Excerpts

These brief selections from A Divided Life are offered to convey the book’s tone, voice, and interior arc. They are not meant to summarize the memoir, but to give a sense of how it moves—through reflection, silence, survival, and the slow work of becoming whole.

“Understanding Myself”

 Time does a funny thing. It stretches when you’re young and compresses when you’re older. In childhood, a year feels like a continent. In adulthood, it feels like a page you turn without thinking. My childhood was lived in the 1970s and early 1980s—full of exuberance, annoyance, curiosity, discovery, confusion, and energy.

Some things blur with time. Other things don’t. Some moments stay sharp because they were the moments when I learned something essential about myself—what I could say out loud, what I could not, and what I started to store away in silence.

I didn’t set out to write an autobiography. I wrote this to understand—fully, and without flinching—how I became the man I am. For many years I have worked, loved, laughed, and built a life that I’m proud of. But before that life there was a long, private apprenticeship in hiding: first from other people, and then, more painfully, from myself.

Just before my retirement, I was doing an ordinary morning routine: coffee, email, and the day’s meetings on my phone. A message popped up announcing a new hire in my department. It listed the usual credentials and then ended with a sentence that stopped me: “Kyle and his husband Michael are currently building a new house. Please welcome him to our team!”

I read it twice, set the phone down, and just sat there with a warm, unexpected feeling in my chest. Not because the new hire was gay—I had never even met him—but because the email was so unremarkable. The follow–up replies were the same ones any new team member would get: “Welcome!” “Glad you’re here!” His marriage was simply part of the background, as ordinary as the fact that he was moving into a house.

That kind of casual acceptance was not the world I grew up in. In my early adolescence—around 1978, in the Midwest—being gay was not a topic. It was a label. It was a threat. If you were suspected, you learned to become smaller. If you were known, you could be ostracized by family, church, and peers—or worse. Even when violence wasn’t present, the fear of it shaped how you moved through the world.

Gay marriage became legal across the United States on June 26, 2015. Today, a line like “his husband” can pass in a workplace email without anyone pausing. That’s real progress. Reading that message, I realized what I once thought was impossible—living in a world where being gay was treated as a simple fact, not a verdict—had quietly become normal in many places.

I’ve seen that same normalcy in my faith life, too. My Episcopal parish is a mix of people, and the welcome is simple: you belong because you are a child of God. Not long ago, a young gay couple in the parish welcomed a baby through a surrogate. Watching older and younger parishioners coo over that child—no footnotes, no discomfort, just joy—felt like another small miracle of ordinary life.

When I was young, I used to imagine a world like that. I wanted to live honestly without being reduced to a single trait. I wanted to be measured by my skills, my quirks, my shortcomings, my kindness—by my whole self. I didn’t want being gay to define me, but I also didn’t want to live as if it were a stain. Back then, I never truly believed I would see a time when it could be treated like something as ordinary as the color of a person’s eyes.

This book focuses on the parts of my life that shaped me as a gay man—especially the years when I was trying, with equal parts hope and denial, to become someone else. It begins in a happy, contented childhood, then moves into the confusion of early adolescence, the strategies I used to cope, and the costs of those strategies. Along the way, you’ll meet the two voices that argued inside my head, and the “monster” I thought I had to defeat.

Eventually, I came to a moment when I could no longer live by avoidance. I had to choose what kind of truth I was willing to carry—and what kind of life I was willing to build. The road that followed was not easy, but it led to something I once thought other people were simply born with: the ability to feel at home in my own skin.

That decision, made forty–one years ago, set me on a difficult path. But perseverance brought its own reward. Today, I am a person who is content in his own skin. This is a rare gift for anyone, and I have come to believe it is most often earned through crucibles.

I neither flaunt nor hide the fact I am gay. It’s simply part of me. I’m grateful much of the world has begun to see it that way, too—even if progress is uneven and never guaranteed.

Yes, this is another coming–out story—though not exactly the usual kind. It isn’t primarily about coming out to the world. It’s about coming out to myself: tracing how shame is built, how it disguises itself as virtue, and how it can be unbuilt—slowly, one honest moment at a time.

“I became truly invisible during recess”

From that moment forward, I became truly invisible during recess. Since the change was never announced, only a few teachers were aware of my whereabouts; the other students never realized I spent the entire recess period sitting on the steps in the east stairwell on the second floor. 

This arrangement brought a sense of relief for two reasons: I could finally be alone, which I preferred, and I was no longer cold, as I could remain indoors and did not need to wear the coat I could not bear to put on in public.

Each day, immediately after lunch, I followed the same routine. I exited through the usual door leading to the stairwell that ascended from the basement cafeteria all the way to the third floor. There was an exterior door on the first landing which opened to the playground, but rather than going outside, I continued up two more flights to the second floor. There, I would retrieve a book from my classroom and settle on the top step next to the bell switch, quietly reading, studying, or working on homework until recess ended.

Sometimes, I would gaze out the stairwell window and watch the kids playing outside. From that distance, it always seemed like they were having fun. I would briefly consider joining them, but the thought of facing Dale and Tony quickly reminded me why I chose my spot of safety. 

As time went on, I found my solution was beginning to erode my self–esteem. The longer I spent watching the others from afar, the more I longed to be part of their world. Gradually, I found myself staring out the window for longer periods while the pages of my book remained unturned, wishing I could somehow find a way to fit in.

“Not Alone”

On Sunday afternoon, I had finished what I had taken with me to read and started looking through Tim’s bookshelves. I found two newspapers on a shelf called The Advocate. As I started reading them, it dawned on me they were gay newspapers! 

I kept reading. My heart was pounding. I read every page and article. 

I had been so enthralled with the newspapers the reality of where I found them and what that meant did not hit me until after I finished reading them. 

With a smile still on my face because I was thrilled at knowing I was not alone; my mind finally took the next logical step to a new conclusion. 

Tim was gay!

I was lying across his bed, and I remember putting the newspaper down and looking around his room a bit more carefully. Nothing seemed any different than a normal teenage bedroom. There were posters on the walls, and he had cool music. There were bookshelves built into one wall with the stereo, the twin bed was in a corner, and a dresser and mirror were on the wall opposite the bookshelves next to the door. It all seemed so normal. 

Then I thought, why shouldn’t it look normal? My room looked remarkably similar. 

It occurred to me maybe, just maybe, I was not a freak after all. 

As I went to sleep that night, I could not stop thinking. I lay in the bed and stared at Tim’s ceiling.

Irrational Brain: “I AM NOT ALONE! There are other guys out there who are gay too!” 

Practical Brain: “And Tim is gay. I even know someone who is gay.”

Irrational Brain: “I’ve got to call him! I bet I could talk to him about all of this.”

Practical Brain: “I don’t have his phone number.”

The excitement of Irrational Brain was obvious. Whenever this happened, Practical Brain was, always, well, practical!.

Irrational Brain: “I’ll ask his mom or dad for it. They’ll give it to me.”

Practical Brain: “He’s in his second year of college. I’m fourteen. His parents would wonder why I was wanting to call him.”

Irrational Brain: “Shit, that’s right. They’d have all kinds of questions.”

Practical Brain: “I don’t even know if they know he is gay.”

Irrational Brain: “Maybe I can talk to him the next time I see him at a family reunion or something. I’ve got to take one of those papers home with me.”

Apparently, Irrational Brain had taken control.

Practical Brain: “That is stealing.”

Irrational Brain: “And just who am I going to ask permission of? I really don’t believe Tim would mind…he’s always been cool with me.”

Practical Brain: “So, I’m going to take the paper with inferred permission?”

Irrational Brain: “YEP!”

Just as the “YEP” was stated in my head, I was already placing one of the papers in the bottom of my bag under my clothes and books. 

We arrived home on Monday evening around 7:00pm. Having eaten at a restaurant earlier, we did not have dinner. So, by 7:30pm, I was safely ensconced in my room and started unpacking. Immediately, I dug in and pulled out my new treasure. It was just a newspaper, but it felt special to me. It was like a connection of some sort, knowledge that there were other gay people in the world. Maybe it was even an affirmation of myself. 

Trying to understand if I was gay, was always a thought process I kept inside. That was easy – it was intangible. This newspaper, however, was not. Mom did my laundry and would put my clothes away, but I never had a problem with her going through my stuff. Of course, there had never actually been anything I possessed I didn’t want her to find. So, I knew this needed to be well hidden, just to be safe. If it were found, it would be proof the other boys were right when they called me a fag. While I was thrilled to have the paper, I was also nervous about having it. I had a strange mixture of feelings about possessing this newspaper.

I’ve always been a pack rat, so it was not difficult to locate a shoebox, filled with various news articles cut out of the newspaper. Carefully, I folded the paper then placed it in the very bottom of the box with the innocuous clippings placed on top. I put the box in a dark corner of my closet. 

I had always wondered if there were other people like me out there and this newspaper was proof such people existed. If there were others like me, maybe there would be a way to talk to someone about what it meant to be gay. I’d been so alone in my feelings and trying to make sense of them. 

Over the next half hour, I sorted out my dirty clothes and put the rest of my things away. Closing the closet door, I smiled to myself, happy to know I was not alone.

These passages are only brief windows into the memoir. The story itself unfolds more slowly and in fuller context, where survival, memory, and wholeness can be understood together.