“It was the worst thing you could be called as a high school...

“It was the worst thing you could be called as a high school boy. It was interchangeable with stupid, or ‘things we don’t like.’ Math homework was ‘gay.’ Gym class was ‘gay.’ So I grew up feeling that if people knew who I really was, they would find me disgusting and unlovable. And that extended to my own family. My parents never spoke about sexuality at home. The few questions they did ask would project straightness onto me, like: ‘Do you have a crush on any girls in your class?’ But for the most part there was silence. And in some ways the silence was worse. Because it suggested the subject was too taboo, too tainted, to even bring up at the dinner table. My parents were liberal. They’d let me read whatever I wanted. They took me to R-rated movies. We could talk about murderers and terrorists, but we couldn’t talk about that. So I kept it a secret. Until the age of seventeen when my sister read my diary, and told my mother what she’d found. I felt powerless. Caught. I pleaded with them to let me tell my father. He was the one who coached my little league teams, and encouraged me to watch action movies, and showed me pages from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. So I was most afraid of his reaction. I walked into his bedroom at 3 AM, and shook him awake. I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words. ‘Remember my friend Sean?’ I asked. ‘He doesn’t come over anymore because I told him I have feelings for him.’ What happened next is kind of a blur. But I remember my father holding me, and telling me that he loved me as I was. It was a nice moment, but the next morning I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I tried to sneak out the garage door, but he called me from the top of the stairs. ‘What I told you last night stands,’ he said. I’d always thought that coming out would be the end of the work. From the little you see in movies, and how it’s spoken about, it’s supposed to be the ‘happily ever after’ part of a gay person’s life. But for me it’s when the hard part really started. I had to look in the mirror, and ask: ‘What did all this conditioning do to me?’ My father had just looked at me and said: ‘I love you unconditionally.’ Why couldn’t I say that to myself?”