Stunted: A Queer Teen’s Reflection

The loss of adolescence in a narrow-minded world.

Saturday. This is where we are. In the family room of my house, stretching out on a massive sectional. We are 16. Bradley sleeps perpendicular to my feet. I lay silent. His gentle breath whispers over his head. I notice the rise and fall of my chest. I imagine lying closer. I wonder if he would deny me. I hope he would open his arms, eyes barely open, and pull me to his chest. We fall into a deep sleep. The vision arouses me, then drifts into comfort. I fall into my own sleep. Only here, I am alone.

Gay teens are numerous. Outnumbered. Hiding quietly any moment of the day. Which ones can see themselves?

I lost my teen years. Not because I was queer, but because my world prevented me from accepting queerness. I moved through my adolescence as a phantom, until my young adult years, when I began understanding the world as myself.

I never knew I was gay. I only allowed myself to step a limb over the immaterial threshold separating tradition and my gay reality in college. I acknowledged I was only halfway across this line years later. I am a gay man now. I was a gay kid then. Only now I want to be. Then I was blind.

The predicament frustrates me. Like a sword, I was cut in half. One half projected a world of true life, lying next to boys divine, exploring the adolescent beginnings of intimacy. The other half showed the pursuit of false intimacy. An act I studied and understood. Girls like me, and I like them back. I washed my world with the latter.

My queerness was not discovered in my college years. My queerness did not sleep like some hibernating beast until the season came to metamorphize into a glowing, flying specimen.

I was always gay. Instead of idle, my queerness behaved as some untamed, unseen captive, knowing they need sustenance to survive but unsure of what. They claw and whimper. The beast sheltered from the surface of the hole for what seemed like millennia.

The stifled creature, however, was far from silent. Although I failed to hear a weep, they infiltrated every aspect of my life, from my friendships to romantic partnerships, to school, to my future. My queerness was my entire existence.

Yet the world I inhabited was unfit for a creature so honest. A world of hyper-masculine varsity sports and watching gay porn as punishment for losing a bet. A world of binge-drinking weekends and who got the most pussy. A world of 4-hour Call of Duty sessions, where the only words I may say to the other boys include “shoot them” or “fuck”. This was not a world for the vulnerable or tender.

So the prisoner hunkered. As my queerness was protected from the surface, I was kept from knowing what was buried inside. Someone locked this creature away long before I was conscious. The moment of their liberation far off. With no key of my own, I was unaware even of what to look for.

Clues of my queerness lived only in small moments. Hunches. Slight aftershocks of taps on the bars or echoes in the cavern: ripples on my skin. Like choosing a direction to walk from the brush of the breeze or holding back words because of a knot in your chest.

These ripples choked my teenage years, like with my friend Brad. Sudden arousal when moments became quiet. Alone, one thought trickled in, then another, until Brad was more than a friend. He was a glimpse into another universe. How was I to know how to say those words? I stayed silent. The opportunity went so quickly, and the telescope buried so deep, I was dubious on how to look. The vision passed. The familiar reality returned. Those inklings were thrown away like old notes on the counter. Until the next note came. Again, thrown away.

I fed the impulse, sometimes running the films over in my mind. Sometimes watching porn. I still wiped off any curiosity after holding a 5-inch screen to my head, watching two men penetrate each other. Odd, I thought. I understand this.

To keep face, I chased girls. It was like feeding the caged beast water, and the ripples followed. I needed perfect women. I obsessed with the chase and let them go as quickly as I caught on. Often I committed to nothing more than a drunk hook-up. I attracted the most beautiful people I ever knew and thought, “You’re good, but there must be better.” What was better, J.S.? If only I knew.

When I did date, I was desperate for a way out. One junior year girlfriend “cheated” on me with her ex-boyfriend right when we began dating. The infidelity came to light months later. I made sure to end our fling quickly. I left no room for consideration. This girl took my virginity. She meant something to me. I gave my innocence to her. I was devastated, I deemed. She was too. She was perplexed why an innocuous moment from long ago meant it had to end now. She was right, of course. She was also wrong because this had nothing to do with her. She took nothing from me. I had nothing to give. I dare not tell her that.

The ripples shook me in classes and at parties. They drew me to press against the walls. My eyes always careening around the room, noticing every conversation and interaction. I refused to observe the recesses of myself, so I became adept at observing everyone else. People were long-term subjects.

They were also friends. Many of them. Every network was open to my influence. The popular kids. Sports. Choir. I liked everyone, and everyone liked me. The world was my oyster. So much time away from myself. I never needed to be their center, but only had to orchestrate them around my needs. I came and went as I pleased. Popularity gave me the control where sexuality did not.

Feeding the beast less and less, the ripples grew louder. Senior year I was at my wit’s end. I only know why now. I wonder if my queerness believed they were on the edge of breaking free, instead of the edge of a cliff. Either way, they forced me to turn the other way and go. I went. I went away from my childhood home, away from the distractions of my adolescence, to the only place that might save me at the time. I resented New York at first. Now I am only grateful.

I struggle with putting this to words as I struggled to communicate the fantasy on the couch. My childhood was a pattern of compromises. Performing as all the rest, I sacrificed moments of my true self. Was it to survive? Was it out of fear? Was it pure ignorance? I labor over the ineptitude of my mind. I knew I was a gay teen, yet I was clueless. I believed every action deserved scrutiny, and every reaction required critique. There was no time to be gay in that world. I was going to play sports, perform, egg houses, drink platinum Bud-light, plan bangers. I was going to be famous. So, I buried young love. I buried intimacy. I buried vulnerability. I buried Honest connection with those I called friends, decisiveness, My true ambitions. I buried my own voice. I poured earth over the tender, captive creature, keeping them from home.

If I knew my queerness then, would reality be different? Maybe I collapse. Maybe I thrive. I never leaped to find out.

When I finally found the key to unlock the cage, seven years passed since my first day at college. Freshman year I began uncovering the dirt. Digging was slow. The further I reached, the more audible the sounds became. I recently reached the front of the cage. The key was close. There was no creature, only myself. They looked shriveled and pale. I unlocked the door. They kept their gaze. It took some time for them to crawl out before they reached the surface. The ground around them is safe.

They are next to me often. I’m uncertain if they are angry or depressed, or confused. They are still thin and small as if stopping them from moving stopped them from growing up. I talk to them. I ask questions. They are quiet but patient. Their words are clipped but calm. Perhaps they are relieved to be exposed. Perhaps, even in the dead of winter, the tiny fragments of the sun give them a warmth they yearned for.

I thank them for guiding me here. I tell them sorry for all those years. They shake their head. They say this was the only way for both of us to survive. It was never safe for them to come out. It was never safe for me to find them. They pause. Then they say reclaiming what I lost is going to take time. Some moments may be quick to retrieve. Some may have to grow from scratch again.

However they are found, they will be me.