I'm From Driftwood

by Charles De Silva

I was a chef working on a cruise line in Miami. Sailing the Caribbean, I was having the time of my life. Work was very hard. But that was it that kept me on my toes. I worked with 48 different nationalities and that was the icing on the cake as I loved moving around with the people of the world. I worked for 5 years and then it was cut short and it was down hill then…

Being gay was a problem as I was being followed by nearly every man who wanted an easy lay! But me being the old fashioned person that I am, I was not interested and shunned them away. I was more interested in a long-term relationship and with someone who meant something and not just lust.

But that was my downfall. Since I was not giving it to them I was gang raped by three of them and that was the worst experience of my life. I tried to forget it and get on with my life but it haunted me day-in day-out! Until something even worse hit me…

When I was back in my homeland for vacation, I found out that I was HIV-positive. But after a while I managed to get a job in Sri Lanka and it helped me forget what I was going through, but then the first ‘symptoms of HIV’ hit me.

My boss found out about my status and I was fired instantly. Then the routine followed job after job until I was out on the street on my own eating from garbage bins and surviving day to day. So I started doing work with PLHIV and also I started positive public speaking in forums to bring the issue to the forefront. It’s now been 16 years since I was infected, without medication!

I had three partners since 1997, and all of them turned out to be a disappointment as they wanted to get saved through me.

They all had jobs and were not HIV-positive. But they knew of my status before they got involved with me. But the last boyfriend took the cake as he lived with me for three years. I looked after him, finding jobs for him as he could not stick to one. I even looked after his family, sending one of his sisters to Japan for studies and his other sister for a temp job as she was studying at the same time.

I had saved a bit for hoping to start my own business at home, as doing sensitization and prevention work on HIV was a bit too much when you are living it every day. So I decided to have something else to take away the sting. So with a small loan from by brother and with all my savings I wanted to start a costume shop. But the day that I withdrew all my money, I had to go out for a sensitization programme and my boyfriend was at home. When I came back he and all my money had gone. Ten days went until I tracked him down. But he had not gotten the money as he says that he had lost it. Now in the meantime I had found out the lies that he had been telling me for the last three years and that was another blow. But I could not go to the police as I did not know what would come out. Homosexuality is a criminal act punishable by law. So I had to keep quiet and he took the upper-hand. This happened in 2007.

Now in 2010 I have met a wonderful guy who loves me and accepts me for who I am and my background, too. I was open with him from the start and he has opened up to me and we are now making plans to make fruit of our commitment to each other. The first steps of our relationship is to move in together and which we have now done, and are hoping for the best! I really feel this is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with as he shows so much concern and is also very open and direct, which is what I admire in him.

Wish us luck!

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by S. Irving

“I want to move to Iowa to get married, and make you pancakes every morning.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with her, but reading that text message on the first Friday night of April 2009 ranks fairly high. She had a knack for making grand romantic gestures in the simplest of words. For the first time I imagined a future with a girl — this girl —and the thought didn’t terrify me. I had once told her I could live a lie for the rest of my life, but the appeal of that future now gave way to one where I’d get to recreate again and again the memory of waking up next to her. That alone would make every disappointed look I’d later have to bear entirely worth it.

Before I met her in October 2008 I had never given my sexuality a second thought. I spent most of high school living on a tropical island where homosexuality still carries a 12 year jail sentence (not that I felt this had any bearing on my life back then). I’ll never forget my first serious boyfriend telling me that before I dolled up around the age of 16 he thought I was a dyke because I played soccer and didn’t ever wear skirts. Not exactly “classic” homophobia, but I definitely bought into the stereotype that lesbians were unattractive women who resorted to dating each other because they couldn’t land a man. I had an ugly duckling complex growing up, and dating good looking men made me feel validated as a woman.

But this girl, who I met in a class during my sophomore year at college in New York, defied my preconceived notion of gay women. When I first suspected she had a crush on me I remember thinking, “she doesn’t look like a lesbian,” but looks weren’t even half the story. She’d fight for the seat next to me in lecture just to ask me how my weekend was and she’d sit opposite me during recitations to maximize the chance of making eye contact. I found her attention flattering. We eventually went out for coffee after I pitched an essay idea about mental illness to our class and she volunteered to be interviewed about her adolescent anorexia. It slipped out during our conversation that I was sexually abused as a child, which was the first of many things I revealed to her before I could even admit to myself.

What happened between our first kiss on my birthday in January 2009 and the day I flew back to Sri Lanka for that summer I could say is too much or too complicated to explain, but really it’s just too painful to relive. Let’s just say I was only able to confess my feelings for her because I believed my coming out story would double as the greatest loved story ever told.

It did not.

For months we oscillated between vicious arguments and spells of silence, hooking up and going off the grid, feeling liberated and feeling imprisoned. The moment I declared I was finally ready to openly be with her, she decided I wasn’t actually worth the risk. She once told me “the worst thing to be is single and gay,” and she had just rendered me heartbroken and ashamed. Coming out stories are often painful because they don’t always have happy endings, but the most traumatic ones don’t have happy beginnings either.

But as I mended myself over that summer I realized the process didn’t involve reasserting my heterosexuality. In fact, the solution to my ugly duckling problem and how I reconciled myself with my queer nature were the same: I learned to be proud of who I am regardless of who I am with.

Whatever her intentions for luring me in love with her, the fact remains that she challenged me to be more myself than I ever dreamt was permissible. She and I are friends again. I’m still single and gay. Though the thought of that may terrify her, for now the reality of it kind of suits me.

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by T. Wicks

When I met her, I didn’t know what she meant to me. When I made love to her for the first and last time, I didn’t know what she meant to me. And now, years later, I am still none the wiser.

She is the one that never quite got away. I had her, but didn’t. I was in a relationship with her, but wasn’t. I am not in a relationship with her now, but I am.

Her name means Truth.

I don’t know why, but that absurdly makes me one hundred percent certain that she is meant to be in my life. I just don’t know why, or where she fits in.

I don’t know if I am gay or straight or somewhere in between. I am not used to falling in love with women. I fall in love with men far too easily. I find it easy to be attractive to men – I know what they want, I know how to tease and I like doing it, I love their strength and I love pushing into it with my own, whether in bed or in conversation. 

Don’t get me wrong – I find women attractive all the time. But I have no idea how to be attractive to them. And of the two women I’ve ever fallen for, I have only told one. The other, I think I just love – out of respect and awe and inspiration.

But this girl. I don’t know what it is. She teases me like I tease men, and she knows just what to do to make me want her. Pulling, tugging, grabbing and then, at the last moment, letting go. Stop. Start over. And repeat. She does it by kissing me – months apart and when I’m least expecting it. At a dying man’s house. Or in a bathroom, at a café we often visit. The last time, she had just given me a present and then she gave me this. “Best. Present. Ever.” I whisper in between kisses, and she smiles against my mouth.

Neither of us are good at being single, so ironically we never have been. But we’ve been together all the same. Together, but not. It’s always something with her – but never everything. I let her go once, but she cheated and slipped a little bit of herself into my coffee or something. Because I’ve never quite been able to get her out of my system ever since.

She was with me when I got my tattoo. “Verité” – ‘Truth’ in French, and a variation of her name. I had wanted to get it anyway, so it was just a coincidence. I tell myself.

In silly moments, when we’re upset with our partners, we dream about a life together. “If I had to pick one person in my life that I think I could make it work with, it would be you”. She said that a month after she met me and she still says it today. She looks straight in my eyes and tells me she means it. I can see it happening too, to be honest. We would barely fight, we’d listen to jazz on Sundays, I would breathe in her glorious hair at night, we would both be mothers and raise each other’s children as our own, we would hold hands and kiss in public and people would try not to look, she would sit beside me as I told my parents and we would deal with the consequences together.

It’s a nice picture. We have sillier dreams, like running away together to Spain or Greece and opening a shop that sells home made bread and goat cheese. Those are more fun, appealing to our affinity for the quaintly glamorous – but, in the end, harder to imagine actually coming true. But the other dream? Yeah. I can picture that.

Then again it’s easier to dream when you have a different reality. Maybe this is all it will ever be. Maybe once or twice a year she’ll kiss me in that way of hers and we’ll look over the table at each other with knowing eyes and then walk away from each other.

Until the next moment of Truth.

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