This is the transcript of the episode recorded on April 20, 2026 where Billy shares his coming out story.

Linda:
Hi everybody, welcome to episode, I think, 39 of The Spectrum. Today we have a coming out story. Our guest is Billy, who lives here in the Shenandoah Valley. And Billy’s story, I wouldn’t say is unusual or atypical, but he came out later in life. He did not know who he was when he was growing up. He only recognized who he was as an adult. So Billy’s going to share that story with us and hopefully we can learn a little bit about what it was to be a gay man and learn about who you are. So Billy, thanks so much for agreeing to sit down with us today.

Billy:
Thank you, I appreciate you having me.

Linda:
So it’s 2026 now, how long ago did you come out?

Billy:
It was 2001 when I came out officially to family and friends. Okay. I knew myself a little before that, but yes.

Linda:
So about how long, about a year before or two years?

Billy:
Yeah, about a year before last even.

Linda:
Okay, so you came out more or less with the millennium.

Billy:
Yeah.

Linda:
And how old were you at that point in time?

Billy:
I was 35.

Linda:
You had lived a fair amount of your adult life thinking that you were a straight man. And you did the things that straight men do, right? You were married to a woman. And so how long were you married?

Billy:
We were married nine years before the separation happens.

Linda:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you had children with your wife, right?

Billy:
Yes, we have three daughters.

Linda:
So there’s reason to believe that you’re a straight man, you’re having babies with women. Right, right. When did things begin to change with you? You had told me offline that you divorced and that your divorce didn’t have anything directly to do with your sexuality, that you discovered who you were after the divorce. What were the things that started you to question that you weren’t who you thought you were?

Billy:
In college and after being married during those years, interestingly enough, my two of my best friends, one in particular was obviously gay. And my wife and I even knew that he was gay, that he didn’t officially come out to us. So I had, you know, friends who were in the community earlier than even when I was married, before I was married. The catalyst was the divorce. The recognition for me was just to be, I guess I felt like I was free at that time when we were divorced to be able to bore more of who I was and be happy. I always had, looking back, a difficult time connecting with women. Mostly I was never one of those guys who could flirt or talk up a woman or, you know, really kind of engage them. It was more of a friendship, like I was very, very much friendly extroverted person in school. I was actually voted friendliest of my senior class. I knew everyone. Everyone knew me. A lot of my best friends in school and even outside school were women, were females. But I did have a core group of male friends too. And, you know, we always talked the high school boys stuff. Looking back now, I think I really rationalized out and justified out all types of things that were obviously flags for me that I should have recognized that I did not due to some just environmental factors and also geographic area where I lived and my family and so forth.

Linda:
So let’s explore some of those geographic and environmental factors that you talked about. So you said you were 35 when you came out. So you were born in roughly 65-ish?

Billy:
Right, 1965.

Linda:
Okay.

Billy:
And where did you grow up? I was born and grew up in a little town called Withville, Virginia.

Linda:
What was that like a very conservative religious area or just politically conservative?

Billy:
I think both. I think it’s a small town. A lot of people know all the different families who have populated the town for many generations. It is a very religious space area too. But also I think there’s just a very structured definition of male and female. That very much patriarchal structure where the man is this, this, and this and the woman is this, this, and this. You know, when it comes to societal roles and roles within relationships. So it also was any person in the LGBTQ plus community or who was identified or suspected of being a part of that was sort of ostracized, made fun of, you know, seeing my parents. I can remember them, especially my dad, making comments in a really negative fashion about a gay man that they saw or they suspected, whether it was in public or on TV and the media. So those things were kind of fed into me from a young age all the way through high schools. There’s a lot of racism there, but this was even worse to be gay there than it was to be in another minority. So that was kind of instilled in me early on. It just was something I think.

Linda:
So to be gay was to be wrong or broken in some way in the environment in which you grew up.

Billy:
Right. Yeah. And I think even there’s like, I recall, particularly my dad, but others too, there seemed to be anger directed toward gay men in particular for being gay or feminine or seen that way. So that was a,

Linda:
for not matching that stereotype definition of what a man should be.

Billy:
Right. Exactly. Which there is very blue collar, you know, the rugged masculinity kind of thing that I never really had, but I did find a way to make myself fit into that. So yeah, those were the sort of the, and I think that’s true of that area, Appalachian area, religion, and then the roles of men and women in the masculinity issue and so forth is very prevalent, probably still today.

Linda:
So while you were growing up and you, you get to be, you know, in your early teens, what kind of interactions did you have with the boys and girls of your age? Were you dating girls?

Billy:
You know, I had a lot of friends, male and female. I really didn’t date. I never always would become friends with the girls before I would have any romantic connection with them. So I really didn’t have a girlfriend until I was in, I went to four, no, I went to three proms. I’ve always went to the dance. I always had a date that I never had a, but no romantic connections. Right. Until I was a freshman in college, which was also there in the same town.

Linda:
And that, that same teenage junior high, high school timeframe, what kind of interactions did you have with the boys here that you interacted with?

Billy:
They were just good friends that we did all those boy things, you know, camping out, making prank phone calls, smoking cigarettes, and, you know, riding around town in the cars, basically.

Linda:
Yeah. So you didn’t have any kind of a relationship with, with a boy that would be seen as gay by anybody in your life.

Billy:
No, not during that time. You know, after I came out to myself and was thinking about my past, there was a boy that was in band with me, marching band, that I was friends with. But then when we, he left the band and we know I were friends, I can remember really missing him. And then looking back, I realized, you know, I think I actually had a crush on him. Yeah.

Linda:
That’s okay. What happens at band camp stays at band camp.

Billy:
Yeah. Well, nothing happened. Unfortunately.

Linda:
When you were growing up and you had these thoughts of who you would be with, did you just kind of skirt around that subject and not even think about it? Or did you think about being with a boy or being with a girl?

Billy:
I always pictured myself in that traditional role of being with a girl, of getting married, having kids, that whole sort of prescribed

Linda:
but it was just something that you thought was something you were supposed to do as opposed to something that really attracted you.

Billy:
Right. I never had a recognition or a thought of having any kind of romantic relationship with a boy or, or, you know, even a young man as I got older, it just never crossed my mind as something that I was or could do. I was obviously in deep denial

Linda:
in your family growing up was your family particularly religious? Were you in church all the time or was it just, just in the background?

Billy:
It was more in the background. We weren’t in church. We didn’t really go to church regularly at all. But once in a while, when I was really young, but as I got older, we didn’t really go at all. But there was the element of religion in the house, you know, the talking about the Bible in the Bible, it says this in the, and sometimes having some of those religious shows on the TV was also part of it. So that was always an aspect, but not the biggest one necessarily.

Linda:
So you went away to college. Were you still at home or did you go away to college?

Billy:
Well, I started at a community college in Wytheville and I was there for two years and made a lot of new friends. Then I transferred to VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and moved to Richmond.

Linda:
What was it like living in Richmond compared to being small town, Virginia?

Billy:
Huge difference. And I found that I really, really enjoyed it and liked it. The whole educational environment, the college environment was so appealing to me when I, you know, once I got immersed in it and I had all these friends and it was just one of the best times of my life for sure. And Richmond still has a place in my heart because so many great happened there. And it was interesting that even during that time, as free as I felt and as disconnected from my old hometown that I was, I still focused on female relationships. I did have one girlfriend and then the community college, another that was brief and then the woman that married. So that only had three, I would say girlfriends in my life before getting married.

Linda:
Okay. So up to that point in your life growing up and then being in Richmond, did you know any gay people who were out or who had confided in you?

Speaker 3:
No.

Linda:
So you didn’t have any direct experience with an out gay person at all. So you had no experience of what it was like for someone to be gay.

Billy:
Right. No, just what I observed in the media on TV and then how they were described, my family or friends or people at school that I would overhear. That’s really all I knew about it. And that was typically negatives.

Linda:
In your own mind during this time period, you’re not recognizing anything in yourself or at least it’s not making it to your conscious thoughts. What were your thoughts about gay people at the time?

Billy:
Not so much. I kind of went along with the crowd in high school of, if they said something negative or something, making fun of someone who they thought was gay in school, I would kind of go along, laugh along with it and so on. In college, I really didn’t experience those types of people really would make fun or bully. And I didn’t know anyone who was out as gay.

Linda:
So let’s fast forward to when you started to question yourself, what caused you to do that?

Billy:
Well, the real catalyst was my marriage ending. My wife at the time was unhappy with our marriage and she finally told me that, but she had already started an emotional relationship with someone else online. So that was because we had children at that point, we had three daughters and they were young and it was a very difficult thing for me because I didn’t want them to go through the children to go through that separation. So I’m getting off the question. No, it’s all relevant. Yeah. But that was the beginning of. So once I got through that period, which was about a year and a half. And then because I think there was some time before she moved out and then we have to wait a year to divorce with kids. And there was one point where she finally decided that she was done after I confronted her about my knowledge of the person she was, you know, had a connection to or a relationship with. And I said, if you meet him, then that’s almost like a switch went off. Once she said, yes, I’m going to go meet him and travel to where he lived and met him. That was it for me. But that relationship, that kind of switched that off. And then I started thinking about myself. My first thought was, well, I’m going to be the best dad I can be in this situation. So I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make the girls, my daughters comfortable and happy and in this situation. And then the second part was just me. I thought I just want to be happy, have a happy life and start to just be more introspective about what I was attracted to. Why was I on this track as a straight person? Is that the right track for me? And then that was not long after she made that announcement and we were trying to work with things, but it obviously wasn’t going to work. I traveled to Las Vegas. Nothing really happened other than I was with my good friend from college and another friend of ours. And it was almost like that was a time to be comfortable with myself, analyze and think about what is my attraction? Is it to men? Is it to women? And because they kind of allowed me to do that and knowing now that one of them, both of them actually are gay, they weren’t really out to me at that time, but I know that now. It was almost somewhat ironic, but then not. But it was that I ended up going with those two folks to Vegas and then talking to each other about my divorce, about myself, and then trying to really analyze for myself, do I have an attraction to men? I always could note I would allow myself to notice a man that was, most people thought was a good looking person, like a celebrity or someone. I was like, “Oh yeah, he is good looking.” But I always thought that there was nothing.

Linda:
Just an objective description.

Billy:
I never allowed myself or thought to myself that that was actually me finding them attractive. I thought it was me acknowledging their looks like a woman would acknowledge a beautiful other woman or so on. I started to think, “Am I just?” I started to be honest with myself to be truthful. To say maybe that is an attraction, maybe it’s more than just me acknowledging their looks. Maybe I really think they are attractive. There’s a slow opening to myself of accepting the possibility that I might find this man attractive and what does that mean? So it was a deeper intellectual process for myself to sort through it a little bit at a time and not easy.

Linda:
I can imagine. It sounds like, and correct me if I’m mischaracterizing this, but it sounds like you were pretty closed off to your own feelings for a very large part of your life and that it was uncomfortable for you to start opening that door, lifting up that curtain and seeing what was there. Is that correct?

Billy:
Yes. That is a very good way to put it because I think I was not authentically living me. I was almost playing a role for most of my adolescence and adult life up until then. I was doing what I thought I should be doing and not really being unhappy, but not really looking back now, not really truly happy either.

Linda:
When did you reach the point of saying to yourself, “I am a gay man”?

Billy:
Well, I had a phase of once I started thinking about it more and looking at what I was attracted to. I did have a phase where I thought, “Well, maybe I’m bisexual. Maybe that’s really going to be…” That was a softer step for me.

Linda:
It’s an uncommon path.

Billy:
Yeah. To say, “Oh, I’m bisexual.” Obviously, I’m in love with my wife. But also now I think that I may have some interest in men as well. So maybe I’m bisexual. I had that phase for a while, but really what broke it open to me was my first relationship with a man and having the emotional feelings for him did not compare to anything I had with a woman.

Linda:
Are you familiar with the Kinsey scale? If you had to characterize yourself on that scale, where would you put yourself?

Billy:
Probably if the middle is truly bi and they’re straight over here and gay over here, I’m probably a few ticks down from 100% gay. Probably between the die and gay. Somewhere in there.

Linda:
For the viewers or listeners who are not familiar, the Kinsey scale was developed by Dr. Alfred Kinsey to characterize the kinds of relationships that people had. And at one end of the scale, and I may get which end of the scale is which backwards, but at one end of the scale, say, number one, is people who’ve only ever had heterosexual thoughts and relationships. At the other end of the scale are people who’ve only ever had same-sex thoughts and relationships. And in the middle are the people who are perfectly comfortable with either. And obviously, Billy had a relationship with a woman for a number of years, fathered children with her. So there had to be at least some level of heterosexual relationship there. But I also don’t think that where you are in the Kinsey scale is necessarily constant through your whole life. And so where you were at one point in time may not be where you are now, because it’s complicated. People get in their own ways all the time and convince themselves of things that aren’t really true to try to make other people happy. And so it sounds like that was your journey in a lot of respects where you might have thought that you were here toward the middle, because that was a more comfortable place to be. It was a safer place to be. And then you realized as time went by that you were kidding yourself and that you’re really more toward the other side. This is all happening in 2001, right? What happened after that? Where were you living at that point in time, actually?

Billy:
I was living in Stevens City, Virginia. We had a house there. And then when we separated, she moved out. I stayed in the house for as long as I could manage it. And then I sold it and moved to a townhouse in Stevens City. So I was in Stevens City during the divorce and after the divorce when I came out as well.

Linda:
At that point, did you start looking for the gay community?

Billy:
Yeah, like I said, my friend from college, he would visit. He was living in Richmond. When he finished college, he became a flight attendant. So he was all over the East Coast. So I would visit him and he would take me out and then I would start to be a little more comfortable with myself in that kind of gay environment or whether it was a restaurant or a dance club or whatever it was. So that was a good experience for me.

Linda:
And where were you going for that? That was that local or was that somewhere?

Billy:
Mostly where he lived. And so he lived in Baltimore, then he lived in Philadelphia. So bigger cities that had more of a community in that respect. And me being able to visit with him and have him have access for me to for that was great. Looking back, that was really a key in helping me become more comfortable with myself.

Linda:
And how did you feel as you took those first steps into that community? Do you feel like you were ripping away that curtain or were you scared?

Billy:
I think initially I was a little scared, but also was mixed with a lot of excitement and just so much kind of joy because I was so comfortable and so it was just so easy for me. And so natural people say that, but that’s a word that I use. It just felt natural and comfortable to be around that community. It was a great time for me actually.

Linda:
I noticed you have a ring on your finger. Yeah. So what’s the origin story for that?

Billy:
I just like jewelry. Yeah, no, no, I’m not married currently. Oh, okay. But no, yeah, this is just a piece of jewelry that I like.

Linda:
I thought we were going to get a good story out. Yeah. What is your life like now? You’re living here in the Shenandoah Valley area. There’s not exactly a gay bar on every corner. So where do you find community these days?

Billy:
Just to give you a little history after I did come out, I had several relationships, but the relationships that I had were really difficult because I had never really dated men or women. I just kind of started a relationship with them instead of let’s go out, let’s go out and getting to know over time. So that was difficult for me in dating men. And also me as a gay man with three young daughters was made things difficult to date as well. I struggled with keeping relationships there. I would find someone and say, Oh my gosh, this is great. I’m in love. This is a year. They were always like a year, a year, and then they would end. So it was very much a difficult path as far as maintaining a good relationship with a man for a number of years. And then my current partner and I have been together 11 years. So that finally got there.

Linda:
Okay.

Billy:
Yeah.

Linda:
What’s your now?

Billy:
We couldn’t be closer. They’re the best thing ever. And in my life I have two grandchildren too. So they’ve always been supportive. I know when I first came out and they were still young, my youngest was I think five or six at that time because they were so good with me when they were at home with me and my current boyfriend was with us and they had no problems with that. But I think as they got a little older, like middle school, and even with my middle daughter in an elementary school, I think it was a difficult thing for them because then they have to come out to feel like they do or feel like they may be ostracized because their dad’s with a man, you know? So that was a balancing act as well, trying to have a relationship with another man and have them as a part of my daughter’s lives. But also kind of pulling back on them, being present at functions that involved my daughter’s friends or because that made a whole another level of challenge for them. And I didn’t want that. That was a difficult aspect of all the relationships I had. Some of the guys I did eventually figured out that they didn’t want to date a man with children. They didn’t really like my children and that was not obviously going to work for me.

Linda:
Yeah, that makes things a challenge. And some people are looking for that one-on-one relationship without extra people involved.

Billy:
Yes, yes. I had someone I dated for a year who actually said that to me. I want to be number one. If I’m not number one, I don’t want to. It’s like, well, I’m sorry, my daughters are going to be come first.

Linda:
Yeah. Well, I mean, you got to be honest with each other, right?

Speaker 3:
Yeah.

Linda:
So it’s been 25, 26 years since this happened. How has your life changed?

Billy:
It’s been so great, actually. And I will say that I do give a lot of credit and love to my ex-wife because once I came out to her and I started dating and any person I was dating, if I brought them around, she was always loving and accepting of them, walking them into her house for whatever gatherings we had. She made it so much easier for me. And I know not all men who are, are, were married or, and or have children from a marriage have that luxury. I actually know men who are married who have had a horrific experience when coming out and with children and their exes being really difficult and ugly. So I’m blessed with them. I’m so thankful for her and how she allowed me to find my own happiness with who I was with and was always accepting of it. So, but you know, how things are different now, just, I think coming out, I was able to obviously be authentic with myself and just live a more authentic life, which is always happier and more relaxed for most people.

Linda:
You mentioned to me when we were talking about doing this, that when you came out, you had several people say to you, well, it’s about time you figured that out. Why do you think that they were able to recognize this in you or at least recognize the possibility of it before you did?

Billy:
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think I obviously have some more feminine mannerisms or whether it’s the way I move my body. And as a child, I think I can even remember as a child playing Little League basketball and having the boys make fun of me because of how I moved my body when I shoot the ball or dribble the ball, you know, and I didn’t know what was happening. I was like, what do you mean? What am I doing? That’s wrong. You know, but now I realize it was just my natural way of moving, of talking my voice tone, whatever. So I do think other people noticed that maybe I just didn’t. And so some of my closer friends when I came up to them, they said, Well, I could have told you that I was like, well, I wish you would have, but it helped me probably a little quicker.

Linda:
But how is the Billy that we see today different from the Billy that we would have seen 30 years ago, aside from being 30 years older?

Billy:
Well, much more comfortable in my own skin and comfortable to talk to others and be who I am, not really. And I think some of that comes with age, but also it comes from me being happy with myself and my life and the person that I am. It’s also encouraged me to speak out. And that’s why I wanted to do this with you. Because I know there’s probably other, hopefully, men who are married or recently divorced who are in the same kind of path that I had traveled, that this may be helpful for them to hear. It’s been helpful to me to be involved with people in the LGBTQ plus community, whether it’s in a profit groups or I dated some folks and we went to a gay church in Washington, DC, or clubs or other organizations. Those things really helped shape who I am today too.

Linda:
If there’s one question that you were hoping I was going to ask that I haven’t, or one piece of information that you wanted to share that’s important, is there anything?

Billy:
Well, I think something I thought we might hit on that I just didn’t really hit on that much, maybe just a little, was just my coming out to my family. And that was difficult.

Linda:
Difficult in that it was a hard conversation to start or difficult in the reactions you got?

Billy:
Both. It was difficult for me to just do it. But once I was in a relationship with a man and I was very much in love and I thought, “This is who I was going to be with,” I thought, “Well, I just need to do it. I just need to tell my parents and my brother.” I can remember calling my parents with the intention of telling them. And I told my mom and she said, “Well, that’s okay. We can talk about it.” And she kind of wanted to put it off. I said, “Well, let me talk to dad because I want to tell him too.” And she’s like, “No, I don’t want you to do that because he’s going to say something that he doesn’t mean and he won’t be able to take it back. So I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him for you.” I was like, “Well, I really want to tell him myself.” So she insisted and then I’m assuming she told him because for about six months after that my dad and I really didn’t talk. So I thought, “Well, I guess he’s just not going to talk to me.” And interestingly, after the divorce before I came out, when they visited, I can remember my dad a couple of times saying, “Well, are you dating any women? Have you met any nice women because you need to have a woman in your life?” Kind of pushing that aspect. And now I really think that he was fearful that I was gay and I think that he maybe had suspicions that I was gay for maybe a long time. So that’s maybe why he had the kind of relationship with me that he did. And I think my mom, because I was the youngest, I was mom’s little boy, she never saw it that way. So I think she was more surprised by my coming out than my dad was. I think he was more fearful that it was going to be the truth and when it was, he didn’t want to deal with it.

Linda:
Did your relationship with them improve over time or did it never get any better?

Billy:
Yes, it did improve over time. My mom and I just kind of went on and she accepted it and she was fine. She was, she’s still fearful of other family members. My dad has a large family of them maybe saying negative things. And my dad, it took a while. He finally agreed one Christmas to come and visit and he met my boyfriend at the time and he was fine. I think he maybe had a vision of something that wasn’t realistic, that I was going to be with someone who was a drag queen or something like that. I’m not sure what he thought, but I think he thought that he thought it was very stereotypical.

Linda:
I think what the world doesn’t understand is that we’re just as boring as everybody else.

Billy:
Yeah, get up, go to work. Watch TV, go to bed.

Linda:
Yeah. What about your dad? It’s pretty

Billy:
good. He is very religious, which I respect and that’s fine. He was one of the catalysts for me going away from social media because on Facebook he had posted some things about trans folks and gay people. It was around when Caitlyn Jenner came out as trans and it was all the media hype and he put some religious things and things about that and it just felt personal towards me. I asked him about it and it just became a wedge between us at that time. I just sensed to let it go. I got rid of Facebook at that time and so I think he’s fine with me and my partner.

Linda:
Okay. Well, Billy, thank you so much for sharing a lot of deeply personal details about life. It’s not a small thing to do, so thank you. I hope that if anyone else out there watching this would be interested in sharing your story, we can do it remotely, we can do it in person, we can do it anonymously if we need to, but I think that stories like this are what is going to help those in the wider world who are not accepting of people in the LGBTQ plus communities to understand that we are just people trying to live our lives the best way we know how. And so thank you so much for coming in to share.

Billy:
Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity and it was fun.

Linda:
Yeah, I enjoyed the conversation and enjoyed getting to know you a little bit better. If you’re out there watching and you’d like to leave a comment on the video about maybe your own story, we can start a conversation. Remember, keep these comments respectful. People are sharing lives and that’s a big thing. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach me at spectrumpodcasthostedgmail.com and until next time, take care.