Project Rebirth by Dr. Robin Stern Page B

first came out of Larry’s mouth on October 30, 1987. It was, of course, an impetuous thing to say. After all, Larry and Gene had met only a few hours earlier at a Washington, D.C., piano bar. Even offering to give Gene a ride home after their few hours of electric conversation had seemed like a risk, but Larry was filled with a sort of audacious attraction. As he and Gene searched the D.C. streets for Larry’s car, he just let it fly.
    Eugene, thirty-three, flashed Larry, then forty-two, a “get real” smile and said, “You can’t be in love with me. You just met me.”
    â€œJust watch,” Larry said confidently. When Larry first laid eyes on Gene—this “gorgeous” African American man with a bright smile topped by a dark mustache, and graceful hands—he’d simply known they’d end up together. It was unusual for Larry to be so assertive, but there was something about Gene that made him feel courageous.

    Courage was important to Larry, as it hadn’t always come easily. For years, he’d lived the life that he believed he was supposed to live, the life that was expected of him and modeled for him by his parents and grandparents back home in rural Nebraska, all the while ignoring an unalterable truth in his own heart. He’d married and created a family with a woman, although he had long known he was gay.
    â€œIt was an act of self-preservation,” Larry now explains. Having grown up in a very conservative, religious small town in the late fifties and early sixties, Larry knew from an early age that his gay identity would not be acceptable, so he buried his true sexual orientation and fell into step with his peers—dating, getting married, and having children, just like everybody else.
    Larry, his wife, and his three children lived outside Portland, Oregon, and, contrary to what one might expect, had a fairly happy life despite Larry’s secret about his true sexual identity. “My wife and I had a number of good years together,” Larry explains. “I really loved her even if I wasn’t in love with her.”
    They attended a strict Pentecostal Baptist church. At one point, the church organized a protest against an upcoming bill created to ban sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. Larry did not participate in the march, but he didn’t make any public statements against the march either. His betrayal was getting harder and harder to bury.
    In 1979, the family moved to Columbia, Maryland—just outside of Washington, D.C.—to fulfill his wife’s desire to live near her childhood home. It was in Columbia that their marriage finally unraveled under financial and emotional stress. Larry asked for a divorce.
    After the dissolution of their marriage, Larry began going to gay bars in Washington and finally reckoning with his true sexual identity. When he told his ex-wife that he thought he was gay, she admitted that she’d always wondered and offered her loving support, not condemnation. They’ve maintained a good relationship over the years.

    By 1984, Larry was living in his own place in Columbia, working as an accountant in a gourmet food shop during the day and exploring the vibrant gay scene at night in D.C. He was torn about not living with his three teenaged children, whom he loved more than anything in the world, but he also knew that he would be a better father if he learned how to fully be himself. He was committed to seeing them frequently and he was committed to living his whole truth for the first time.
    â€œI finally felt that I was being honest with myself and living the life I should live,” Larry explains. “In fact, I felt doubly blessed—I had three children who loved me, which is not something that every gay man can say.”
    For a few years, Larry was content to explore his new liberation mostly on his own. His life was very full with frequent visits with his kids, an