspired by the Lady Marmalade music video.

That F Troop clip is like any Data Lounge thread on trannies.

R113 I read Mommie Dearest at age 12 after seeing the Gilda as Christina and Jane as Joan SNL skit. Then decades later I worked at the school Joan sent Christina to when she became an awkward rebellious teen.

Playing the soundtrack from The Sound of Music over and over and acting out all the songs.

Bewitched was also on rotation a lot during my childhood. I'm convinced that show must be some sort of gay gateway.

When Pure Disco came out on CD in the mid/late-90's, I bought all of the volumes and would blast them in my room. I could never understand why disco died. I thought it was wonderful.

For my 16th birthday, I asked for - and received - and Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall album.

I was the gayest kid that ever gayed. My parents were VERY naive, but all their friends around them already knew. Of course I was bullied at school, needless to say. 90's kid: I would try to emulate every single anime girl (Sailor Venus, Misty from Pokémon, Mimi from Digimon, Sakura etc) I was seeing on TV, I would play with barbies, Disney princesses' castles and dresses, I'd put towel on my head pretending they were long hair, I would try my grandma's clip earrings etc. I can't list them all.

Quite ironically I then grew up in my teen years as a very masculine punk/rock guy. And still today everybody says "But you don't seem gay". The strangeness of life.

I'd always want the girl toys in the McDonald's happy meal.

My father was at some "important" cricket match (in London) - he phoned and asked me to join him, I declined because I wanted [bold]to watch a rerun of Bewitched. [/bold]He was really angry when he got home.

My parents were away and I persuaded our housekeeper to take me to see "The Way We Were" - I'd seen the trailer and had put it at the top of my must see list - I was ten years old!

Blimey!

I told my best friend's father when I was about 7 that my dream was to become a ballet dancer and, in doing so, I grabbed the staircase handrail and extended my leg back like I had seen Margot Fonteyn do. He looked positively disgusted and left the room.

In Kindergarten, when the boys chased the girls at recess (to get a kiss), I chased the boys.

[quote] Sang and danced to Copacabana by Barry Manilow at the 6th Grade Talent Show. This was in the early 2000’s so naturally nobody knew what the fuck I was singing or what going on. Can’t believe I was ever so bold!

This might be the funniest story in this thread, to me at least. I’m howling.

[quote] Quite ironically I then grew up in my teen years as a very masculine punk/rock guy. And still today everybody says "But you don't seem gay". The strangeness of life.

You sound like me, R125. I’m a bit older than you (80s kid), so my early childhood was more of the Bewitched/Sound of Music/Hayley Mills/Wizard Of Oz/Patty Duke variety, but I shed all that and became more masculine and bisexual (I was always attracted to girls, exclusively as a young boy in fact), and now I just seem like a regular, gross, rock and roll bro. But as a little boy? Ka-WEEN. My mom was definitely worried.

When I was 6, I dragged my best friend (at the time) to see “My Fair Lady” T our neighborhood theater “now at popular prices”. My mom saw nothing wrong with that I guess. After all, she had given me the OBC album with Rex and Julie the year before so I knew all the songs. At the intermission, my companion thought the movie was over and we could leave. But I said “No! There’s more! Sheila going to the ball!” He never looked at me the same after that. Mom made me gay. She had also given me the OBC LP of “The Sound of Music” so when I saw that a yer later, I knew all those songs too!

I see Bewitched, but I'm surprised none of you wanted to be Barbara Eden from "I Dream of Jeannie." None of you future subs wanted a "Master?" Larry Hagman was pretty hot and Jeannie was the ultimate "sub!"

OP and R66 - I haven't had a good laugh at anything on DL for a really long time. Runny nose, crying - the works. Thank you.

Watched old musicals on TMC with an elderly next door neighbor lady who knew I was gay before I realized it myself. She and her husband were Mormon (or former Mormons, I forgot) but surprisingly open-minded. They kept chickens in their suburban backyard. I used to invent reasons to go to their house (to help with chickens and yard work) because she’d always have classic movies for us to watch. One day she said to me cryptically as we were watching Victor/ Victoria on cable tv, “is there a character that you identify with?” referring to the character played by Alex Karras of course. I was 11 then, and that’s when I acknowledged to myself what I had suspected since 4th grade. I guess it was Mrs. Brown’s way of letting me know it was okay and that she understood even if I didn’t tell her directly.

R135 that's a sweet story.

I played with Barbie………and then I found Ken…..…..but when G.I Joe entered the picture…….I knew I found the one for me.

My brother collected baseball cards, which I would help myself to when he wasn’t looking.

I would happily trade a fugly Pete Rose card for the card of a dreamy ballplayer.

My brother was not amused.

R104 , are you a C**T , LIKE THE REAL BLAIR ?

The fuck is a c**t?

We’re adults here. You can say cunt of that’s what you mean.

Gosh, it is funny how much young gaylings like Bewitched. It must span generations, because I am 30 and loved it (thanks Nick at Night). Just like someone else mentioned, I used to go around saying “all my stars” as well. And, I used to pretend I was Andora on the playground.

r114, that's not very gay. All boys did that who grew up with "Batman."

[quote] I played with Barbie………and then I found Ken…..…..but when G.I Joe entered the picture…….I knew I found the one for me.

I played with Ken AND G. I. Joe.

Sometimes Big Jim joined in.

I can still remember in junior high (late 70s) when another boy told me I shouldn’t be holding my books high to my chest. The other boys held them down by their leg. I didn’t even realize that. I took his advice.

OMFG, me too!

I swear!

I’m rolling with laughter right now.

R142 really? The dainty floral pillowcase and embroidered burgundy towels didn't feel too manly as capes.

The was fascinated by the men's underwear section of the Sears catalog, but I thought the underwear that was shown (baggy whities and boxers) was ugly.

So I bought some tracing paper and colored pencils at the store. Then I traced some pictures of the underwear models, and gave their underwear a designer flair. I can still remember the fabulous plaid-print briefs I gave to one particularly attractive guy.

[quote]Love all the trolls trying in vain to turn this thread into Anti-Tranny lamd.

Love all the trolls desperately trying to make everyone out to be a tranny when the only thing that makes someone a tranny is when therapy to get them to love themselves when they exhibit gender dysphoria fails and the next best option is genital mutilation.

This thread is a keeper. I love it.

[quote] is there a character that you identify with?”

Are you sure she wasn't grooming you for some kind of weird Epstein-Maxwell thing?

What's interesting about all the shared experiences is how similar they are. This makes me think, are gay men predisposed to specific interests? The difference between us and straights is that straight men develop their interests from their environment. They are led by example and observe other straights and that's how they get attached to things like sports and cars. Whereas gay men are an anomaly. Rarely do you find multiple gays in one household. How is it then that these interests are so common amongst gay men?

Like for example the towel/pants around the head thing. I've never seen anyone do it and developed that habit intuitively. But when I speak to other gay men many of them have done the same thing in their youth. How?

I am mixed and for our 4th grade Thanksgiving play it was some sort of Pilgrims and Indians deal. I had no clue that due to race I was supposed to be an Indian. No, I wanted to wear Knicker pants! Plus big buckles on your shoes. Running around in fake buckskin had no appeal for me. So the black kids hated me for “trying to pass.” Then to top it all I guess I recited my meager lines “flamboyantly” and brought the house down. The little yellow Pilgrim.

Wow, I did a lot these things when I was a kid. When I was very little, I danced around with a towel on my head. I don’t really remember it, but a lot of my relatives STILL like to remind me about it.

In the 70s, all my older girl cousins had long, straight hair, and they would let me brush it for hours.

I also loved Charlie’s Angels (had the trading cards), Wonder Woman, and Bionic Woman. I never got that Wonder Woman doll I wanted, but for some reason I did manage to get a Jamie Sommers Bionic Woman doll. I don’t remember how that happened.

One time we were visiting some neighbors, and I went into a lengthy discussion about the hairstyles of Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Ladd. My mother was not amused.

When I was about 12, I discovered All My Children, and became obsessed. I convinced my poor mother to get me subscriptions to Soap Opera Digest and Daytime TV. I’d cut out all the pictures of the All My Children performers and made collages and scrapbooks.

Watched Julia Child's The French Chef on TV whenever it was on. Laughed so hard once at an insult Endora lobbed at "Derwood" on Bewitched that my mother came into the room to see if I was okay. When riding the city bus, would sneak looks at a billboard ad (for milk, I think) that had a gorgeous tanned male model in only cutoff blue jeans. I would strictly limit my lustful looks at him to 10 seconds so people wouldn't guess what I was up to.

I put on my white miniskirt, pulled up my knee-length white wool socks, and I BECAME Joey Heatherton putting on a Vietnam USO Show for all the troops in my neighborhood, OP! Many came.. Really, they did.

I could lip-sync (and to be honest, sing live) all the songs Barbra Streisand sang in Funny Girl including on the ferry when she sang "Don't Rain on My Parade" and the tragic finale, "My Man." Then I moved onto Barbra's live concert, "A Happening in Central Park," including "Marty The Martian" and "He Touched Me." Then onto Hello, Dolly including the up-tempo, dramatic, "So Long, Dearie," with her comic breathing pauses and the very demanding "Before The Parade Passes By." As a bonus, I could perform the song from Funny Girl that was in the Broadway musical but didn't make it into the movie: "His Is The Only Music That Makes Me Dance."

I was very good. And maybe a little gay.

This thread made me smile and laugh so many times! Love the memories!

Speedos were popular in the 70s growing up. We had an above ground pool growing up where our friends frequently came to swim. My twin brothers had a friend who was so good looking, even to me as a preteen. I commented to him one day when we were alone that he could be in PLAYGIRL, implying he looked so good. I still can’t believe I said that! I’ve never forgotten that.

My great grandmother live a few blocks away in our small town. I rode my bike there almost every day during summers. I helped her in the large garden and just hung out with her all day. The summer between fourth and fifth grades, I knew I was gayling, but also that I should guard that knowledge vigorously. Some of the other kids had already started teasing me, including the hooligan boy who lived nextdoor to my grandmother.

One day we were in the garden and the neighbor kid rode by in the alley and yelled something at me. Grandma emerged from the corn and commanded him to get back there. He complied and she chewed him out. After he rode away, she told me that she once knew two “confirmed bachelors” who lived in the boarding house they owned in the 1920’s. They were “good people” but everybody else looked down on them. Then she said that the most important thing to do when you’re a s.i.s.s.y. (she spelled it out) was not to let anybody else know you were one. Standing there with my hands on my hips, fingers pointed backward, in a huge straw hat, I meekly denied that I was like that.

Oh, yeah, Grandma had my number.

(I grew about ten inches during fifth grade and by the beginning of sixth grade, I was over six feet tall. I was, by far, bigger than any other kid at school. Nobody teased me after that year.)

Talking of lip syncing - I used to lip sync to this song - my brother and I shared a room with a great big window above a radiator cover - so it looked like a stage and there was a curtain of course - my brother would set the portable record player, woosh back the curtain and there I'd be, holding the blind cord as a my mike singing to this >

I played with my next door neighbors Barbie doll whenever I was there. I loved the little shoes. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist when I was around 6 or 7 because of it and they could obviously see I was a budding gayling. I clearly remember being placed in a glass mirror walled room and had been provided with a selection of toys to play with including Barbie dolls, trucks etc. Somehow I knew with a sense of dread that I was being watched so I just sat there and touched nothing. They weren't pleased. I remember the psychiatrist asking me why I liked playing with dolls. I can't remember anything else or what happened after the psychiatrist asked me that.

True story.

I stopped having anything to do with my father when I was 19 and the rest of my family when I was in my forties. It's a lonely existence but they full on hated me.

Like many here, I loved Wonder Woman, and I used to do her transformation twirl in the backyard, but I was pretending I was Steve Trevor turning into some kind of Wonder Man leotard number. I used to think I was pretty cutting edge for coming up with the concept of Wonder Man. Lyle Waggoner was one of the first men I took an interest in.

I got into comic books because of Wonder Woman and Batman (although Batgirl was the best part of that TV show to my gayling self) and became obsessed with with an obscure comic called Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. I made my mom take me to the one drugstore in town that stocked the comic every month on the day it came out, and I'm pretty sure they only stocked it in the longer term because I bought it. My mom was remarkably blasé about it all, and I sometimes wonder if she asked them to keep ordering the comic without me knowing.

[quote]I commented to him one day when we were alone that he could be in PLAYGIRL, implying he looked so good.

What was his response?

Penelope Pitstop was my favorite Wacky Race character - I'd even do her voice...Hay-elp!

R163, he was always such a nice guy. I don’t remember him having a negative reaction. He probably laughed or smiled.

R162, wow, I forgot about Amethyst of Gemworld. I’d imagine only girls and gaylings read that.

R162 so funny the wonder woman twirling thing, I used to do exactly the same thing with my best friend (who was also very obviously gay). Also into comics, and powerful female characters. I remember crying when Phoenix, from the X-man died. I remember loving doing flower necklaces my grandmother teached me (we lived in the countryside). Also remember had a fixation for a scarf I saw on a vinyl record of Nick Kershal, so I asked my mother if she could teach me how to knit. She said no. But I think she new I was "different" since very early age.

My sister had the Barbie car and several Barbies, one of which had a head which came off easily. I used to put that one in the car and run it into the wall to watch the head fly off. The rest of time I designed and built amusement park rides out of Tinkertoys.

It appears that gays are just better at lip-syncing than straights. We start earlier and have a whole lot more practice with a much wider repertoire.

R6 is another one of these trans folk trying to erase the culture of gay men.

Get it through your head, a lot of us gay men were sissies and love sucking cock, and dressing up in mommy's pumps, and none of us gay men actually wanted to be women, ok? There is a difference between gender identity, and a sexuality expressing itself via sex, understood gender behavior, and camp.

Took a free cooking class especially for kids, in my home town, and perfected the best cinnamon buns anyone had ever tasted. I started bringing them to the neighbors and when my father found out about my deliveries, he killed that hobby quick! This was after my grandmother taught me to embroider and he squashed that, too.

R170 = wants to be a woman, won't admit it, so he lashes out at trans people with his Log Cabinette friends

Some of these really warm my heart. I was a sensitive gay kid, too.

I collected She-Ra as well as He-Man. (You tell me which is gayer!)

I remember stepping on another boy's hand during nap time in Kindergarten and I started crying, I felt so bad for hurting him. The kid was like, "I'm fine."

I had this nerdy bowl cut so my mom gave me a perm in 4th grade. Probably the most humiliated I've ever been in my life, going to school with my hair permed.

As far as gay-ish things I used to say: When I started learning about the birds and the bees, I used to say, "I think I'm ovulating!" and my mom and dad would just roll their eyes. It annoyed my older brother for sure.

Sending love to all the gay boys in this thread.

[quote] I started bringing them to the neighbors

LOL

[quote]Sending love to all the gay boys in this thread.

Bless your heart, gurl.

I liked to brush my mother's hair, and help her with makeup and spray her perfume on. Her favorite was Chanel #5. One time I decided to create a special scent for her and I was mixing various perfumes, and ruining them. Oy!

I loved the show F-Troop, and (after begging) my mother bought me a civil war outfit and a pony. I would carry a toy rifle and trot my pony around. My dad got me a little red cart and I would ride around the LA River/Arroyo Seco (it was pretty dry when I was a kid).

I was 12 when the film version of Cabaret came out. I somehow managed to get my Mom to take me to see it and then I got the album and I memorized ALL the songs. I especially liked singing the Emcee songs.

Some of you gays got started early on "sucking cock". I don't even think I knew it was a thing until I was in high school and didn't get the chance to do it until I was in college!

I collected tons and tons of Disney VHS tapes and I would regularly sing the songs from the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin with my friend.

I liked "I Dream of Jeannie", too, although not quite as much as "Bewitched". I would have died to have a bedroom designed like the one in Jeannie's bottle, though. I also liked "My Favorite Martian" and "Nanny and the Professor", so maybe "magic" was the common thread for me.

I didn't understand why parents wouldn't let me bring my "disguise kit" along with me to events like my grandmother's birthday party. The disguise kit consisted of sunglasses and a scarf inside an old purse.

R178 is right. The first time I heard about blowjobs was in high school. The guy delivering this information reliably told me that semen collects in the suckee's stomach and they die after 30 days (or 45, can't remember)

The same guy also told me that gays (he didn't know I was one) inherit those genes from their fathers. So if you were gay your father definitely is one as well.

I eat piles and piles and PILES of shit!

R182 Those "experts" in fifth and sixth grade also told me that ladies poop out a baby.

R184 Lol, I'm ashamed to say I reached the same conclusion when I was that age. Mainly because my sister's barbies didn't have any genitals so I legitimately thought that women had nothing but flat skin down there.

R138, I did trade a Pete Rose card for one of a player who had no lasting career at all. I thought this other guy was gorgeous. and I'm from Cincinnati!

I only collected cards of the baseball players I found handsome. One year, I must have been nine or ten, I wrote a letter to Topps asking them to photograph the players shirtless. I told them I wanted to see the players' nipples. Lucky for me the company did not send a letter to my parents informing them their son might need some help.

r186 wins the thread.

This reminds me of the classic "Dialing the Phone With a Pencil" thread from yesteryear.

R187, I agree. Writing a letter asking for photos of baseball players’ nipples is the single gayest thing I’ve read on Datalounge!

When I was 9, I used to keep track of Valentines I had received in Elementary School, and used the class list as a checklist.

I would call out the people who didn't give out any valentines, with the pencil tucked behind my ear. Man that was bitchy of me. I didn't actually care that I didn't receive the valentine, I just liked the secretarial aspect of the assignment I gave myself. So silly, and I embarrassed a few kids in the process.

I made Lee Press On Nails out of scotch tape and used magic marker for varnish.

[quote]For my 16th birthday, I asked for - and received - and Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall album.

I received it for my 12th birthday, and I didn't even ask for it!

My mother's male boss, who'd met me ONCE for ten minutes "thought I'd like it"! He was right, I did!

Picture it. 1979.

I created a full on dance routine to "Knock on Wood" by Amii Stewart, and wore my sister's cheerleading outfit. My sister caught me and thought it was hilarious, and taught me some of her cheering routines, so I could create more elaborate choreography. Thanks Sis.

I know, r189. Like maybe ever.

R178, some of us who got started early sucking cock had been molested by family (or had been approached by a boy our own age with that experience).

Hi, Debbie Downer at R195!

I would create my own cigarette commercials, using my mother's Salem Light 100s, pulling them from her suede cigarette case, and utilizing the loud buckle sound of the snap to start my commercial.

My mother told me when I was around 5 I once said, "I want a hat with fruit," and then did a little Latin-flavored riff: "A book-a-LA chi TA, a book-a-LA chi TA!" Obviously I was referencing Carmen Miranda.

The local library had the Manhattan White Pages on microfiche which I, aged 11, used to look up the home telephone number of Mrs. Thomas “Nan” Kempner... who was by far my favorite socialite. I had pictures of her torn from WWD and Town&Country on my bulletin board the way other boys had pictures of star athletes or Cheryl Ladd in a bikini. I had it in my head that I just had to call Nan and tell her how beautifully she dressed was and that somehow we’d start talking every week about the dinner parties and events she was attending.

Anyway, it took several weeks of calling and only ever getting a maid... and me hanging up... before I hit the jackpot and Nan herself answered the phone. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but she let me go on for a few minutes before saying that she was flattered and I seemed lovely, but really shouldn’t call again as she had so many girlfriends always needing to get through and hoped I understood. My feelings were hurt, but she handled it in a really sweet way and I’m sure had to know I was a full on fledgling little gay boy.

Years later after I moved to New York I actually met her a few times through mutual friends and once told her the story about my calling. She didn’t remember, but laughed and said she always had a fair number of young gay boys that would approach her on the street in a similar way and that she found it beyond charming.

There used to be a blog called Born This Way that had tons of stories like this.

[quote] My mother's male boss, who'd met me ONCE for ten minutes "thought I'd like it"! He was right, I did!

That's.....kind of sweet.

I love you R186

There was a bump-and-grind commercial with a frau trailing a roll of paper towels off the wall while singing "It takes a whole ROLL of paper towels/To do the work of one HANDI-WIPES!"

When my parents were gone I would reenact this number over and over again, rolling the paper towels back up each time. By the end of my solo performance the roll of towels was kind of saggy and bunched-up.

"What did you do to the paper towels?" I was asked. I never told. They didn't deserve to know about my special dance.

Here's the commercial!

R186 lmao

This thread is gold, Jerry, gold!

I used my trusty Realistic brand tape recorder to tape the musical numbers from "The Harvey Girls" when it played on the Late Late Movie on tv, so I could dutifully memorize and perform (in its entirety) the thrilling "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" number!

What red-blooded American boy didn't do that?

My friend and I would hold impromptu dance contests where we would judge each other on dancing to contemporary classics such as "Heart of Glass."

You may be shocked that my friend is also a gay man.

R205 I did that with "Funny Girl," so I knew every line. I would also tape the Cher show, and especially remember an episode featuring guest stars Elton John and Bette Midler. And then the Judy Garland show when they re-ran that. I remember also taping Judy's old "Madame Crematon" number. Whew.

r188 see r61 AND r101.

I was kind of expecting r135's story to end up like "Tea and Sympathy."

[quote]Mom made me gay.

And I'll bet you never even thanked her.

Yes, r207, I had stayed up past 2:00am on a school night to tape the "The Great Lady Gives an Interview" segment from "Ziegfeld Follies".

I can still do the entire thing, naturally.

R205 gets a MARY!

Mostly because I laughed at the thought of little 8 or 9 year old Mary bunching his shoulders up to do the big choo choo movement at the end of that song!

Re the towel wrapped around one's head:

I can't remember if it was Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn or Candy Darling. But years ago I read that one of their glamour careers began when he would pull the potted plants into the bathroom, run a bath so hot that the room fogged up, pour perfume in the water, and wrap a towel around his head a la Lana Turner in "The Prodigal" -- declaiming "When the men see me, they will stop this madness!"

I lined up my teddy bears and taught them the importance of posture and good manners.

R214 did you host a tea party and serve them biscuits and tiny sandwiches as well?

R215 No, I was too suburban gauche for that. Had no idea about that sort of thing at the time!

It's unbelievable just how many of these I did myself. Everyone seemed to dismiss it under the guise that I was just creative (I did community theatre, music, choir and sync). But I always suspected they knew even way back then. Strange though I don't really like a lot of girly things now except for female artists and movie stars but back them for some reason I had very girly tastes.

R203!!! What a great commercial! I bet you nailed it.

My 6th and 8th grade Social Studies fair projects were on Bewitched and "The Life and Death of Judy Garland," respectively.

My favorite thread, love these stories!

I was absolutely obsessed with Bewitched - especially Uncle Arthur.

I pretended to be some version of him for years.

I was a huge fan of "The Patty Duke Show."

Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere,

From Zanzibar to Berkeley Square*

But Patty's only seen the sights

A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights -

What a crazy pair!

As a little kid, I liked looking at all the naked men and boys in the changing room at the local municipal swimming pool. I didn't know that was gay. I just liked it. I still do.

These are such cute stories.

R223 I realized it when the summer I was turning 13. I suddenly wanted to go to the pool to see Carl, who was short but muscular, had wavy hair, and body hair from his neck to his toes. Loved seeing him in his swim trunks.

I wasn't quite sure why yet but I figured it out not too long after.

Happy to see so many fellow Bewitched fans here! That show gave me a lot of comfort growing up; I think deep down it was confirmation that being different was ok...and maybe even a good thing.

Very good point, R226!

Once, in 6th grade, for Current Events, I brought in Tallulah Bankhead's obituary. The teacher was an old school marm type and she was pissed at me. She made a big speech about Tallulah Bankhead not being a good example for young people. Imagine that.

R228 I’ll never forget, when Judy Garland wed Mickey Deans, the New York Daily News, which my parents had around, did a big spread called “Judy’s Marriage-Go-Round” with pictures of all the husbands. I wanted to bring it in for third grade show and tell. I figured I would explain to the other kids that this was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I also liked the play on “Merry go round,” that sounded fun to me. My mother put a stop to this idea.

When I was really little - probably 3 or 4 years old - I was obsessed with the Wizard of Oz. It was pre-VCR days, so my parents made an audio cassette recording of it when it was on TV. I would listen that tape every day, and usually fell asleep to it most nights. We would have to re-record it every year because I would wear those tapes out! I would skip around my room singing the munchkin songs, and sometimes, I'd use my sheets to fashion a big, puffy dress and pretend I was Glinda. Before I was in kindergarten, I knew every word and every inflection from that movie by memory - it was a "Show and Tell" trick in primary school where someone would say a random line from WoO, and I would recite the subsequent line. I could probably still rattle off most of the script even today.

Also, in kindergarten, me and the neighbor boy would go to my club house and play truth or dare, and we would always dare each other to pull our pants down or touch each others' wieners. We would even stick our dicks in each others cracks and wiggle around. We obviously didn't penetrate - I don't even think we had erections, but I have no earthly idea why we would think to do that. My household was very prudish, and I certainly didn't know what sex was and had never seen porn or anything.

The release of Cabaret must've been a seminal event for a lot of us of a certain age based on a few posts upthread. I remember pure enchantment when I saw this trailer in some dingy old Last Picture Show theater playing another Planet of the Apes sequel. Erasing any doubts that my parents had about me, I insisted that we see it on its first night in town, and coasting on the way home I belted out the title number again and again and again from the open back window of our station wagon to anyone who was unfortunate enough to hear it. I had no idea that I'd just shown my hand even when I overheard an incomprehensibly loud argument that same night between my parents and my oldest sister about gay rights. I had no clue what that was. I was 9.

R199 what a cute story.

R200, the blog still exists.

This is Kelly age 9 who thinks he had just told Santa that he wanted a Barbie, a boy and some boobies for Christmas.

I love all the "Bewitched" references. Anyone who has watched the show knows that Samantha's Mother, Endora, would often just appear in rooms perched high near the ceiling with a martini glass to look down and cast spells. I was obsessed with Endora!

I used to climb up on everything (chest of drawers, high walls, counter tops, cabinets etc.) to elevate myself in any room so I could be perched like Endora. I also always loved pranks and jokes. It would scare the hell outta unsuspecting people when they came into the room and see me sitting there. Everyone always got a huge laugh out of it after getting over the initial shock.

My mom had a beautiful (and expensive) China Cabinet filled with beautiful dishes in the living room. One day I decide to climb up there with my mason jar filled with grape kool-aid. I wait up there for what seems like hours for my mom to come into the room. Finally when she does, I say "Samantha where is Derrrrrwood?" My mom is startled. She looks up and says "Boy how in the world did you get up there?" I answer: "I'm Endora, it's magic." My mom then says: "Boy if you don't get your ass off my China Cabinet, you're gonna wish you had some magic to avoid my switch!"

At this time my brother and sister who, had been under the dining room table watching the whole scene, crawl out laughing their asses off.

I then realize I may have taken things too far and quickly climb down. In the future, I continued to be "perched," just not on my mother's China cabinet.

The year before Judy Garland died, she performed on the Boston Common. It was a big success with a huge crowd. I was only 12. I lived in the city, it was still a ride on the streetcar to get in town. I was pissed I didn't go.

I've read all these stories and they're great! I'm sure being gay and realizing it in the 60's and 70's was not easy for many, but there is such a purity and innocence to a lot of these stories that is very heartwarming.

It's a bit sad as a gay millennial to think these experiences really don't exist anymore as the internet and social media have diluted sex and self-discovery so much, and everything is just in your face, over-the-top, and trashy all the time. Also, when the older gays die, will these stories be gone forever? I suppose they'll be archived here for as long as DL is around (the end of civilization).

Wild Wild West was on TV every Friday at 7:30PM. I'd sit in front of the set praying, oh, Jim (Robert Conrad) please take off your shirt this week. The wardrobe designer on the show must have been gay as Jim's clothes could not have been any tighter. The best episodes had Jim shirtless and in chaps.

After my first nocturnal emission, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Being raised catholic in the 60's, I received no sex ed. Well, for some reason I decided I needed to see if I could get my dick in my mouth. I went in the bathroom to "take a shower." I took my clothes off, got on the bathroom floor and threw my legs over my head trying to get it in my mouth. I could only get the tip of the head at first and then almost the entire head until my mother banged on the door and opened it. I had the shower running for at least an hour and we had only one bathroom. "What are you doing?" I rolled forward and threw my head in the toilet. "I'm getting sick." My two brothers were right behind her laughing their asses off.

I was in high school in the 70's. I had a bold, yellow plaid linen leisure suit. I was 6' with a 30" waist. The pants were bell bottoms with a cuff. The jacket was an eisenhower with epaulets on the shoulders. I wore a solid yellow qiana shirt open almost to the navel. However the clincher, and what I was most proud of, was the mustard yellow platform shoes with real wooden heels. I was standing in the living room waiting for my ride with my older brother (who despised me) SCREAMING at me, red face, veins popping out of his neck, IF YOU'RE GAY, WHY DON'T YOU JUST SAY SO!!!!!!!! Me standing there, dumb as rock. Huh?

I left my home town at 21 and traveled a great deal in my adult life. I was good about writing my folks and family. My folks never wanted to know that I was gay, they were polite with me. Both parents lived into their nineties. I was going through the stacks of cards I'd saved through the years, putting them in different piles. I had a lot of cards. I tossed a card on the pile from my Mom and noticed for the first time that all of the postage stamps on were Judy Garland in that Star Is Born pose, the one with her hands framing her face. I laughed very hard.

My mother would show me what she was wearing before a night out and I invariably provided some helpful advice, usually involving accessories but sometimes we discussed a sweater or a jacket of which I disapproved.

She told me years later that I was almost always right.

I was 12.

R135 I adore Mrs. Brown. By the way, did she have a lovely daughter?

R144 I had the exact same experience in Junior High also. 6th grade, age 12. I was walking between classes and a boy (a sort of friend) ran up behind me and swatted my stack of books out of my arms (I was carrying them up against my chest) and they all fell on the floor and he said: "Quit carrying your books like a girl!" as he and his macho buddies laughed at me derisively. From that day on I always carried my school books down by my side, like all the other boys did. I had no idea until this happened that there was some sort of unwritten rule that boys "have to" carry their books in a certain way. To me, carrying them up against my chest was easier and more comfortable. I had no idea it was considered a "sissy" thing. It felt natural to me.

Another thing I used to do when I was 11 was imitate Johnnie Ray singing "Cry". (Johnnie was gay but I didn't know that then...I just loved his singing style and voice.) Needless to say all the adults thought I was weird.

OP here. I was another Bewitched kid. On channel 5 out of NYC every ,morning. There was definitely something mildly subversive going on there, for some of the time.

As a kid, for whatever reason I liked the black and white episodes better, and got annoyed when they were removed from the syndication package. The first Mrs. Kraviis was so much funnier!

There was something SO damned gay about Samantha's sister Serena. Was Elizabeth trying to imitate JoAnne Woorley for that character or something? So funny how Jeanie had an identical twin sister. Also with dark hair. Who spoke kinda like Serena. I imagine Bill Asher and Liz had to have been somewhat annoyed by that kind of thing.

R115 OP here.

Wrangler Jane had a very bouncy walk. Very determined and bouncy. It was like she was still riding her horse or something. She did it every episode.

I stole 5 Donna Summer CDs from a used record store when I was 7 yrs old.

I’d apply a big glob of Cetaphil skin cleanser and rub it all over my face while preening in the mirror. I imagined it was cum.

Watching wrestling on Saturday afternoons in the 70's and early 80's just to see all the tight little shorts and all that manhandling in the ring. I was all afflutter and mom had no idea what was UP, literally or figuratively.

[quote]Happy to see so many fellow Bewitched fans here!

It's funny. I raced in and posted my Bewitched post not having read all the others.

I guess it makes sense all the gays loved it. Wacky pretty woman = check. Woman holds all the power = check. Multo silliness = check. Cunty matriarchal woman (grandma) = check

& on it goes...

Also turns out E. Montgomery was a MAJOR champion for the gays LONG before so many of the Hollywood actresses jumped on the friend to the gays train.

R237 On another board discussing Wild Wild West I came upon this episode where he totally splits those snug pants open at the crotch and exposes his non period tighty whities and quite a hefty bulge. Apparently, it was the producer of the show who was gay. The fight scene and exposure come close to the end.

When I would visit my friend, his mother's "story" (Guiding Light) featured a fun, fabulous bitch named Vanessa. Won't bore too much with the details but think Scarlett O'hara - beautiful eyes, dark hair, a bit haughty. Wore fab clothes - once walked into the office of a man she wanted to seduce in a fur and nothing underneath.

When I was home I would get the dark towel down from the closet, put it on my head and pretend I was Vanessa. "Oh, daddy, no. I simply can't abide that trashy Nola today!"

I played jumprope, jacks and Barbie with the girls.... and stared at the boys.

I dressed up as Little Orphan Annie for halloween. Got lots of candy!

I think the gayest thing I did as a child was hang around in the kitchen as much as possible when cooking was going on. My mother didn't do much of the regular cooking, but she was an incredible baker. She always said "baking is an art". And I fell in love with baking and watched every move she made. She taught me how baking was a science and that you must follow the measures to the letter in most cases. She loved teaching me how to bake. Something neither my older brother and sister had any interest in at all as they considered it beneath them. And to this day 6+ decades later I'm still one incredible baker.

My father hated seeing me in the kitchen watching the cooking going on, but he knew better than to say one word about it.

I acted bad in gym class and let the coach spank me. I really liked it.

[quote]I was in high school in the 70's. I had a bold, yellow plaid linen leisure suit. I was 6' with a 30" waist. The pants were bell bottoms with a cuff. The jacket was an eisenhower with epaulets on the shoulders. I wore a solid yellow qiana shirt open almost to the navel. However the clincher, and what I was most proud of, was the mustard yellow platform shoes with real wooden heels.

All of it, so terribly familiar. The epaulets. Yes. My platforms were dark green patent leather Florsheims. Those fuckers hurt like hell and a false move sent you careening into anyone or anything nearby.

Jesus R253, did you and the other guy come from circus people? Those sound like outfits you'd see people coming out of a Ringling Bros. clown car in the center ring. 😁

Epaulets. Colors.

Caftans. Earrings.

I use to wear all my mothers clothes to her bridge parties. That stopped when I came out topless in her rubber girdle and cha-cha shoes

I always thought my aunts cans of hairspray were so mysterious and wonderful. Say it out loud to yourself, in a whisper, ‘Aqua Net….. Aqua Net’. Seems classy, right?

[quote]I was absolutely obsessed with Bewitched - especially Uncle Arthur. I pretended to be some version of him for years.

It's probably time to stop now.

^^^ Too late. He has morphed.

That torn pants scene at r247 starts at 46:34! How it got past the censors, I don't know. The gay censors must've been working that day.

I would go to record stores and pick out Whitney, Madonna, Tiffany, and Janet cassettes and throw in a Bruce Springsteen (who I did actually like) and another butch tape so as not be told that the ones I really wanted were for girls. I just presented a vast pallet in my musical taste.

First book I ever bought, at the local 7-Eleven, was a biography of Bette Davis.

I guess I was gayer than you, r262. I went to record stores and bought 45s and LPs by Lesley Gore, the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shirelles, Skeeter Davis, the Angels, the Caravelles, Millie Small, the Shangri-Las, the Dixie Cups, and the Supremes, and it never occurred to me to worry whether the record store employees might think they were girls' records. It never actually crossed my mind.

My friend told me a story of how when he was in the third grade he asked his mother if he could take the soundtrack from Flower Drum Song to school and she said yes.

It was some kind of show and tell day, and he put on the record and lip synched to "I Enjoy Being A Girl." He had memorized the entire Nancy Kwan routine.

The nuns were not amused, but he was the talk of the school by the end of day.

Oooo, R265! A friend of mine, in elementary school, performed for his class "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?" His teacher loved it so much, she arranged for him to perform it in several other classes that day.

He was soon the talk of the school. His older brother beat the shit out of him that afternoon. His father punished the brother, but then explained to my friend that anyone could understand why his brother did that. No training required to be a parent, ya know.

[quote] a vast pallet in my musical taste.

Just not good at spelling.

I made a clay bust of Katharine Hepburn from "Suddenly, Last Summer" for senior art class. I was so proud of it as the teacher roller her eyes.

When the parents were at work, I'd come out of the shower with one towel wrapped around my head and another around my torso high up under my armpits. Then I'd walk around my older (straight) brother to crack him up. He thought it was hilarious, and it was. Never did I consider it was trans. I'd also mimic commercials, one where the girl with the Swedish accent would day, "take it off...take it all off" and the one with the girl (also with some sort of accent) would say "LEEP WENCHER).

We were latch key kids which wasn't really an during the school year, my Mom was home soon after we were. However, she wasn't about to let her kids run wild during the summer so she'd send us off to day camps, swimming, tennis... A school bus would pick us up on the corner and take us out to the burbs. It was a lot of kids, the bus was packed. The bus pulled up to the swimming pool and our coach, Steve, was supposed to take it from there. Steve was late so I guess the bus driver told us to go ahead and change into our swimsuits. We piled into the locker rooms, I was one of the first to enter, and there's Steve and one of the other coaches facing the wall. The walls were lined with benches. I walked over to get undressed and Steve is trying to push his big hard dick into his speedo. He had that perfect speedo body. I acted like I didn't see anything. I've had speedo fetish ever since. Oh, and we played a "game" that day where the coaches all lined up behind one another and we had to crawl between their legs as they spanked us. Fuckin' weird. I really liked swim camp.

The hot young man doing the shaving is Remak Ramsay. He went on to be a fine New York City character actor with a long, long, resume of professional credits.

He's in his 80's now, but in his day... Oh, my! He was hot!!!

[quote] I was so proud of it as the teacher roller her eyes.

She sounds like a real cunt. She should’ve encouraged her students.

I once sent a fan letter to Robert Conrad asking if he could send me a photo of him in a swimsuit.

I sent over 50 letters, w/self-addressed stamped envelopes, to Lucy asking for an autographed photo. I got ONE back! I was dancing in my red shoes!

One-upping you on that, R263. After seeing Bette in classics shown in the afternoon on a local channel, I was obsessed with her. Seeing Mother Goddam on display in the paperback section at the local grocery store, I ran home, emptied my piggy bank and paid for the book with quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies while the housewives gaped at the strange 11-year-old kid holding up the line at Alpha Beta.

Oh My Stars! I say it all the time, but had forgotten it came from Samantha on Bewitched until I read this thread!

One thing I did, a lot, was if someone called me I'd turn around to face them like I was a woman in a primetime soap intro.

lol R276, what does that look like exactly? Annoyed? Seductive?

R277 Think Pamala Sue Martin at around :38 in the video.

R277 what kind of gay are you? I can think of multiple examples, and r278 I would’ve gone with Susan Sullivan, but you do you.

This is an all-time great DL thread though.

My grandmother was born in 1894. "My stars!" was her go to expression.

The expression did not start with Samantha Stevens.

R279 She was the one I thought of too, but the dynasty clip was easier to find. The Falcon Crest intro I found didn't have her best turn.

My List:

In junior high, everyone was required to take a term of drafting, a term of woodworking, a term of sewing, and a term of cooking. I had a strong dislike for all but the cooking. In my sewing class the girls were making letter pillows and the boys were making gym bags. I told my teacher that I had no use for a gym bag and asked if I could make a bathrobe instead. She said that I could, so my mother and I went to the fabric and pattern shop and I chose a pattern for a bathrobe from the McCalls pattern people and picked some blue sailcloth. I wasn't particularly good at sewing and my teacher probably almost had a stroke by time she was helping me attach sleeves and the belt loops when I asked if we could monogram it.

In my cooking class, one day we were making tuna noodle casserole and someone in my small cooking group, thought it would be amusing to add cinnamon to the white sauce. I failed to see even a trace of humor in this and went to report it to the teacher.

I was very intrigued by nuns in traditional habits. There were none to see in person, but I loved watching movies or shows with nuns (Sound of Music; Nasty Habits; The Nuns Story; The Singing Nun; Change of Habit; Shattered Vows (Valerie Bertinell) and would pull the sleeve of a white t-shirt through my face as a wimple and then put a bath towel over my head as a veil.

After reading and then seeing 'Mommie Dearest' I started my days by filling the bathroom sink with cold water and ice cubes and I'd plunge my face in to tighten my skin and close my pores.

I liked watching the Carol Burnett Show and would do impersonations of the skits that eventually became "Momma's Family." I would also do Carol Burnett's "coo-coo pigeon" character as well as Mr. Tuddball and Mrs. Wiggins. My family was encouraging.

I entertained my family by impersonating Shields and Yarnell's robot characters.

I did lots of cooking for family meals and would create elaborate shopping lists with obscure ingredients for recipes I'd find in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." My father often did the shopping and was not amused. Until he sat down to my filets de poisson mornay.

Julia Child's telephone number was in the phone book and I used to call her just to hear her voice. I never had the courage to speak to her and would just hang up.

My list, continued:

In gym class when we played bombardment, I would deliberately try to get hit early on so that I could sit on the bleachers and talk to the girls who had cramps.

In gym class we had to make a pyramid and I was so light and thin that I was chosen to be on the top. I had no desire whatsoever to climb all these bodies and be up there so when I was climbing up, I deliberately dug my heels into the kids I was climbing on to encourage the pyramid to collapse before I got too high. It always worked.

In grade school we had "lunch mothers" who would come in to watch us as we ate (we ate in the classroom) because the teacher went to eat lunch at that time. Afterwards, we would go out for recess. I spent recess walking around the playground with the mother and remember asking her why she did it: "Why do you volunteer to do this? These kids are horrible. There must be something better you could do with your time?"

In 7th grade, my English teacher was getting married and another little gay boy, a girl, and I organized a bridal shower for our teacher. I think we bought her a mixer. I also went to her wedding which was held in a local Catholic Church.

I would sing at full voice "Tomorrow" from Annie. I was mad for Andrea McArdle.

I was obsessed with "Gypsy" (we performed it in high school) and got the soundtrack from the movie and played it constantly for a couple of years. My younger brother still says that he knows all the words to "Have an Eggroll, Mr. Goldstone."

I was a very good cleaner as a child and for a period of time when I was in junior high, would get paid to go to my aunt and uncle's house on a Saturday to clean.

I loved watching Wonder Woman spin around.

More from Michael:

I used to be fascinated by the school intercom and, for my birthday one year, asked for a set of Radio Shack intercoms for use at home. I had one intercom in my bedroom, and my brother (with great reluctance) had the other intercom. Our house was not large. My bedroom was directly next to my brother's bedroom. If I wanted to say something to my brother, I would hit the "tone" button first and then said, "May I have your attention please: Adam, please contact Michael; Adam please contact Michael. Thank you." It did not take long for my brother to threaten to destroy the intercom.

As a small child I liked that my grandfather played muzak in his car as opposed to the Oldies that my parents played. So, I recorded some muzak with my cassette tape recorder and would sit in the back seat of our car and play it when we'd go out. Mind you, my parents were still playing the Oldies station at the same time.

I used to spend hours ironing my Levi's cords with a super sharp crease down the legs.

I was obsessed by "The Wizard of Oz" and Judy Garland. I can recite almost the entire script/score. I recorded the musical parts with my cassette tape recorder. Same thing with "The Sound of Music."

I used to steal rhododendrons from a neighbor's garden in order to put them on a vase on our dining room table.

I really wanted a Barbie Dream House when I was in second grade. I did not get one.

I also really wanted to wear Dr. Scholl's classic slide sandals like some of my girlfriends. They seemed so practical and I liked the noise they made.

From a young age, I mastered making my grandmother a brandy Alexander. I always was quite generous with the brandy.

The year we got our first microwave oven, I made Christmas dinner from the microwave cookbook (this was probably 1980). I remember scallops wrapped in bacon, ham, cheesy potatoes, and green beans almandine. I also made homemade dinner rolls (but not in the microwave).

When I was quite young, I put on my mothers sanitary napkins like they were socks.

I remember traveling from Massachusetts to Connecticut and stopping at a highway rest area with a McDonald's. I wanted to sound sophisticated and said to the person at the register something like, "This is very similar to the McDonad's we have in New England." He replied, "This is New England."

I had a gay science teacher in 6th grade and he had a very effete way of walking on his toes. I started walking this way at home until my mother told me to stop.

At family gatherings I always preferred to hang out with my mother and aunts in the kitchen, rather than with my cousins.

I affected a Mid-Atlantic accent and spoke in the cultivated manner of a 1930s actress.

I LOVED the Batman series and really wanted to live in a mansion as an older man's ward. I also wanted a maiden aunt and butler to look after things.

I was fascinated by Jeannie's bottle.

[quote] That torn pants scene at [R247]

Notice how just after the fight was over they had him in pants with the tear on the outside of the other leg, rather than the fully exposed crotch tear.

I think this thread has turned into reminiscing about fond, old memories.

More from Michael:

I used to love picking out clothes for my female cousin (three years my senior) to wear to school the next day (junior high).

I tried in vain to get my mother to dress in a preppy style (she never would). I was desperate for her to wear culottes with little whales on them, a pink Polo Oxford or polo shirt with a popped collar, a monogrammed fair isle sweater around her shoulders with the sleeves tied in the front, and espadrilles. This was so NOT my mother's style and I was so eager for her to dress that way.

I used to call the local radio station that would take requests and if I got on the air, I would talk just like Ed Grimley (I must say).

Dear Michael,

Get some real life friends. You seem quite lonely.

[quote] Get some real life friends. You seem quite lonely.

What an asshole thing to say.

Michael, I loved your list! Don't mind the cunts out here; They are just unhappy and fat.

[quote] What an asshole thing to say.

Are you new here, Sean?

[quote]They are just unhappy and fat.

What an asshole thing to say, Sean.

[quote] What an asshole thing to say.

No. I've been coming to DataLounge since 1996.

I was done with Michael after a few lines. Sheesh.

Michael, I completely did the same thing regarding Mrs. Wiggin and Ed Grimley. :-)

[quote] I used to think I was pretty cutting edge for coming up with the concept of Wonder Man.

I totally did the Wonder Man thing, too, r162! Cutting down those old silver Kool-Aid cans made great Wonder Man bracelet (even if the metal dug holes in my wrists) and there was enough left to fashion a tiara with. A piece of clothes line painted yellow with finger paint and some red cowboy boots, and I WAS Wonder Man. I must have been 4 or 5.

My best friend told me that his mother described me to his father as “festive.” I was delighted and flattered hearing this.

Tremendous, R284.

[quote] unhappy and fat.

The original name for this site, before it was changed to DataLounge.

You are absolutely adorable, r285.

Just adorable.

[quote]It was some kind of show and tell day, and he put on the record and lip synched to "I Enjoy Being A Girl." He had memorized the entire Nancy Kwan routine.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I still do it several times a week.

I would play prostitute with my female friend next door. Her younger brother would be our John. We freelanced most of the time except when Eric came to stay with his grandparents. He was a few years older than me and Anetta so he would act as our pimp. He also had sex with us (play acting) whenever he wanted to. We would play this make believe game a lot during the summer. It was soooo fun!

I used to love playing game shows with all my friends when I was very small. I gave away all my mother's jewelry as prizes. Top prize was her mink stole!

During a visit to Grandma's SC farm one summer, my Mom and Dad took me along to visit Mom's Uncle Ike and Aunt Ida several towns over. I was the baby, and my siblings had gone off exploring the countryside with my Philly and NY cousins. They got to wear their play clothes for the day, while Mama dressed me up like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Plus white gloves. Yes, white fucking gloves.

I had to be seen and not heard, so I went away in my mind while the adults talked. The old folks had lovely dark antique furniture, including an enormous buffet and gorgeous rolltop desk. So I quietly got up from my horsehair chairseat, and [italic]floated[/italic] over to the heavy furniture, twirling like the pretty Lemon Pledge Lady while singing the jingle in my head.

Did i mention Ike and Ida were old? Actually, they were ancient. Old eyes miss lots of shit. Like dust. So I twirled on my toes and lightly ran my white-gloved fingertips through the inch-thick dust that coated the furniture, feeling soooo light and elegant. Til I reached the baby grand piano, when Mama caught my eye--and the Lemon Pledge Lady stopped mid-song and fled the room, the traitorous bitch. Chile, I hadn't seen that death-stare since I'd stamped my three-year-old feet at her the year before, whereupon she switched my ass UNDER the coffee table. I knew this time would be worse. In the car I tried explaining I was only giving the "white glove treatment," like in the commercial. Nuh-uh. I can still see Daddy's death grip on the steering wheel of the Polara as we drove back to Grandma's.

My siblings TO THIS FUCKING DAY tease me about the spanking I got, and my red-rimmed eyes and heaving chest in my Little Lord Fauntleroy suit w/white patent shoes.

Ran around outside with my top off (pre-pubescence) with toy guns in hand while playing gi joe/army with my brother. Oh, did you mean gay gay (as in boys), or gay as in gay boys/lesbians. I’m the gay girl.

I had an outfit like that in the 1980s. I wonder if they finally quit making them.

I would quietly edge along the hallway wall, then quickly turn the corner into our den and scream COVER ME, BRI! as I pointed a toy pistol at family members like they were episode villains while in my best Kelly Garrett “gun pose”. I did this at all hours of the day and night for months and got shit for it which confused me as I thought my imitation was so flawless!

Looking back, I don’t think the criticism was necessarily because the behavior was gay... although it totally was... but more because it was fucking obnoxious! lol

I was ten when Get Christie Love! premiered. Sadly it lasted only one season.

At first, I stopped people, stuck out my palm and said, "You're under arrest, Sugah." Then I bridged ", Sugah" to anything, like "What time are you going, Sugah?" Or "pass me the butter, Sugah."

[quote]I used to love playing game shows with all my friends when I was very small. I gave away all my mother's jewelry as prizes. Top prize was her mink stole!

Hilarious.

I used to sketch "improved" sets for my favorite game shows. My redesign of "Split Second" was a masterpiece.

R303, my mother still calls me Little Lord Fauntleroy.

[quote]I used to sketch "improved" sets for my favorite game shows. My redesign of "Split Second" was a masterpiece.

I wish you could have done something with the set of "Now You See It," hosted by Jack Narz, which I've recently seen on Buzzr. The set is a nightware mash-up of the absolute worst of 1970s excess.

Well I didn't have many traits that were gay but my long hair phase. But I have curly/wavy hair so that didn't work too well. And my family and education - all Catholic schools for 12 years then a secular university. But the last 4 I had a choice between a well regarded public coed school and an all boys Catholic school. I chose the latter. And happy I did. If I ever come into a bit more money I'd definitely donate some to the school.

Now the family - on moms side there was my great grandfather- he was an engineer who invented a device to let you swap Jacquard loom patterns out on the fly. And at least two of my uncles were also in engineering. Plus my paternal grandparents knew my bent with electronics and encouraged it. That electronics thing grew into computers and well now I'm a Sr. Linux Engineer.

And my love of reading has served me my life over.

I would lecture my big brother on his 'horrendously dangerous driving' just because he liked to speed on the abandoned dirt roads. I thought it was a lot of fun, as a kid, but somehow felt like I had to be the 'voice of reason' at the same time, because our mother wasn't with us.

I was more of an introvert. I didn’t act out so much. I bought crazy things with my allowance. I remember discovering lamp finials at a local designer’s gift shop. I’d swap them out and eventually my mother started to notice. The big carved jade dolphin got her attention first.

I love that r313. Only a little gayling would become obsessed with finials and sneak them onto his mom’s lamps!

R284 Michael I think you are adorable and your childhood sounds similar to mine. We would have been fast friends.

When I was 4, I wore a makeshift Wonder Woman costume. Like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 4 years old and doing drag. My mother later told me that she prayed I'd outgrow that phase before Kindergarten cause she knew I'd get my ass beat. Thankfully, I did.

I once told my mother when I grew up I wanted to be Witchiepoo and then couldn't understand why she began to sob.

I had no filter or any limitations as a child. My mom was a single mother so I pretty much lived at my grandparents and watched television in the den alone. Cable and premium movie channels so I remember being like 10 and watching all the Emmanuelle films on Cinemax. I'd then go to school and educate my fellow 4th graders on Sylvia Kristel's latest sexploits. This is back when Cinemax would air really weird shit like Bette Midler as the Flapjack Floozy and Eros America which went behind the scenes of a Playgirl photo shoot. It was also around this time I begged my grandmother to buy me a subscription to National Lampoon magazine and sure enough she did. Age 10 was like an awakening for me. I also became obsessed with Ken Russell films (Gothic and Crimes of Passion).

Other gay childhood obsessions included Julie Newmar Catwoman, Jem and the Holograms, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling....Incidentally, I've met all these people in adulthood and they adore their gay fans and are as sweet as can be.

When I was 14, I had my grandma take me to see Madonna's Truth or Dare which was playing in an old, small theater in the black part of town. Then had my mom take me to see it. Then one aunt...then another. It was funny watching them squirm in their seats when the dancers go to a gay pride parade.

In college, I would hop from theater to theater to watch Uma Thurman strip out of that pink gorilla costume in that shitty Batman movie. That movie was awful but watching her strip to Arabian music and then walk across the backs of muscle men was awe inspiring.

Did I mention when I was first learning how to read that I'd practice reading the stall walls in public toilets like Kmart and McDonald's? Then I'd quiz my family members about words I didn't understand like cock. "A rooster," my grandpa told me.

"But Paw Paw...why would someone want to suck a rooster?"

R316 would you dance all sexy to the Poison Ivy song ?

R317, No. I was working at Magic Mountain then and we had the Batman stunt show and the chick that played Ivy did a dance on the set to that song between shows. That cross eyed bitch had zero talent and ruined it for me.

Right before the film opened I met Joel Schumacher at those Sunday shows they used to do at the Shrine. I guess I was his type cause he signed a poster for me which included his personal number! I had that poster framed and it became an interesting discussion piece whenever new friends came over.

[quote] Julie Newmar Catwoman, Jem and the Holograms, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling....Incidentally, I've met all these people in adulthood and they adore their gay fans and are as sweet as can be.

You've met Jem and the Holograms personally, r316??? Amazing!

Just the speaking voice of Jem, the speaking voice and singing voices of Pizzazz and, of course, Ari Gold.

Also met Jem writer Christy Marx who conceived the Amethyst comic book mentioned up thread.

I always knew when my 3 sisters' outfits were not happening and when I corrected them they always listened and knewI I was right.

Watched Stella Dallas witb Barbara Stanwyck when I was 11 and was riveted. The scene in the rain at the end made me cry. I didn’t see it at the theatre. They played old movies on PBS on TV in the 80s. I’m not THAT old. lol

i know the DL thrives on being bitchy. But some of the these stories are darling. I absolutely know so many of these.

R320, Christy Marx didn't originate Amethyst; she wrote the reboot of it. Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld debuted in 1983 and was created by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn.

I once held a viewing of Poltergeist in my family living room for neighborhood kids and was the master of ceremonies. I got my parents to order pizza for everyone and it was a huge hit.

325 posts confirm about half of 'gay' men are really undiagnosed trans.

R251 That is really, really wonderful about you and your mom, and baking. I bet many of us wish we'd had that kind of connection with either of our parents. Never take that memory for granted. It's very special. And it sounds like your mom was an awesome lady and therefore had a pretty cool son.

R326 since you say so

This thread has been so much fun. The only way to make it even more fun is to put R326 on ignore.

R129 what a fucking asshole that dad was. You know what? If you're not prepared for the possibility of one of your kids being gay, or one of their friends, then just don't have kids. Keep the misery your bring into the world at a minimum.

R129 I hope he didn't make you feel too bad. I'm SURE he was dealing with his own issues, if ya know what I mean.

R161 I am so very sorry. I wish that hadn't happened to you. I wish you'd been surrounded by decent, warm, supportive folks.

And I hope today and going forward, you are at peace, my friend.

R329, as the OP, I fully endorse your idea. Thank you!

When I posted this thread, I had no idea it would grow to be so big!

Thank you ALL for sharing your hysterically funny, sometimes touching, sometimes sad memories. And to the person who just had a dumb, pointless, boring agenda- why not for forget that, and share some fun memories? I know life is hard these days. And sometimes it feels like the only way to be heard is to try to hurt people- make them feel badly. But you don't need to do that. Really.

u

R278 and R278 Check Out Dallas Opening Season 9, Barbara Belgedes (AKA Miss Ellie) Perfected the turn. Nothing like a gay boy emulating a Diva's turn!

By the way, I asked for Judy at Carnegie Hall album for Christmas at the age of 14. I'm sure dear ole dad was thrilled.

A few years later, when I was in college, I asked for the Barbra Streisand boxed set For the Record for Christmas. By THAT time, my mom was actually letting me know "Oh Christ. Daddy's gonna LOVE that one"

I did LOVE that boxed set though. It had all her numbers from the Garland Show. And Don't Rain on my Parade, along with My Man from the Broadway closing night of Funny Girl. I memorized the little speech before Greatest Star: "Look, ummm suppose all ya ever had for breakfast was ONION rolls, now all of the sudden one morning in walks a bagel. Ya take a look at it, ya say 'what is that' until ya TRY it! That's my trouble I'm a bagel on a plateful of onion rolls! Nobody recognizes me! Listen... I've got 36 expressions sweet as pie to tough a leather..."

I love all of these stories, especially how creative some of you are making your own stages and costumes and sets.

I have to agree with the Millennial that posted upthread about younger ones not having the same sort of environment to create and explore. The slow awakening process that most of us had.

When I was about 7, there was a girl in my class that I adored. She looked like a tiny Doris Day. I used to sit next to her and pet her. I'd carry her books and get her lunch in the cafeteria.

Once, when she was cold in class, I took off my jacket and put it over her shoulders like I had seen men do in the movies. And I'd beat up any kid who disrespected her. Male or female.

I was a handful and my parents didn't know what to make of me. My dad was mostly amused. My mom was bitterly disappointed.

When I was 6 or 7, my mom got me this gold lame, shiny, faux satin/silk blanket for my bed room. I loved it so! I would lay there, ensconced in my gold, and pretend to greet people, smoking a cigarette. In my head, I would there thinking "Hello! Darling, it's been so long. No. No. No, Why YES oh my goodness hahahaha." Like, I wouldn't even know what the questions were in my head. I was just saying Hello to everyone at some kind of event in my gold.

"Well, no. YES! How ARE you doing! Hahaha ohhh you naughty boy!" and then i would take a drag of my imaginary cigarette. I swear, I was not thinking about being into boys, or men or anything sexual at the time. Or that it was a dress or anything. It was really a great way to fall asleep.

Oh darling r337, you’re such a CARD!

My best friend and I had an album collection that was probably the gayest two 14-year-old boys ever had, though we were pretty oblivious. He's a professor at Columbia now. I never did find out if he's gay since we lost touch in college, but connect the dots:

Miss Bette Davis Sings

The Broadway cast album of Mame

The Divine Miss M

The Broadway cast album of Funny Girl

Songbird-Barbra Streisand

Smooth Talk-Evelyn "Champagne" King

The soundtrack from Cabaret

The Broadway cast album of Two's Company

Flowing Rivers-Andy Gibb

Unpredictable-Natalie Cole

Arrival-ABBA

Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis

The soundtrack from Car Wash

Tapestry-Carole King

The soundtrack from Lady Sings the Blues

The soundtrack from Mahogany

Rufus featuring Chaka Khan

In fourth grade, we had to do an oral report about a famous historical person, and some sort of creative project to go with it. All the other boys did male figures, and made posters or drawings or dioramas.

I chose Sacajawea, and made an extremely detailed hand puppet. My parents helped me. She had a suede dress, black yarn hair, turquoise accents, the works. I got the highest grade in the glass. It was worth being made fun of by the other kids.

Grew up in late 60s, early 70s. Hated all the heavy metal bands boys followed in high-school. Much preferred Donovan. Didn't know one other boy who did.

I smelled cookies.

Apparently that is a very gay thing that I did not know about as a child.

Even stranger, heterosexuals pretended to smell the cookies!

They had me fooled.

I thought anyone with a functioning olfactory system could smell cookies, but I was wrong.

It's like that time my grandmother smelled toast, but there was no toast. Not even bread!

She kept begging me to call my mom.

As if my mom would have pretended to smell toast!

I told that bitch I would get my revenge no matter what.

OP, just so you know - I didn't sleep well last night and at 3 a.m. I woke my husband up because I was shaking with laughter. He said "What are you laughing at?" I said, "Oh Mother really." We both laughed til we cried for a good 10 minutes. This is one of my all time favorite threads.

You know, reading through all these comments and relating to most of them, it makes me wonder why we have so many problems coming out? If it is obvious to those who love us, why don't they help us more?

The thing was that I had no idea what things that I was doing that made people think I was gay. I would meet new kids and at some point someone would let me know that so and so thought I was a "fag". Or I would be just walking down the street and someone would say something. I worked in the dock at a department store and became friends with another guy, We would catch the bus home together and hang out in the way kids do. There was nothing sexual about it - I was just happy to have a friend. Before you know it people at work are making comments, asking how my boyfriend is and making the whole thing just really awkward. I was so ashamed that I stopped talking to him for no reason other than I didn't want him to get hurt by the fallout of all the stupid , thoughtless comments.

It was just so upsetting for me, to not know why this was happening. Like any young kid/teenager, I just wanted to be have friends and be part of a group.

Until my voice changed during puberty, I was often mistaken for my sister when answering the telephone.

I got in trouble when I was five.....one night my parents had company over, I think a few coworkers of my dad's.

My older sibling could sing and she sang briefly with her little folkie guitar.

I went down the hall, put on my mom's robe, came back out, and started to do the Enjoli commercial aka I'm A Woman by Peggy Lee. (I loved it, plus it was a catchy song I KNEW.) Sort of slithering down the hallway in that pouty style.

I got as far as "Fry it up in a pan" and my mother feigned a coughing fit to stop me, then grabbed my by the arm and told me to wave goodnight to daddy's friends. Damn her, she was two steps ahead of me.

Did not see my dad's face or his friend's/coworkers' faces but my mother's expression was priceless enough.

R347

I had a similar experience when I was probably ten….I put on one of my sisters dresses…..really went all in………my Dad was not amused in the slightest…….never did it again…..ever.

In middle school I did a report on the Golden Girls. Got an A.

I cruised the men’s underwear section in the Sears catalog….although I’m a boxer guy……the briefs section showed more ‘impressions’ of cock…I perused them often looking to see who had the largest ‘impressions’ to feed my homo-erotic fantasies ……..at like……eleven years old.

As a boy I was telling all the adults about a great new musical that had opened and it was about a bunch of old chorus girls who get together on the stage of a half demolished theater for a reunion and it was a theatrical collage of them reaching into their past and coming to terms with their aging selves.. They gave me these WTF looks and I was wondering what was wrong with these people? I expected them to be as excited as I was.

Decades ago in the previous century when my brothers and I would play Rocky Jones like we saw on TV.....I would volunteer to be Vena Ray because there were no girls around. And we HAD to have a Vena Ray.

I loved her short skirt and her driving around in her nifty convertible.

Big hugs to your teenage - and current - self, r345.

Love this thread and relate so much to many things, especially the love of Bewitched. I was so sad when it was no longer shown in our area.

I also loved the models on The Price is Right during the Barker era. I was so sad when Anitra left, but always preferred Janice. Never was a Diane fan, but appreciated the humor of Holly. Holly and Janice even appeared on Match Game which was the best. When one came out in a caftan during the showcase, we wondered what costume was on underneath for the next showcase. I also became quite good at modeling items like they did. My older brother thought that was hilarious. I still can flip my land out better than the current crop as if I was presenting a NEW CAR!!!

R347, that is a great example of what we grew up with, that 'hush hush' about our behaviors and mannerisms, when we're just trying to have a blast.

If I were in the livingroom and you started in on that commercial, I would have absolutely loved it and might have joined you. I loved that slinky little number.

R355 I'm handing you a tambourine! Let's do it!

Enjoli!

My family went for a vacation in a Miami hotel when I was very young. They all went to the beach while I stayed in the room and watched 'The Red Shoes'.

[quote] You are absolutely adorable, [R285]. Just adorable.

That's very sweet. But I think you are really talking about R284?

I remember mimicking my grandma's comments about her "pocketbook" thinking it was her purse, and my aunts being aghast that I even mentioned it. I got a stern talking to by mom to not say that again, but she wouldn't explain why.

When I was around fifteen…were talking 1971 here……..I started ‘experimenting’ with acid……..and after the peak there’s this period of time where you get a lot of heavy thoughts about life…about yourself…….I always had fantasies about homo sex….and would masturbate accordingly…..I wasn’t pondering my sexuality too much at that age but it made an impression on me…even after that it took years for me to actually acknowledge to myself that I am Gay finally coming out of the closet. But looking back ..I understand that the acid was trying to tell something about myself……..i just didn’t understand what until much later.

Speaking of Julie Newmar: did anyone else obsess over My Living Doll, with Julie Newmar and Bob Cummings? Or have a crush on My Favorite Martian’s nephew, Tim, as played by Bill Bixby?

I love this thread. Alternating between tears of laughter and...just tears. I love you all.

[quote]Speaking of Julie Newmar: did anyone else obsess over My Living Doll, with Julie Newmar and Bob Cummings?

I thought I was the only person who liked "My Living Doll," in which Julie Newmar played a remarkably lifelike robot. I was about 8 during its brief run. At one point, Bob Cummings left the series abruptly, no doubt finally realizing the show was a stinker, and gay character actor Jack Mullaney, who played Cummings' neighbor (or something), assumed ownership of Julie the robot, even though he didn't previously know she was a robot. Cummings thoughtfully left Mullaney a note explaining it all before heading for the hills. The show was soon canceled after that.

R359 are you black? I’m just trying to figure out how common that is/was? I’ve met plenty of older black women who use pocketbook to refer to their vagina, but all the old poor white Southern women I have known do not, when they say pocketbook they mean purse, my grandparents also refer to men’s wallets as a pocketbook.

Shout out to R313, the finial queen. Love you, boo.

Any man who knows what a finial is has to be gay as a goose.

R363 I am not. We were middle class and not Southern but Gram grew up poor and rural/Applachian so maybe there was some carryover there. I also think it was a word that had a time of usage (which is long gone).

After seeing The Sound of Music with my parents (at a fancy first-run theater, too), I sang Do Re Me in the back seat of the car ALL the way home. Pretty sure that noise I could hear was my dad gritting his teeth. Like many others upthread, I wore out several soundtrack albums lip-syncing and dancing around in my room -- Oliver!, Mary Poppins, SoM, among them. (I would recreate the dance break of Sixteen Going On Seventeen by leaping from one twin bed to the other just like Charmian Carr leapt from bench to bench in the gazebo.) And I still know all the words to all of those records (and now SO many more -- I had no idea Broadway cast albums existed at the time).

For a brief while I found baton-twirling fascinating (I must have watched the talent segment of some beauty pageant). I taught myself to twirl a broomstick (with the broomhead cut off) in the basement. I couldn't throw it up in the air because of the low ceiling, but I could definitely twirl it from front to back and back again. My mother must have been mystified every time I dropped it and it clattered on the concrete floor. I think I told her I was using the broomstick as part of some game I'd made up. Years later I was in marching band but not the drum major, alas.

I wanna hug R159 and many of you in this thread, sweet gaylings.

[quote]My family went for a vacation in a Miami hotel when I was very young. They all went to the beach while I stayed in the room and watched 'The Red Shoes'.

A true pre-gay would've gone out in search of the Golden Girls' house. (Of course since you didn't specify your age or when this occurred, I'll give you a pass.)

R334 Thanks, that was a great turn. Also, once we got a car with power windows I would sit in the back and let it down like I was Angela Channing, especially if we were pulling up to a hotel or somewhere.

Surely I was not the only child who could watch the Purina Cat Food "Chow Chow Chow" commercial without springing to my feet and doing the chow-chow-chow with the cat.

Bought the “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman!” board game at a garage sale, and scared my mother to death by playing it at home.

Motherfucker! Motherfucker!

I dancedto that too, R371, and annoyed my family to no end by singing along with this one.

R337 I love this one! I don't have golden sheets but I will do this tonight when I go to bed! LOL

It's a shame the mid-atlantic accent died out. It would have clearly been perfect for DL.

I also posted this on the "A Little Night Music" thread: So, the summer I was 14, my family lived in London (my dad was on an overseas temporary assignment) and one of my Mom's best friends (Auntie Dee, as we called her) took me shopping one day, to lunch, and then to the matinee of A Little Night Music. We had WONDERFUL seats - and loved EVERY minute of it. I was entranced. She even bought be the cast album (which I still have) Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland were the stars. Auntie Dee must have known I was a young gayling. What 15-year-old boy loves musicals who isn't a homo-in-training?

[quote]...and noticed for the first time that all of the postage stamps on were Judy Garland in that Star Is Born pose, the one with her hands framing her face.

I think you mean this stamp, as it is the only official Judy Garland/A Star is Born image stamp, unless you made them yourself with that postage program, which I doubt.

R275 You definitely one-upped me! I don't remember much else about buying the Bette Davis biography except that it was on one of those rotating wire book-display racks and that when Bette rotated into view she magnetized me.

I was always the person in charge of of our family's Oscar pool which even my dad participated in

There are some nasty gays here but this thread is exactly why the DL is an absolute treasure. Thank you OP. We are all family. I've shared your experiences gays. And its wonderful. There are some wonderful stories being told here. Some of you are adorable. And hun I also did all those things. #bewitchted My sisters and me watched it and I Dream of Jeanie on TBS daily.

When I was a child, we always had a lot of guests for Thanksgiving. After dinner, all the men would gather in the living room to watch football, and all the women would be in the kitchen talking about recipes, fashion, shopping, etc., and also gossiping. Guess which room you could always find me in.

When I was 7 or 8 during the mid-70s, I was watching cartoons at my grandparents’ house. A commercial came on for the Easy Bake oven. My birthday was coming up and I asked, “Grandma, can you get me one of those ovens for my birthday?”

It was so neat — to be able to make deserts for my parents and brother in my bedroom whenever I wanted to!

“You don’t want one of those things,” she said laughing at me. “They’re for girls!”

I was confused by her response, and a little sad by getting shut down with such gusto in her voice. I don’t think she suspected anything... or did she?

R382 I hate stories like that. We were made sad by our grandparents, though that was the last thing they really would've wanted. They just didn't know. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Remember the Addams Family when Morticia would express a need for something, and the hand "Thing" would pop up out of a box and hand it to her? Morticia would always say "Thank you, Thing."

When I was like 6-7, any time I experienced something automatic, like the doors at the supermarket, when they would open, I would say, in Mrs. Addams voice "Thank you, Thing." One time, just to annoy my mom, it said it in a very exaggerated, female way. My mother said "Cut that out." I said "It's Mrs. Addams!" My mom said "I don't care if it's Lilian Carter. Boys don't talk like that!"

[quote]It was so neat — to be able to make deserts for my parents and brother in my bedroom whenever I wanted to!

You must have gone through a lot of sand and palm trees.

R384 But Miss Lilian was very supportive of brother Billy’s drag shows when he was a boy?

[quote]“You don’t want one of those things,” she said laughing at me. “They’re for girls!”

I had the exact same request of my mom when I was six, R382, but with the difference that she said that the Easy Bake Oven was crap, and that it wasn't really cooking. "If you really want to," she said, "I'll teach you to cook, in a real kitchen, with a real oven." And so she did. We started with things like butter cookies, for which one used the cookie cutters and sprinkles, etc, and worked our way up to more complex stuff.

It was a sort of Rubicon that I'd crossed with my dad; he made no more overtures to spend time with me, or relate to me as his son.

This reminds me of one of the most heartbreaking things a teacher said to my best friend when he was in third grade that still wounds to this day and makes him hate her with the heat of a thousand suns that I’m sure quite a few of us probably would have heard ourselves many, many times. As everyone was putting on their coats to go outside the teacher said loudly to the whole class “And Bobby is going to play just with the boys today right?”

R385, I always get that one wrong, and I write for a living! Usually google docs catches that one for me, but DL’s antiquated platform has gotten the best of me again.

Also, go fuck your mother, stupid cunt.

R300

—Senatrice Lindsey

That's Senator Linda Graham to you!

I dressed up as Poirot for Dress Up As Your Favourite Book Character Day.

I was 6.

R391 I don't know whether that's gay or just eccentric.

I love the "Thank you, Thing!" story. Hilarious. I'll be saying it all day.

[quote] I would say, in Mrs. Addams voice "Thank you, Thing." One time, just to annoy my mom, it said it in a very exaggerated, female way.

Love this one. My brother, also a gay, would do this one, too. Your story brought back good memories, r384.

I always liked the cartoon in an underground magazine that had Thing masturbating Gomez.

Nowhere on line that I can find.

I memorized all the songs to the MAD Magazine movie musical parodies.

Broadway and juvenile humor, all rolled into one wonderful rag.

R382 my parents actually bought me an easy bake oven but then took it away, not because it was girly but because I left it on one time and they were afraid I’d burn the house down. But, it was alright because my mom and grandma let me bake with them and later on by myself if they were around.

I always had a stack of MADs in my room as a kid, R396, especially loved Mort Drucker's movie parodies.

Cross my legs, gesture with my hands, gasp during tv shows and movies, sway my hips when I walk, sing all the high parts in songs, cry without restraint, watch soap operas with interest, sit up straight, belt showtunes, be baffled by sports/violent movies/yardwork, talk for hours about my feelings....

....need I go on?

I used my asshole to store miscellaneous small items. Like a catch all

On A Clear Day You Can Hear A Funny Girl Singing Hello Dolly Forever was one of the best of the Mad movie parodies. Combining all three movies with Daisy Gamble remember her previous movies was a riot. And Frank Jacobs and Mort Drucker got Babs down perfectly in those still early years.

R348, the last time my family celebrated Easter was in 1967 when I was six years old. Then the next year my dad became a stupid Jehovah's Witness and no more holidays. There's a picture in our family album that I now have where I'm standing in front of the living room wall in my little Easter suit. I have a forced smile and there's tears in my eyes.

The tears are because right before they forced me to take that pic my dad forced one of my older sister's dresses on me by pulling it over my head to wear. I remember fighting him and crying but I don't remember what triggered him. I sort of remember having to stand there while they took the pic. The forced smile beccame a metaphor for how I was forced to live as a gay closeted kid in the JWs. All my dad cared about was how things looked on the outside, hence the forced smile when inside I was fucking devastated.

I had the pic blown up and it's hanging on my living room wall.

[quote]When I was 6 or 7, my mom got me this gold lame, shiny, faux satin/silk blanket for my bed room. I loved it so! I would lay there, ensconced in my gold, and pretend to greet people, smoking a cigarette. In my head, I would there thinking "Hello! Darling, it's been so long. No. No. No, Why YES oh my goodness hahahaha." Like, I wouldn't even know what the questions were in my head. I was just saying Hello to everyone at some kind of event in my gold.

R337 I just pictured Young Sheldon doing that on a Very Special Episode.

When I was 7 yrs old, I pulled my satin gym shorts up in between my ass cheeks and danced in my front yard to Donna Sumner “Bad Girls”. I got lots of attention!

My mother baked apple pies quite wonderfully. I would watch her make them, and I loved eating them.

When I turned 10 years old, she stopped having someone babysit me, because I was totally able to care for myself at home. She came home from work a few hours after I came home from school. One day, she came home to a fresh apple pie that I had baked all by myself. She was really shocked, and like a good Mom she was, she immediately talked up how impressed she was with the pie. She sat down an looked it over with me, and told me that it looked perfect, it just needed another 15 minutes in the oven to get the crust nice and crisp. So I put it in the oven, it crisped up perfectly and we sat down and had it for dessert that night. It turned out really well, and it did taste a bit different that my Mom's version. She asked me to walk through what I did to prepare it. I did, and she was interested in how I put more sugar and more vanilla in it than she typically did (totally a kid's error - I wasn't totally scientific in my measurements). She really liked it that way. She would bring that up occasionally when I was an adult, that somehow I managed to whip up the best apple pie she's ever had, and was just a kid alone at home. It was a sweet memory between us.

She passed last year, so memories like this are really coming to me at random times nowadays. Rest in Peace Mumzie.

R405

MARY!

*sobs*

[quote] sing all the high parts in songs

until we hit puberty boys are supposed to sing the high parts.

R405 A lovely memory of a loving person. As I get older, I realize that more than growing up with money, kids who have multiple stories like that one about either parent were really the lucky ones.

I was a kid in the 80’s and GI Joe did NOT have removable clothes. They were painted on. I never played with mine but I spent hours each day staring at the gorgeous faces and bodies (those biceps!). I would try to decide which one I loved the most. I seemed to gravitate most towards a ginger with a beard. I don’t remember any of their names.

I stole my mom's Lilt home permanent and used it on our dog, It worked, Fritzie had wonderful curls on fur close to her ass. !!! No one figured it out!

I drew chest and pubic hair on my GI Joe !

The girl next door had an Easy Bake Oven, we wanted to roast a chicken, I took a cornish hen from the freezer let it thaw, and cut in into pieces, seasoned with salt and pepper, added some chopped carrots and celery we baked in the easy bake oven for about and hour and a half it was was delish!

I rearranged the linen closet and separated the bed linens and towels into matching ensembles!

R381, I had forgotten about that, but yeah that’s totally what I did. Never went and sat in the “men room” at family gatherings. Now that my parents are gone, I don’t go to those gatherings anymore. Even at the last one, probably 5-6 years ago, it was still happening. All the aunts cleaning up in the dining room and kitchen after the big meal, while my dad and all the redneck uncles parked their fat asses in the den. It was gross.

Yes the women would chat and gossip as they cleared the table and the men would collect in a stupor to watch football. Agony. Why couldn't they at least be watching rugby? I know we were in America but still. Pro wrestling even would be a lot better.

R30

[quote] I identified with Divas as a teen, but never for a moment did I not want to be a woman, the vast majority of gay men would agree with me, I'm sure.

I’ll take that bet for $100.

R159 Standing there with my hands on my hips, fingers pointed backward, in a huge straw hat…

Perfection.

These are just darling. I'd have loved to be your friend as pre gaylings. Now not so much. How did y'all land up all cunty in this steaming pile that is our home away from home? Kisses.

I would give massages to my older male cousins, and my older brother’s friends. Usually just neck, shoulders, and backs. They all loved it. I never offered my services to any females.

I placed my hand on my left ass cheek and would make hand signals, as goodbye signals, to friends and acquaintances as I walked by them. This has become my trademark.

Why all the little gay boys always be all about the akimbo?

R418 Gurl is that a picture of Anderson Cooper as a toddler?

R419 No, ironically (disturbingly) his baby pictures were done by Diane Arbus though.

Who knew that Anderson Cooper, without even posting himself, would win the thread by having the gayest thing with baby pictures by Arbus?

If you think that baby picture is gay....

In fourth grade we could pick any historical figure and research and dress like them for our “wax museum” project. I was Andrew Lloyd Webber.

What gay boy didn’t want professional modeling picture, but this must be a nightmare for him- “Big Boys,” Poly-Cotton blend and the biggest horror, it’s discounted 30% off!

I insisted that mother and father accompany me as I paid homage to Judy Garland's grave.

I pretended I was interested in a woman to make my father happy.

R418 no no no that's ask wrong for a gayling! Mary! akimbo is with the thumbs turned to the front, and the other fingers pointing back.

Like so.

[quote] All the aunts cleaning up in the dining room and kitchen after the big meal, while my dad and all the redneck uncles parked their fat asses in the den. It was gross.

According to the women in my family, it isn't gross. They are happy for them to go into the other room and leave them alone so they can talk and gossip.

R405 Wonderful!

I held a bunch of bananas and an orange on my head and pretended to be Chiquita Banana.

I came across a photo of the Carmen Miranda Veranda, a seedy motel in Florida, and longed to go there.

Push my penis between my legs to make a VAGINA after shower.

[quote] According to the women in my family, it isn't gross. They are happy for them to go into the other room and leave them alone so they can talk and gossip.

Plus you never wanted to be in the living room/family room where the men were, because they would sit in there and fart.

For show and tell I told my class we owned 3 monkeys and they always swung on our chandeliers (neither of which we owned). I was sent home with a letter. My mother the next day told my teacher there was nothing wrong with my imagination. My father thought different.

My also gay brother got sent to a psychologist in second grade because he got overly excited by holidays especially Christmas. They gays overdo Christmas is a very strong gene indeed and it shows early and intensely.

OMG R435 that happened to me. I remember I regularly got sick for Christmas Eve cause that was when we opened presents. I was very manic during the holidays.

Back in the 70s, Spencer's Gifts sold a collection of puzzles of Playgirl nude celebrity centerfold pictures. I recall Peter Lupus and Jim Brown were among them. I saw the box of the puzzle with Christopher George, with the pieces over his crotch missing, and I wanted to steal it. I never did, thank goodness. Can you imagine the scandal!

I was just shocked a man I watched on TV was buck naked. What did America think of it?

Anyway, this is the puzzle picture...

R437 Just sitting around naked on the leather chair petting the dog as one is want to do.

"Wont," r438. Not "want."

[quote]When I was 7 yrs old, I pulled my satin gym shorts up in between my ass cheeks and danced in my front yard to Donna Sumner “Bad Girls”. I got lots of attention!

Several decades later, your milkshakes would've been bringing all the boys to the yard.

R131 Ha, thanks. I still full body cringe when I think about it! I was only 12, so I give myself a bit of a break, but everyone else in the talent show were rapping, girls who were in competitive dance, and girls from chorus. And here I am whipping my flat cap in the crowd at the end of the line “But just who SHOT WHO?” I thought the audience would be engrossed at the story the song told, I was wrong!

Oh well, will be a funny story to tell my kids one day, lol!

[quote]They gays overdo Christmas is a very strong gene indeed and it shows early and intensely.

I hate it. I wish the calendar would go straight from Thanksgiving to January 2.

I once sodomized myself with an aluminum cigar tube.

I first watched Mommie Dearest ate age 7 or 8. It seemed to be on tv a lot (we had Showtime.). I was utterly fascinated with the movie and would watch it whenever it was on. Then my brother and I started acting out the No Wire Hangers scene followed by the bathroom cleaning scene. We had to do it at least twice so we would both get the opportunity to be Joan because it was much more fun. The bathroom scene always had us in hysterics beating each other with the Comet can and then throwing it all over the bathroom. We never cleaned up either. My mom never once brought it up. I think she thought we were trying to clean but just weren’t very good at it.

R444 The friend I mentioned at R206 came over to my house when Mommie Dearest first came on TV and we both wore wire hangers on our heads for the entire movie.

When my mom made us popcorn I kept calling her Carol Ann and told her to keep the children quiet.

Again, how our parents didn't have both our numbers from the word go, I'll never know.

R405

That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us.

R161

A mirrored room? Sounds nightmarish.

I'm reaching a point where I know I won't be staying in touch with my family anymore. I hate it. I loved them and tried so hard to keep us happy. But they don't like me. And for that, I don't like them.

I dread the loneliness of knowing I'll be alone on this earth. But its better to be on your own than with people who treat you like sone kind of freak....right?

I kept a scrapbook as a kid and looked at it recently. I had rainbow stickers and all sorts of other gay silly crap in it.

I did a book report, age 13, on The Thorn Birds at my all boys Catholic school. Ironically, of course, but inside I was deadly serious. It was a hoot. The teacher loved it. `

At about 13 persuading my best friend to let me suck him off, and in the years following wanting to do that ALL THE TIME, pestering him constantly. Sometimes he said yes, sometimes no.

R191 I teach middle school and this year one of my boys was doing that with the Scotch tape. I told him to knock it off, not because I care about the nails but Scotch tape is fucking expensive and we have to buy our own supplies (Florida 🙄). The same boy brought in Lady Gaga Oreos for the class and fashioned a handbag out of a UPS bubble wrap package. I love his confidence, and I only wish I’d been so self-assured in midddle school. I was too shy to talk to anyone.

R451 Then don’t buy any. I don’t have any sympathy for teachers who spend their own money in the classroom and then act like martyrs about it.

R452, it's not too early to start drinking today, if that will take the edge off.

R451 Let me guess. You're an education reporter for National Review.

You're an asshole, r452.

Add me to the list of “Bewitched” fans. As soon as that animated opening kicked in I was off and flying around the family room on my pretend broomstick . . . just like Samantha!

My life took a major turn, however, when I discovered my parent’s original cast recording of “My Fair Lady” in all its mono glory. I played that LP night and day and soon discovered that I could sing . . . just like Julie Andrews. I continued singing like her throughout middle school - British accent and all! My “Greensleeves” during the holiday season was particularly loverly. Did I forget to mention that I had a haircut similar to Julie’s in “The Sound of Music” during this period?

It's a spectrum isn't it From Donovan on one end to show tunes on the other.

Where do you fall on the gay boy spectrum?

My sister and I would put tinker toy blocks firmly in our socks and sass around like we were wearing high heels.

455 Why? Because I am not fawning over some teacher doing the typical woe is me that teachers love to do. And, why does he even need tape? To hang up some shitty posters than no one even looks at?

R459 Fuck off you pus filled CUNT.

R459 = Betsy DeVos

R459 How do you contribute to the economy/society? I'll bet you're some low-level financial-sector ripoff artist. Some nasty outfit like J.D. Wentworth, or you're in health insurance, ripping off people with your half-ass insurance, milking the taxpayer with overpriced drugs, that sort of corporate bloodsucker.

This is R451 - I use the tape for students to tape things into their spirals. I don’t begrudge buying the tape, just them wasting it to use for fake nails, tape balls, to put over their eyebrows, etc. Kids are endlessly creative and not at all aware of costs. They just don’t think about that. I love my students and don’t mind buying them things that they’ll use to help them learn. And none of my posters or shitty or hung with tape. I spend 9 hours a day in that room and I make sure it looks good!

This is also R451 - the whole point of my story was that I had an awesome kid this year who wasn’t afraid to be himself and it gives me hope for the future.

I would point out a two pack of Scotch brand tape is available at the dollartree, so can we all move on now.

I was OBSESSED with The Bodyguard. Yes the Whitney/Kevin Costner film. I had a neighborhood boy that I messed around with and I asked if we could do some role play.. he was like whatever.

So I come out in my mom's sparkly dress with my sister's dangly drop earrings, pretending to be Rachel Marron who just won the Oscar.

I tell my friend to run in front of me and hit the ground. As soon as he does that I sprinkle ketchup all over his chest. And I scream "He's My Bodyguard!" And cradle him in my arms. Unfortunately I did not realize my sister came home from school early. She was like "What the fuck are you doing wearing my earrings? I'm going to tell Mom"

I guess my parents told my friend's parents what happened and I think they forbade him from coming over to play. I did look him up on Facebook, he's a professional bodybuilder now. Go figure.

And no, I'm not trans or non-binary. I'm just a boring gay dude. Maybe it was just a phase we all went through. We didn't have the resources like kids do today.

r466 do you remember "MARON BITCH"?

R466, did you sing I Will Always Love You to him?

Did your cunting sister order the hit?

How do people remember the plot of The Bodyguard? Is that now a thing?

I was 11 years old when the movie FUNNY GIRL was released. I was thrilled that Anne Francis was in it.

Honey West and Barbra in a move together. No straight 11 year old would care about that. Or even notice.

R466 We need links to his bodybuilding profile.

R466, you shouldn't have to qualify your very adorable, creative and young GAY MALE sensibility for the trans slactivists' benefit. This is a thread for us, not them.

R472 Bravo!

MARY!

Watched Johnny Carson every night. It seemed very sophisticated.

Dressing up in my grandmas clothes to play Janice in the mirror from The Price is Right

Using scotch tape as fake long nails and painting them.

Having Donny and Marie dolls when I was 10 years old.

Ugh so embarrassing but this DL so y’all can relate!

My grandma used to spend winters in Hawaii and would visit us in the spring. One year she left several of her housecoats with Hawaiian motifs (a palm tree or some such thing, flowers, etc.)

I would put one on and my mom's spare pair of glasses, which were huge, and pretend I was Helen Roper. The poor neighbor boy was Stanley.

R477 That's so charmingly down-market California.

In grade 1, we had to tell about our favorite tv shows. Mine was Dynasty. At age 6!

I remember being obsessed with the Sears catalogue and telling my mother that I wanted to look like X when I grew up. I remember very specifically being obsessed with some of the men more than others. Now I realize that I was attracted to them.

R78- Are you a stylist/colorist now?

R161- HUG.

R199- How did you handle explaining the long distance bill?

R234- PERCHED! I love it.

Our Thread Patroness and Perch Queen.

"Oh really, Mother!"

I bought a Nelson CD (and Peter Cetera and Genesis) at a used CD/Record store in Raleigh. It was the late 90's. Cashier sneered and said "Nelson huh?" I stared at him and said "They made a album. You sell it. See the difference?"

LOL R485

GET HER!

R485- I was 12.

R476 those are great-- The Price is Right was huge for me too, I was obsessed with those models. Pretended like they were my friends - Diane, Holly, and Janice!

I wonder how much Janice and the other Price is Right models were paid?

I imagine they are all enjoying decent AFTRA pensions while we think about that.

R485 That reminds me of a time when I was in 5th grade. We had a long hallway that went from the cafeteria to the rest of the school. I always walked with a bit of a switch, and this jock kid sneered to me “This isn’t a runway”. I immediately snapped back “Yeah, because if it was, you wouldn’t be here”.

Sometimes I still wish I had that same spark, but I guess the jock kids eventually won…

R479 In kindergarten, I would tell the teacher's aide what was happening on my favorite show, One Life To Live. She said it was better than watching it herself.

I used to take the socks off of nearly every male I came n contact with and I would start feverishly masturbating to their feet.

In the lunch room, 7th Grade, I guess I was acting rather silly or queeny. One girl at the next lunch table yelled over to me, "Oh my GOD dude, you are SUCH A FRUIT!"

I stood up, and turned right around and pointed at her, saying "Well, at least I'm not a VEGETABLE, Miss String Bean Face!!!" She laughed so hard, and said "touche', very good". Then I asked her, more quietly, what does touche' mean? She laughed and explained it to me that I won that little match with my comeback and that she was impressed. I said "Oh, ok."

A couple other kids laughed at my retort, but the other 10 or 12 at the table just looked at both of us, completely clueless and slack jawed - mouth breathers that they were.

I became friends with Miss Vegetable that day. She was a tough bitch, and good to have on my side. We stayed pals all through high school and a bit afterwards too. She turned out to be a lesbian.

It's super hilarious to think that this all happened when I was 12. Where did I get that snappy comeback from? I certainly didn't have any witty people in my family. I must have been possessed by a gay Guardian Angel.

R388 Your story about your third grade teacher loudly announcing that you were going to play only with the other boys at recess reminded me that my fourth grade teacher did the same to me, but she had the class to pull me aside and say it to me in a hushed tone. It’s particularly notable because that teacher always shouted nasty and mean things to students. Gayling sycophant that I was, the few times I was with another boy when that teacher was on recess duty, I proudly looked at her to get an approving smile. In retrospect, I wouldn’t put it past me to have checked who was on recess duty each day and chose who I hung out with accordingly.

I celebrated holidays in a very traditional way. Most people don't know it, but that's textbook gay.

I identified with the opposite gender(women), even though I'm not what others would call a fem.

I guess I was traditional in general, which I didn't know was Gay 101 until later in life. I thought we were supposed to be outrageous and unorthodox, but often, the opposite is true.

Miss R466 we still need that link to his bodybuilding profile, gurl!

R159 I am still laughing at your description of yourself as a child, gardening with your granny: “fingertips pointing backwards”. Awwww, I bet you were so cute.

I honestly thought I was Sheena Easton when I was a little boy. I’d mimic her looks and lip synch all of her songs to everyone I came in contact with. A popular boy in my 5th grade class said I was hot and asked if I’d go out with him. He called me at home after school and on weekends he’d ride his bike over to my house. I’d perform “Strut” and “Sugar Walls” for him and we French kissed on my couch.

[quote]I’d perform “Strut” and “Sugar Walls” for him and we French kissed on my couch.

Did temperatures rise inside your sugar walls?

Oh the other thing about me. My mom's side of the family had a hell of a lot of engineering types. As in mechanical engineering. Me I did electronic engineering. As a kid I was build or and and gates out of relays. Why? Because my maternal great grandfather taught me how to solder wires together when I was 6 years old.

I likely would have ended up in the Bell System but alas by the time I was old enough it had been fractured into a bunch of little pieces.

I openly loved, raved, fanboyed over and sung the songs of girl group Bananarama- totally oblivious!!

I loved drinking my boyfriend’s piss.

I was obsessed with the super heroine Black Canary. I used to draw sketches of her over and over. She was never on Super Friends, and I was always angry about that! I would talk about her to anyone who would listen. There were also no action figures or dolls of her back then, but I bought any comic she was in. I admit I have bought some of her figures and dolls now that I’m an adult. I’m *still* waiting for an accurate live action version of Black Canary.

[quote] I loved drinking my boyfriend’s piss.

Up or on the rocks?

Oh yeah and the other thing that might have tipped them off - I hated sports. I thought playing sports was stupid. Football of all things for me was like watching paint dry.

R504 straight from the tap!

[quote] straight from the tap!

Mmmmmmm.....anyone else love to do this?

This is completely true and I still remember it. In seventh grade English class, in Florida, we were assigned to bring in current examples of mythological gods used in the culture. I brought in a small ad I saw in the New York Times for the Adonis Theater. I remember just a little glint of humor in my teachers eye when I showed it to her.

I wore a sheet playing Julius Caesar and insisted that my brother and sisters assassinate me.

We used ketchup for the blood.

I had my little brother play Brutus.

My mother screamed.

R509 Dramatically at the right moment as part of the crowd, or later for ruining the “good” sheets?

R508-They must have been rolling on the floor in the teacher's lounge over that one.

1982: I walk into my 4th grade home room class one morning and ask my teacher, Mrs. Hobbie, to please call me Olivia from now on. I was wearing a sweat/headband and thought of myself as a mini-gay -boy version of Olivia Newton-John. She said “I don’t think so. Get that thing off of your head”! I was devastated. 😩

Oh yeah and I've actually attended a Toga party. Bunch of guys in a toga and lots of booze. What could go wrong?

Bump

R510, neither. My twin sister switched roles to Mark Anthony so she had to stay and do the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears" part. That's all I knew so she just kept repeating it and waving her arms. My little sister was an assassin and The Roman Crowd.

My brother had been instructed to "escape" so he ran down two flights of steps and through the house yelling and waving a ketchup-dripping knife with his sleeve all red. He ran past my grandmother and mother in the kitchen, then up the back stairs back up to the scene.

Mom stabilized in a couple of seconds (She remembered who her children were.) but the scream was imitated for decades, down to the hand on the heart. We didn't hear her. We knew about it because my German grandmother told everyone. At the time Grandmajust sat there and muttered, "Höllenhunde," German for "Hellhounds."

I used to avidly read "Can this marriage be saved?" in my mother's Ladies Home Journal. "

I read Erma Bombeck's column in the paper each day it appeared. I even clipped out ones I liked.

I was obsessed with skin care products: Here goes: - I would take a small container with me when I visited friend's houses and take home "samples" of products that I found in their medicine cabinets. - At one point my mother bought a range of "Charlie" skin care (it was around for a very short time) and I was so taken with it and used to do the full three step ritual everyday and night. I wonder of my mother ever knew why her products were being used up so quickly? - I used to look forward to Christmas and Mother's day so I could freely buy products and tell the salesgirl they were "for my mother". Loved the starter kit sets that came out then as well. - When we would visit outlet malls I would "disappear" for a bit and buy skincare and hide it under my sweater so my parents wouldn't know. - I was obsessed with Estee Lauder's Swiss skin care line when it came out in the 70s. I would walk past the counter, wait for the the consultant to be busy with a customer and try all the testers. I also knocked off samples, which were kept of the counter in those days.

Cucumbre Frost.

I had this memorized in my little gay boy youth.

I often corralled my younger siblings into attending Mass, which I celebrated wearing a white-bathrobe alb my Grandmother stole from a fancy Holiday Inn in St. Augustine, Florida, and a chasuble I fashioned out of my mother's poncho. I made a pre-Vatican II altar out of stacked tables and filled vases with plastic flowers I bought at Woolworths (Daisies and hyacinths - I knew nothing of season arrangements at the time.)

I made communion by smashing down Wonder bread and using a cookie cutter on it. I made a chalice and ciborium from shiny-metal footed sugar bowls. The ciborium had a proper lid, which I loved.

First I would make them take Confession, telling me their sins. Then we'd have Mass. For a special treat I would announce it was Ash Wednesday and would lick a domino and rub the black onto their foreheads. That part they loved. I didn't care that my tongue was black for a couple days afterward.

I would give them the hosts but not the Welch's grape-juice wine.

If my brother would act up during Mass (I would abbreviate it but did it in Latin.) I would make them kneel through a Litany of the Saints, and they had to sing the "Ora pro nobis" responses the 75-or-so times required. Sometimes my six cousins would be over and they'd attend. A full chapel is a happy chapel.

Things came to a head when my father found I was wearing my mother's black nightgown as a cassock, pinned up at the neck with a piece of toilet paper to look like a Roman collar. When he realized with relief that I was doing a church thing and not becoming a transvestite, he took over and built me an altar in thanksgiving.

This is true. Yeah, I'm the poster at R509 who would do Julius Caesar's death scene, too.

Dear Msgr. Fox,

One doesn't "take" confession. One goes to confession.

One "takes" Holy Communion.

Oh, DEAR!

Squeezing another boys crotch in 6th grade because I was attracted to him. He didn't know it was gay either because he squeezed my crotch in return.

Asking to sit in men’s laps and yes I liked it when I could feel their junk.

My friend and I dressed up in his sister's dresses and makeup and acted along with his Disney Cinderella record.

Then later we would get naked and play with each other's dicks.

What's gay about that R524?

I loved the Family Affair theme more than the show. It was very Mame.

I used to make my own lunch in the mornings in elementary school. I would make myself a Manhattan cocktail in my thermos and pack some pre-packaged cheese and crackers so that I could have a cocktail and cheese and crackers before eating the rest of my lunch. I'd also take a cloth napkin to school.

I had Lisa Frank folders for my schoolwork in elementary school. I also had a bunch of her bead and bracelet kits. It didn't even cross my mind that dolphins and rainbows weren't masculine. My parents were cool.

I loved that theme too, R5526. Out of curiosity I looked up its composer De Vol, had no idea he created so much familiar music from that era...

R526, that is.

R518, I was the same way with my mom’s full line of Mary Kay skin care products. They looked so attractive in their pale pink jars.

Thank you, R526!

I liked Brian Keith much better than the theme song, R526. I also saw the Parent Trap (photo here), and I thought of nothing else but his nipples from that point on.

Retracted my foreskin and sometimes tried taping it back so my penis would look like the boys' penises at school. If noticing all the other kids' dicks in the locker room and realizing yours is different isn't a sign of being gay, I don't know what is.

I think straight guys also check out the other equipment.

Reposting from: I just saw Cabaret (the movie) for the first time Cabaret came out when I was 12 (1972) and I was OBSESSED with it. I thought Michael York was dreamy and I loved all the camp and glitter and make-up. I asked my parents for the soundtrack - which I listened to over and over and over. And for my junior high talent show audition, I sang Willkommen. How did my parents not know I was a gayling???

BUMP

Question from a Lezzie: My sister's 5-yr old son wanted to wear his 4-yr old sister's Princess costume for Halloween. He's a nice kid, talkative, not super-masculine or effeminate.

Does the costume mean he's gay? These kids have definitely seen the Disney movies, etc. I remember wanting to be the Cowboy . . .

I can remember flicking through one of my mother's magazines and seeing an article on how to make paper flowers. I found some paper in a closet (orange - it was the 70s) and made one for my mother. I was so excited to give it to her . Her reply?

"You should be out on the football field instead of making flowers like a little girl".

Singing and dancing with my cats

OP, we may be around the same age. F-Troop and Bewitched were in syndication when I was a kid.

I wanted to be with the men on television.

1. I remember thinking Captain Wilton Parmenter was cute. I surely had a crush on him. When he got tied up and ggged by his evil look-alike in one episode, I got all excited. Who knew what a kinky turn on that would be later in life?

2. I loved "Bewitched"...I would twitch my nose.

3. Absolutely adored "The Wizard of Oz." My parents bought me the soundtrack record when I was in kindergarten, which was the year Judy Garland died.

4. I remember watching "The Adventures of Robin Hood" on tv and thinking how good Errol Flynn looked inn tights. I wanted him to rescue me.

5. I loved Broadway shows.

6. I had crushes on Brian Kelly in "Flipper" and "Dennis Weaver" in "Gentle Ben," the fathers in the show.

I watched Thomas Magnum's every single step with an eagle fucking eye.

I was five.

I imitated Ann-Margret singing “Bye Bye Birdie” when I was 10!

R543 is Sal from Mad Men.

R543 that is a right of passage.

I draped our and the two adjacent streets' pets in mauve-colored fabric and gilded all the trees along the sidewalks. This always made me climax.

[quote]that is a right of passage.

Oh, DEAR.

My mother had a huge bottle of "Jean Naté Après-Bain Splash," which no doubt was diluted rubbing alcohol with a lemon scent. A more glamorous potion I had never seen.

"Après" my "bain" I would stand up in the tub, pour a bit into my palm, and fling it all over myself with an insouciant flick of the fingertips.

I saw some girl in my 1st grade class who walked around with her hands in the "gurl" position (where they're flopped over on your wrists, hard to describe) and I thought it was cool so I started doing it all the time, too. My parents I don't think said anything at all about it but I know they noticed.

I saw a character in a TV show I think who kissed the mirror repeatedly (perhaps it was Miss Piggy) so for awhile after whenever I saw a mirror I'd kiss my own reflection repeatedly with lots of "mwah!" noises.

[quote] I celebrated holidays in a very traditional way. Most people don't know it, but that's textbook gay.

Honestly, I am bisexual, but I very much inherited this part of the gayness. My mother would let me decorate the house for Christmas. The living room was usually themed to the late 40s/early 50s, the dining room was Elizabethan, the family room was a mish mash of Victorian and Department Store decorating, and I would decorate the kitchen like a 1960s grocery store. Every room in the house was decorated, I even had Christmas trees in the bathrooms and laundry room.

I also collected stickers and had several sticker books.

I did a book report in the 8th grade on Gerold Frank's biography of Judy Garland, "Judy".

I made a lot of lists and memorized them for some reason. By the time I was thirteen I could name every movie Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did together. There are nine, ten if you count 'Thousands Cheer" in which they both appear, but not together.

They were to have shot a musical number together for "Ziegfeld Follies, but for some reason it was never filmed. The song was called "Do You Love Me As Much in Technicolor As You Do in Black and White?"

I didn't go to college, I was too busy being gay!

I frequently performed the entire Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments album in my bedroom with my own choreography.

[quote]I did a book report in the 8th grade on Gerold Frank's biography of Judy Garland, "Judy".

MARY!

R521, you obviously did not endure the same rite I did. We took confession. We RECEIVED Holy Communion.

I stuck my mother's Ban Roll-On deodorant container up my little butt.

In grade school, before class would begin and everyone was starting to come in the room to take their seats, I would stand in front and sing whatever song I heard on the radio that I liked. Usually it was some ballad or bubble gum pop song.

No wonder everyone thought I was "different".

[quote]I stuck my mother's Ban Roll-On deodorant container up my little butt.

Would that work on my pussy?

My first lover was bisexual, apparently.

I blew our priest. I didn't know it was gay. I thought it was cummunion.

I told my 4th grade nun that Elizabeth Taylor was a friend of the family but my mother didn't have anything to do with her any longer because of her many divorces. I also gave the illustrated women (Mother) and girls (Jane and Judy) in my Weekly Reader schoolbook new hairdos, makeup. and outfits. Mostly bouffants and beehives and Cleopatra eyes. I got in trouble for it in school and my mother tried to discourage my drawing (mostly dress designing) at home. I ended up having a successful career as a dress designer despite the disapproval and the discouragement. Jayne Mansfield was my muse. I became obsessed with her after an appearance on the Merv Griffin Show with her two chihuahuas, Momsicle and Popsicle. My taste got a bit more refined as I got older.

You sound like were a wonderful little freak R561!

And I say that in a reverent tone.

There wasn't anything I did where I didn't know, my older brother always told me I was a f word, even when I was under the age of ten.

We lived in a boring suburban tract house. Misinformed by "Family Affair," I assumed all apartments were like Uncle Bill's and I longed to live in one.

There were some stucco apartments near our house that had the street number SPELLED OUT IN SCRIPT: "FIFTY-SIX TWENTY-FIVE," they read, the script making a diagonal above the carports. This obviously was the height of glamorous living.

I broached the topic with my parents: Could we get "FORTY-THREE-FORTY" across the front of our house? No, we could not.

Haha, r565 🤭

R565:Ever hear of EL-Wire? EL is short of Electro Luminescent. Imagine it scripted in that.

I was a Miss America contestant…Tawny Godin who was from New York I would run around the house saying I’m Tawny Godin Miss New York

OP I LOL”d at your examples

R568 what was your talent?

R568, you know Tawny Godin won Miss America 1976. She played a piano piece she composed herself. Later became Los Angeles news anchor Tawny Little. Later married The Dukes of Hazzard's John Schneider.

I was such a gay kid I knew a little bit about every Miss America.

R518 Did all that skin care pay off?

R568 cool info. John S is hot so I'm not surprised.

Did Samantha also say "WELL?" as two or three syllables?

I'd sing all the female power ballads. Loved how they all changed keys and had sustained high notes for the final chorus.

Oh, I had so many. Like many above posters, I was a kid in the 1970s and I absolutely loved Wonder Woman. I would play outside and imagine I was Wonder Boy, the only male allowed on Paradise Island. Of course a bunch of lesbians would be ok with a gayling! Also, one Christmas there was a Wonder Woman rerun on and I made all my relatives be quiet so I could watch it. So gay!

I also used to make my mother laugh by doing a dance routine to the Enjoli perfume commercial (YouTube video attached). I even got a frying pan out for the part when she sings, "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan!"

So many other things, but those were standouts.

I was at sleepaway camp when I was 9 or 10 and used to show off my impersonation of Mae West "Come up and see me some time."

You were obviously a beta gay.

No, Mae was pretty aggressive.

I rolled my eyes at everyone.

You misquoted Mae. Bad gay.

[quote] I would play outside and imagine I was Wonder Boy, the only male allowed on Paradise Island. Of course a bunch of lesbians would be ok with a gayling!

Oh, I really don't think so!

Patrick Macnee was raised by lesbians. As a child, he had to wear a kilt.

"Also, one Christmas there was a Wonder Woman rerun on and I made all my relatives be quiet so I could watch it. So gay!"

I can see your relatives now, five or six drinks down in the late afternoon, whispering to each other that you were such a little horndog with your crush on that honey Linda Carter...

I was seven the first time I went to Disneyland. I ADORED the Small World ride. We were going to go on the Matterhorn, but took the cable car ride through it before hand. I took one look at the tracks below and said there was no way I was going on that ride. I had my mother take me on the Small World again while my brother and father rode the Matterhorn.

Hi used to Ethel Merman impressions

I rejected fat people.

I demanded top shelf liquor.

[quote] you obviously did not endure the same rite I did. We took confession. We RECEIVED Holy Communion.

That's crazy. Where did you take it? Perhaps one could make an argument for TAKING absolution, but even then I'd say that you received absolution. You don't take confession, you GIVE it. I might even be mildly okay with saying you made your first confession. But what you really should say is you WENT to confession. What you received was absolution following your confession.

I did makeovers.

I told my mother that she could just sashay her ass away if she thought I would zip up the back of her long-sleeved seafoam catsuit with the sagging crotch and pit stains.

She did and I ended up with a new daddy.

Two of my favorite cereals as a child were Strawberry Shortcake and Frankenberry. I suspect my mom picked up on me being gay rather early.

[quote] Two of my favorite cereals as a child were Strawberry Shortcake and Frankenberry. I suspect my mom picked up on me being gay rather early.

Same with my mother. I liked Trix, Banana Nut Crunch, and Honey Smacks (because I like doing breakfast froggy style).

[quote]What gay things did you do as a kid?

I sucked an awful lot of dick.

The neighborhood boys just LOVED playing with me!

Wore a New Kids on the Block button on my shirt (for about five seconds before the entire school laughed at me). I wonder if my sister was trying to get me killed ....

r592 You didn't realize that was gay?

I sewed sequin appliques on my backpack.

Went to see the movie Funny Girl with my sister and wouldn't leave the theater when it was finished, I made her sit through it a second time. I was 7.

Gurl!

GURRRLLLLL!!!!!

*clutches pearls*

MARY!!!!!