My dad always used to ask me this one question and I could never really understand why. We would be floating around in the pool on a hot summer afternoon without a care in the world when all of a sudden “Are you sure you’re not gay?” Then there would be a very awkward pause where I would pretend as though I didn’t hear him correctly. “I’m your father, I’d still love you no matter what.” Defensive wasn’t even the word for my reaction. I’d get damn right angry. “No!” I’d say with a dramatic roll of my eyes. Then I’d drift away and hope the issue was closed, and it was, until the next time he asked. That’s not a question that a son wanted to answer over and over again. I was a boy. I liked girls. All my guy friends in middle school liked girls. It was normal and so was I. I shouldn’t have had to prove it over and over again. I was just a late bloomer. That’s what my dad always said.
I remember it being so distinctive. Standing in my driveway with my best friend one day over the summer before I was to start the 8th grade; the last year of middle school before high school. I remember suddenly thinking to myself “I’m really not happy.” Maybe I was upset that school was going to start. Maybe I was just a little lonely. Everyone I knew was in a “relationship” it seemed. A label I use extremely loosely given the age of those involved at the time. Even my juvenile brain knew that it was silly and that none of them were real but just for show because it was the cool thing to do, but still. Maybe it was time to get a girlfriend. It was the normal thing to do and I was determined to be normal. I could be happy being normal. It all happened pretty quickly after that. I asked Rosa, my good friend since when diapers were still trendy (and who just happened to also be a girl) if she wanted to go out with me. She immediately responded to my instant message with a resounding “yes” and subsequent colon parentheses to show the closest thing to a smile she could through a computer screen. Ah, things were starting to look up. Now I could start getting out of this funk. The school year that followed was filled with our friends telling us how cute of a couple we made and love letters being exchanged in between classes for good measure. Relationships meant telling the other person you loved them as often as humanly possible. I was brilliant on paper – a regular Casanova – but things would always crumble when it came to actually being with her within the same physical space. I was terribly awkward. I could manage holding hands well enough, but beyond that, I was lost and Rosa never skipped a chance to tell me. The thought of kissing her terrified me to the point where it would make me nauseous. One day after school, she had finally gotten fed up with my lack of physicality and called me out on it in front of all our friends. I could do nothing but stare at her. My stomach went all in knots and my palms began to sweat. Everyone watched as I crashed and burned. I finally worked up the nerve to go in for a kiss but apparently had waited too long because she turned away from me. That make it even worse. It was definitely not part of the rules. Vomit inducement was probably not what she had had in mind when she signed up to be with me. But it was my first relationship ever. There were things to get used to. It would just take a little time .
My father used to have a lot of friends. That was before he found out that his business partner, and longtime friend, was stealing money from him and my dad lost all hope in humankind; basically becoming a recluse. Before that, there would always friends of his at home. My parents loved to entertain and they loved disco music so almost every Saturday afternoon, my house was filled with both. The women would sit in the kitchen or in the living room chatting while the guys lounged in front of the television watching sports and drinking scotch. I lived in a cliché. The men would yell and scream and curse and I was expected to sit with them and act in kind. My dad knew very well that I was not into sports. He made me try out for just about every single one when I was younger and I hated them all, until I tried out for baseball. I actually really liked it until my dad decided to be a coach and never wasted an opportunity to tell me how bad I was at throwing. Baseball lost its magic after that. Anyway, I would just be sitting with the guys who smelled like scotch and think about another book I wanted to buy or something when I’d hear, “look at that little faggot.” or, “what a fairy.” as they stared at the screen talking about some unfortunate member of the team they were watching. I knew what these words were in reference to. It wasn’t a favorable position to be in. It’s a good thing I was straight then.
High school was about to start. Just a few months away. Rosa and I were going to be going to St. Mary’s together. What a treat. My sister had gone there and my parents figured that if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. Then one day a representative from this private college prep school came by and made a presentation in my class. It was an all-boy school but that honestly didn’t mean anything to me. It was prestigious. They had a reputation. I wanted in. It was also quite far from St. Mary’s, and I was okay with that. I convinced my folks to let me take the entrance exam, took the test, passed it, and became an honorable student of Saint Joseph’s High School. I excitedly went up to my girlfriend in the hall the day after I found out to tell her the great news. “That’s great! Congrats.” I don’t think she understood what I meant. “I got in,” I repeated. Her face suddenly changed. She was a statue. “Oh.” And that was the end of my very first relationship.
You know how they say high school is the best time of your life? Exactly, you’ve never heard that because it’s just so blatantly untrue. High school was hell and the absolute worst four years of my life. I was depressed all the time. I couldn’t get away from it. It was as if all happiness had been sucked out of my life. There is no way to explain it without sounding like an angsty little teenager, but that’s exactly what I was. Nothing made it go away. I was full of anger and jealousy. I would look at the guys in my classes and hate them but could not for the life of me figure out why. I think it was because they were what I wanted to be. They weren’t questioning themselves constantly and they seemed genuinely happy. Then again, I think I played the role of happy teenager pretty well only because no one ever said anything to the contrary. I felt as though keeping everything to myself would be better than sharing because if I told anyone what was really going on, I’d be shipped away to some hospital like certain friends of mine had been. I turned to cutting because it was something I could control. It would put me in pain but at least it was pain that I could explain. Faulty reasoning but it’s all I had. I did it right on my wrists, easily visible to anyone willing to ask. But nobody ever did.
Being in a high school whose student body was entirely made up of males probably cemented the fact that I was what I was and that it was no longer realistic to just think otherwise. All of my fellow students didn’t have the added distraction of having females in their classes but for me, a hormone-crazed sixteen-year-old, all I had were constant reminders of what I was. Being gay was a part of me. I was who I was and it wasn’t going to be changed. That didn’t mean I had any intentions of sharing it with anyone. I would remain silent. Gay guys got too much unwanted attention. They were looked at differently. During my Sophomore year, there was a boy who transferred out of our class and the rumor was because he was a bisexual and that that was not acceptable. Whether he left because he was being ridiculed or because the school asked him to was never made clear. No one really made fun of anyone at my school though so I was inclined to believe the latter. Either way, I was definitely not ready to risk anything. My life was rough enough. I didn’t need any more reasons to be sad.
Life went on, I had a couple of other fake relationships to try and play off as though I was “normal” and everything else remained the same. Uneventful. High School was finally over and I was ok with that. I had survived several suicidal gestures involving pain killers and had come out the other end. I learned to be numb to everything. I was unwilling to let the depression get the best of me, to the point where a gesture would become a definitive act, but that didn’t mean happiness would just flow over me. My only option was to become numb. I had come to terms with being gay, but couldn’t tell my parents, so I decided to just not care anymore. About anything. This is how the beginning of my college life went. I didn’t want to die anymore but living didn’t really hold much splendor either because I had resigned to be alone. I was stuck forever in the middle .
You know how sometimes you get epiphanies while taking a shower or on a long drive home from work? Well I had one too one fateful morning. It happened just as I was waking up. Almost as though the thought had come to me deep in the night and was just anxiously waiting to come to light when I awoke. As I opened my eyes, it’s like I was seeing a different world than I had been in the night before and I was overcome with the realization that just because I didn’t want to come out to my parents, didn’t mean I could tell anyone. My father was a recluse, remember? He barely spoke to anyone anymore apart from my mother. And my mother was not one to associate with anyone my father didn’t associate with because that’s what a good wife does apparently. That day, I decided it was time to change. I began telling my closest friends about who I was and was met with overwhelming acceptance. That day – that moment upon waking up one random morning after years of heartache – changed my life drastically. Suddenly I was taking charge of my life. It was, after all, my life and I would be damned if I wouldn’t at least try to enjoy it. And then, almost all at once, all the things I had wanted in years passed were making their way towards me. I didn’t have to keep as many secrets anymore. I could go out and search for someone to be with whom I actually wanted to be with. And I found him. All because I finally decided that I had the right to be happy.
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