I was working at Chuck E. Cheese�s pizzeria at the time. A job that I had gotten with the help of my other friend Dave who worked there. Derek, Dave, Greg and I were, and still are, pretty much like the four musketeers. I had developed this terrible habit however of psychologically abusing them in a way. Random acts of meanness, laughing at their miseries or discomforts and playing tricks on them for my own amusement was pretty common and started in high school. Why they still hung around me sometimes baffles me. I�m glad they didn�t give up on me. I had developed this stupid crush on Dave for some reason and my thus far repressed sexuality began to surface. David began seeing Jill, who also worked at Chuck E Cheese�s, and their inevitable involvement triggered another depression cycle. I remember feeling physically sick while we were at Marriott�s Great America park when I first saw them hold hands publicly. I look back at this now and think how silly it all was on my part.
Dave, Jill and many others of the crew at that time moved on and I found myself working with a whole new group of people. One of them was Jim. The first time I saw Jim I thought he was incredibly attractive. I met his roommates at the time, Christi and Bobby. Bobby and Jim were lovers and Christi took an interest in me. She loved a good challenge and me being so shy and a virgin had her trying her best to woo me. She didn�t know I was gay at the time. I liked the attention and went along with it. One night Jim, Christi and I went out to Denny�s restaurant. Christi was doing most of the talking and Jim seemed to be feeling like the third wheel. My attention was on him and seeing how uncomfortable he was. I moved my leg over to his under the table and began rubbing mine up and down against his. He practically jumped from his chair with surprise and when he looked at me I smiled mischievously.
We all went back to mine and Derek�s apartment after Denny�s. Derek was in bed. Jim sat in the recliner while Christi and I sat on the couch. She and I started necking, but I just kept looking at Jim who seemed to be wishing he was somewhere else. After a while I told Jim he should come over on the couch with us and so he did. With Jim on my right and Christi on my left, they both began competing for my attention. I would be kissing Christi only to feel Jim�s hands exploring my upper body. I would turn and begin kissing him only to have Christi begin to explore me with her hands herself. Pretty soon it became a tangle of tongues and roving hands. I guess I wasn�t ready for a further level of intimacy though and I found myself mostly fending them off of my more private areas. Nothing more happened that night, but a new door had been opened for me. Somewhere around the same time, Bobby left Jim and I didn�t mind seeing him go.
For a few weeks, the three of us would all play around together going a little further each time. There came a time where clothing became optional and I found myself fondling and suckling Christi�s breasts while Jim was kissing my neck. She was writhing with pleasure, as was I. I started moving down but only got as far as her naval. Even though I felt very strongly toward her, I could not bring myself to go any further. The very thought of anything more had me feeling ill. We were all sort of camping out in the living room and this just seemed to naturally happen. One thing that I seemed to forget completely however was that Derek had come over too and was on the floor not far from us. I guess he was watching us in the darkness and feeling left out. He got up, slammed the door on his way out and walked home. That of course killed the mood and Christi went to sleep while Jim and I just sat there for a while. A strange thing happened to me then. It was as though I could see and feel Derek in my mind. In my mind�s eye I could see him standing by my car, feeling angry and then storming off toward our apartment six blocks away. I felt kind of bad, but was too enraptured by my new adventure to let it bother me too much. I was being very selfish.
Soon afterwards I just sort of moved in and became Jim and Christi�s new roommate. I left Derek alone to pay rent by himself out of pure selfishness to explore my emerging sexuality. I had written him a touching letter of apology and he forgave me. He told me that when he left that night he seriously considered smashing my car window in. I think it was before I moved out though that Derek and I had Greg and Dave come over and I came out to them as well. Dave did not react well and was very homophobic. Greg said he pretty much already guessed, especially since I had once before told him that I was a hermaphrodite (having both male and female parts, not true of course). I had told him this because it somehow seemed more acceptable than being gay and meant that I wasn�t some deviant or something. At first I thought I would only perhaps lose Dave as a friend. But his distaste, coupled with his influence over Greg and Derek, and my adversarial �This is how I am and if you don�t like it, tough� mentality pretty much assured that they avoided me entirely. This lasted only a few months or so and eventually even Dave came over to mine and Jim�s house. (This was around a year or so later and Christi had met someone and moved out.)
My life with Jim was good for a time. I had a new sense of happiness and my depression became much more manageable. But it would not last. The main problem was that Jim was a very Physical based and sexual person. Sex was very important to him and he wanted it all the time. I was very needy emotionally and quite clingy. I was not very sexual. Once a week or even once a month was fine for me, as long as there was a lot of cuddle time and affection. Things began to break down. Since I was unable to satisfy him, Jim began looking elsewhere. It wasn�t long after the first year that I felt him pulling away from me. He did love me there for a while, and even tried to include me by bringing someone else home. A young kid named Robert. For a short time Robert became a part of our home and I did like him a lot. He and I even played around a bit. He was a charmer. But I just could not divide my affections like that and when Jim tried to get us all to be together at the same time, I just went numb. My depression was triggered and came back full force and Jim finally gave up. The last heartfelt moment we shared was when I lay next to him in my depression and told him that a part of me was dying. I sobbed uncontrollably and he begged me not to let it die. He did love me, but we were just too different. I unintentionally pushed him away and he simply stopped caring. So much so that at the end he just started bringing guys home to have sex in the living room after I went to bed.
I hold nothing against him. I take responsibility for my own life. I even would see him years later working at the hospital or through Christi and we got along fine. But back then it scarred me deeply. I went into the worst state of depression I had ever known. How I made it through I will never know. It was during this time that I had more blackouts. The first was before I had moved out of from Jim�s. I was on the phone with my friend Lynn from work (still Chuck E. Cheese) I remember one moment talking to her on the phone, and then everything seemed to fade out and then back in and she was all of a sudden sitting on the couch in front of me with a concerned look on her face. From my perspective I was puzzled. A mere moment had passed for me, but she said that I became less coherent and must have dropped the phone. She drove over only to find I wasn�t home. She drove around the neighborhood and said she found me a couple blocks away wandering around in a daze and brought me home.
Another time I blacked out was when I was transferred to the Chuck E. Cheese in Modesto, a nearby town. I was a manager by that time and very prone to stress. The last thing I remembered was going into the office and laying my head on the desk. The next memory is of me waking up in at my mom�s house. They told me that one of the employee�s found me in the office trembling violently and they couldn�t rouse me. They took me to the Tracy store, apparently in a state of delirium where they managed to get my mom�s number out of me. I can recall a fuzzy moment of tunnel vision of someone in a yellow shirt, but other than that it�s all a blank.
Two of my three years at Chuck E. Cheese and a year or two after ward were pretty much all bad. The darkness had almost completely engulfed me. It is all a blur to me. One time I do remember. I was in a very bad depression cycle and I called up my friend Shannon who I had met in my later time at Chuck E. Cheese�s. I was so very close to losing all control and was not at all confident I would survive it. I knew that if I didn�t do something I would kill myself that night. So I called Shannon and I guess I begged her to come over. She came over and we ended up going for a drive. I was trying so hard to keep it all in. When she stopped at a store to get a drink and left me in her truck, I broke down. I could not hold it in and cried and sobbed. My body itself felt as though it would shatter to pieces. I pulled it back in when I saw her coming out, wanting desperately not to burden her with my inequities, and she drove us out to the river where we parked. She was quiet and didn�t know what to do. I was silent, but after we parked next to the water I again lost control and in her presence fell apart completely. The despair and sorrow were like a tangible force that came out of me in waves. Poor Shannon. I can only imagine how helpless she must have felt by witnessing that. But I thank God for her. That night she saved my life. She too remains to this day one of my dearest friends and I love her beyond my ability to express.
So that�s how it was for a stretch of around ten years of my life. The depression as I stated in the beginning of this entry caused physical effects too. I had a number of physicals throughout my life. The last one where everything was fine was when I was 18. Then when I was 26 I had to take a physical for my warehouse job. The doctor listened to my heart and right away asked me if I knew I had a heart murmur. I informed him that I had never been told that before and it was not on my old hospital records. He told me that it was very noticeable and was concerned enough by it that he sent me to Kaiser hospital for a full analysis. It ends up that one of the valves has weakened, probably due to extended periods of stress, and over the last several years of my life it has caused some pretty painful problems. It really only acts up when I undergo stress and as long as I eat right, exercise and don�t smoke (doctor�s words) it should degrade no further and may not need to be operated on. This condition I believe was caused by the years of depression. Especially the very intense period surrounding my Chuck E. Cheese days. But back to the story.
Before I left Chuck E. Cheese, I met Allen. His influence in my life was the greatest of all. For God had chosen him as the tool to use to bring me to what I have become today. Almost completely opposite of everything I had been. Once Allen came into my life, guiding me to God, things began to change. Slowly at first, for I was very stubborn and had absolutely no love for religion. I had to fight my own misconceptions of Allen�s role in my life. Some of the following entries go into all that a bit. It took me years to realize that everything I thought I loved about Allen and the qualities he had that I felt myself missing were actually the result of God�s Light shining in him. That it was that Light that I was really attracted to and needed so badly in my life. It was the golden Radiance I witnessed and recorded in the last entry. The Light of men. The Light of the world. The Light that would overcome the darkness. The Light known as Jesus Christ. And once God�s spirit touched me and I accepted him into my life, things just got better and better until today, I am happy to say that I have come to know and appreciate Love as I never could have imagined. I have completely overcome depression and have not experienced it�s effects for many years and without the need for medication. I have let go of all the hurts of the past, forgiven myself, my parents and now have a better relationship with them than I ever thought possible. And I live my life with a greater sense of Joy than I ever could have dreamed of. Even though there are still days when I just don�t want to get out of bed, or feel grumpy, it�s really minor when I think about it. But it shows me that there is still room to grow. And I hope and pray there always will be.
What follows beyond this entry are the pages of my life. Each one is dated and were written as I experienced them. I hope that this labor of love I present to you will bring inspiration. It is my own living testament of what God can accomplish in a humble heart that becomes willing to serve him. I give all the glory of the transformation of my life to him. A transformation that came about by letting his Light shine in me. The Light is his, I am merely the lamp that carries it. All I can do is polish this lamp so the Light can shine brightly.
