Email from a reader in Buenos Aires in his 20's

A couple of weeks ago, a Latin American reader sent me an email telling me about his life:

Hi GB,

I honestly can't think of a reason to be writing you. But I kind of had the urge to do it. I think I should start by introducing myself:

I'm not British, and English is not even my first language. I live in Buenos Aires, a city you happened to visit 4 years ago. I am a gay man, I'm 25 years old. I study film making and I work for a large American company.

My story goes pretty much like this:

I grew up knowing that I was gay. I just couldn't accept it. My parents even sent me to therapy because they felt I was a 'little' too girlish, and they were scared I might turn out to be a homosexual. Then, I don't know what happened in the middle but my sexuality wasn't a problem anymore. I suddenly found a way to suppress all of my feelings towards men and in fact towards anybody. In fact I had a pretty much uneventful adolescence.

Back in 2004, I was friends with this guy that I considered him to be the best friend a person could ask for, and all of the sudden it hit me: I had fallen for him, I had feelings! So I had to get him out of my life somehow, so I killed him (kidding ... I didn't). We had this great fight over some keys and we have barely talked to each other ever since. I know it sounds stupid, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. My love for him was getting bigger and bigger each day, and I hated that, hence I hated him.

And at the same time as I was falling in love deeper and deeper with this guy, I started kissing girls and fooling around with them, maybe it was a way to make me believe I wasn't gay at all. Years go by and I even attempt to have sex with girls but nope, it wouldn't work out! It just didn't feel right for me. Even when my friends thought me to be the 'promiscuous' of the group. I wasn't, I was a virgin. So it's year 2007 and I find the right girl, Daniela. I'm not sure if I've ever fallen in love for her. But I really loved her and I still do. We only had sex once, after 7 months of having been seeing each other. And when I was convinced that I finally got to love someone, another man appears. A 35 year old sociologist. Anguish, anxiety, depression. All of those things and more were the kind of feelings that I had back then. I couldn't deny it anymore. I was gay. And the weirdest thing is that when I was thinking of breaking-up with Daniela, she came to me and told me that she didn't have it for me anymore. I was totally shocked by that, but at the same time was glad 'cause now I could go have a relationship with this sociologist guy.

Well after some comings & goings we ended up together. Or should I say, he ended up fucking me and leaving me ten minutes after he came. Yeah, it was very harsh. But I did learn a lot. Now, I know what I like, I had this 2-year-long relationship with a 39 years old guy who I happened to know while cruising on the internet trying to look for sex, but that is another story.

Right now all of my friends know I'm gay, they even know it at work, and we sometimes hang out at this gay party that goes on Fridays with some of my straight colleagues. I managed to make some really good gay friends who helped to get to know the Buenos Aires gay scene. And even my mom knows, and now she's become one big gay activist. I dunno if you know this, but Argentina has become the first Latin America country in legalising gay marriage. Here's a link to the BBC article with that news.

But why am I writing all of this? I don't really know. I perhaps should tell you how I came across your blog a week ago. I've recently been having doubts on how gay male relationships work, is it okay to be in an open one? Or should it be a monogamous one? Even when I don't know the answer I thought your blog was the most interesting and most intelligent I've found on the web. I even told a friend of mine to go read it. He thought it was a big load of lies and unbelievable stories. But even if they are lies and you're making all this up, you still manage to point some interesting and unique points. But I do believe you. Yes! There is a chance that you're a good writer who finds some time to write a beautiful drama as an everlasting novel.

In the last couple of days I've pretty much went through the five years you've been writing this blog and it has made me think and rethink some things I thought I had the answers for. And for this I am really grateful so...Thanks!

I don't want you to consider me as some kind of 'admirer' because it's not like that at all. I just really really appreciate the possibility of seeing and sharing the world and the view we had of it with different people. And you give a great outlook on life.

Well, I think I've written a quite large email, hope you didn't get bored or anything.

Hope everything is good with you and at least I get a reply from you.

PS: Keep on blogging, I know it'll eventually come to its end, as everything else does...but not just yet, okay? :-P

In fact, I did notice that Argentina had legalised gay marriage. I think that's a great step forward for us all :-). But I was curious to know why this reader's friend thought that my blog is lies, so I sent the reader an email to ask him. The answer turned out to be quite simple:

My friend thinks your blog isn't true because he usually doesn't believe in stories of someone he doesn't know and leads a more interesting life than he does!

As I said to the reader in my response to him, a couple of years ago I did a poll to ask everyone whether they thought my blog is true or not. The majority got the answer right. That's still the right answer today, namely that my blog is mostly true :-). The "mostly" typically means that I occasionally do things like combine two slightly interesting true stories into one more interesting story, or in conversations I'll make some minor changes to what people said, often for the sake of clarity. I reckon changes like that are just part of the art of blogging!