2
Tom Carlile
“What a freak. Hey, look at this…”
On New Year’s Eve I’m standing in line on the plane, waiting to deplane, when I hear the comment coming from some snotty-faced kid who couldn’t have been older than thirteen. He motions at my Lady Gaga shirt and then nudges his little friend, who starts smirking and giggling.
I slide on my headphones and play a Beyoncé song to try to feel fabulous. It doesn’t work. I try not to let it in, the hurt and the shame and the embarrassment, but it comes anyway.
This happens all the time, and I still never know how to react to it. It’s a special kind of shame to be humiliated by someone half your age, and still be too petrified to even respond. I wish I could be like the boys in the movies and have the sassy, bitchy, devil-may-care attitude about it. Sure, I am fine with myself in many ways, and many parts of me are fabulous. I enjoy being me: I’ve never met a room I couldn’t re-decorate, my knowledge of Lady Gaga’s career is nearly encyclopedic, and my orange- blonde hair is styled for the gods every day of the week. And yes, I know these people are just hating me out of their own ignorance, and because of issues they have with themselves, and not me.
But deeper than that, underneath all the sass, it really does hurt.
Sometimes it really does feel bad. Why was I born like this, anyway? Why couldn’t I have been Tom Brady? Sometimes I do kind of hate being me. I mean, how could I not? All everyone ever does is tell me all the things that are wrong with me. My voice is too high, my wrists are too loose, even my face has been described as “girly.” I could joke about it all day in the self-deprecating way I usually take, but the reality is that it makes me feel as worthless as the clothes on my back. If people are rejecting me because of something I cannot change about myself, what does that say about me? Why are so many things wrong with me?
The line of sweaty, irritated travelers finally starts moving off the plane, and soon I am rushing through the airport to the exits, suddenly wishing I’d brought a jacket to hide over my stupid shirt.
In my daily life I guess I’ve learned to blend in, to be two people at once. My inner monologue can be as sassy as it wants to be, but I guess I keep my clothes as “masculine” as possible. That way, I don’t attract any attention. Because attention can lead to problems, and problems can lead to danger, and all of it in general leads to humiliation. I once tried to wear tight, ripped jeans on a night out in my town, and a car slowed down so a bunch of frat boys could lean out of the window and shout “faggot! Hahahaha.”
So, as I grew up, I guess I started learning to blend in, to live two lives inside one body. I could be as gay as I wanted in the gay bars, but in public, you learn to edit yourself: you walk a little taller, you move your wrists a little less, you speak a little deeper.
And then it all changed.
This year I found someone who started changing things. I found someone who accepted me, for the first time, in a way I have never been accepted in my life, not even by my parents. I found someone who changed my whole life, and nobody knows it but me. And it has to stay that way, because over the last year I made the stupidest move any gay man could ever make: yes, that’s right, I fell in love with a straight guy who will never love me back.
And speaking of straight guys: as I wait for an Uber outside the terminal, I get a text that makes my heart skip a few beats:
Hey. I’m at the house, and…I think we should have a talk tonight. Just let me know when you’re close.