Keeping Secrets

I knew I was different from other boys at an early age. When I was a toddler, I wished I had been born a girl because people, especially my father, seemed to want me to be like other boys, but I wasn’t.

I stole a kiss from a boy in second grade. I came into the classroom from lunch, and he was sitting on the first row. We were the only two people in the room, and as I walked past, I bent down and kissed him on the forehead. I thought he was so cute and sweet, so I wanted to kiss him.

When I was eleven, all the boys around me started talking about sex, and that fired up my libido. I tried to imagine having sex with girls because that’s what the other boys talked about. In my fantasies, I was surrounded by a group of boys and one girl. After a while--a few weeks, a couple of months--I realized that I was really interested in the boys and the girl in my fantasies was just a token. She was there because I thought she had to be there. After that, the girl disappeared, and it was just me and the boys.

That’s when I knew I was gay. I can recall sitting out on our back porch and thinking it over. I wasn’t interested in girls in that way. I wanted to have sex with boys. Boys who want to have sex with other boys are gay. I was gay.

I accepted it immediately, and I relished my attraction to boys. I liked being attracted to boys. I liked that feeling. I liked the sexual fantasies. I liked looking at their bodies and imagining what they looked like naked. But I didn’t dare tell anyone.

By then I was already a fairly private, secretive person because my mother was seriously mentally ill and my father did his best to ignore me. My mother was unpredictable, so telling her anything, anything important, seemed scary. And my father would have a fit if I asked for help with anything more complicated than a hangnail. My father had already made it perfectly clear that he was hugely disappointed in me for not being the kind of boy he expected, and I imagined he would never even want to be in the same room with me if he knew I was gay.

So I kept my mouth shut, and I already knew how to keep my mouth shut. I realized I was gay when I was 11, and I didn’t tell another living soul until I went away to college at 18. Seven years is a long time to keep a secret like that, especially when you’re young. Seven years is an eternity when you’re young. All during that time, I was terrified of anyone finding out my secret. I was even afraid of falling asleep if my parents or my sister was in the room because I thought I might say something about a boy in my sleep. I was afraid of falling into a coma or getting a fever because I thought I might reveal who I really was. I was always on guard, so tense and stressed out.

Living like that for so long did something to me, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure it can be fixed. Most people instinctually want and need friends and family around them. But I’m kind of like a stray dog. I keep my distance. I shake and quiver with the desire to be touched and loved, but my fear of abuse is greater than my need to be loved.