L.A. Affairs: I’m queer. I’m a military veteran. So where do I belong?
LA TimesI’d caught the eye of a guy dancing nearby just when my hands started to shake. And it had been a year since my last off-base mission in Afghanistan, time I spent struggling to navigate gay Los Angeles, caught between two seemingly incompatible identities — queer and military. A guy in his 30s, about my age, asked: So what’s it like “coming out after the military?” “I came out in college,” way before joining, I said. As I stepped onto the dance floor a few days later, I wondered, “How many of these people don’t want me here?” This fear of being cast out was familiar from a time past, from being closeted and coming out, terrified that there was an intrinsic part of me that people would never accept. In the day since he’d made that comment at dinner, he’d apparently come to his own conclusion about me — one that seemed to contradict his beliefs about the abilities of gay service members.
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