Five Year Plan
30th March 2014, 06:36
I've realized my participation on this forum has been overly abstract and depersonalized. I am going to write about my life in snippets. Here is the first installment....
For as long as I can remember I’ve been on the outside of life, looking in at it. Or at least the life I have always thought I should be living.
From the time I was 7 or 8 or something close to that age, I remember feeling guilty as a result of the fact that I liked other boys. I remember hearing the terms “gay” and “gay wad” being used in a derogatory fashion by some of the very boys I wanted to get closer to, that I felt attracted to. I remember when I was in the second grade, and I walked back to my school and surreptitiously entered my classroom to switch the seats around so that the boy I liked would be sitting at the desk next to mine. I remember games with other boys my age that involved pulling down pants. I seemed to enjoy these games more than they did. Was something wrong with me?
Not according to my parents. They always believed in me. Perhaps my one gift in life was to score unreasonably high on every test, to be as honest with them as I possibly could be. When I wasn’t trying to look at the penises of boys I knew, I was challenging myself to do something I knew my parents would appreciate. I knew how to read and how to tell time before I even entered kindergarten. When I was around five, I locked myself in a downstairs closet and told my parents not to let me out until I had finally learned how to tie my shoelaces. Outwardly, I was the child the two suburbanite parents’ dream of picking from the adoption agency catalogue. Always obedient, always mindful of other people’s feelings. Wasn’t I everything they wanted?
For as long as I can remember I’ve been on the outside of life, looking in at it. Or at least the life I have always thought I should be living.
From the time I was 7 or 8 or something close to that age, I remember feeling guilty as a result of the fact that I liked other boys. I remember hearing the terms “gay” and “gay wad” being used in a derogatory fashion by some of the very boys I wanted to get closer to, that I felt attracted to. I remember when I was in the second grade, and I walked back to my school and surreptitiously entered my classroom to switch the seats around so that the boy I liked would be sitting at the desk next to mine. I remember games with other boys my age that involved pulling down pants. I seemed to enjoy these games more than they did. Was something wrong with me?
Not according to my parents. They always believed in me. Perhaps my one gift in life was to score unreasonably high on every test, to be as honest with them as I possibly could be. When I wasn’t trying to look at the penises of boys I knew, I was challenging myself to do something I knew my parents would appreciate. I knew how to read and how to tell time before I even entered kindergarten. When I was around five, I locked myself in a downstairs closet and told my parents not to let me out until I had finally learned how to tie my shoelaces. Outwardly, I was the child the two suburbanite parents’ dream of picking from the adoption agency catalogue. Always obedient, always mindful of other people’s feelings. Wasn’t I everything they wanted?