I was nine and I was in love. He was my GI Joe doll. Why my folks got him for me, their nelliest of sons, I’ll never know. My baseball glove sat, unused, in the closet while I spent countless hours dressing and undressing Joe. He was anatomically perfect except for one thing which I quickly fixed by making a penis for him out of clay. Looking back, I think I did it more for me than for him.

I loved to dress Joe in my brother’s Captain America doll’s red, white and blue tights. He looked so cute. Brother Bill didn’t find out until the day he noticed that the crotch was stretched out of shape (Joe was pretty well endowed).

Before Joe, I played with my cousin’s brunette Barbie, making darling fashion accessories for her out of foil. Joe was my man, though. Once he came into the picture, Barbie, and all her fashion glamour was history.

Neal, Rehoboth Beach

I was about sixteen, and I found that men’s underwear ads in Playboy were more enticing to me than the centerfold. It was around the same time that I decided that a whipping was not necessarily a punishment.

Kenn, New York City

Sorry, but I don’t remember my "aha" moment—just the moment when I was having sex with a woman for the first time—under her kitchen table. It was earth-shattering. Over the next few days, there wasn’t an inch of space in her apartment where we hadn’t done it! Hallelujah!

Roni, Lewes, DE

I was sitting at my office desk when the phone rang. A very nice woman introduced herself and asked if there was meeting space available in my building for a gay women’s group one Wednesday evening the following month. Their regular weekly meeting space was unavailable that night.

My heart stopped beating and I couldn’t breathe. While I knew there were gay people in the world, I had no idea there was an organization of them.

I stuttered through my response, saying I’d have to check with the board of directors. This was, after all, a synagogue and what would they think about my leasing the space to a gay group? When I got off the phone, I didn’t know what to do or how to approach the president. I was so nervous. It was then that I realized my nervousness was caused because of the words that made up the name of the group hit home—Gay Women’s Alternative.

Having gotten permission to host the group at the Syna-gogue, I went to their meeting the week before the group was to come to my building (I did have to check them out after all).

It was just comfortable. And when the leaders gave announcements about other community activities, and they mentioned services at the gay synagogue in Washington, I knew I had found heaven and I was home."

Beth Cohen, Bethesda, MD and Rehoboth Beach

Although I could not identify it then, the first time I became aware I was gay was when I was about 9 years old. For years, my family would spend its summers in the Catskill Mountains of New York. One summer when I was playing with some new found summer friends, two boys who were cousins got into an argument over something. I was asked which side I was on and I responded that I was in favor of Richard because he was cuter.

Peter Schott, Rehoboth Beach

I was married with two young children and of course a husband. I was teaching Physical Education in a high school and coaching Hockey and Basketball. Well, one of the students got a crush on me and kissed me on the lips one day and the rest is history. No kiss my husband had ever given me felt that GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many years later, after the divorce and two failed relationships, I did meet up with one of my former students and we are still together—the ultimate fantasy…land your gym teacher!

Judy, Rehoboth Beach

Please send us your own stories to campoutreho@aol.com. We’ll run them with or without names. We can’t wait to hear some of your fabulous memories!