August 18, 1999, two days after my 16th birthday. I just had a fight with my dad about working in the tobacco field. (don't ask)
Well, later I
was feeling a little better.
My rage
was soothed, and so I
opened my door and everything. By the time my mom got home, she
knew that I had stormed off. She told me
that she
wanted to talk to
me over
dinner about what happened.
It was steak.
It
was a very rough
dinner. Tension and all sorts
of things built in the room, and eventually
she starts talking. We
discuss the day, and I lay out exactly what happened. Then she asks
why I stormed off. I told her that it was because my dad was treating me like a
little kid. Eventually, she gets around to saying that
I was
perfectly right in it, but that I
still have to do it anyway. Then...
"So is there anything else you have to say?"
It was
the opening...
"Sorta..."
"What is it?"
"Well, you don't look at me as
a kid, do you?"
"No, I don't."
"And you would respect any decisions
that I made as an adult, wouldn't you?"
"I will respect any decisions that you make as long as I agree with them..."
There was a dreadful pause...
"Go on."
"Well..."
I closed my
eyes and let the words form in my mind first. I
started shaking and
crying. "I'm gay."
"Oh, honey, it's OK..."
She had me sit
with her
on the couch, and
held me in her arms. She tried to soothe
me, but it didn't really work... I
had so many
tears uncried through this entire ordeal that I
just had to let them go.
Unfortunately, I
said something
that I'd later regret. "I really wish I could be straight, but I'm not." Well, she went on
trying to comfort me. She said something that I
thought was really funny.
:) "With Billy, I
wouldn't have been surprised if he had come to me saying this. With Bobby, I was prepared for him to come to
me with this. But I never expected you to be
the one
who said this."
I couldn't help but
laugh. I guess I should pursue a career in acting. My mom said that she only wished I had come to
her about it sooner.
She went
to tell
Billy, Bobby,
and Anna. Then
the procession began. I was in my room, and one by one they
walked in. First came Bobby. He said that
he still loves me, and that he isn't worried about me in my life, but rather
in the world
after. In other
words, "You're going to hell, but I still love you." In the middle of his schpiel, he asks me,
"What happened to your toe?" It was the weirdest
question, but I told him why my
toenail was bruised (it happened when I played Brad in tennis a few
weeks ago, and
I have
to wait for the nail to grow
out before I can fix it)
Then
Billy came in. He became a little more philosophical, but still had the
basic "I love you, but you're going
to hell" view. He started asking questions about how
I knew and whether or not I had a choice
in the matter. I don't know
any way
to prove to
them that it's not a conscious choice... Of course I can't go into the reasons as to how I know to them... They don't
want to hear about my encounter with Dave, or the crush on Raul, or every day how
when I masturbate that I think about
men even if I try
not to... It's just not something explainable.
Anna popped in and said
that she loved
me, but
that was it, basically.
That was pretty much all that
happened last
night. I went to bed, and was so shaken that I
didn't even think about masturbation all night. For me,
that's particularly
strange, so it
shows that
I had some heavy stuff to think about.
This morning,
I woke up to my father
asking me if I was going
out to cut
tobacco, and I said yes. I got
up and got dressed, then went for
a coke, and he
wanted to talk with me. The most pain came
next, but I was
ready. I had
to be. His words were like peroxide, they sting at
first, but it's really best
in the long run.
(Bravo, nice simile!)
"Mom told me
the problem that you
had yesterday. She says you think you're gay."
"I AM gay." I said
it cold and decisively; I have
no idea
where the courage
for it came
from. Maybe it was hate, or anger, or pain,
I dunno. He didn't
believe it though... It
was as I thought, I'm
still a
child in his eyes. His main concern
was the internet. He seems to think that people online have coerced me into
thinking that I'm
gay. I tried explaining that I don't
even know any gay people and that
I made the
conclusions all on my own, but he only
hears what he
wants to, and he didn't want to hear any of that. He still thinks that
the internet is
the problem. What he doesn't even realize is that
it was the internet that quite possibly saved me from suicide.
That was another fear of my
mom's that I had to allay the night before.
I cut tobacco for 5
and a half hours today. Whenever my dad and I had
a moment in private, he'd say again, something like "Don't let
anyone put a label on
you" or "Don't say that you're
gay on the internet, because then there will be a record of it" or "Saying that you're gay will come back to haunt you. You'll never get
a job because of it." Leave it to my father to think about
money to the bitter
end. He'll die while counting the money in his wallet, I bet.
He also brought up something that hurts
a lot... It was an incident that I
hoped to leave behind me, because it
brings so much shame to me
that I want to die... But
I'm going to be strong,
and I'm
going to explain it in here as well as I can remember it. It happened in 7th grade, two weeks
from the end of school...
I was
eating lunch. Yes, I had lunch!!!
:) Well, that
wasn't really so good on this occasion... See, my friend Ernie and I were joking around. I don't even remember what it
was, but
he made sort of a gay
motion. o_O He
reached down
towards my penis and made squeezing motions,
but didn't actually touch it or anything.
It pains me to say that... Well, I wanted
to be funny. I had no idea what I
would cause,
but I walked over to Pam and Stephanie and sat down beside them.
We weren't very good friends, so they
asked why I
was sitting with them.
"Ernie just grabbed my penis. o_O"
I had no IDEA what that would cause! It was meant
as a joke, really!
But then Stephanie goes over to Ernie, and tells him that I said that he was gay. At
this point, the joke is over, and I've
moved on to talking to someone.
Well, a minute later, someone
grabs me from behind
and throws me off of
my chair. Keep in mind, Ernie is a
fat guy, so
he weighs
about 250 lbs, and this
is probably before puberty (which
means that this is
before I knew
I was
gay, keep in mind)
:P Well, calmly
I got
up and
sat back down,
and he screamed at
me, "WHY DID
YOU SAY I WAS GAY!?", and before I could even
lay a
hand on him or give a response, an administrator was between us. Well,
we were taken to the office.
At this point, they had us in the same room
together, alone. Yeah, that's smart!
Idiots... Fortunately, I worked things out with him. We were both fine
by the point they called
us in to discuss it, which
really makes
no sense. Everything
was OK, so why
drag rules or parents into it?
Well,
unfortunately, there were several
punks who wanted to get
out of class.
They were such bastards, and caused the whole thing to escalate to a level where it didn't need
to be. According to
them, they saw
everything that had happened. "Randy
hit Ernie, then Ernie hit Randy back. They hit each other again a bunch of times." When the vice principal read these "eye-witness
accounts" to us, Ernie and I started to spaz
out! At this
point, we
were friends again, and did our best
to work together to kill this. We both made it
perfectly clear that there was no fight, and that everything
was OK.
Still, at this
point, everyone thought Ernie was gay because he supposedly grabbed me... I'm such
a bastard to turn on my own friend like that.
My dad
asked what the
deal was with that, and I don't know
how I did, but I somehow
dismissed what he said because
I really didn't
want to
talk about it. It
just shook me up really bad.
Later, Billy tells
me that he went to see the pastor,
and he thinks that it's possible
that I will be
straight.
Again, later, I
go to ask a
simple question of my mom,
"Are you going
to make dinner?", and get
something I really don't want. She goes on for a long time that she thinks that I really want
to be straight, and
that I should
see a professional who will be able to
help me "become" straight. I just can't convince them.
I thought she said that she'd respect
my decisions... They're all telling me how
bad my future's going to be,
and they don't even seem to realize that I've already
thought this over
a million times before!!!
AAAAAAARRRRRAAAAAAGGGGHHAHAAAHHHH!!!!!! I
feel the need to scream, because I have nothing else to say to them besides "Go away".