I am as gay 

as others are straight.

I was gay long before

I knew it had a word.

When I was five

I knew who I was

and only later recognized

that others were not the same.

I learned early

how, if not to pretend,

at least to avoid.

I learned also that I 

was alone within my

own family.

Although they knew,

it was a secret we kept 

from each other.

I was 17 when I found,

in a darkened theater,

that there were others 

like me—not just others

to whom sex was merely a game

my male schoolmates played

with me as they danced

to the tune of their hormones.

To them it was a game:

to me it was a life.

I have traveled distances

those coming out today

cannot imagine,

as I cannot imagine how

it must be for them 

in a world more accepting

but far more deadly.

Yet not for one single second

of one single moment of my life

have I doubted who I was

or that I had the right to be

who I am.

     --Dorien Grey