It took me a long time to figure out 100 percent that I was gay. I mean a l-o-n-g time. But that speaks more to my naivete than anything else, because I certainly had clues.

For example: As a seventh-grader living at Eglin Air Force Base on northwest Florida's sugary-white Gulf coast, I'd go to youth-league baseball games with my dad - not because I was remotely interested in the sport, but because the local team had a cute pitcher who always threw himself out of his shirt. Those glimpses of skin - along with the Pixie Sticks I'd buy at the concession stand - sustained me for weeks.

Of course, there were other clues in my early teen years. When pink bellies became a fad, I was in absolute heaven. And what budding Baby Boomer queer can forget TV shows like "Flipper," where kids our own age were running around shirtless for 30 minutes.

Still, I put those feelings on the back-burner. Not only did I have no idea what a "homosexual" was - though I can still picture the precise moment I asked my parents about the word, which had just come up on a TV show (a rarity in the '60s) - but I figured I would grow up like everyone else in the official version of Mainstream America and settle down with a wife and children.

Boy, was I stupid.

It began to dawn on me that I was gay - though, again, that was such a foreign concept in my world that I didn't really understand it - when I was a junior at Baumholder American High School in Germany. My best friend was a smart, witty, slightly stocky kid named Rich. Never once in the year or two we spent together at BAHS did the words "gay" or "homosexual" cross our lips. But even then, I suppose, my gaydar was finely tuned: I knew he was gay from Day 1. He, on the other hand, apparently was clueless about my orientation. It wasn't until about five years ago that I told him I was gay, too.

Anyway, I remember us going to bars in Baumholder (there was no true drinking age in Germany at that time) and getting plastered. Weekend after weekend. Once, when I stayed over at his house, we were stumbling home and I pretended to be drunker than I was. The reason? Simple: I wanted him to have to half-carry me home, knowing there was no way he could avoid skin-to-skin contact with me, thanks to a particularly loose shirt. It worked. One of his hands kept me from falling to the sidewalk - pulling up my shirt in the process - while the other wrapped around my naked waist. It was a total turn-on for me - and, I'm guessing, for

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