QColumn: A Gay In The Life: The Unending Journey
Steve Prince came out 10 years ago and in the birthday spirit, he’s reminiscing.
The Unending Journey
By Steve Prince
Recently I volunteered for a phone-counseling program designed for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth. Some of the callers are older, but most of the kids calling are ages twelve to twenty-four. No matter how much I prepared myself, I wasn’t able to even fathom all the different reasons people would call. He called because he had a fight with his boyfriend and didn’t know who to talk to. He called because he can’t stand the breasts that he was born with. She calls because drinking is the only way she can feel comfortable around the straight girl that she’s in love with. All of these callers are under sixteen-years-old.
They call because they need to be heard. Need to be consoled. Need to be loved.
“I can’t go back there again!” Through the helpline phone I can hear the frustration in Shawn’s thirteen-year-old voice.
“Well, Shawn…” I pause. I don’t want to sound like a parent, but he has to go to school. “What do you not like the most about school?”
“It’s the names.” Shawn says, his voice cracking. “I know I shouldn’t care, but if I get called fag one more time. I’m sick of it. Do you know what it’s like?”
Faggot. It’s just a word but it still stings. I try and wish that sting away, but it’s still there. It still evokes pain. Not as much as it did when I was young, but it still lingers like a bubble in a murky pound that slowly floats to the surface and pops, causing a small but distinct ripple in the water’s clouded surface.
This week it has been ten years since I came out of the closet. It’s one of the greatest acts of love I have ever given myself. Today in Los Angeles, I am so lucky to be able to live my life openly and carefree, yet I often forget the trauma of my own coming out process. As much as I loved growing up in Oklahoma, I often forget the huge amount of heartache I went through in the heartland. As I talk to kids on the phone listening to their struggles of coming out, my own memories flash through my mind like scenes in a play. To answer Shawn’s question, I do know what it’s like…
“What a faggot!” It stung. I did not know what it meant, but I knew it was mean. Clay Reeves wasn’t my friend, but I didn’t remember doing anything to upset him. I was just playing Wonder Woman by myself, my favorite thing to do in my own fantasy world of lassos, bracelets, and invisible jets. With disgust he, and the other third grade boys, looked at me. I was confused.
“What did you say?” I asked.
They laughed. “What did you ssssay?” Clay mocked. I hated when people made fun of my lisp. “You’re such a little fairy.” Clay added. “Fag.”
He strutted away, the other boys following in his wake. I sat on a playground bench, warm from the Oklahoma sun. My stomach felt cold. I didn’t know what a faggot was, but I did know what fairy meant. My Dad had called me that before. Whenever he coaxed me into another sport I didn’t want to play, I would stand looking at him bored to death with my right arm resting on my hip and my left hand draped to my side.
“Steven, put your damn fairy wrists down.” Dad would gripe, “Stop standing like a girl! Stand like a boy.”
As I started putting fairy and faggot together, dread rose in my chest. Was I different from other boys? Was it okay to be different? I started to think about the type of kid Clay Reeves was and I didn’t want to be like him. I liked myself. Wonder Woman stood for truth, but Diana Prince was her alter ego, a way for Wonder Woman to hide her real self. Maybe I needed an alter ego. I mean I already had the last name Prince, and I took that as a sign. The bell rang. I stood up, closed my eyes, and spun around, just like Lynda Carter on the TV show. I imagined a starburst of pinkish light permeating my body and transforming me into my secret identity with superpowers impervious to pain. I stopped spinning. Squinting in the afternoon sunlight, I noticed the playground had been quickly deserted. I skipped to my classroom, leaving a shadow of dust in the breeze.
…
Derek Berry had great hair, and he was my best friend. We were celebrating our last weekend of the summer before our seventh grade school year. The setting sun peeked through the boards of the tree house, freckling his chestnut hair while he spoke. I loved to watch Derek talk. He wriggled in his sleeping bag.
“Did you hear Jeremy has already kissed three girls?” Derek asked. “I heard that he was even sneaking out to Shelly Allen’s house in the middle of the night. Dude, I better kiss a girl before school starts. You too. We’re falling behind.”
Eager to change the subject, I mentioned our upcoming Boy Scout trip. What girl did I want to kiss? I didn’t really think about it too much, and that scared me. I liked to imagine stories of comic book heroes, playing Nintendo, or staring at the dimple on Derek’s left cheek when he smirked. We talked and laughed all night, finally lulled to sleep by rolling thunder in the distance.
Boom! I awoke to thunder clapping above. I immediately was grateful Derek’s dad had put shingles on the roof to fend off the rain. The rushing wind whistled through the boards. I rolled over to my left side, surprised to see Derek’s face staring at me. Even in the darkness his eyes sparkled green. He smiled. Rain was beginning to tiptoe on the roof.
“Hey”, I said. “How long you been up?”
“A bit, couldn’t sleep ” he replied. “Brrr! It’s chilly.” He shivered and moved closer.
Something looked different about Derek. His face looked taught with nervous excitement and the tone of his voice seemed to hide a strangled laugh waiting to erupt. I quickly imagined when Sprite bubbles over a glass of ice.
“Yeah”, I lied, “uh, a bit.” I felt flushed and was nervous. Was it me or did Derek seem to be staring at me?
The rain drummed quicker. Derek smiled. Even in the dark, I could see the shadow of his dimple. A breeze blew across my face, but my body felt warm, almost electric. I could see Derek’s eyes scanning my face, yet his gaze seemed to linger as he looked at my lips.
“Kinda hard to sleep with all this. You don’t wanna go inside, do ya?” he asked, while he rose up from his pillow and itched behind his ear. When he lowered his head, half of his face was on my pillow. He bit his bottom lip. It was beginning to rain even harder.
“No, I’m fine.” I smiled back. Right now, a tornado couldn’t move me; I was frozen.
“Good.” Derek smirked in relief. I could smell the sweetness of his breath. He inched closer and closer. I closed my eyes, hoping the pouring shower would drown the thumping of my chest…
The next morning, Derek walked me home. We lived only about two miles from each other. Even in the mid morning the air was thick and hot. The humidity of last night’s rain hovered in the air like an unseen fog. We meandered along the beaten gray road in silence kicking gravel that had been dislodged in the rain. We walked a while before one of us spoke.
“Well…um…I can’t believe we, uh…woke up last night,” I said finally.
Derek paused. Avoiding his glance, I scanned the field. My gaze rested on the Bogle’s family pond. I loved that pond. I smiled remembering the cool amber water and the carefree summers I spent practicing my cannonball. It was a sanctuary from the relentless beating we all took from the scorching summer sun. A haven. I imagined what the pond looked like the night before in the storm, the water tossing and buffeting itself in the stiff wind and the rain. Emotional, visceral, and wild. This morning the lake simply mirrored the cloudless Oklahoma sky. Eerily still.
“What are you talking about?” Derek asked forebodingly. His response startled me.
I smiled apologetically. “I mean in the storm. We were cold and you know…” I didn’t want to say it.
I turned to look at Derek. It was then that I noticed he had not been walking beside me for some time.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” He shot, avoiding my glance, “I gotta go home.” With finality, he turned to walk home.
It was what he didn’t say that stung the most, and that he never talked to me again that I don’t forget. I wasn’t until the middle of my seventh grade year that I had my first kiss with Jenny Simmons, or at least that’s what I told people when they asked.
…
I stumbled in the hotel hallway. What the hell did I drink? My nineteen-year-old body wasn’t used to this much alcohol. I wasn’t a drinker. I only did it because all my friends wanted me to. That sounds silly to say but it’s true. I wish I hadn’t because now I feel sick. I walk past a hotel room with an open door and peered in. An exotic dark haired boy who looked a few years older than me was sitting on a bed staring out into the hallway.
“Hey, I’m Ruben,” he says politely.
I had seen him before. He was a violist at school. As he would walk the halls, something about him drew me to him. I wanted to know him. He had never said hi to me before, but that was back at school in Texas. But now we were in Colorado. Ruben and I, along with 200 other college students, were stuck in a floor of a hotel room for two weeks for a music festival. He played in the orchestra and I was one of the singers in the ensemble.
“Want some water?” He said, holding up a bottle.
“Sure” I say, obligingly. “I’m Steve, by the way.”
I sit and we make small talk. We both talk about where we are from, what we think of Colorado, but then he interrupts suddenly.
“Aren’t you tired?” he says softly.
“Well, yeah” I say in a slurred speech. “We were playing some drinking game called Thumper and now I’m tipsy. Stupid really—”
“No.” He said, halting me in mid-sentence. “Aren’t you tired of it?”
I looked at him and he stared back, unblinking. It wasn’t what Ruben said but how he said it. It was like a parent or a big brother who had walked the path I was stumbling on now. He knew. The thing that I had tried to not think about for the last year, for really all my life was actually known by someone else. So what did I do? I lied of course.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I looked down at the dirty paisley carpet and kicked my feet.
“You know…” he paused. “I’m gay.” Taking my silence as permission to go on, Ruben continued cautiously. “It was hard at first, but I came out five years ago. I was raised Catholic, so my family had a hard time with it but they’re getting better. I’m really glad I did it. It was like freeing a part of myself.”
I said nothing.
He put his hand on my leg. Not like a lover, but like a friend. It was the first time in my life that someone saw me for who I really was and still didn’t judge me for it. I looked up at him but I couldn’t see him. In that moment, a spark ignited in my chest. This feeling was different than the feeling I usually felt in my gut. There wasn’t anxiety, or fear, or guilt, or shame. There was just love. Love for myself. I smiled while tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I laid my head on my new friend’s shoulder and silently cried, releasing a spirit that had been waiting almost twenty years to begin its renaissance.
…
The gravel crackled underneath my car as I pulled up my father’s driveway. The question echoed in my thoughts, “What am I going to say?” If my Dad had not greeted me in the drive, I think I would have backed the car up and left. But there he was, tinkering on his work truck as usual. Some things do stay the same, but not today.
I knew it was time to come out to my Dad. Everyone else in my family knew, my friends knew, and I hated being in relationships and not telling my Dad about such an important part of my life. “I’ll tell him first thing. Get it over with.” I told myself. As he smiled and I gave him a hug, my resolve weakened. “This is not the right moment,” I thought.
The right moment didn’t come while we grilled burgers, or during dinner, or even as we sat in the living room watching a movie. Finally he and my step-mother were going to bed. My thoughts screamed at me, “You have to do this tonight!”
“Dad…” I swallowed. “I need to tell you something, and I think you know what it is.”
My father’s face turned bright red, as it always does when his blood pressure goes up. With a deadened look, his eyes fell to the floor.
“I don’t wanna hear it”, he quipped. “Not tonight.”
“Dad, you have to.” I commanded. I had to say it. My secret was like a balloon ready to pop. “Dad, I’m—”
“Steven…” My father pleaded, “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it son. It’s late son, and I’m…tired.”
Now that I had begun I couldn’t stop. “I’m tired too, Pop.”
As tears rolled down his red cheeks, he lips moved but he couldn’t talk. I only saw my Dad cry once before, the day he left my Mom. I had helped him pack his clothes in his truck and it was one of the hardest days of my life. But this was different. I wasn’t sad anymore. As I hugged my weeping father, telling him I loved him, a calm came over me, a lightness that I hadn’t felt since I was a child.
Tonight I am working late at the call center. It’s been a long day and even though I love volunteering, I’m tired. The phone rings and I pick it up.
“This is Steven. What’s going on tonight?”
She talks and I listen. Carly is a lesbian from the Iowa who just came out to her parents, who promptly kicked her out of their home. When I started volunteering at the LGBTQ helpline, I thought situations like Carly’s were rare; however I soon learned that she is one of many teens who are forced to fend for their selves. She’s scared. I remember that feeling. Immediately my feelings of being tired from the day vanish. It’s all about Carly right now, not me.
As she talks, my own memories flash through my thoughts, as if on fast-forward. A snub on the playground, a crush not returned, my father’s fear—I’m grateful for those moments. I used to think of my sexuality as a facet of myself. I did not want my gayness to be my identity, but now I realize they are one in the same. Being gay forced me to find my sense of self at a young age. It allowed me to see others without judgment and prejudice, and my gayness has brought me to the life I live today. A life that I love.
“Feeling better, Carly” I asked. It’s the end of the call and she has calmed down.
“Thank you so much.” She says through sniffles. “I don’t know what I would’ve done. You’re totally my hero.”
I smile, taking in the word hero. Wonder Woman inspired me to hold on to my true sense of self. She was tough but loving. She was a goddess with the insecurities of a human. I think her dichotomy is why I love her still. She lives her life in truth. As I hang up the phone I’m glad that Wonder Woman was there for me, but more grateful that now, I can be there for someone else.
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Years after moving from Oklahoma, Steve Prince is still acclimating to the gay scene in Los Angeles-he’s a slow learner. By trial and error and a lot of sex, his mission is to make the uncomfortable, comfortable. Also it should be known that he is gayer than butt sex.
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Previously, on A Gay In The Life:
The Birds and The Birds
Lyin’, & Twinks, & Bears — Oh My!
Going Public
Christmas in July
Luck Be A Lady Tonight
I Left My Heart In Oklahoma
As Luck Would Have It
Shock & Awe
Blame It On Britney
Aug 16, 2008
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