Well THAT is just statistically IMPOSSIBLE

So yeah, that was a fun first term. Spent three weeks nearly having a complete breakdown trying to tell someone, ANYONE other than the guy I like and already had told that boobs just don't do it for me. And then that Friday night happened...

I've been rooming with the same guy at school for three years. First year was a complete accident, might have been the people in charge noticing we lived, at the time, five minutes away from each other. This arrangement has worked fairly well, since he is super chill and handedly puts up with my lack of organization. Needless to say, we know each other very well since he showed up back in 7th grade.

Basically what happened that day was this: after a week of loosing my mind, I decided the best people to talk to were the dudes at my videogame project meeting, since they are all RAs and are trained in being, you know, good people in these situations. I stated I had a rough week, and when they asked why, I told them. And nothing happened. The just nodded in agreement that that crap sucked, and the meeting went forward as usual. Which was just what I needed, to be assured that nothing would change.

So that night, I decided to tell my roommate. Granted, I had considered him once for a short while, but had somehow divined that he would never be interested.

And so the big moment came while we laid in our beds in the dark: the first time I would utter those terrifying words out loud. The only other who knew was notified via email, and he too had told me in his response. And so I asked him, more accurately I asked the dark ceiling, if I could tell him something.

And I did.

And you know what? He agreed and promptly informed me that he had been gay the whole time. This quickly devolved into us making fun of one of our roommates who lives in the single down the hall whose 'gaydar' if you will allow the term is so broken, or our respective ruses have been so effective, that he has no idea.

Anyway, after kavetching about that, he asked if it meant we could now use the word 'faggot', commenting that, meaning aside, it had tremendous power sonically. I agreed, and the conversation moved to making that roommate uncomfortable by commenting on hot dudes in public, which would surely make him cringe. We then discussed how hard it was to find good erotic material that wasn't clearly produced by morons. The most aggravating thing we agreed upon, though, was being afraid of dancing in public. As if, somehow, the fact that neither of us had ever dated a girl, he dresses well and takes care of his hair, and I rant about LGBT issues and comment that "I don't get what the big deal with breasts is" all the time DIDN'T already out us.

This was all accompanied by much giggling, and my speech patterns honestly veered a little in the flaming direction (what a relief THAT was). He felt much better afterward, and frankly the guy hasn't stopped smiling since.

Fast forward two days, and my third roommate informs me he is transgender (explains a hell of alot). That coupled with the forcibly repressed transgenderism ( :tantrum: ) of another friend of ours brings the total to FIVE people with non-straight orientations. The oblivious one's circle of friends at school is small enough for this to constitute what appears to be a statistical anomaly.

Not to mention the fact that the three other dudes he is living with are all "different" and one is shortly going to be dating a guy. Ooo, I can't wait to see the look on his face.

Now all I have to do is get over the mountain of emotional crap in the way of telling my parents that they probably won't be getting any grandchildren out of me (so far that appears to be the big gripe).

 

Oh, thanks guys! I'm warm and fuzzy inside. (&&&)

I guess it is the area I'm in; hippie-ish in sentiment. I mean, we're ALL OVER the place. With my friends at home it's like...10, MAYBE 11 people if my gaydar is functioning properly (there's one dude in the group who is VERY suspicious, and my gaydar so far hasn't let me down.)

 

Update: told my mom today, a little ahead of schedule...

We were driving to a doctor's appointment, a town away so like twenty minutes, and the commercials on the radio stopped.

Over the airwaves the slightly guttural and deep voice of Rush Limbaugh could clearly be heard.

"What are we listening to?" I asked sternly, as some parent might of their child's music.

"Its Rush Limbaugh." My mother and I have had this argument before, over Rush, over Hannity, over Glen Beck, over Fox News. Her tone was mild but tinged by my previous tantrums.

I flatly stated "No, we aren't" and turned off the radio. What followed was stupid, but strangely not heated. Apparently I don't have the right to do that, which I don't, and furthermore my mother has never done such a thing to me regarding the computer or the television, which she hasn't.

But we weren't talking about musical taste or Top Gear versus Titanic. We were talking about a bigoted, hateful, twisted man that hates me even though he has never met me. This wasn't about "I don't agree with him" but "he doesn't think I should exist."

My mother has never been one for introspection or 'internal debate' (what I tend to do when I am mulling over something in my head). She said herself, "I cannot assimilate information like you can, but I can feel." My sister and I are convinced this is a lie produced from growing up with 1950s morals, but the point is that is how she argues and often that means she conflates feelings with facts and taught principles with absolute morality. Sadly, unless it affects her, and even if it does, she feels there is no way for her to care or do anything about it. This has lead to a human bereft of social awareness, filed with pent up anger, and operating under the confused mores usually reserved for the crazy evangelicals.

No surprise, and yet again, the significance of Limbaugh's opinions of me, her, of my friends, of her friends, was lost on her. She tried to explain herself, saying, as usual, that she doesn't even listen to what he is saying, it is just noise for her. Great, like that makes me feel better; when there is nothing to listen to, you choose garbage over, ANYTHING else.

Finally, this time, I cried. I was just silent and cried. I said she didn't understand, that she just didn't. No matter what I said she wouldn't get it. It wasn't even just because of me that I cried, but all my friends, all the things I know. Here was my mother, a person in the business of making children, and she just didn't think about it, ever, about other people, about what it would be like to be hated for no reason and have people listen to that hate casually.

So when she parked the car, I said "You want to know why I can't stand him, mom?"

Yes.

"Because he hates me, and he hasn't even met me. You're casually listening to a man who would rather I not exist than to think."

What does that mean?

"Put two and two together mom...I'm GAY!" And so I told her why FOX wasn't suitable dinner television, why when she implied that gay men would be poorer parents or we all have AIDS I could have hit her, why I was ripshit when she said she would never support gay marriage because of some fucked up sense of her own marriage's meaning being lost, why I had been angry at existence itself and for no apparent reason.

I got an "I still love you." But not the one I wanted. "You know now that I have two men in my life that are hard to love?" As if thirty minutes prior I didn't like dudes. I wanted to say something stupid, I wanted to explode, to burst into tears...I wanted to call my friend. I wanted my parent's love to not be wrapped up in who the hell I fuck. But I didn't say anything stupid, I just let her continue. I am not sure I can ever get her to separate loving a person from loving the whole human in her head.

I long for my roommate's mother's reaction: "I know, I have like three gay friends at work. Of course we still love you, why wouldn't we? We just want you to be happy!" Isn't that all parents are supposed to want? For their children to be happy?

Her face is haunting me: it was kinda like I had died, or something had died inside her.

Do I feel better? Yes, a lot better for a short while afterward. But now it is sour, it feels...olive green, snot green, like pus or dessicated limes. Reality feels distant, foggy, in fact it feels exactly like a dream; unreal. The house my great great grandfather built seems alien and broken and I want to return home to school and just...cry into 'John's' shoulder. And then we can watch the movie we've been planning to watch all f-ing term and drink tea and I can fall asleep wanted and warm, where there is no prejudice or glaring eyes and I can be myself.

I should talk to my sister tomorrow, she will doubtlessly give me the welcoming "So what?" I need.

 

Well, okay, everything is...well, I guess I can say back to normal. Sort of.

My mom was like "you should tell your father," and I did. And this is literally how it went:

Me:"Dad. I'm gay."
Dad:"Really?"
Me:"Yeah." I kinda look at mom quizzically, as in, "See, just another day."
Dad:"Okay. We still love you, you know that, right?"
Me:"Yeah. I know, duh."
Dad:"Okay. As long as you're happy." he gets up for a hug "You're free now."

Fucking poetry, right? The most screwed up person in the family has the most sought after, the most desired, the most urgently wished-for response to their child coming out: So what?

Sometimes I wonder about how my parents got together, because I really don't get it. And every once in a while I'm like "huh...you know, this would all make a lot more sense if Dad was...NAH, that's silly."

But it has been lurking in the back of my mind a lot recently. He loves her, but it doesn't seem they really get intimate, she loves him A LOT, but she kinda feels there is something wrong. I don't know. He has plenty of other reasons for that, so whatever is, simply is. Not my job to speculate.

So that day was pretty nice. The next day got weird, when before going to my grandparent's place my father insisted we talk. The conversation rapidly devolved into...hell, I'm not really even sure what it became, it was just weird and confusing. I think he meant to say "don't be angry about this; hate can consume you."

But instead it was more of "OMG! YOU HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TO GRIPE ABOUT! DON'T DESTROY YOUR LIFE! BTW, YOU GROUP ALL CONSERVATIVES INTO GAY-HATERS! IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PART OF WHO YOU ARE IF THAT HELPS! HERE, I'M FATHERING YOU!" Yeah...I have to patch that one up, but at least I didn't rise to the bait and start lambasting him for, in general, being kind of a dick when it comes to telling his children how to think, or deal with life at least.

The next day, I had to have one of the follow-up conversations with my mother over lunch. Well THAT was just...bleh, weird. The typical:

-gay sex makes me uncomfortable (me: why are you thinking about the actual act of me having sex?)
-I just don't get it
-You aren't going to start wearing high-heels are you? (this was sorta in jest...but it was hard to read)

Then the kicker: "I feel like I am losing you to a bunch of people I don't know or understand!" I was actually dumbfounded. I mean, what!? First of all...wtf? It was SO out there all I could say was "You make it sound like there's a gay commune on the moon." My second thought was, "Actually, that's not a bad idea."

My THIRD thought was, "Okay, that is going to need some work...empty-nest combined with 'I don't think I'll ever understand my son.' That is a hard one."

Today over dinner was another follow up. I said she could ask me anything she wanted, since she did say she knew nothing about gay anything. And since she asked if "dude" was a slang term for some type of gay guy or something, I figured she was shockingly uninformed.

Blah blah, affirmations of her love for me as a son, more I don't understand...then she said this:

"It is as hard for me to go there and try to understand it as it is for you to try and rescind this and " you know where this is going, though I can't remember if she used the word 'rescind.'

I was all, "WHOA, hold the horses. Did you just say that?" She tried to lecture me on how 'everyone' is always picking apart her words and over-analyzing what she says and that is just how she talks and --

I stopped her, and I explained. "Mom, you do not say those things in this kind of conversation, not on this topic. Because you equated changing what you believe with not being gay. And those things aren't as hard to do, one isn't more hard to do. And do you know why? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE."

The 'something died' face again. She asked me where 'it' went, that is, where me apparent love of women went, and I said "Nowhere, it never was." And that REALLY sucked to say, she has no. Fucking. Idea.

One, I know that really hurt for her.

Two, I really never wanted to say it to myself, because you know, the odd women can still do it for me, I think...maybe. I don't know. A feel a last shred of male/female attraction lingering, and I can't tell if it is me not wanting to totally give up (bleh, I typed that) or actually there and the fact that I am kinda dating a guy is clouding it. And I don't like dealing with such...mundane topics as the 'check list of things your parents need to hear.'

Okay, lots of hugs, she's going to bed, and then...she brings up being worried about me 'getting sick' if you know what I mean. I was ripshit inside, because it was so...typical. Just fucking typical.

I ranted on my blog about it: it is so completely stupid to assume that a guy who was allowed to sleep over at parties, with numerous girls he could have had sex with, with numerous girls who had crushes on him, all through his lower-education career because he was a good kid and could control himself, SUDDENLY likes cock SO much that he is going to screw half the school and come home with every disease known to man. I was hurt. I am hurt. Any other gay stereotype, I am okay with. Hell, I don't mind stereotypes so much in general...when they are used for comic effect or a good joke, but it is an unwritten understanding that everyone is in on why all the stereotypes are wrong. It is part of the comedic way of thinking, of extracting that visceral reaction from people.

But promiscuity? Lack of protection? Irresponsible sexual conduct? Who the hell does she think she raised? Last week, she would have NEVER, EVER, EVER worried about me doing something so stupid as to bed a girl without a condom, and furthermore we probably would have gotten tested first. That is what you do, and I'm a stickler for rules and protocol. But now that dudes are involved, apparently I am a sex addict.

Bleh! The idea is so...revolting that I would lovingly share my body with someone and not have their and my health a top priority that I could just SCREAM. Just go done to her job right now and punch something. Euehhh!

And no matter what I've said, she still says something like "But in a moment of passion..." AHHHHHHHHHH, what do I have to say!? "You know I'd never do that." "Mom, I'm not that stupid." "Mom, the risk is more or less the same, and you never freaked out about [my sister] getting HIV." "Mom, I'm serious, I am not going to do that." Nothing has worked so far. I even explained why there was a correlation in the first place, the closeted, fabulous world of the 80s gay bars and one bisexual guy in California. Nothing, she probably cried herself to sleep worrying about me dying a slow, painful death of ten types of pneumonia.

But it was...okay, in the end. I guess. I still have my family. I still have my friends. I still get to go back to school and finally enjoy that movie.

But seriously, the amount of shit you have to go through just to get to watching a movie and maybe a kiss is just silly. This has been exhausting, completely exhausting. I'm done, so done, but I have to explain so much more, ugh. Its a good thing Halloween is next week, because that ALWAYS gets me in high spirits.