Tag: Gay

Dirty Old Man

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Alex was the curiosity of the EMT class.  Of latin descent, he has tan skin with thick black hair and gorgeous brown eyes.  It’s clear Alex works out and for good reason.

What made Alex the curiosity of the class was that we never knew what he would be wearing.  The first night of class, it was about a quadrillion degrees outside and he wore soccer shorts and a t-shirt; typical college kid attire.  “Nice,” I thought, “that look is working for him… and for me.”  The next few classes he wore sweats, fairly ordinary.  A couple of weeks in, however he came to class wearing flannel lounge pants and a hoody.  By this time, giving Alex a once over was a routine practice for Jafet and me.  We looked at the pajama-ed spectacle and then we looked at each other in disbelief.  (Why do people leave the house in their jammies?)  (Why do grown bloggers use words like “jammies”?) (Anywho)

Most classes Alex came to school in work pants and a T-shirt emblazoned (you should pardon the pun) with his fire academy logo.  “Now I know why he always looks so fit,” I thought.

One day Alex blew us all away arriving to class wearing black wool slacks, a purple dress shirt and coordinating tie.  The clothes fit him nicely and flatter his physique.  You have to know the whole class, including Mr. William’s, took note of how he was dressed!

Alex is very gung-ho!  One night the guy who runs the concessions stand got mugged and hit over the head.  We called 911, but Mr. Williams treated him while we waited for the responders.  Alex was right there in the thick of it helping with the assessment… With no gloves on; the number one rule of EMT-ing.

In my opinion, Alex was one of the best in the class.  Better than me in skill if not in knowledge.

He showed up at school Wednesday night, I guess to pick up his course completion certificate, but he stayed to help the students with skills.  While Mr. William’s was giving lecture to the class, Alex and I were out in the hall inspecting the equipment we would be using and talking about our future plans.  The subject of Ambulance Driver Licenses, and the cost of insurance to the operating companies came up.  That’s when he said it.

“I’m 18, so I probably won’t be getting hired for a while.”

I almost dropped whatever I was holding as I stared at him, mouth agape.  “I’m sorry,” I began, “did you just say you are 18 years old?”  He confirmed it.  “When is your birthday?” I couldn’t believe he could have been a “child” in class.

“March,” he answered.  “I’ll be 19 next month.  My plan is to be a medic (paramedic) by 21.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said a little too emphatically.  “I knew you were young, but I had no idea you were this young!”

I kinda had a secret crush on him.  I mean it’s not like I had many any lacivious lustful thoughts or anything but damn!!

I’m a dirty old man…

Is There A Certain Kind of Store For That?

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

On the television show Glee, there is a gay character by the name of Kurt.  Kurt has known all along that he was gay and never tried to hide the fact from anyone.  After a year and half of being terrorized by one of the jocks in the school (a self hating, closeted homosexual, in denial) he transferred to another school, a private school with a zero tolerance policy for bullying.  He met Blaine who is also gay and they have become friends, though it seems apparent that the relationship is budding into something more.

Each week I watch as Kurt grows and learns from his experiences and gradually becomes a more secure, self-confident person, able to accept himself as he is and surviving the adversity he experiences.  The relationship between Kurt and Blaine is very special to me to watch because it mirrors something I very much wish that I had.

~~~~~

On the television show 90210, there is a gay character by the name of Teddy.  Teddy is just coming to terms with being gay.  He was an All American Athlete, professional tennis player until he injured his knee.  Blond hair, blue eyes, and a body that goes on for days (what does that even mean?)  Teddy had a reputation as a ladies man, which stood in the way of him having a relationship with, Silver, his girlfriend last season before she finally got over the hype and gave him a chance.

This season has been about Teddy coming to terms with his sexuality and coming out to his friends.  It’s a story that is still being told, but aside from what I see as an accelerated time line, has been very believable and satisfying.

While drunk, Teddy hooked up with a guy name Ian at the beginning of the season and then tried to pretend it never happened, denying any confusion about his sexuality, even to Ian.  Right before the winter hiatus Teddy admitted to Ian that he was gay and that he wanted to be with Ian but needed time, before telling anybody about it.  Of course, Ian agreed, they kissed and one of Teddy’s friends saw them.

A couple of weeks ago, Teddy finally came out publicly, letting all his friends know that he was gay and was with Ian, only to have something come between them and he ended his relationship with Ian.  Last week’s episode saw Teddy sulking and having his ex-girlfriend, now friend-friend supporting him by taking him to do something she already knows lifts his spirits; hitting tennis balls off the roof of some building or other.  Just as Teddy starts feeling better he hits one last ball off the roof and we hear a male voice cry out in pain.  In the next scene, we see Teddy and Silver standing over a guy, dressed in soccer attire, sitting on a bench with an ice pack on his eye.  Teddy offers an  apology, the guy asks what they were doing and Teddy tells him that Silver was supporting him after a bad break-up.  The soccer player tells Teddy that the person must have messed him up pretty badly and before he thinks about it Teddy says, “Yeah.  He did.”  There’s an awkward silence as Teddy realizes what he just said and as the soccer stud doesn’t react to it, and then Soccer Stud says, “Yeah.  Well, I’ve been there,” before writing his phone number on Teddy’s tennis ball and suggesting that maybe Teddy could give him a free tennis lesson “to make up for hitting him.”

In this week’s episode we see Teddy’s friends, Dixon, Navid and Liam talking about going to a girls volleyball game to cover the story for the school news.  Just then Teddy walks in and they shut up.  There’s an awkward moment when Teddy feels left out and the idiots guys feel awkward for having talked about girls within the ear shot of the gay guy.  Later Teddy see’s Silver in the courtyard and they talk about how he feels like he’s out in the cold with all his friends.  Silver scolds the idiots boys who confess that they thought Teddy would be uncomfortable with what they were talking about and that they didn’t mean to be leaving him out.  The idiots guys decide to make it up to Teddy and invite him to hang out.  Teddy agrees without knowing what they have planned only to realize, too late, that they are taking him to a gay bar.  When this is revealed to the audience, my own anxiety level skyrocketed as I imagined being in Teddy’s shoes.

Inside, the bar is full of muscular, shirtless guys dancing and the friends stand dumbfounded, staring at the crowd.  Everyone is awkward, the guys don’t know what to think, and then a guy comes over to them and asks if he can buy Liam a drink.  Liam storms out and stands on the sidewalk outside, as if that’s going to make him less appealing to the gay guys in the area, and soon he is joined by Teddy.  They have a nice little heart to heart in which Liam tells Teddy he’s just not comfortable in that place and Teddy tells Liam he isn’t either.

“This just isn’t my scene,” Teddy says.

“So, what is?” Liam asks.

There is a moment of silence as Teddy looks through the huge window at Dixon and Navid dancing together while the pedophiles guys in the bar watch.  Teddy shakes his head in uncertainty, not disgust, and says, “I don’t really know.  But it’s not this.”  In that moment I can truly relate to Teddy.

Liam and Teddy leave to get a burger and leave Dixon and Navid inside with their admirers.

~~~~~

Heather, as I have mentioned before, is perhaps the one and only person in the world who has taken the time to know me of her own volition.  Deb probably knows me as well as Heather does, but I pay her for that and as much as I’d like to be able to look beyond the business nature of our relationship, I just can’t.  Heather knows me because she wants to.  She wants to take the time to see and understand me.  She wants to know the truth of my existence and not just the flowery, fun, shiny, “happy” side of my life (because she knows it’s not real).

While having dinner on Saturday night, I decided to ask her a loaded question.  I didn’t know how far the conversation would go, or just how useful it would prove to be, but I decided it was worth a shot.

“So tell me,” I started, “what’s wrong with me?”

“Well!  How much time have you got?” she asked, with a chuckle.  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with you? In what context?”

“Socially,” I answered.  “Why can’t I meet people?”

I don’t remember the exact dialogue of the conversation but she asked me for more specifics about what I was thinking and it came down to this.  Stereotypes exist for a reason.  I truly believe that.  The stereotype of a modern-day gay man is one of promiscuity, lecherous even, damn near predatory at times.  I saw a movie once in which one of the characters talked about how sex, for gay men, is like a handshake.  I am not like that.  I wasn’t like that before I knew I was gay and I’m not like that now.  But I buy into the stereotype… Because stereotypes exist for a reason.  And as such, I don’t trust gay men (I mean, I don’t really trust anybody, but for the purposes of this conversation, I don’t trust gay men.)

I know it’s not realistic to compare my life to characters on television or in movies and for the most part I try not to do that, but T.V. and movie scripts are based in some modicum of reality and so when I see things that I like, but which don’t jive with my own experience it’s disheartening, to say the least.

You see it all the time on television.  Gay characters meet in the most ordinary of places under the most ordinary of circumstances and they fall in love and have a relationship, like I would like to have.  Depending on the show their might be some “cruzing”/ “club scene” hooking up taking place but rarely is that where the lasting relationships come from; kind of like reality.  But these guys go about their day-to-day lives and meet each other in the most random and ordinary of circumstances and end up in relationships.  Meanwhile, I go about my day-to-day life which includes an overabundance of ordinary circumstances and I never meet anybody who I know is gay first of all, and with whom I have a connection, secondly.  I never have a moment of realization in which we both realize the other person is “family”.  I never meet a guy, think he’s attractive and have certainty that he’s gay and he knows I am as well and then bond and have anything, whatsoever, evolve from that.

I go to work.  I go shopping.  I go to school.  I go to the gym.  I go to Big Brothers and Big Sisters events.  I go to random training opportunities a couple of times a year.  I may not be a social butterfly, but I’m honestly not a shut in, either and yet, never once have I met someone I thought could be something more and had it turn out to be so.

Heather suggested that I should look into on-line dating.  Honestly, that idea is abhorrent to me, for me. But even if it weren’t, stereotypes.  Exist.  For.  A reason.  What little exposure I have had to the world of on-line gay dating has proved that those men are looking to live up to the stereotype, and I am not.  So I don’t trust it.  I don’t trust them.  And honestly, I’m afraid of them.

Heather says I lack self-esteem…  Well, DUH!  If anybody knows where I can buy some of that, please let me know!

All In Just A Few Short Hours

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

After work yesterday I went to the school to sit in on the EMT class.  Last night was a very long, drawn-out, not terribly succinct lecture on anatomy, given by sir stutters-a-lot.  It was good review, but I remembered pretty much everything he talked about.

Mr. Williams gave “the kids” the test in groups.  I can’t remember if we took it in groups or individually, but I think they should have to take it as individuals.  I hung around in the front of the room with the other non-students and watched and waited.  I helped grade the tests, which most of the kids stood around and watched because they wanted to know how they did.

They seemed to be under the misimpression that I’m someone special, because they kept asking me questions.

Can we look at the test papers again and see what we missed? I don’t know you’ll have to ask Johaun. (Johaun, pronounced Joe-Hahn, is the Teachers Assistant)

Will we review the tests in class? I doubt it, but you could ask Johaun about it.

Will there be another test on Wednesday night? I don’t think so, but maybe.

What will it be about?  I don’t know.  You’ll have to ask Johaun.  Now stop talking to me, I’m trying to grade this test.

Are you sensing a trend yet?  Johaun is the TA.  Johaun is the man who knows the plan (assuming there really is a plan.)  Johaun is the one with the authority.  I’m only putting on an act while I wield the red pen.

~~~~~

I didn’t get home until nearly 10:00.  I hadn’t had dinner.  I didn’t have any clothes ironed and ready to wear today.  My kitchen was a mess and all the cat food bowls were dirty as were both of my blenders; which I would need this morning for feeding my household.

I changed clothes and went into the bathroom to… take care of business.  While I was sitting there, Mischa came wandering in and stood on his back legs putting his front legs on my knee and asking for some attention.  I noticed a significant amount of mucous in the corner of his right eye, so I used a tissue to wipe that away and scratched his head a little bit.  He walked away and came back a few minutes later.  I noticed that his eye lid was glistening and he was blinking his eye a lot, keeping it closed more than opened.  I scooped him up and held him in my arms and said, “you’re not going to like this very much, but hopefully it will help you” before I dripped a few drops of Visene is his eye.  I was right, he didn’t like it much.  I was wrong, it didn’t help any.  I looked into his eye but I didn’t see any obvious injuries or problems.  It looks like the corner of his eye, might be cut or torn slightly, leaving a larger space than his left eye, but I may just be imagining it.  If the favoring and/or discharge persists, we’ll have to make a dreaded trip to the vets office.  He’ll like that even less.

I quickly emptied, refilled and started the dishwasher.  I chopped the green onions and cilantro that would go into my Chicken A l’Orange that I had for dinner.  Fortunately, I had some left over rice in the refrigerator so I didn’t have to cook that too.  While the Chicken was browning I mixed a cocktail that I discovered a week ago at The Olive Garden.  Citron Vodka with Lemoncello and Strawberry puree.  Really tasty.  Really fun to make.  Really shouldn’t have bought the stuff to make it at home, but I digress.

I ate dinner while watching Live with Regis and Kelly.  It’s their 10th anniversary and naturally Gelman, the producer, is making a big hoopla about it.  I used to watch Live with Regis and Kathy Lee every day, but I really watched it for Kathy Lee and I only stuck around after her departure out of idle curiosity and just long enough to find out who would replace her.  I started recording the show again yesterday, because after 117 years on the air, Regis Philbin is finally retiring… Apparently.  I’m curious about how things will go and who will replace him.  (In my opinion they should just end the show, but what do I know.)

Chris Colfer from Glee was one of their guests and they played a clip from tonight’s show.

SPOILER ALERT:  Kurt and Blaine are standing at a counter in a coffee shop.  Blaine orders, “I’ll have a tall regular drip and a [I forget the name of the actual drink] for this guy.  And let’s get one of those [insert some cookie or pastry item here] to share, please.” He takes out his wallet and begins fishing for the money to pay for his order.

Kurt has an astonished look on his face as Blaine turns and looks at him.  “You know my coffee,” Kurt says disbelieving.

“Of course I do silly,” Blaine says while Kurt reaches into his pocket for the cash.  Blaine smiles sweetly while looking Kurt in the eyes and tells him to put his money away before walking out of frame with his coffee and cookie.

Kurt looks at the cashier as he reaches for his coffee drink and says, “This is my new favorite holiday.”

AND, SCENE.

Kurt has an astonished look on his face as Blaine turns and looks at him.  “You know my coffee,” Kurt says disbelieving, as I say to no one in particular, “OF COURSE HE DOES, stupid.  He’s in love with you and has been since the day you met.”

I ironed my clothes for today and I went to bed.

I dreamed.

~~~~~

I was at the school, sitting at one of the tables, grading a test.  Students were around and talking, but not crowded around me, as was the reality last night.  Other seats at the table which I sat were filled with students, primarily chatting amongst themselves.  I’m aware of a student sitting next to me and as I dream and my unconscious mind must fill the void, the student takes on the form of this guy. –>

My focus is on the paper in front of me.  My right hand holds a pen as I scan the page prepared to mark wrong answers.  My left hand is lightly placed on top of the table, my fingers slightly curled leaving a space below my palm.

As I continue to grade the test I’m aware that the student has placed his hand on the table as well, near my hand, but not touching.  I smile lightly as a tingle runs down my spine.  As my mind narrates the dream and fills in the voids of knowledge and emotion, I’m aware that there has been an unspoken attraction toward this boy and an uncertain perception of reciprocation.  I continue to grade the test.

After a brief, trepidatious moment – perhaps he was testing the waters – he lifts his hand off of the table and slides it under my arm, placing his hand back on the table on the nearer side of mine.  He scoots his chair closer and there is electricity in the air between our bodies.  My smile grows and spreads to my eyes as I briefly redirect my gaze at his strong, sinewy hand, which grazes ever so slightly against my thumb.  I return my attention to the test.  I don’t know exactly what is happening, but I like it.

After another moment, perhaps because I have not resisted, perhaps because he sees my smile, he turns his hand over and slides it under mine, interlacing his fingers with mine.  I stop grading the test and I turn my head to look at this boys handsome, sweet face.   As I look at him, he turns and looks back at me with the kindest eyes I think I’ve ever seen and he smiles a smile that conveys so much innocence and sincerity.  I am taken aback for a moment as I realize the air of casualness with which he performed this act of simple affection, completely devoid of any self-consciousness.  I realize that while I was aware of his presence and his movements, I was not aware that he had been engaged in conversation with another student, the entire time and this feels like the most natural thing in the world.

The class ends and he asks to meet me at my house.  I have to make a stop on the way so I tell him I’ll see him there.  As we part ways I begin to worry.  I’m not your stereo typical gay man.  I’m not out, running around looking for the next hook up, the next easy lay.  I want a relationship with substance and commitment.  What if I misread his intention.  What if he just wants to fool around and then move on?

I stand in front of my apartment door, knowing, inexplicably, that he is inside waiting for me.  I’m nervous and anxious about what I’ll find on the other side of the door, but I know what I want to say and I’m optimistic about his reaction.

I open the door and look inside and there he is, sitting on my couch looking happily toward me as I walk in, encouraged about the direction this conversation will take, hopeful that he wants more than just a casual fling.

I walk in, close the door behind me…

And then I woke up.

~~~~~

Today, I am sad.

Just the way I am

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Yesterday in therapy, I talked to Deb about the “Amber Alert” from last week.  I was surprised, as I told her the story, to hear the anger in my voice.  I really didn’t realize I was “angry” about the whole thing.  This is just Amber.  This is how she is.  And over the years, we have just grown apart because of it.

This time last year, my mother asked me if  I had gotten Amber’s Christmas card, a photo of her children.  I told  her I had not and she said she would forward me the one she got.  I told her it wasn’t necessary for her to do that.

“Aren’t you guys friends anymore?” my mother asked, astonished.

“Not really,” I answered her honestly.  “I mean, nothing really happened to end our friendship, we’ve just, sort of, disconnected.  We don’t really have anything in common anymore and we haven’t talked in ages.”  I told her the card didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t have a burning desire to see the picture of the kids.  My mother seemed to find this hurtful in some way, using her “jewish mother” tone of voice to say, “Ooook.  I’ll just keep it then.  I like other people’s kids.”

It seems… maybe… that I might… have seemed a little hostile when talking about this card… maybe.  Deb asked me what it was about the card that bothered me.  At first I really didn’t know what she meant.  I didn’t realized that I was conveying serious displeasure about the subject.  I gave her a few answers:

“What’s the point?”

“It’s a waste.”

“Why do I want pictures of other people’s kids?”

None of these answers seemed to satisfy Deb.  “I think there’s more,” she kept saying.

I told her, I don’t understand why people send out pictures of their children as a Christmas card.  I’ve gotten them from other people as well.  People I don’t really interact with.  People who I’m no longer (or never was) close to.  People who can’t be bothered to give me the time of day for months and years at a time and then one day decide to send me a picture of their kids as a Christmas card, without bothering to personalize it in any way.

“It feels like an afterthought,” I told her, “like they didn’t really care that much.  I imagine them sitting down at their dinner table with a stack of these damn picture cards, a stack of envelopes and their rolodex.  They pick up a card, they right a nice greeting to the recipient and they pop it into the envelope and they send it on it’s way.  They get to the end of their list and there’s one card left.  ‘What should I do with this one?’ they wonder aloud.  ‘Eh.  I guess I could send it to Kevin.’

“The sentiment feels disingenuos.  Like I was nothing more than an afterhought and I wasn’t any more important than a quick flip of the wrist, and off the last card goes.

“I’m not attached to these people’s children, and they couldn’t even be bothered to write a simple ‘Merry Christmas.  Wish you were here.’  What’s the point?”

The answer still didn’t seem enough.  “I keep feeling like you’re looking for me to tell you that I’m some how jealous or envious of these people having families, but I swear to you, that thought has never entered my mind… Before right now.”

That’s when the real irony of the situation hit me.  I told my sister, in October, “I need good quality, non-cell phone digital pictures of the children so I can print them out and hang them on my office wall.”

“I know,” she replied.  “I need to take their picture for the Christmas card anyway.”  The thought crossed my mind that it was a lame card.  Nobody wants a card with pictures of other peoples’ kids.  But at least it would get me a picture of my neices and nephew.  Out of all the “christmas card” picutres of other people’s kids I got this year, the one person from whom I would have liked to, my sister, didn’t even send one to me.

Deb asked me for more.  More explanation why I was so unahppy to receive the child-photo-christmas cards.  Why did it feel disingenuos to me?  The only answer I could give her is that it felt one sided, like people were foisting upon me something I didn’t care about without any interest or concern about whether I was interested; without any interest or concern about me.

“Say more,” she prompted.

“To me,” I told her, “Friendship goes two ways.  Sure, we all want to talk about ourselves.  We all want people to listen to us as we tell them about ourselves.  But friendship?, is about talking about the other person.  Friendship is about asking the other person how they are doing.  What’s new with them?  What, if anything, do they need?  Hopefully, after they have answered those questions they will turn around and ask you about you, but if they don’t, that’s when you can say, ‘OK.  Glad to hear your doing well.’ and then proceed to tell them about you.

“THAT is what I didn’t get from Amber for a very long time.  It’s all one sided!”

“Of course it is!” Deb answered.  “You made it that way.  You didn’t tell her about you.”

“She didn’t ask about me.  She didn’t express a genuine interest about me.  She didn’t really want to know about me.”

“She didn’t?” Deb asked me.  “You said she asked about your love life.”

It’s true Amber always asked the dreaded “when-are-you-going-to-get-a-girlfriend-you-need-a-girlfriend-when-are-you-going-to-get-married?” questions, but she didn’t want to know what I would have told her, had I answered those questions honestly.  She didn’t want to know that I am attracted to strong, healthy, athletic men, preferably with a nice tan and not much hair below the neck.  She didin’t want to know that the kind of relationship I was interested in, the kind of sex I wanted to have, wasn’t going to result in the creation of a baby.  She didn’t want to know that the kind of marriage I would want is not even legal in 45 US States.  So I make sarcastic, sometimes even snide remarks, (“What are you?  My Grandmother?  Would you like to pinch my cheeks and talk about my punum too?”) and she either doesn’t get the point or she pretends not to and continues to push.

“So she doesn’t know the truth and the dialoge is one sided because she feels free to express, maybe even push, her thoughts and feelings and what she believes, but you don’t do the same.  And I think we see this over and over again where you form these relationships where you feel like you have to sit back and allow the other person to force their perspectives on you and you start to feel like you can’t express yourself and be who you are around them.  And then you start to accept this as how things are.  I’m concerned that you make it OK.  That you give people permission to do this to you.  And then you feel more and more like you can’t be who you are and be open and honest with people.”

…..

WELL, DUH!

It Gets Better?

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

I’ve struggled greatly with how and whether to write this.  I’m still not entirely sure what to say.  And I’m truly, if unrealistically concerned that somehow, this will be the post that I write that will be seen by more than the 6 or 8 people who usually read my blog and that somehow my words will be misconstrued as something more than they are.

By now we all know about the number of teens who have committed suicide recently after having been torturously bullied by their classmates for being, or being perceived to be, gay.  Most of you are probably aware of the “It Gets Better” campaign and the numerous videos that have been made of people, some in a position to know, some not, telling the youth of this world that life gets better and that they have so much to look forward to and that if they’ll just stick it out until they graduate they can have the life they want, free from bullying and torment, free to live openly and proudly and freely as who or what they determine for themselves that they are.

To that I say, “Don’t bet on it!”

My story is about more than just being a gay kid.  Hell, I didn’t even know I was a gay kid!  Nevertheless, I was bullied and beaten and name-called; abused by my classmates with words I prefer not to use, even as an example.  I didn’t know why they would call me that and I wondered what they thought they saw in me that I didn’t think I saw in myself that would prompt them to be so hurtful.

But it was more.  I wasn’t just called names because they perceived me to be gay.  I was tormented for many reasons.  And when I went home after school into what was supposed to be a safe place of refuge, I was tormented for entirely different reasons in new and terrible ways.  I was raised by a single mother.  While she was at work, I was at home alone with my older siblings, a brother five years older and a sister three years older.  My brother was abusive; he once broke my nose over the use of an alarm clock… MY alarm clock, that I bought, with MY own money.  That was the worst, but he abused me often, physically and emotionally.

What my mother did was worse.  In the case of all three of her children she “disciplined” us into submission so that long before hitting our teens, or even our “tweens” to use a modern term, there was no longer a need for “discipline.”  So instead of physical abuse, I suffered emotional abuse; bullying of its own kind.  I wanted to be close to her, she told me I was “in the way”.  I wanted to talk to her, she turned up the volume on the television.  I told her I was horribly depressed, she told me I wasn’t and “never say that again.”  I told her I didn’t have any friends and I was miserable, she told me “Well that’s your problem, isn’t it?”

I was raised in the “Bible Belt” of America where there’s a church on every street corner and if you’re politics aren’t ultra-conservative, you’re a sinner who will burn in hell, or so I was led to believe.  In the Bible Belt… where Christianity, acceptance and God’s perfect love abound, right?

I’d be lying if I said I never had feelings and urges I didn’t understand.  If I said I never felt desires that I was ashamed of.  I was embarrassed by my body and just plain scared of sexuality in general, fearful that I would cross some boundary into sinfulness; more fearful that I’d discover something about myself that I couldn’t handle.

When I was 12, I spent the night at a friend’s house and while he was using the bathroom, with the door open, he asked me if I was in puberty yet.  He told me that he had a hair and then he wanted me to come see it. I didn’t want to because I would have to look at his penis to see it.

When I was 17, I was hopelessly in love with my best friend, I just didn’t know it then.  I spent the night at his house one time, and more than once during that night, I wished something would “accidentally” happen before immediately catching myself and feeling ashamed, embarrassed to look him in the eye over something he didn’t even know.

My mother told me repeatedly throughout my life that being gay was a sin, it wasn’t something that I could accept about myself.  And that belief was only reinforced every Sunday and Wednesday night at church.  And do you think that bullying and hateful speech was limited to school?  It wasn’t!  I got it at church too.  At church! Children and teenagers running around a very highly reputed, internationally respected institution yelling “F____t!” at the top of their lungs and aimed at one specific person.  Me.  Yeah, this was a safe and loving, welcoming environment.

In every circle of my life I was reminded almost daily that to be a Christian, to be acceptable in the eyes of God and man, I had to be straight.  I had to grow up and fall in love, and get married (to a woman) and have 2.5 children with a dog and a white picket fence.  I could never admit to anyone that I didn’t want any of that.

I was miserable every minute of every day.  I wanted to be out of that situation at every turn.  I went to bed every night and prayed I would wake up as someone else.  I drifted off to sleep at night begging God to let me off the hook and take me in my sleep.  I never cried; it wasn’t safe to do so. I still don’t cry.

And if I’m to be completely honest, I tried to kill myself, more than once.  I was terrified of pain, and completely unsure of where I believed my soul would go if I killed myself so, no, I didn’t try very hard.  I buried my face in my pillow and hoped I’d “accidentally” suffocate in my sleep.  I don’t suppose I ever really believed it would work and maybe on some level deep down, I didn’t want it to, but I was sincere in my attempts nonetheless.

The one thing that kept me going, the one hope, the one belief that got me out of bed everyday and kept me moving in my life was that one day life would get better.  I would move on from this place.  I would live on my own, in my own place with my own feelings and beliefs and the real world of an adult would be a better place.  I would be OK.  I believed that because I had to believe something would change.

Twelve years ago, I moved to arguably the most liberal, inclusive, welcoming, accepting place in this country.  I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since.  I have worked the last eight and a half years for a company with a sterling reputation for diversity, inclusiveness, acceptance and equality.  We rate 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Buying for Equality Guide which means we have full domestic partner benefits, nondiscrimination practices in hiring and, as a corporation, actively supports public equality.  And still “we” are not perfect.

Despite the community in which I live, this is still a nation of in-equality.  We are still a discriminating people.  Our institutions still bully.  Though things are still in a state of flux, as of this moment, I can not get married.  Even if I could, I couldn’t reap the federal financial benefits of being married.  Up until a week ago, I could serve in the armed forces if I wanted, but I couldn’t tell anybody the truth about myself while I did it.  My status as a homosexual man isn’t recognized as a protected minority even though, statistically, the proof is irrefutable, and as such I am not entitled to the protections afforded to minority populations.  You can call it what you like; I call it bullying.

Oh sure, some of the circumstances have changed, but many of them have not.  I still don’t feel safe to reveal myself to the people around me.  I still don’t have the confidence to be open and free in the world I live.  Every day there are stories in the news of discrimination in the world.

It’s not fair to say that I’m in this place because I’m gay.  And it’s not fair to say that gay teenagers today have everything in their favor except that they happen to be gay.  My story is not unique.

So when I hear these messages, telling kids “It Gets Better“, I have to ask: Does it?  Really?

I don’t have the answers.  I wish I did.  I know it’s not suicide!

I also know it’s not false hope and unreliable promises of a better tomorrow.