| Hi. My name is MARK GITTNER. I am a 27 year old man living in South Carolina. I am an actor currently between jobs, working retail, and still trying to get back into college to finish my education. I also happen to be gay. This is my story, in the hopes it might help someone understand me, and themselves as well. I was an average kid, in an average world. Other than my obsession with books, you could have put me in a group with any other kids my age and not blinked twice at me. I was into Robotech, Transformers, GI JOE, and all your other Saturday Morning cartoons. I liked playing in the dirt, and climbing trees, and all the usual "boy" things. My family was a military family, Navy. My parents divorced when I was about 5, and both parents remarried later. Of course this means that, like most of Americans, I have an extended step-family as well. My mom married a Marine, so I was a traveller up until the 7th grade, when my father was medically discharged. We moved to Orange County, CA where we remained. I was pretty young when I discovered my body, and the pleasures it could bring me. I learned to masturbate around the 2nd or third grade. At that time I really didn't think about anybody, but just the strange new sensations I felt. It was around the 5th grade that all the other kids started the usual "experimentation", but I never took part, cause I was too timid. Even then, I knew something was "different" about me. I wanted to be like the other boys around me. I always thought they were so much better than me, more attractive, and I wanted to be around them all the time. It wasn't until the sixth grade that I Realized why. I was walking home with an eighth grade boy that I was particularly fond of, someone I idolized because all the girls wanted him, and he so good at sports and all the teachers adored him. You know what I mean, everyone knew "That Boy". Well, "That Boy" asked me if I ever touched myself. Being the timid one I was I told him no, at which point he offered to show me how... to which I also responded no. However, that night, when I masturbated, I suddenly had a subject for my fantasies. It scared me. I tried not to think of it as different. I tried telling myself I liked New Kids on The Block because they had good music, NOT because Joey McIntyre was hot. I tried to have crushes on the girls. For a while, I spent my time on the fringe of life. I hung out with the kids who didn't fit in. The nerds, the disaffected youth of America, and, of course, the Drama kids. That was a good thing, cause I discovered my love of theatre then, in the eighth grade. For the first time in my life, I had something I was PROUD of in my life. I wasn't proud of anything else in my life. It was around this time that I was discovering that I fell short of my step-fathers expectations for me. I was being told that I was fat, and a slob, and as I grew body hair, that I would never get a date and girls would laugh at me. My step-father would rather hang out with my friends than me, and often left me out while he played Video Games with my friends. He would often try to force me to work out, and I could tell he didn't like my obsession with theatre. I think back and wonder that maybe he suspected I was different and was trying to make me more of a "man". It was also around this time that my parents rediscovered religion, and I learned just how low I was in the scheme of things. Suddenly I knew I was not just different. No, not me. I WAS AN ABOMINATION. I was evil and I was going to hell. From ages 13 to 15, I tried to change myself. I spent my time in the front of church crying, trying with all my heart to become straight, to become "clean", to be what I thought everyone else was. I was told that I was possessed by a demonic influence, that this was the test God saw fit to place before me to prove my faith in him. I was taught that it was ok to love me, but hate everything ABOUT me. Here I was. A good kid. Rarely in any serious trouble. I eschewed drugs, and alcohol, I was still a virgin, and I was genuinely a nice kid. I liked everyone around me, and treated everyone with respect. I had very good manners and I was definitely a "momma's boy". I tried chasing the girls, and had a sexual encounter with a girl when I was 16 that left me confused. It felt ok, but something was still missing. I would be almost 18 before I tried anything else again. All it did was prove to me I could function with a female, but left me wondering why I felt nothing else. Back to church I went. Suddenly I met someone in church. Another actor, somewhat feminine, and my life started to turn in on itself. I really wasn't alone. I was 16 when she came out. My friend Sara Brewer at Laguna Hills High School, in Laguna Hills,CA where I still was at the time. To this day, I still admire her guts, breaking down the closet door the way she did, on K-ROQ's LOVELINES, announcing to the world who she was, and offering no apologies. I instantly gravitated towards her. I knew if I couldn't accept myself, that I could start by accepting her, and learning from her. I expanded my circle of friends to include her, and her close friends, knowing that there I could, and did, find total accetance without ever having to say I was gay. For a while, I just hung out with her and tried to discover the source of her strength, and wanting to come out myself. I told myself at that time that I was Bi-sexual, after all I had already had sex with a girl once, right? Then came PROM. <----HOME PAGE NEXT PAGE----> |