gayfathersjourney

Hello everyone my name is Richard Cacace and I am a single gay father 49 years old who came out in the 80′s and because of this I was banished from my parents and from my natural born son for being gay. Here is my story:

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In high school I was very confused at the young age of 15 when I was at a barber shop getting my haircut and while I was waiting to get it cut they had playboy magazine and penthouse magazine for the men to read while they waited. I picked it up and started to read it not knowing what it was and saw lots of nude pictures or women with some of nude men. The nude men interested me but the nude women didn’t and I could not understand that. Once in a public bathroom at a train station I was fondled by a stranger in the mens room and I got freaked out. I got freaked out but the next day went back to that same bathroom again. For a few year I struggled with my feelings and had no one that I could talk to about what was going on in my head. I had old fashioned parents an Italian father and a Jewish mother with both very old school mentalities. In the 12th grade I became friends with a girl in school and saw that she took a liking to me. I had never had a girlfriend so I thought that dating her would maybe help my confusion in my head and prove that I in deed liked women and not men. We dated for 1 year and at first it was amazing!! But then she got pregnant and had wanted to get an abortion. I did not want her to do that and I proposed that we get married. I converted my religion and got baptized and confirmed so that we can have a wedding in her church. We had our wedding while she was 5 months pregnant and few months later gave birth to my beautiful son Jason. In the beginning it was great but after 2 years of being married feelings of men started to come back into my head and I noticed myself looking at guys when I was in public and in playgirl magazine the playboy magazine for women. Sex and love became harder and harder for me and the only way that I could be a good husband was to look at naked mens pictures in secret first before we made love. It did not make me happy so I chose to come out of the closet and divorce her so she could meet a man that would be in love with her. I loved her but I was no longer in love and I could not live a lie anymore. I was ridiculed by everyone family and friends not just for being gay but for ending our marriage. I was banished from my parents who could not deal and did not want to have a gay son and being a father to my son and being gay did not work for family and everyone around me. Rather than be ridiculed I made the tough decision to leave everything behind my parents and my son to live a truthful life and be happy. While I believe I did the right thing it created alot of problems for my son. He was never told the real reason why I left and assumed that he was the reason that his father abandoned him and at the same time his relationship with his step dad was never that great. His step dad had 2 natural born kids of his own with my ex wife.He was a skateboarder and him and his friends were serious at the sport but then my son had to have a rod put in his back due to scoliosis and was told he could never skate board again. His friends wound up going professional and getting major sponsors and developing a professional skateboarding company called Chocolate. That killed his spirit. He became addicted to heroin and other drugs to cope with all that he was going through and overdosed on a friends porch and was taken to a detox. All efforts failed to clean him up and his mom and step dad threw him out. It was already 17 years later and a friend helped set out to help him to find me. They did. When I first met him he did not shower, brush his teeth, wash his clothes and all he did was work at a mall to make money to drink and continue to do drugs I could not believe that this was my son.

I made him move in with me and I started to show him love and teach him the basics of life. Dentist, brushing teeth, washing his face, showering, doing laundry and most importantly looking in the mirror and being being proud of what was staring back at him and that he was going to be ok and that he was a beautiful person and never give up. I put him through pastry school here in new york and helped him to get work as a pastry chef but he was still to young and staying out all nite with his friends so he could not keep a job. I saw things going backwards so I said something and he chose to move out and live with his girlfriend and not see me anymore. It killed my heart but I did not know what to do. The rods in his back started to reject and by a miracle his spine had fused back and the rods had to be taken out. All the hardcore drugs they put him on during and after surgery got him hooked again. He smacked into a tree after being hit by another car and was arrested for drugs. He was on probation and went to drug counseling and turned his life around and became a vegan and a full time pastry chef in a vegan cafe doing what he loves. He got his mom and step dad back and me back and it has been amazing. In all these years I owned my own skin care business becoming very successful but after almost 16 years and a bad economy I am just paying the bills now. It’s ok because when I see my beautiful son and how successful he became and how I helped to change his life as a gay parent I am proud not only for me and what I was able to do but for him and how he has changed his life around and is finally happy. The love he has for me and I for him is so intense that I know all our hard times are behind us. I hope that my story will help other men and other children who are in the same situation to realize that its better to live an honest life than to struggle living a lie. And that the hurt will eventually go away.

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