I am a husband, father and closeted gay man. 50 years of life in 50 lines

Email sent to us by Lorenzo*

I have just turned 60, I am married (and also a recidivist because in reality I remarried after being divorced), I have a 22 year old son and I am homosexual.

Castrated, of course, and twice: the first by my parents when I began to show the first signs of my being and the second by myself: 24 years ago I made a commitment and I respect it, even if sometimes it makes me feel it costs quite a bit.

I'm not even as Christian as I should be, or maybe I'm not Christian at all - but we'll talk about that later - even though I'm deeply religious.

In short, I'm a mess: homosexual, but castrated, Christian, but also not, and in any case my faith in God has never been questioned. I will try to tidy up, please excuse me if this ends up being a dark and above all long feuilleton.

Let's start from the beginning: I grew up with my cousin, a year younger than me; we spent our childhood together, played together, shared many aspects of our life, so much so that I always preferred to spend my free time with her - and the games were what were once defined as "girly", we played with dolls, we played to the ladies who were having tea, ... - rather than taking part in the football matches my peers were playing or mixing with the other "boys": I felt much more at ease that way.

Between the fourth grade and the sixth grade I "fell in love" three times with as many of my schoolmates, I felt I was different from my peers (so much so that I went so far as to pray every evening that I could wake up as a child... blessed innocence!) but not I suffered more from it, given that I almost immediately learned to camouflage myself: my family - and first of all my father who seemed obsessed with homosexuality - would never have accepted me, had they known.

Hiding was the most practical solution, except giving vent to my being when no one saw me (I was recently reminded of the time when, at 10 years old, I stole a small doll from my cousin and took it home to hidden to play with when I was alone and to fall asleep hugged).

Then we grew up, my cousin and I, and we took different paths although we still remain very close today: different friends, different hobbies, ... in short, different lives.

At 15 I had my first sentimental and physical experiences (as physically as fifteen-year-olds from good families could have in the early 70s, obviously) and all with boys.

At home they seemed almost obsessed with me finding a girlfriend, from a certain moment on, I even began to show, during meals, an interest in this or that schoolmate, so as to be able to hide my true feelings.

I met the first girl when I was 18, after having been with three boys; then at 19 I met A., the first love of my life. It was a beautiful and intense relationship, physical and emotional: I was in love with it and I thought that maybe I could finally be myself. I thought wrong, because in reality he never reciprocated my feeling, limiting himself to having a little fun (his words) when we moved on to the physical plane and within a year he disappeared from my life in a totally unexpected way and to my great pain.

At 22 I met a girl with whom I thought I was in love, so much so that after two years we got married. I told her everything about myself, about how I felt different, about my experiences, about my loves and about my pain following the end of the relationship with A.

I believed that living together, wanting to build something together, total sincerity was not only necessary but also good and right. She never told me about her problems with alcohol, which I had finally become aware of; they were 10 very hard years, spent between picking her up drunk from some tavern, taking care of her when she was ill due to her excesses and suffering - from a certain moment onwards, fortunately towards the end of the marriage - her anger and her distrust for being (as she defined me) a "half fagot"...
“Half” was the most offensive part, meaning I wasn't even capable of being fully homosexual. And feeling absurdly guilty, as if I were the cause of his alcohol problems, which he had already had for years when we met.

At a certain point I couldn't take it anymore, I stopped keeping up with her and finally one (beautiful) day she left home.

After a year of complete solitude, during which I tried to put the pieces of myself back together (and I even spent a small fortune on psychotherapy sessions, unfortunately almost completely useless sessions), I by chance met A. again, who I had been seeing him for a while, and we resumed our relationship for a few months; with the same rules as the previous time, of course; I suffered because I knew it was ending badly and that there was no future for me with him, but I was also deeply in love with him and I tried to only look at the positive side.

Obviously there was no future with him but nevertheless my life changed when I accepted a job offer in another region. I imagined I could create a new life, more in keeping with my feelings, far from the city where I grew up and in fact that was the case, except that I didn't meet my life partner but my partner. We got married, our son was born and I finally felt fulfilled; obviously I didn't come to terms with my true being, which after a few years forcefully returned to the fore.

She knows nothing about some parts of my life, she doesn't know that I'm homosexual and I don't give space to that part of my personality, I suffocate it, I live it from time to time between myself and myself, in fantasy, let's say, because anyway I made a commitment to her that I intend to honor; I don't want to make her feel bad, I love her too much to deceive her (because I don't feel like I deceived her by not telling her about me: in practice, nothing changes, I'm faithful to her and we take care of each other).

I "castrated" myself, as I said above, and I adapted my life to the situation that I myself chose at the time. Why am I writing to you, then? I think I need to be myself, transparent and clear; to talk and open up not only with someone who doesn't judge me but also with someone to whom my opening up, my telling about myself doesn't cause pain. I would honestly rather die than hurt her.

And why am I writing to a Catholic organization, I who don't even feel like calling myself a Christian? I believe that first of all it has to do with the brief contact I had at the time with the "Davide e Gionata" (one of the first groups of homosexual Christians born in Italy in Turin, now deceased): I have only been there twice but I they finally made me feel "at home", understood, accepted, no longer different but equal to everyone else and I have kept good memories of them.

Secondly, I do not agree at all with the neoliberal and neo-Calvinist demands that permeate the so-called "queer theory" imported from the USA/UK and which has become one of the cornerstones of the "secular" gay movements (but this is another discussion, longer and complex, which I don't feel like addressing in a "first contact" email and which I don't even want to put anyone who reads me through it - not right away, at least).

The curious thing is that I don't even feel like calling myself a Christian, I don't agree with many parts of the preaching of Jesus, who I consider more of an extremist zealot than anything else (and sorry for the blasphemy). I believe in God, deeply, and I am very religious, even if there is a syncretism between Jewish mysticism and part of the Christian one.

Sorry for the verbosity and for having concentrated 50 years of life in 50 lines.

*We thank Lorenzo for authorizing us to publish his touching testimony.