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The first gay bar I ever visited was called Backstreet, in a strip mall in Detroit. Yet as I approached my mid-20s in Detroit, I realized more and more that I couldn’t keep hiding myself from everyone, or life and happiness would pass me by.įortunately, the secret gay world was alive and flourishing. Even before we knew what AIDS was - in the very early ’80s it was just called the “gay cancer” - gay men lived in fear of public reaction. How could I ever be a trusted doctor in the community if I had sex with men? Being gay was still worse than a dirty word. Being an aspiring doctor, I imagined people’s irrational fears would run to protecting themselves as well as their children, from a gay man. In the ’80s and ’90s it was not only “not cool” to be gay, it was politically high-risk for career aspirations. That was what fear of public reprisal did to so many gay men, particularly professionals, my age. If I had to bury the potential of complete personal happiness, so be it - ny professional life was too important. Nothing, I had decided, would interfere with my goal to become a physician and a respected member of the community. I was excellent at avoiding my sexual identity issues.
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I had learned how to hide myself in books and to suppress my sexuality for years while studying to gain admission to medical school. Keeping my sexuality a secret to virtually everyone through high school and college was paramount. In medical school in Detroit planting the seeds for my future, having just finished my undergrad at the University of Michigan, I was as closeted as could be. In Michigan, where I went to school, sex between two men was, shockingly, illegal. There were no Will & Grace or Mitchell and Cameron on TV. Growing up, I had no gay friends that I knew of.
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When I was a young medical student in the early 1980s, the gay world was a complete unknown to me.