I ran across a picture earlier that has been on my mind. It wasn’t a very good picture or else I would have saved it and shared it. I looked at it for a few seconds and decided I didn’t like the colors, I didn’t like the cloths, I didn’t like the dingy, depressing little room, so I scrolled past it rather quickly. But I did pay enough attention to what was going on in the picture for it to register and to make an impression on me.
A rather slight young man in his late teens was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Another young man, this one more athletic, hunky and perhaps a bit older, was standing beside him with his back turned. The boy standing appeared to be looking out the window, and the boy sitting on the floor was looking at his friend’s bottom.
The boy who was sitting had such an expression of longing on his face, and was also tinged with sadness and maybe even a bit of fear. I immediately related to the emotions I was picking on this young man’s face. Of course even now I find myself looking at certain young men and experiencing longing mixed with sadness. And sometimes I’m afraid that I’ve looked too long and made myself noticeable. But thirty years ago, the longing was powerfully intense. I had to look at certain guys. I had to drink in their beauty. I had to. But at the same time, I knew I couldn’t get caught.
Of course we’ve all been attracted to people who we can’t have. But there’s something deeply frustrating about not being allowed to try to have them, for it to be catagorically forbidden for you to act on your desires always, no exceptions. It’s humiliating when you’re not even allowed to admit to your attraction to anyone, ever. I lived in fear of being found out. Ostracism, relentless teasing, bullying, threats, rejection by my closest family members and friends, and even physical violence, they all seemed like very real possibilities.
I was caught looking once while in high school. It was during summer break, and my sister and I went to the mall and watched a fashion show. One of the boy models struck my eye, and I couldn’t stop watching him. It was hard not to watch him since he was onstage. The mall was not in my hometown, and I didn’t recognize the boy, so I assumed I would never see him again. I assumed that it was safe to look at this pretty boy in his pretty new clothes. He was, after all, part of a fashion show. He was inviting people to look at him, and so I didn’t pass up the opportunity.
Later, my sister and I were milling around a gift shop in the mall, and much to my surprise the boy from the fashion show came into the shop. He was with a coupe of other boys who were also quite attractive to me. I tried to sneak glances. I did my best to be discreet. But there was something about this boy that really made him stand out. I guess I was obvious, and he noticed me looking at him. He caught me several times. Our eyes met several times.
After a few minutes, my sister and I left, and I assumed that this gorgeous creature was gone for good. But as luck would have it, he turned up at my school a few weeks later when the fall semester began. And he hadn’t forgotten me. Nor did he have any intentions of giving me a break. For the next two years, he taunted me every time our paths crossed. He was a popular boy, and he was always with friends. Every time he saw me, he would make a point to tell his friends how he had once caught me looking at him. They would laugh with derision, and there was often homophobic epithets hurled at me.
I had a run in with the boy in question the very last day of school before I graduated. I had to hand in a paper to my biology teacher, and I had to go into his room while he was teaching another class. While I was standing there beside the teacher’s desk, I heard someone call out my name. When I looked toward the class, I saw the boy sitting in the back. He and several of his friends were giggling and mouthing words at me. I didn’t bother trying to make out what they were saying. When I left that classroom, I thought to myself how glad I was that this bullshit was over. I never saw him again after that day.
It had all hurt so much. My sin had been finding this boy attractive, and he reacted to that by ridiculing me regularly for two years. So not only could I not have what I wanted, but the object of my desires detested me. He wanted to hurt me, over and over again, for years. And his relentless desire to punish me inspired more aggressive bullies to target me. I ended up being shoved in our crowded halls daily between classes by invisible hands, pushed, punched, and knocked into lockers, and a few times almost knocked to the floor. I was called names, and I was physically threatened. And all because I found a boy attractive on a sunny summer afternoon when I was sixteen.
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