The bottom has just dropped out of my life.
I never knew it until today, but I am gay.
Yes, apparently, I have gone through two decades of human existence completely assured in the conviction that I was a young, heterosexual man with a craving for human beings of the female alignment. I was in love with the idea of my girlfriend's supple, tender young body, the gentle, refined curves of her form, and the soft murmurings of her voice as she whispered her hopes, dreams, and fears into my ear at the bedside, half-asleep.
But I've got to put all of that behind me right now, thanks to the devastating ballista of cold, perfectly-reasoned logic that struck me in the face this morning after I read my web email. I need to get used to the fact that my life has been radically changed, and fight the inexhorable, overwhelming feeling that I can no longer take anything for granted in my life. No, the only thing left to do is to pick up the pieces, throw them in the garbage, and move forward.
It may very well come to a surprise to you how a young man in the prime of his life can so easily and abruptly realize that his sexual polarity is the exact opposite of what he naturally assumed it to be since puberty. I can assure you, gentle reader, that mine was not a completely lonely struggle for sexual identity, as I received an unquantifiable degree of aid from an old girlfriend of mine -- let's give her the neutral name of "Stacey" to keep your perceptions of "her" androgynous and non-gender oriented, since apparently I didn't know back then I was supposed to have sex with men -- with whom I had broken off personal contact about two years ago, back in that crazy, free-spirited, anything goes era of experimenting with heterosexuality.
Although I stopped seeing "Stacey" sometime in March of 2001, we still kept up a spotty correspondence through our common membership to Livejournal.com, several local news mailing lists, and a couple of clubs in our city. Sadly, it seems that "Stacey" was still buying the lie I was living for everyone else -- that I was a heterosexual teenager interested only in coitus. Supporting this claim are the numerous instances on which "Stacey" would attempt to flirt with me online and in public, on several occasions exposing "herself" to me and attempting to seduce me into bed for a night of sexual intercourse.
I guess it was right about that time that my false persona began to crack and my true colors began to spill out, for, after a brief period of brooding and self-loathing following the breakup, I was decided that I no longer had any genuine interest in "Stacey". I politely accepted "Stacey's" advances, but kept to my resolve not to get involved in another relationship. "Stacey" began to pout and get a bit bitchy at times, but overall I would have guessed that things were still fairly "sympatico" between the two of us.
Today, that rough assumption came to a brutal end, along with any shred of dignity I can claim to have possessed during my life. Last night I wrote a short email to "Stacey" suggesting that we have a nice, informal, strictly platonic dinner in the comforts of one of our favorite local restaurants. This was prompted in part by our chance encounter Friday night at a popular club downtown, where, once again, against better judgment, I rashly concurred that "Stacey" was eager to see and converse with me throughout the evening.
When I saw "Stacey's" email address with the requisite "Re:" and my original header next to it this morning, I smiled to myself and eagerly clicked on the accompanying link. "Stacey" is usually slow to answer personal emails, given that "she" gets online on an average of only twice a week. I expected a brief, but courteous, and well-written answer to my query.
But alas! Instead, the force of the 12-point Mistral script hit me like a raging pimp on methamphetamine:
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
"She" was mocking me! What could possibly be wrong? I read further:
You are a fucking dickless faggot, Deckard.
"She" went on to describe various complications in our relationship that were exacerbated by my alleged lack of masculinity and assertiveness, and the irony of me "crawling back" in an effort to gain "her" fleeting attention. The abuse culminated in a scathing critique of my alleged lack of sexual performance and presence of multiple hangups, and "she" attributing both of these traits to my latent homosexuality. "She" closed with a brilliant piece of advice of how to make the best use of a certain neglected body part (which, ironically, according to her first sentence, doesn't exist) in an effort to learn how to do what I apparently should have been doing all along.
The only thing left to say is thank God for "Stacey." If it weren't for "her" astute judgment, backed up with her astounding level of insight into the human psyche, who knows where I might otherwise have been five, ten, even thirty years from now. Still attracted to young, bronzed blondes in bikinis, a fetish which I now know runs completely contrary to my given nature? "Happily" married in a loving household with children while suffering from the hallucination of a healthy sex life with my significant other? The list of nefarious possibilities is truly as endless as my ability to imagine such horrors actually taking place.
No, now I know that I can never truly be content with who I am until I am "sodomized with a reach around from (my) freshman year philosophy teacher during a communal, drug-induced orgy".
"Stacey" ... there are no words to express the level of gratitude that I feel for you.