Gay: sex or culture?

So I was chatting with a good friend about cha-chas and chu-chus and who was sticking what in whos and all of a sudden something dawned on me...something I've been churning around in my mind these past few weeks as I navigate my way through a newly single life of girl and boy potentials. Defining my sexuality has always been hard (so to speak, hehe). For years I refused to use the word "gay" or even "bi-sexual" choosing instead to use new-agy definitions like "open" and "free-spirited" which, while basically defining my sexuality, was always a rather cumbersome and, dare I say, slightly pretentious way of putting things.
I would give long drawn out explanations to people, even those I had just met, about labels and choices and spiritual revolutions. I would correct people if they DID call me gay, adamantly professing my disassociation, desperately needing people to understand me as a progressive, undefinable being. Its not that any of this is no longer true, but what Ive realized is that in my obsessive quest for un-definability, I let a deep, internal homophobia make its way to the surface. boisterously professing my love of women while diminishing my desire for men... The truth is I was afraid of being weak and hurt and tormented, like everything gay I'd seen in the media and even experienced as a child (Going from a free-loving house of lesbians to a general education elementary school can be rather trying for a boy who knew nothing of gender roles). Anyone can see the hardship and the long upward struggle gays face and somewhere inside I wanted nothing to do with it.
But, as much as I try to resist, the fact is I AM gay. Even though Ive slept with women, and plan on sleeping with them again, and may even end up married to a woman, being gay is a part of my culture. My mother's gay, my father's gay, I went to my first Gay Day parade at five years old. I knew about AIDS and its tragedy at 10 and, all in all, gay culture is embedded in me like a religion. So beyond all the progressive notions of openness and freedom, I can still choose in this moment to define myself, in this way, with pride. I guess, in a way, this is my coming out...Hello world, Im GAY! didnt know if you'd accept me, but here I am regardless. There I've said it...I am gay. funny to be coming out 10 years after the fact..
but ladies, please, don't let that stop you (wink)