Searching For a Friend by Bill Dolan Little did I know that as I was on the brink of plunging into homosexuality, a "chance" encounter one balmy evening would change my life forever.

I was wandering around in the gay area of downtown on a warm Friday night. In two days I would be 21, and I knew my life was going to change. The two-block strip of bars, dance clubs, and hotels was crowded with men, some holding hands. I felt nervous and badly wanted a drink. I was finally ready to indulge my homosexual desires and act on the feelings that I had been hiding for years. I was raised in a Christian home on the East Coast. My parents loved me, and our home was stable. God was always a part of my life. I remember wanting to be a priest when I grew up, playing with Wonder bread flattened to look like Communion hosts and going through the motions of the Eucharist. My first awareness of sexual feelings was focused on other guys my age. These feelings didn't seem strange to me. But I remember the day when I realized that the way I was thinking about my fellow classmates meant that I must be gay. I was terrified. I didn't want to be gay and figured it must be a stage I was going through. I began to have two very different lives: My public life, which I hoped appeared straight, and my private life, a world of gay fantasy. To ensure that no one would ever find out about my desires, I was careful to avoid any stereotype of outward homosexuality or "gay" behavior. I fumbled my way through many conversations about who were the most desirable young women in our high school. I took on the identity and social label of a "stoner," and progressed from drinking on the weekends to smoking pot every day by the time I was a senior in high school. Throwing myself into drugs and an identity based on music allowed me to hide in the image I had created. When others were experimenting with sex, I would always be too high to care. I surprised myself when, one day over a game of hacky-sack in a friend's backyard, I articulated my disenchantment with the church. I thought it was unfair, I said, that after God had made gay people as they are, the church would then say that homosexuality was wrong. It was unusual for me to even speak the word "homosexual" out loud. What was even stranger was my verbal assertion that God had made homosexuals, when in my life, I was waiting for the time when I would grow out of this adolescent phase. I thought college would be a new start. I planned on leaving behind my extensive fantasy life, finding a group of friends that I could really feel a part of, and finding a girlfriend. It was time to grow out of this phase, I told myself. I desperately wanted my life to really match up to what I was trying to look like. Instead, I used harder drugs and drank more heavily. Soon I found myself emotionally wrapped up in a guy who had probably never had a homosexual thought in his life. He was loud, boisterous, and very masculine. He had qualities I felt I lacked, and I was attracted to him because of them. We were roommates for two years, and our relationship was close, in some ways totally based on drugs. All during this time, I was studying psychology, looking for answers. Why was I gay? Could I change? Not surprisingly, things started to fall apart for me at school. I decided to transfer. I picked Portland because it was 3000 miles away from my family. I knew no one in Oregon, so I figured I could finally indulge myself in the fantasies I'd had. Maybe I had to get homosexuality out of my system and then go on with life. I was very nervous that late summer evening in 1992, as I watched numerous male couples going in and out of the gay bars. I walked around a corner and made eye contact with a young, straight-looking guy and was very excited to see that he looked back toward me and was obviously hanging around. I walked around the block several times. On each pass I would stand on the corner, smoke a cigarette, and wait for him to approach me. He would not, although it was obvious that we had both noticed each other. Finally, I nervously went up and asked, "'Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" He told me the time. I turned to go, palms sweating, stomach dropping. "What's going on?" he asked, before I had walked away. "Nothing." "My name is Jason." "I'm Bill." We shook hands. "Do you go to school around here?" "Yeah," I enthusiastically started to answer, but then decided to be vague on the details. "What are you doing hanging out in the gay part of town?" he asked. "Just curious." I gave a safe answer. Jason asked, "Do you ever think about where you'll be in 20 years? Married to some guy….?" Married to some guy? Why did he say that? I looked again at the older men milling around a mysterious red door across the street. "Do you want to get something to eat?", Jason asked me. "Yeah, sure," I said, although I wasn't hungry. Jason told me as we walked away that he was not going to have sex with me tonight. OK, I thought, very blunt. I was interested in what he was doing there himself. Then he started to share why he was hanging out on that particular street corner. He told me about his struggle with homosexuality and about how his life was different now because of a relationship with Jesus Christ. I had never heard this before. I had searched psychological textbooks for answers about how to change but couldn't find any way. I was raised in a Christian family and had always admired the man, Jesus, but had never really known people who struggled to live Christlike lives. I had never heard of the life-changing power of the Gospel. Jason invited me to church and introduced me to Phil, The director of Portland Fellowship. The Billy Graham Crusade came to Portland a few weeks later, and, because I had been wrestling with the true meaning of the Gospel, I responded to the invitation and made a public commitment to Jesus Christ. I still had many questions. Was homosexuality really a sin? Could I change? That year I attended Portland Fellowship's discipleship program. I began to learn about Christ and also the reasons behind my strong desire for male intimacy. My parents loved me, I knew that. They were good to me. My father provided more for our family than anyone could ask. But I recognized an emotional dynamic that was present in my relationship with my parents that left me longing for direction. My father was a loving man but was quiet and not demonstrative or generous with his affection or guidance. But he showed by example a life of faithfulness to his family. Unfortunately, I didn't realize and connect with the subtlety of his example until recently. And it was often easier to find support in a friend who was there to disciple me than it was to find leadership from my Heavenly Father. Learning how to have healthy, godly male friendships was the most difficult struggle in overcoming homosexuality. But God preserved my friendship with Jason, and I had the honor of being one of Jason's two best men at his wedding in 1997. As time went by, I began to openly talk to people about my homosexual desires. I spent a year at Multnomah Biblical Seminary. That year, my faith became more my own. I was able to relive the experience of college I had missed because of my sexual confusion and drug habits. On a Sunday morning at the end of that school year, I was baptized in a cold lake on the Oregon Coast. Surrounded by my classmates, I made a stronger decision to trust Christ than I had made four years earlier. Jesus had shown me that He was working in my life and that anything was possible. Today, five years after meeting Jason on that lonely street corner, I'm grateful to God that He protected me from being sucked into anonymous gay sexual encounters and embracing a gay identity. Since I have a compulsive nature, I could have easily used sex for comfort, just as I had used drugs. God spared me. For years I thought that physical and emotional closeness to other men would make me whole. But as I've grown in my faith in Jesus Christ, I've also grown in the confidence, certainty, and masculinity I had coveted from others. Jesus truly is the friend I've always searched for.