Coming Out of the Closet in a Speedo
How a simple swimsuit helped me embrace my sexuality
--
“Well, that’s one way to get a suntan!”
This is what a woman sniggered just after passing me on the hiking trail to Secret Falls in Kauai. I was wearing a bright blue Speedo. No embellishments, no fancy designs, no eggplant emoji plastered over my dick or banana hammock pushing my pecker into the face of unsuspecting children. Just a simple swimsuit designed for the male body. She finished with a scoff, like Miranda Priestly throwing Andy Sachs shade for her “first day at Runway Magazine” look.
“Joke’s on you, ma’am!” I thought to myself. “We’re both covered in mud from this trail, and you’re the one who’s about to ford a chest-deep stream wearing a cotton blend T-shirt and jean shorts. Hope you enjoy air drying that denim!”
Although I didn’t say that out loud, in retrospect I should have. I’d been thrown out of step and my mind began to spin. Was I wearing something inappropriate? No. I had spent my day swimming in jungle-rivers, crawling through mud, and splashing in the wake of waterfalls. A Speedo seemed par for the course. Was my ass hanging out? Not possible. My booty is flatter than a pancake. Could she see my penis? I’m certainly not a genital-free Ken doll, but I also wasn’t serving up an anaconda jungle fantasy. Maybe it’s because I’m not chiseled like Michael Phelps, or perhaps my translucent white skin shocked her, or maybe she’d never seen an adult male form in all its glory and was instantly traumatized for life. Or maybe it wasn’t her who had a problem with the Speedo at all. Maybe it was me.
I grew up in White Lake, New York, a town best known as the hamlet one drives through to get to the original 1969 Woodstock site. The population is a paltry 719, which means everyone knows everyone. Between the summer months of June and September, if you were looking for my family you’d be directed to the lake, where my sisters and I would be swimming from dawn to dusk. We became human fish. Only, while fish wore scales, my sisters wore bikinis and I wore a long pair of board shorts. Board shorts: the…
