A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation (3 page)

It had occurred to me that if someone was going to like me, then they should like me for who I really was. While I thought that was a very solid and honest philosophy to live by, it certainly didn't get me many dates or even much interest. In fact, it made me wonder whatever happened to my charm, or at least the persuasive nature I'd had in grade school through the first part of high school. Of course, that was with guys, and that time of my life was forever over with.

Truth be told, I guess I was still a bit curious about other guys but decided to keep it to myself, since that kind of curiosity was no longer considered innocent. Hell, it could get the crap kicked out of me, and that thought alone was enough to make me continue burying my feelings. Weren't there people out there who remained curious, too? Was I the exception to the rule in still being who I was while having these feelings?

I certainly didn't resemble in any way the kind of stereotypical “fag” used as the butt of a ton of tasteless jokes, so I couldn't be one. This was fine by me because I liked being who I was, the type of person I had potential to become; and there was no room in my life to be one of those limp-wristed, lisping, feminine-looking and acting queers laughed about and resented so openly. If that's what being gay was all about, then I wanted no part of it.

I didn't want any part of it anyway. I might not yet know exactly who I was, but I did know who I wasn't. My uncertainty about sex merely stemmed with never having been with a woman. Once that happened, I would come to my senses. It was just that simple, or so I thought.

My head hurt, and I wanted a shower more than anything else. I wanted to step under the rush of hot water and feel all the negative thoughts and energy wash from my body and disappear down the moldy drain on its way to the Commons. There was too much negativity in the world. Society needed to be a little more nurturing, a bit more caring. People needed to be a little kinder and respectful to each other.

"You smell like shit,” Todd, my Neanderthal and negative roommate informed me matter-of-factly when I unlocked the door and stepped into the small dorm room.

"Oh, bite me."

Todd laughed and tossed me a bag of cold onion rings from Burger King. Actually, he wasn't so bad, and I'm not saying that just because he brought me food. Most of the time, one never knows what kind of person he or she will be paired up with in a dorm. I lucked out because Todd respected my privacy and the items I had brought with me from home as I respected his. We got along well enough, too, since we were different enough to make for some interesting conversations and alike enough not to argue over what to watch on TV. Sometimes I proofed or wrote some of his papers, and he paid for a movie in Grand Rapids or bought me a CD. He got what he needed, and I got what I wanted. It was a beneficial arrangement. The food he brought didn't hurt my opinion of him, either.

"I hope you earned the onion rings,” he wondered out loud and pointed to my backpack. “What did you find?"

"You may want them back.” I offered him the bag. “Because I couldn't find a thing."

He declined.

"The computer didn't have anything on them."

"Them?” Todd looked at me, confused. “What do you mean
them
?"

"Well...” I rolled my eyes. “...the youth in Asia or youths in Asia. Hello?"

Sometimes, he was a bit slow.

"I mean, I tried every combination, but it either told me there was nothing to be found or that I needed to narrow my search."

"Youths in Asia?” He was staring at me in disbelief.

"Uh, I think I just said that.” I didn't feel so bad about eating his onion rings now. Sometimes I had to talk very slowly and in small words to get him to understand something. “Which part didn't you understand?"

"Which part didn't
you
understand?” he countered. “I said
euthanasia
."

"Youth in Asia, youths in Asia, what's the difference? I still came up empty."

Todd put his hand up to his forehead in a mock gesture of surrendering to an idiot.

"What?"

"E-u-t-h-a-n-a-s-i-a.” He spelled it out for me.

"Euthanasia?” I spoke the word out loud, and he nodded. “Well, what the hell is that?"

"That...” Todd smirked at me. “...is what I needed you to find out. Didn't you ask one of the librarians for help?"

"Huh?” Was he kidding? I stared at him and shoved two more onion rings into my mouth. It was hard to tell at this point which one of us was the bigger moron. At least neither one of us knew what euthanasia was, so in my mind, that made him the more moronic. From his view, I suspected, I should have known what it was, since I generally prided myself on knowing more than he did. That, in his mind, made me the more moronic one.

The only thing we would agree on is that we would disagree, so it was stupid for either of us to continue the conversation.

"You had a call earlier. Some girl.” His voice was even, as if relating events that occurred regularly.

"Really?” It was a rather unusual occurrence. A girl calling me? It had a nice ring to it. There was a girl in Professor Staff's class named Tina who was pretty cute—blonde, nice green eyes, pleasant voice, great body, vacant look on her face, perfect sorority material. What the hell would she be doing calling me? “What did she want?"

"Just to say that your latest music review sucks, Roxette sucks and, according to her, you do, too.” He paused as if in deep thought. “She didn't leave a name or number."

It definitely wasn't Tina.

Classes came and went daily, and homework took up a sizable chunk of time during the week, but that was mostly because I didn't want to do any of it on the weekend. I probably should have saved some of it because I tended not to do much on the weekend anyway.

My writing really started showing signs of improvement, and I was aching to try my pencil at some short stories and maybe even a novel. My other classes went well, and I knew that I was in no danger of being on academic probation again. The dean might not know my name yet, but the expulsion committee wouldn't, either. It was a fair trade. All I had to concentrate on now was finals.

Todd's finals finished on a Tuesday and mine that Wednesday. He was moved out an hour after his last exam but came back the next evening so the two of us could get drunk together before moving on to “greener pastures.” He called it that because he was from the west side of the state and really was moving back to fields and pastures and all that farmer stuff.

That last night I spent with Todd was very special. He was extremely patient and gentle with me, especially since it was my first time—getting drunk, that is. When I could no longer feel my legs, he let me put my arm around his neck for support while I puked. When I could no longer feel the rest of my body, he held my head up so I didn't make a mess on the floor.

My parents arrived the next morning, but Todd had already left. I vaguely recall through my stupor a death threat if I ever became a writer and wrote about him unless it was published in
Penthouse
.

Mom and Dad were both happy to see me and glad I was confident I hadn't flunked out of school and wasted all their money. Aside from inquiring about my exams, the only questions they had were why I insisted that they speak very quietly and why they had to leave the “damn” curtains closed.

After all my stuff was safely packed away in the van, I went back upstairs for one last look around the room. So much had happened and changed since I'd first arrived. God only knew what would happen in the fall, but before I could get to that, I had to survive the summer.

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Most people my age love the summertime. I hate it! I never went away and vacationed in some distant foreign country where scantily dressed women offered to buy me drinks, take me for romantic walks on the beach, watch the sunset and finally accompany me back to a room to have wild orgasmic sex on a hammock. It never really appealed to me, for one, and I couldn't afford it anyway.

Besides, I'd probably throw my back out on the hammock and end up in some third world hospital. To add insult to injury, I'd also leave with something worse than I'd gone in there with.

Aside from the one perk of maintaining my health, summer vacations tended to give me too much time to think about my life. Reality could be such a stupid place, and mine was rapidly closing in. It started after I closed the van door, and we headed for home.

It wasn't the most pleasant journey in the world, mostly because it was time to start thinking about what I would do for a summer job. I really did have to think about it because I was asked about it ten minutes into the trip. Some people I knew were going off to work on boats in Alaska, others to Cedar Point or their parents’ companies, and still others abroad to foreign countries to help sooth the woes of those worlds. The woes of my world began with working at Kay-Mart, an experience in itself. Working for that company period is actually a bit of a joke.

Let me say something about the Kay-Mart philosophy. Forget all the commercials on TV with happy shoppers going down well-stocked aisles talking to cream-of-the-crop professional assistants. Actually, the workers are called asso-ciates. Notice the word ass hidden at the beginning, which pretty much sums up what corporate thinks of their employees.

Furthermore, for a while, the commercials boasted that associates were being retrained. It never happened! There was never any retraining, and not much general training to speak of, since they would never pay for it.

Dustin Hoffman said it best about a similar company in
Rainman
: “K-Mart sucks."

Despite the bleak beginning, the summer of 1989 was an eventful one. I'd really hoped to get a second job, one that was five days a week in the morning and paid a hell of a lot more than what I was currently getting, but that wasn't to be. There was just too much going on.

A friend of mine, Jeremy, was hit by a car while riding his bike across an intersection. The woman driving said the sun was in her eyes and she never saw him. Apparently, she must have missed the red light, too. I visited Jeremy in the hospital once, but it was too depressing to see him hooked up to so many machines, conscious yet unable to recognize who I was. It scared the hell out of me.

It didn't help that I hated hospitals. For some reason, they reminded me of the way some guys talk about how women with fake breasts feel to the touch. They say there's something ominous and sterile about them, a real strange combination.

Jeremy once told me a story about how he used to think that women had their boobs filled with helium, and that was why some of them were so large. Where the hell people got these ideas about sex and the opposite gender is beyond me.

With the exception of a health course, I never had sex education classes when I was in high school. Once in grade school—sixth grade, maybe—we had a slide show presentation that didn't tell us any more than we already knew, which was very little.

"Your bodies are changing.” Well, no kidding! Tell me how. Show me some Polaroids. Let's see some people involved in one of those Kodak moments. How about letting us in on some of what we can expect to be participating in later on in life.

No such luck.

Instead of naughty little revealing shots of nudity and sex, we had a slide show and the only form of legal pornography available in the public school system:
National Geographic
. If Jeremy thought some of the women he saw had large breasts, he never bothered with this magazine. When not reading the standard Hardy Boys mysteries, the guys’ noses were all buried in
National Geographic
. Doesn't that paint a pretty picture for sexual awareness in the 70s and early 80s? It's a twisted way to grow up thinking that when a woman is naked she's also holding a blow-gun.

I sincerely doubt that I made a conscious decision to go the gay route because of that, however. If nothing else, it made me respect women all the more because they were just as capable of beating someone's ass as any man I'd ever seen.

Despite all the material presented to us, we still didn't know what sex was. Even after the experimentation I did with some of my friends, I never really knew if I was doing things the right way or not.

My father sat me down one night for “the talk” with “the books.” I think this was in fourth grade. Anyway, I knew what felt good when I was naked with another person—a guy at least—but I had no idea they had instruction manuals for it.

If I recall correctly, one of the books was titled
Where Did I Come From?
Let me just say that it told me way more than I ever wanted to know about my mother. There seemed to be a section missing, though, one about sex between two guys. Since Dad didn't mention it to me, I guessed sex was just supposed to be the male/female thing—or had I discovered something the authors hadn't?

Dad got through that night pretty much unscathed, though I don't know if he expected to encounter problems or questions he couldn't handle. Thinking back to the grading system they had back then in school, I would have given him an O for
outstanding
.

Naturally, I did have a question for my father, and it related to that white stuff the book called “sperm.” I'd yet to see anything like that come out of me, and I wondered what it looked like so I would know in the future when it did. Despite his assurances that I would know when the time came, I demanded a description. I guess I can be sadistic that way.

Then too, so can he. I avoided Oreo cookies and tapioca pudding for months after that.

Two really cool things did eventually happen to me that summer. First, I got a car, or rather, a battle tank. My first car was an old maroon ‘78 Chevy Malibu. Suffice to state that this thing would have given Stephen King's Christine nightmares, to say nothing of what it must have contributed to the pollution hanging over the suburbs of Detroit. Mom and Dad didn't need to buy me a beeper to know where I was. All they had to do was look outside with a pair of binoculars and scan the distance for the smoke signals I was sending them compliments of the oil I was burning.