Kirk Read is a god. Kirk was the first person I ever came out to — I met him in the spring of our first year of college. I knew who he was, and I knew he was gay, and I basically maneuvered myself into meeting him because I’d never had a gay friend before and I needed to tell someone. He was a mentor to me over the following year. (Unfortunately, it was platonic; I wasn’t his type.) I knew back then that he’d be famous someday, and he’s well on his way; his first book is coming out this spring.

Back then, I wasn’t ready to learn everything he had to teach me. I came out to him in April 1992, when I was 18; over the next year I came out to a handful of other people. In the summer of 1993, I came out to my parents. But my parents didn’t want me to be gay, and I didn’t want to make them unhappy, so I went back into the closet and rarely spoke to Kirk again. It wasn’t until 1998 that I really began once again to come out to people.

In between — from the time I was 19 until I was 24 — I considered myself asexual. I think of all I could have done in that time: the sex I could have had. The boyfriends I could have had. The gay friends I could have made. The community I could have joined. But I wasn’t ready.

In August 1999, I came out to my parents again, and this time, I stayed out.

Thanks, Kirk — you did what you could. You were teaching; I just wasn’t ready to learn.

I can’t believe I agree with Fidel Castro.

1) If you have a link to my blog, you should change the link to http://www.geocities.com/tinmanblog/index.htm. On Geocities pages, the default is supposed to be “index.htm” — for instance, “tinmanblog/index.htm” is supposed to be identical to “tinmanblog/”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always seem to work that way. So it’s just better if you add “/index.htm”. Trust me on this, OK?

2) Ever since I began blogging, I’ve been getting even less work done than I used to. My routine used to be: come into work, read the New York Times on the Web really quickly (it winds up taking over an hour), then Salon.com, then maybe The New Republic, then do some work. Now, in addition to all of that, I’m reading various blogs and adding to my own blog. Despite all this, I’m apparently still getting all my work done and being praised for its quality. I’m not quite sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.