The hermit comes out (briefly)

I was twelve years old when I had decided that there was something wrong with me, or, at the very least, that something seemed not quite right. My terror, though, of being not quite right pushed me far over into the realm of understanding that there was something really rather wrong. I couldn’t reconcile it or explain it—(to borrow from Twain) I knew the words, but I didn’t know the tune—and, after some now forgotten length of time, I had decided that I was going to share this information with my mother, who, I believed, could help me understand just what was wrong. For my confession, I had selected an evening when I knew my father would be working out in the garage. This, I had told myself, was so that I would have my mother’s undivided attention, but, secretly, I knew it was so that my father wouldn’t overhear.

I don’t much remember how I told her that I was gay—only that I did, and only that she had started to cry. At this, my being the perhaps overly sensitive type, I, too, began to cry, though my tears were a blend: some were for my disappointment with myself (for making my mother cry; what kind of a boy does that?), and some for the tune that I couldn’t sing; for the words that I had used, but didn’t quite understand; for the knowledge that, while, to this point, I had only inferred some deviance about me, I now knew for certain (because emotions do not lie to the young and inexperienced) that something was very, very wrong.

I was terrified. I begged my mother not to tell my father—whatever she did, I did not want her to betray me in this. Why? Well, he is my father, he’s a man with expectations for his first-born son, he tells fag jokes and has a dislike for wimps and pussies. I didn’t want him to hate me.

Being emotionally exhausted and afraid and saddened and depressed—and a whole host of things a twelve-year-old should never be—I had gone to bed somewhat early, leaving my mother to her tears in the living room, and I lay in bed hoping that she’d pull it together before my father came inside. I had to trust that she would.

I heard my father’s footsteps coming up the stairs a short while later, and, fearful of the imminent shit-storm I was conjuring up in my mind, I listened as he walked past my bedroom door. He had gone to bed. I began to panic a bit, but I trusted, still, that my mother could pull it together—after all, her son’s life was on the line. After a short while of absolute silence, I began to relax. It was late, I heard no shouting, no sobbing, nothing.

“It will all just pass,” I told myself. “Tomorrow, I will act as if nothing happened, and we can move beyond this.” Or, I told myself something to that effect.

This is when I heard a very faint knock at my door. I froze, closing my eyes, hoping that whoever was there would think me asleep and leave me be. The door opened, and a bit of light shown in and onto my tear-streaked face. My father came in and, without a word (at first), squatted down next to my bed. He knew I was awake, and I knew he knew I was awake, so there was no use pretending to be sleeping.

“Why do you think you’re gay?” he quietly asked me.

“I don’t know,” I responded feebly.

“Well, you told your mother that you like a boy. Who is he?” he inquired.

I was still terrified at this moment, and the first thing that popped into my head was a scene from A Christmas Story, the scene where Ralphie is being punished for swearing, and his mother asks him where he’d heard that word used before. Like Ralphie, I blurted the first name that came to mind…and it so happened not to be my crush, just as Ralphie chose not to name his father as the speaker of the not-fudge "fudge."

“Well,” my father said, “there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s a nice kid. Is he gay, too?”

“I don’t know,” I answered too quickly and with the agitation of the teenager that was budding inside me, but only because I was now terrified that my suspiciously nice father was going to call over to this boy's house and out the kid, whom, of course, I was pretty sure was straight (he’s married to a woman now, so it’s probably a safe assumption).

We talked for some time, my father and I, and I was very surprised to find that he didn’t hate me—but that he loved me, and that he would love me no matter what. I wasn’t sure how to take things from here, and he had no advice to offer, but he said that he would always be there for me should I ever need anything. And, I have always been grateful for that.

My mother, on the other hand, turned out to be not so thrilled by my confession. She wouldn’t say it directly to me, but I discovered her true feelings were evident in her not-so-subtle actions. She had picked me up from school, not long after the night I (sort of) came out, and she stopped the car at a convenience store. I waited while she went in; I couldn’t imagine what we were stopping there for. She returned a few minutes later with a thin paper bag, roughly the size of a magazine, and she handed it to me. I cannot recall whether or not I had any inkling as to what was inside the package (it, of course, makes sense to me now), but I can say that I was surprised when I pulled out a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. These gifts would show up unsolicited and regularly. Every Christmas, even, I would receive a poster of a woman wearing barely any clothing, and a wall calendar of the super model that I would arbitrarily select (when prompted) as my favorite that year. I realized then that I was starting to learn her tune.

I had tried briefly to come out to some friends at school, and that quickly escalated into laughter and derision. I panicked, claimed it was a joke, and left it at that. It was never brought up again, and I was glad of it. I couldn’t ask myself why I was glad of it, then. I only knew that I didn’t want the attention—that I struggled enough to not stick out as a socially awkward, emotionally frail nerd whose mother dressed him as though she wanted him to get his ass kicked—and so I did my best to swallow more of my emotions, and to suppress my adolescent's hormone-induced passions to a very quiet and introverted space. Being used to the isolation, it became difficult to function as myself inside of the community. From day one, it seems, I have always attempted to join the group based on the group's expectations for me. This has been problematic and has, I believe, almost irreparably skewed how I perceive myself in the world.

I believe that it is not uncommon for boys like me, those who isolate themselves and only join into community when the conditions suit their perceived success (thus enabling them to become what they believe the community desires they be), to find themselves subject to a broken paradigm complex.And, what's more, the suppression of our true natures prevents our ever realizing anything resembling social or personal success--and while we play at things we'll never be able to make good use of (in this case, being "masculine") we waste time and energy on an identity that will also never afford a genuine opportunity for success. How does one, a child or an adult, cope with that? How does one pursue the construction of a meaningful life?

I can tell you how one shouldn't...