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I Grew Up Different

I'd like to tell you a story. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, really. Why
would a fifty one year old man propose to sit before an audience and talk and sing about some very intimate aspects of his life, anyway?

I guess it boils down to this. I've always believed that somehow, I'm
special. I don't mean "better than." I just mean that I've got a special way of talking and singing about my life; a way that I've been travelling since my early teens.

I grew up feeling different. Mom says that when I was three years old, she
was out in the kitchen and she heard someone playing the piano. She thought it was the radio at first, but it turned out to be me. She called the neighbors in and they stood around and oohed and aahed. I don't remember any of it.

One thing I do remember. I was masturbating at five. Maybe that's why I
feel a little burned out at fifty one. I was at once fascinated with and conflicted by sex. By the time I was twelve, I didn't have any doubt about who I was sexually. As an old friend Robert said, "I looked down at my pecker, and I said 'Pecker, what do you want?!" And my pecker said, 'I want a man, if you don't mind."'

But those of you who grew up in the forties and fifties know what you chose when you chose to act on homosexual impulses. You chose a life of total rejection and scorn, of self-denial and alienation. And also, I loved my mother, and I knew just what it took to be a good boy. So while I surreptitiously jacked off in study hall to the male beauty in the next row, I officially attended the church of heterosexuality. Not that I ever took things with my girlfriend beyond petting.

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