There’s an internet meme I’ve seen a few times. It asks whether you would take $10 million or go back in time and fix all your mistakes. The answer’s easy, I’ll take the money. Why? Because if I fixed all my mistakes, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.
Mistakes are how you grow as a human being. I would be a very different Doc if I hadn’t made any mistakes. I’ve sure made some doozies in my time. There are a few things I wish I had done differently though.
First, and foremost, I wish I had accepted my homosexuality sooner. It was a very different time. It was the 80’s, and except for a few places, being gay was not accepted. Homosexuality was considered abnormal already, and then came AIDS. AIDS was a terrifying new disease and people wouldn’t even touch you if you had HIV. It was said it was gods punishment for homosexuality, even if anyone could get it. People were scared and irrational. It’s hard to come out when you’re bombarded with images of intolerance. I remember Ryan White, a child who got AIDS from a blood transfusion and the parents of other children didn’t want to allow him into school. A child…. And Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death for being gay. I don’t think it was until Princess Diana hugged a child with AIDS that things started to change. She had a depth of compassion that was unequaled in the world and a platform to express it. She did more good in that one gesture than all the protesting and education could ever have done. Hell, Ronald Reagan never once mentioned AIDS. Being gay meant being unworthy. It was in this atmosphere that a young Doc was struggling to understand his sexuality. It was a very scary time to be a young gay man. Now we know that HIV was around since the early 20th century, but it it didn’t become a pandemic until the early 80’s. I just remember how scared I was to admit I was gay, and then having to go through a decade of watching so many deaths of people my age. It scarred me. Yet, I think it made me feel more compassion for other people struggling with their own issues. Still, I didn’t come out to my friends or family for a long time, and I was ashamed of it.
Second, I wish I had been locked much sooner. Oh sure, I started playing with it about 30 years ago, but it was just that, play (though to me, it was more than that). If I could go back to those days, I’d would like to have been less embarrassed about my desires to be locked. Of course, 30 year old Doc was always eager to stick his dick in someone, but still, it was exciting when I was locked for a few days. I could say the same thing about kink in general. I wish I had embraced it sooner. I wasn’t comfortable with my sexuality and I wasn’t comfortable with my kink, although I knew what turned me on. I just wish I hadn’t been so tentative about embracing it. I missed out on a lot. You have to understand the times. There was no internet, and the only community was the bars/clubs and the bookstores. Kink requires trust, and it’s hard to trust a pickup in a bar. Information was virtually nonexistent. It wasn’t until I moved to the Bay Area where I found a safer space to start to explore those desires. It’s a very different world today. There’s so much I know now that I wish I had known then (you can stretch your hole???). I would have had a lot more fun.
Lastly, there’s a few people whom I trusted that I wish I had known how unworthy of that trust they were. There was the abusive boyfriend, the business partner who stole from me and almost wiped me out, and a few others along the way. Still, having survived them, I think I’m a stronger, more resilient person. I made it through some awful experiences and rebuilt my life, several times. And now, I’m married (never thought that was even possible back in the day) to the love of my life, my business is successful, I’m (hopefully) respected in my field, and overall life is pretty good. I don’t think I would have realized how special Trip is if I hadn’t been in that awful relationship prior.
I have a lot of regrets, as do most of us, I suspect. But that’s the human experience, and those things are what make us who we are now. So, I’ll take the cash please.
-Doc
Never were truer words written.