Going Home, Part 1

Hello all my beautiful peeps! I’ve been shirking my blogging duties. (Shocker! I know!) But I promised I would write about my trip to Oregon.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently made a trip to Oregon for my 20 year high school reunion. Yeah, that’s right 20 years. But I’m only 29 so I must’ve graduated very young. Yeah, that’s it. Very, very young. 

I graduated in a town called Dallas and also lived in nearby Salem. Salem is where my dad and one brother live and another brother lives in Washington. It was nice to see family for sure, but I had an awesome time, which is illustrated in this pic. Yes, I was a teeny, tiny bit drunk. Just drunk enough to have a very hard time making the peace sign.

That was the first night in Oregon where a group of us had a tour of our high school, which was renovated a few years after we graduated, then ate dinner at a local pizza joint followed by several hours at the bar.

Just talking and spending time with old friends was a ton of fun, but it was also cool to mix and mingle with the people who were in different cliques back then. I was very happy to see that, for the most part, the old clique’s didn’t hold up.

There were a few guys who still captured the attention of every female in the place. (For those of you who were there, think Damon Suede at GRL last in New Orleans.) I wasn’t one of those guys, but I was fine with trying to get the attention of the males, even though I had no idea who might or might not be receptive to my advances.

I didn’t have any luck with the guys that night, but I had a couple other cool things happen to me.

I’d been talking to one high school buddy for several months before the reunion and he knew I was gay, as did a few other people. With the handful of people who knew there wasn’t any negativity so I decided to step out of the closet a little more.

I decided to tell a female friend who I had always been close with, but I wasn’t sure how to tell her. We had just pulled up to the bar and were in the parking lot and I told her I had something to tell her. And then I just said it, no warm up or preamble, just “I’m gay.”

She was obviously shocked and I could tell she wasn’t sure what to say. Which is why I forgave her for what she did say. “It’s okay. I love you anyway.” She apologized later and said it came out differently than how she meant it. She said she didn’t care one way or another and it didn’t affect our friendship at all.

While I was sitting there getting (a little) drunk, a friend, who knows I’m gay, pointed out a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce which offered the chance to have your face on a bottle. I thought it would be awesome to have my face on a bottle of meat sauce. A few minutes later, someone came by and we pointed out the bottle.

Now, this was a girl I’ve known since grade school. Not someone I was ever real good friends with, but she was always nice and sweet and down-to-earth. So I explained the joke behind the joke about having a gay guy’s face on a bottle of meat sauce. And what she did and said was heartwarming. She pulled me into an embrace and said “Good for you. I’m so glad that you are comfortable enough with yourself that you’re able to be open about it. And thank you for sharing that with me.”

I’ve been living in a very conservative location for many years now. I call it Redneckville, but there’s nothing wrong with being a red neck. Really, this town has a lot of close minded, homophobic bigots. Which is why I’ve never been able to consider coming totally out of the closet. The vibe in Oregon just felt different, much more welcoming. Maybe it’s because I was in larger cities or maybe the state itself is less…Redneckian but I felt a freedom I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. It was a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively.

What does that mean for my future and the possibility of coming out? I’m not sure yet. Depends on the job I find. But I think even if I end up in a job where coming out isn’t the best idea, I still think I could live my private life with more freedom and not worry about the repercussions of my job.

And that is just one of the many reasons I want to get my ass to Oregon just as soon as I possibly can. I head back in a few days to testing for a job I really want. Wish me luck!

And because any post of mine isn’t complete without a pic of a hot dude, here ya go!