Undercover

There's this current of secrecy that pops up here and there among some of the gay guys I encounter. Sometimes you meet a guy online and he won't send you his face picture because he is "Discrete". I used to not balk at that, I wouldn't meet someone without seeing their face, but it didn't really surprise me so much that some people wouldn't send you one Or they'd send you a picture of them in sunglasses or postage stamp size or with their face obscured by a hat. Again, no big surprise, but I started to think about it and wondered what this implied, by not sending your face picture means that you don't want to be "found out" and found out for what? ...being gay?? and by gay guys willing to accept that a lot of people don't want to send out their face pic that means what??? That we understand it's kind of shameful and maybe we feel some of that shame ourselves? We are happy to accept less than a full serving because we don't feel we deserve it? Being left out of family functions and alone on holidays used to be pretty common for a lot of gay guys. But now, I realize that by accepting these kind of sleights so readily, it means that we were carrying around a bit of shame ourselves. I thought I had worked all of that out years ago, but I guess self-acceptance is a life long project.