In My Own Time

I’m going to tell you a sad story.

I grew up Southern Baptist in rural East Tennessee adopted by a Southern Baptist deacon and a secretary of the local division of the Southern Baptist Convention. If you think this is a narrow summary of my childhood and adolescence, you’re probably right, but it is truly the stuff of dreams for many straight, white American men. It is also the makings of suicide for many LGBTQI+ youth.

This is a story for anyone who can remember questioning their gender identity simply because you were afraid of bullying for wanting to play dress up with the girls instead of kickball with the gross boys who always had scrapes on their knees. It’s a story for you, who can remember the feeling more than fifteen years later of being mortified that you accidentally let it slip you thought a boy in class was cute in front of a small group of friends.

For most, it’s true what they say: it gets better. When I turned 18, it was finally time to move away for college, and for nine months out of the next four years, I could be free, out and proud among my more liberal colleagues. Even better, I met the greatest guy during my freshman year! My first boyfriend.

He was tall with brown hair, and I can’t remember the color of his eyes, but we’ll go with a bluish green. He was a rugged man’s man; the type of country guy you’re jealous all your girlfriends seem to find but is so elusive in the gay community. I was the luckiest guy I knew — for several months. At first, he was fine with our arrangement of keeping my parents out of it. “One day..,” we would sometimes fantasize. One day my family would accept our love and we could fight over whose Thanksgiving we would attend this year like normal couples.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to have never had to kiss and say goodbye during the holidays before you leave to be with all your loved ones except the person you love simply because they have the wrong set of genitals, I want to make sure you’re aware of this very real issue which plagues our community.

But, my story isn’t really about that. Things between us began to go south for many reasons including building tension because of the aforementioned issue. You see, he had a supporting family. They welcomed me with open arms, and for this I was so grateful. I think most of them understood why I was never able to show up on Christmas Day even though he was there, but he became frustrated over time. I don’t really blame him, but hey, we’ve all got our own baggage, right?

Then it came time to call it quits. The feeling wasn’t exactly mutual, but I’d had enough of what had turned into routine fighting, yelling, and emotional abuse. To say he was devastated is an understatement. I’ll spare you the details of his threats of suicide, but what shocked me most was his insistence that if I followed through with the breakup, he would do the unthinkable: out me to my parents.

Had I mentioned I wasn’t out to them yet? To this day, I’m not sure whether to describe them as incredibly naïve or just in immense denial. I mean, how could you possibly not suspect that your son whom you’d caught multiple times sneaking into your old Barbie doll collection instead of playing outside with his new baseball might just turn out to be gay? Let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and say they’re staunchly against recognizing stereotypes.

At any rate, being outed wasn’t an option at the time, so I allowed myself to be blackmailed into a relationship which was making me miserable for far too long. As things got worse, I was faced with an impossible decision: risk signing a summer of my life away to gay camp or continue in this nightmare which made my goodnight kisses taste more and more like the sick leftover in my mouth after telling him I forgave him and still loved him.

I was unwilling to become one of the homeless gay youth I’d read about who were shunned by their families for boldly being who they are, and that was my choice.

I became so comfortably numb, that one day I decided it was no longer worth hiding in the closet from neither my parents nor my boyfriend. If I had to find a job to support my own living at 18 and take out more loans for college, so be it. At least I could be myself. So, with a deep breath and prep of my résumé, I broke up with him. For good.

It was liberating in a lot of ways. I managed little sleep for two days at least, just awaiting that imminent phone call from my parents asking me to confirm it couldn’t be true. “I could just lie about it,” I thought to myself. After all, they’d probably believe anything so long as it meant their son wasn’t gay, but the call never came. He moved on after a lot of figurative kicking and literal screaming, and life went on.

The near miss afforded me around four more years of this charade with my parents. I dated a bit more casually from then on out, possibly out of post-trauma, until it happened again.

I had just started grad school, and this new boy was nice enough. He was cute and we had a lot in common, especially our tastes in music. It’s hard to find a guy that will lay with you for hours in bed just listening to each other’s favorite albums and enjoy it. As to the relevant points of this essay, the story is similar. We grew apart, and our words became more harsh than kind. Upon expressing my desire to end the relationship before it got worse, (I had seen what worse looked like) he protested. I believe his last words to me were something along the lines of threatening to tell my parents everything. He was drunk and it was late, so I called his bluff. After all, I’d been down this road before, and this wasn’t even as scary as last time. He wouldn’t actually do it.

I woke up the next morning on a couch in my best friend’s dorm room to the voicemail that would change my life forever. We’d decided to go to an EDM show after the breakup to try and get my mind off things. It was early, and I was hungover, yet I very soberly managed to gather my things and attempt to sneak out and face the homophobic music. However, he woke up wondering why I wanted to leave so early for our usual post-rager lunch at the cafeteria. If anyone has ever done something so selfless for me in my life, it was his decision and insistence to come with me. Even another one of my best friends decided to come along after he’d heard. And there we sat, the three of us, on my parents’ couch in the living room across from them on the loveseat.

I did it. I came out to my parents against my will and at the wrong time in my life, but I did it. At least I wasn’t lying anymore.

Fast forward nearly ten years, and here we are: my worst fears had come true, yet life went on once again. Things got bad for a while. I had to move out and take out a few thousand more in student loans in order to pay for my living expenses, but I made it. My relationship with my parents has improved over time, but they still don’t “accept me” (whatever that really means) for who I am and who I love. I don’t take guys home to meet them, and we maintain something like an unspoken don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreement. We mostly talk about the weather, but I had survived revenge outing.