Blessing and curse

I often think to myself having been born in the mid 70's was both a blessing and a curse.

Think about it; what event in the last 15 years has had the most profound affect on the closeted homosexual? What has allowed us to investigate a curiosity that until that point had no avenue for investigation? I am obviously talking about the Internet. With a click of the mouse all of a sudden there were anonymous chat rooms where I was able to talk to other gay men and express to them something I could never share with anyone before. I was able to look at stimulating pictures that I could never have seen elsewhere. Nothing before the Internet revolution had stirred up that yearning and desire in me to figure out what my innermost needs and desires are.

Here's the point though. The Internet had it's awakening in the mid to late 90's. I discovered the internet a year into my marriage with my wife while expecting our first child. Blessing - I was married and expecting. Curse - I was married and expecting. Blessing - I was deep in and had to play the hand I was dealt. There was no easy out so I was forced to fight the battle of my urges in what I considered a torahdike way. Curse - I was deep in. I couldn't walk, I couldn't pursue my roaring gay cry for male connection and intimacy. If Hashem had me conceived by my parents just a couple years later and certainly 5 to 10 years later, it would have been a different ball game.

Even though I grew up with an attraction to boys, I was always able to tell myself that when I got married things would change. It's a phase... I'm in yeshiva, it's like a jail, I'm institutionalized. The second I get out of this mess of public showers and mikvas and into the hands of a beautiful woman all this will change. I will forget about my attractions to my friends in shiur and at camp. That would all be history. I had that conversation with myself thousands of times as a teenager into my early 20's and up until the night of my chuppah. One thing is for certain, given access to what the Internet provides, I would have thought twice. I would have had a stimulation that couldn't have easily been argued against. Could I say I never would have married? I don't know. The argument certainly wouldn't have been so simple.

Blessing and curse.