I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to hide a significant part of it, and I will spend an even larger part of my life trying to convince the world of the legitimacy of that significant part. It’s had a lot of names, from the clinical “homosexual” to the disparaging “fag” to the viscerally offensive “cumbucket” to the is-it-progressive-or-is-it-derogatory? “queer”. I’ll say “gay” when asked or “Kinsey 6” when lighthearted, but, more often than not, I won’t bring it up unless I have to.

And there’s one thing I’ve never really brought up. Ever. Because I don’t know what to do with it, but I know what other people will if they found out.

I was young. I don’t know what age, as it’s hard to remember as the telescopic lens of time unfocuses, but I was young. My brother was a BMG record club member, so every month he got a catalog full of the latest and greatest music along with CDs that he either had to pay for or send back. And I can remember, one time, hiding in the back of this catalog, there was a picture of 90s sex kitten Carmen Electra. It was a thumbnail image, probably no bigger than a square inch, for a wall calendar you could buy alongside those CDs you didn’t ask for.

And I can remember that this picture made me feel weird. Weird as in I felt compelled to look at it, and weird as in I actually walked away from it and out of the room, only to come back and look at it a little bit more. Several times. Weird in that my stomach weaved itself in and out of knots as I felt a complex deluge of simultaneous shame and interest. I knew two and only two things: that I wanted to look at it, and that it was absolutely something I shouldn’t look at.

The fact that I remember this event amidst a wash of childhood lost to distance means that it must have been pretty landmark. I can remember that it evoked in me a special kind of terror, and the visceral weird churning inside of me as Carmen stared me down was the same weird I felt, later, when I saw a small tuft of armpit hair as a male friend of mine reached into his locker one day. It was the same weird I felt when I considered how badly I wanted to be best friends with Homer Hickam, played by the impeccable Jake Gyllenhaal, as I watched October Sky for the first time, and it was the same weird I felt, years later, when I would sneak the Sunday advertisements to the bathroom to ogle the boxer-brief models in glorious full-color.

So, when I tell people, in an effort to qualify my identity, that I’ve never been attracted to women, I’m lying. I can say with certainty that I’m not attracted to them now, and I can say, with certainty, that there has never been a demonstrated pattern of interest for them in any way in my life, but I’ve been lying every time I’ve said I’d never been attracted to them, because at some point in my early childhood, I looked at a tiny, squint-worthy picture of Carmen Electra, and it made me feel the same way I still feel about sculpted arms and bushy treasure trails.

And I’ve had a lot of time to think about just what it means. Despite a lack of previous disclosure of the event in question, I’m actually being honest when I say that it was a completely isolated incident, and in fact I can’t ever remember coming back to the picture after that one night where I walked into and out of the room several times, trying without realizing it to cope with a potent adolescent lust that was probably in direct conflict with my deep-seated Christian upbringing. Perhaps the guilt and shame I felt was the result of a sex-negative religious influence that caused me, whether deliberately or not, to fear any arousal? Perhaps objectifying women had been hyped up as being such a shameful act that, when faced with the possibility of it, I scared myself into seeking intimacy through alternate routes, or, less obliquely, perhaps a preponderance of Christian-based shame actually was causal to my gay identity?

Or perhaps this is something not worth looking into through the lens of pop psychology at all. When it comes down to it, it’s a singular, isolated event deep in the past. Even before then I felt the weird when faced with images or ideas of attractive males, and since then my affections have been for men and men exclusively. And as much as I’m affirming that, I’d also be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that there is something fundamentally limiting in all of that, as even butch lesbians drop off of my attractiveness radar once I realize that they’re actually female. A lot of me wishes that I could love women, and a larger part of me is pretty certain that’s never going to happen. But there’s a small part of me that always chimes in with a less than helpful “well, you know it did happen once“.

And, while I inadvertently repeat that to myself that all the time, I’ve avoided telling other people because I feel like it cheapens what they know me to be. How can I be authentically gay if I got turned on by the same pair of breasts that straight men around the world have longed for and lusted after with interminable vigor? How can I tell people that this isn’t a choice and that I am the way that I am when even I have to acknowledge that my sexuality plays by rules that even I don’t understand? And how can I expect people to not jump to conclusions about who I am based on this one, small, tiny, fringe happening?

“Clearly, he’s in denial”, they’ll say, as if they have a better understanding of the entirety of my life than the person who has lived through it in heartbreaking detail. “He’s probably just repressing it”, they’ll quip without considering that perhaps the magnitude of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of instances of same-sex attraction far outweigh only one instance of the opposite. “He just has a warped view of affection”, they’ll assess, as if there’s anything fundamentally un-warped about a little boy getting hard off of the back page of a BMG music catalog. “He’s just afraid of opposite-sex intimacy”, they’ll diagnose, as if fear is something I have never, ever felt for same-sex intimacy.

I know they’ll say these things, because they already have said these things, and they’ve said them without me calling attention to the little footnote attached to my self-disclosure. “Gay”, I tell them when asked, or “Kinsey 6” when being lighthearted, but, more often than not, I don’t mention the small little “except for once” that, to this day, has me puzzled and confused and, believe it or not, more than a little bit ashamed.