| "I had a conventional childhood and youth. A
completely functional family. My parents aren't very sexy people,
but they're very committed and devoted and sweet to each other.
They're also very churchy, but not doctrinaire. The Methodist
Church. If you pushed them, they would be secular humanists like
most people. They believe in the Sermon on the Mount, love and
goodness, be sweet to your fellow man, nothing supernatural.
"They made it easy for me on the gay issue. I fell in love
with a boy who was in graduate school at Berkeley, so I decided to go
there, too, to be with him. The weekend I told my parents the plan,
my mother wanted to talk to me about my relationship with Alan. I
was on edge. She said, 'You're going away for quite a long time, at
a time in your life when things can happen very fast. So you have to know
certain things about us. First of all, we support you to the hilt in
whatever you do and how you choose your friends and how you choose your
life. The only thing is, we want you to be open with us. You
have to understand that we accept you absolutely.' She wanted to
know if I 'wanted to talk to somebody.' I said, 'I think if there
was a possibility of reversing the situation, there would be something to
talk about. Or if I was conflicted or unhappy about it. But since neither
of those seems to be relevant, I don't know what we'd talk about.'
So the key to this, in terms of mental health, was their attitude.
It was a great gift to have that laid in my lap. In my entire life,
I have never met a gay person who had anything like this kind of
intelligent love and understanding just handed to them." (Matt
Sherrill, in Sex: An Oral History. 1994.) |
"I
will never forget that day with Penny because it was one of the most important
sexual experiences of my life. It was extra special because we were
equally nervous and there was no pressure to measure up to expectations based on
previous experience. With Penny, I experienced for the first time that
warm feeling of another woman's soft body pressed against mine. The
opportunity to be intimate with another woman's body can be a special sharing
experience. It made me aware of how different a woman's body can be."
(Kimberly-Lei Mistysyn, in Early Embraces. 1996, on her first sexual
experience)