Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Leaving Home 1 Leaving Home 2 Leaving Home 3 Leaving Home 4
My mother actually asked me to try not being gay. At least through high school. She was careful to point out that this was not because she thought there was anything wrong with being gay, but because we were living in a very conservative community and people wouldn't understand. It would just be a lot easier for everyone if I would just wait to be gay at least until I went away to college. She couldn't help adding that maybe by then if I had been living like a straight boy all the way through school that I wouldn't even want to be gay. But it would be ok if I still did.
I didn't even speak to my father about it. He just pretended it wasn't there, which a lot of the time meant pretending I wasn't there. He would talk to me about sports, the news, school, most the usual topics. But he never asked me about girls because he didn't want to hear what I might say, and then he stopped asking me about my friends because he was worried what my male friends might actually be to me. At one point he told me not to bring anyone around the house, he said he didn't want a bunch of free loaders eating him out of house and home. He didn't want to unknowingly meet my boyfriend.
My parents really didn't have to worry too much through high school, much as I hated it, and her saying it, my mother was right. I couldn't be gay in high school, not in our town. It would have been dangerous, literally dangerous for me to try to come out. Even in the eighties, people in town were not willing to accept such a thing existing in the world, let alone in their town. My father's response would have been about the best I could expect from most people.
So my mother got half of her wish. I wasn't gay in high school. She didn't see why, if I was willing to not be gay, I couldn't just go ahead and be all the way straight. It seemed like a matter of degrees to her. I wasn't straight, I wasn't anything. I never had a girlfriend, I never went to dances, I never made out with anyone in the theater, for all intensive purposes I was asexual. I masturbated a lot, but I always thought about movie stars or guys on TV. I never thought about anyone in school, even if I thought they were cute, as though somehow they could look at me and just know the truth.
As time passed there were more and more whispers, and I think that by the time I graduated anyone who really thought about it probably knew, but no one would admit it to themselves, and no one would ask me. I was hoping the other kids would just leave me alone, assume I was a loner or a loser or whatever would be reasonable for me to not take part in any extra-curricular activities. The problem was I wasn't awkward enough, I got along with people, boys and girls. I liked music, cars, and dirty jokes; which were all the basic topics of conversation. Guys would invite me to go get drunk or drive around looking for girls and I turn them down.