I'm From Driftwood

by Andrew Reynolds

Even though it was really 1987, it was still the 1960s in the heart of our teacher, Mr. A. That’s why Mr. A had us arrange our chairs in a semi circle in front of the hot seat.

Moving around the semi-circle, we each had to say one complimentary thing about the person in the hot seat. Sarcasm was forbidden, although faint praise was allowed, “I like his shoes,” or, “He always seems really well prepared.”

I heard lots of kind things when I was in the hot seat.

“He’s funny.”
“He says weird stuff but he’s nice too.”
“He’s cool.”

And then it was your turn to speak.

“He’s the most erotic person I’ve ever met.”

“Uhm, Dan I think you might be thinking of the word ‘eccentric,’” Mr. A. suggested.

“No,” you said, looking me in the eyes, “I mean ‘erotic’.”

Here’s my guess—that was so far out of the bounds of what could be normal that everyone just shrugged it off—there wasn’t any teasing or joking or comment at all afterwards. It was so completely implausible that it must not have happened.

We went on a date, if you could call it that. We walked around the supermarket because even then I thought it was fun to look at package design. You were such a good sport, even coming up with an anecdote about going camping in Vermont and noticing how all the brands were different in the grocery stores there.

Today I know this story should end with me inviting you back to make out in my parents’ basement. But I didn’t know that then.

“I don’t wanna go home,” you said as I dropped you off, “I don’t wanna be alone.”

“I hear you man,” I replied, as if you had complained about Mondays or the rain, something out of my hands, “see you later.”

You were the erotic one. Me? God, I barely had the word *gay*, I certainly didn’t have the word *bear*.

Here’s my guess—you were so far out of the bounds of what I imagined was possible (for starters, you never auditioned for a single musical) it never occurred to me to, you know, ask.

I was a senior and you were a junior. We’ve lost touch and the Internet hasn’t helped. I hope you’ve found a home where you aren’t alone. And thanks for being so brave in class that day. I really needed it, even though I didn’t have a clue what to do with it once I had it. 

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by Jeremy Cauffman

I grew up in Fish Lake, Indiana. Where the population never quite reached 800. What was once a summer destination for Chicagoans to flee from the sweltering heat during the 60′s was now a dying village during the early 80′s. You would think that being from such a small town that anyone displaying any gay characteristics would have it rough. Yet living in such a small town sheltered me from homophobia and the stigma of being gay. I was living in a bubble. I was who I was without hesitation. I remember as early as kindergarten having a crush on a set of twins that were in my class. When the other children would be drawing pictures of cats and big yellow suns I would draw pictures of me and the twins living in a castle high in the mountains with our hoard of Popple minions. When I would bring my masterpieces home my mother would proudly display them on the fridge. I would play secretary with my cousins and asked Santa every year for a Barbie because I was jealous of all the girls in the neighborhood that had one. Unfortunately Santa believed that dolls where for girls and fire trucks were for boys. Still none of that was strong enough to penetrate my bubble.

It wasn’t until 6th grade when I had to be bused into the city to attend middle school that I began to become aware that what I acknowledged as being normal was anything but what others considered to be normal. During Sex Education week my entire class was brought into the auditorium to watch a film about the differences between boys and girls, our changing bodies and a very rudimentary explanation of  sex and the consequence of not practicing safe sex. The consequences being unplanned pregnancies, being considered unclean in the eyes of God and STDs that involved an array of bodily discharges. Suddenly there was a male couple holding hands marching down the street with other men holding hands. What was this? I became very interested. Then it happened. A portion of the film was dedicated to AIDS, which at the time was still largely believed to be a disease that only gay men could contract. As I watched the men marching with picket signs pleading for help from this horrible disease a large number of the class began to chuckle. I believe that was the first time I can recall ever hearing the word fag. POP! My bubble had burst. There it was looking me right in the face. “I am gay.” I began to sweat as fear began filling every part of my body. I was so glad that the lights were dimmed otherwise everyone would have noticed that I was blushing in a panic that I would soon be outed, labeled and subsequently judged by my classmates. When the lights came back on I was no longer the same boy that had entered the room. I was now a boy who had to pretend to be someone I was not.

After a year of feeling as though I was living a lie I had finally had enough. I might not have been ready to tell the world, but I needed to tell someone. It was a Friday morning as I was walking to school with my best friend Melissa that I decided today was the day. I would tell Melissa that I am gay. If I couldn’t tell my best friend who could I tell? As we were walking Melissa could tell that something was up. She kept asking me “what is wrong, did I do something?” I explained to her that I had a secret I needed to tell her, but I would tell her after school. I figured that way if things didn’t go the way that I imagined, I wouldn’t have to face her again until Monday. Tuesday if I could convince my mother that I was sick. Something that I had become an expert at. For the remainder of the day Melissa kept trying to guess what it was. Are you moving? Are your parents getting a divorce? Did someone die? By 5th period English class I knew that when the time came there would be no way I would be able to find the courage to utter the words “I am gay.” Even to my best friend. I decided to write her a note and pass it off to her after class. At that point I only had band practice between me and the end of the school day. I pulled out a piece of paper from my trapper keeper and began to think of a way to finally come clean about my big secret. Not being one to sugarcoat things, even in the 7th grade, I simply wrote “I’m gay” in the middle of the paper. I began folding the note, sealing my fate with every fold. It was then that I caught the eye of my teacher. “Jeremy is that a note that you are writing? You know the rule, bring it to the front of the class and read it.” My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I thought I was going to pass out. I could just lie and pretend to read words that were not really there. Saving myself from the humiliation of the truth and the inevitable name calling from my fellow classmates. As I stood there staring at the class I realized that I was done lying. I was done pretending to be someone that I was not. It was time to stop living in fear. “I am gay!”

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by Alberto

I came out of the closet at 16. I was in high school and I had an art project so I talked to my teacher about me being gay and he encouraged me to open up. At that time I was really pressured about it because everyone in high school knew but my family didn’t and for me they are the important ones. So for the exposition I drew a weeping willow with color in the middle of a grey desert explaining how lonely I felt and all the things most of us feel when we’re in the closet.

When the moment was right I showed them the picture and said, “Mom, Dad, I’m Gay.” My dad was so mad and my mom started crying. We left the auditorium and went straight to the house and talked about it. It was really tough; they sent me to a psychologist, even made me take a blood test. Thank God they’re not that religious because they would have sent me to a priest. Now, almost four years later, we don’t touch the subject, I don’t tell them anything about my private life and everything is okay. I know that in their own way they accept me just as I am and with more time everything is going to be even better.

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by Sam Paxton

Not a lot of people go to the grocery store on weekday nights. A few people duck in after work, grab some bread or a gallon of milk, and zip out of there as fast as possible. Tonight, my lane is one of two still open, not counting the self-checkout machines which are, as always, more popular than we are. I stand under the fluorescent lights and listen to the blandly inoffensive pop music they’re piping in. All the songs are about romance. My depression helpfully reminds me that I’m a 23-year-old virgin who’s kissed neither boy nor beard. I tell my depression to shut up, and fiddle with the cash register. My job is a brainless job, but it’s not so bad. It gives me time to daydream, and think about where my life is headed, and where I want it to go.

If you’d asked any of my elementary school teachers where they thought I’d be in fifteen years or so, I doubt any of them would guess “high school dropout working as a checkout boy.” Up to about sixth grade, I was the star pupil of every class. Straight A-pluses, except when I just got A’s. I didn’t just want to be an astronaut, I went to Space Camp and memorized whole episodes of Cosmosand shocked adults with my in-depth understanding of black holes. I was Hermione Granger on crack.

I’d always dealt with some amount of bullying, but for some reason, it seemed to get worse in middle school. Maybe it was because the school was bigger, so there were more bullies. Maybe it was because I started to realize, deep down inside, that when they called me a fag, they were right. I came out to myself in seventh grade, and told no one, but somehow they seemed to sense it. I don’t know if I subconsciously sent out gay signals, or if their gaydar was so trigger-happy that they got a few lucky guesses along with a whole slew of false positives (that’s a distinct possibility; middle-schoolers call everyone gay), but it felt like suddenly every bully in the school was drawn to me like sharks to blood.

About that time, I started sinking into depression. I dreaded going to school. I’d go into greater detail regarding the bullying, but you all probably know the story by now. The name-calling, the beatings, the teachers’ total lack of concern – you know, the classics. My grades dropped like a stone until I was barely passing anything. By the time I got to high school, I’d completely given up on doing well in school, making friends, or being happy. (Just in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t go to that Littleton, CO, high school. And for the record, it’s not even technically located in Littleton, so quit blaming my admittedly crappy town for the sins of Columbine Valley.)

Maybe if I’d known then that I could have graduated in three years, or gone to Bard College at Simon’s Rock after sophomore year, or transferred to the hippie alternative school half an hour away, or just hung in there until I could escape to some east coast liberal arts college where everyone is gay or wants to be, I’d have kept going. But at the time, I didn’t know about any of those options. My teachers and guidance counselors told us all, “College will be just like this, only harder” – repeating that exact sentence again and again like it was a mantra. I guess they wanted to scare us into working hard, but it just made me lose all hope in ever escaping the cycle of harassment. It probably didn’t help that my image of college life came from movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, giving me the impression that the only difference between college and high school was that the bullies would be wearing togas instead of letter jackets. I ended up dropping out and getting a G.E.D. True to form, I got a perfect score on my G.E.D. test. My parents hung my results up on the fridge and left them there for months. I didn’t exactly give them anything else to be proud of me for.

Even though I was now free of the bullies, dropping out didn’t make me any happier. I found I didn’t need jocks to beat me up; they’d obliterated my self-esteem to the point where I’d happily do the job for them. Loathing myself for every perceived fault became like an addiction. Depression is sneaky like that. It’ll convince you to hate yourself for being gay, and when you get over that, it’ll convince you to hate yourself for being too closeted (You’re lying to the people you love!) or too out (You’re making people uncomfortable!) or not perfect enough (You’re making gays look bad!). And when you start to wake up and see the wreckage it’s made of your life, it’ll convince you to hate yourself for hating yourself. (If you were stronger, you wouldn’t be so sad all the time.) But the most sadistic trick it pulls is convincing you it doesn’t exist. I was clinically depressed for years before I sought any treatment, because I listened as it told me, You’re not depressed. You’re just lazy, and you’re using depression as an excuse to not do anything. You just want people to feel sorry for you. You just love feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t need a therapist or drugs; you just need to grow up and be a man.

I drifted apart from the few friends I had in school. I came to fear summers and holidays, when they’d come home and I’d run into them, hear about their happy lives at college or their volunteer work or their internships or their exciting jobs, and face the dreaded question, “So what are you doing with yourself?” I didn’t even have a dramatic, Oprah-worthy tale of surviving on the mean streets of Denver by selling my body for meth. I just hung around the suburbs and hated myself for the better part of a decade. I got lousy minimum wage jobs and lost lousy minimum wage jobs. I got on antidepressants and got off, and got on other antidepressants, and switched therapists a few times. Some days I woke up and the first thing that popped into my head was “I hate myself,” and I’d be contemplating suicide by breakfast. (Incidentally, Suicide by Breakfast would make a good name for an emo band.) I never did attempt, though, partly because I was afraid of how much it would hurt, and partly because I knew it would destroy my parents. I considered admitting myself to a mental health facility, but I didn’t do that, either. My six-word memoir: “I thought about it, but didn’t.”

A few months back, I enrolled in community college, which everyone around me applauded as a major step forward. (I’m just embarrassed their standards for me are so low.) I’m almost one semester in, and even though I still don’t know what to major in or what career path I’m working towards, I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m getting good grades in my math class, which I never thought I’d be able to do. I could transfer to a four-year college, get a real bachelor’s degree. I just might end up going to one of those quirky east coast liberal arts colleges after all.

An African-American guy about my age comes up to my lane and unloads a handful of groceries on the belt. He is a walking greatest hits compilation of everything I find attractive in a man. Tall and slender, with broad shoulders. A dark red scarf tucked into his perfectly-fitting black pea coat. His movements are smooth, gentle. He’s slightly effeminate (not the loud and bitchy kind, more the graceful and sophisticated kind). Rectangular glasses compliment his square jaw and high cheekbones. I’m afraid to look directly at him lest I turn bright red and stammer like an idiot. So my eyes bore holes in his groceries as I scan them and mumble out my script.

“How are you doing tonight?”

“Well. And you?”

I have no idea what to say. He said “well” instead of “good.” No one does that. He asked me how I was doing. No one does that either.

“Great,” I lie, because when you ask your friendly neighborhood register biscuit how he is, you’re generally not looking to hear, “Crippled by clinical depression! And you?”

I continue my mumble-script. Does he have a membership card? No. Does he want one? Of course not, no one does.

SAM: I should flirt with him.

DEPRESSION: He’s probably not even gay.

SAM: Are you kidding? He has to be gay. Look at the way he walks. Listen to his voice. And for God’s sake, I’m ringing up his appletini mix! I should work that in somehow. Cheekily ask him if he needs someone to help him drink those appletinis.

DEPRESSION: Great idea! Then he can stare blankly at you and say he’s making them for a party. Or drinking them with his boyfriend. Or just with someone who isn’t a tangled knot of neuroses.

SAM: I’m getting better.

DEPRESSION: I wonder how many dates it would take for him to figure out what a loser you are? Are you even emotionally stable enough for a relationship right now?

His groceries all fit into one bag. I wonder if it means something that he didn’t go to the self-checkout lane like all the other evening customers? Or is that just wishful thinking? I take a chance, work up all my courage, and smile at him as I hand him his bag. He actually smiles back. I might have a heart attack.

I watch him as he leaves. He strides out of the store like he’s on a catwalk, poised, elegant, confident.

DEPRESSION: He probably thinks you’re racist because you were so unfriendly.

SAM: I smiled at him!

DEPRESSION: After acting really nervous and uncomfortable around him the whole rest of the time.

SAM: He smiled back at me! Maybe he thinks I’m cute. Maybe he’ll come back sometime soon.

DEPRESSION: Yeah, with his boyfriend. And he’ll tell him, “Let’s not go to that cashier. That’s the racist one.”

SAM: Oh, go fuck yourself. You ruined my life. I’m not listening to you anymore.

My depression tells me that this story is too long, too self-indulgent, too self-pitying. No one will want to read it. The dark humor is too dark to amuse anyone. The other stories on this website are way better. A story that is literally about folding laundry is more interesting than this story.

I keep writing.

Bit by bit, I’m learning that I’m not as worthless as I thought I was. I know that someday, I want a husband, and a house, and a cat. Maybe two cats. I’m starting to grasp that I could make that happen. I could have that, and even deserve it. I just have to go one step at a time. One semester at a community college. One smile at a cute boy. One story on a website.

Someday, somehow, I’ll be more than this.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Sam L.

As I sat on my bed gazing at the television screen watching BBC Parliament for the first time, it occurred to me that I will always remember this day, February 5, 2013, for this was the day in the United Kingdom where the gay marriage bill was either to be declined or accepted by the British parliament. I am just 19 years old and this is the first major change in gay rights I have witnessed or can remember in my entire life. As the news broke that the bill had been accepted I suddenly felt overwhelmed with emotion and joy. I am not the emotional type, in fact quite the opposite but I finally felt as if gay rights were moving on instead of moving back.

I live in a tiny village in Bristol, United Kingdom. We have seven shops and a high school, it’s the type of place where everyone knows everyone’s business and everyone has to air their opinion because there is nothing better to do. High school for me never felt like a school, it felt like a prison. I was held captive from 9 to 3:30 every day, all the time just counting down the seconds. I wasn’t openly gay but being somewhat effeminate I didn’t need to be, I didn’t get to come out of the closet, I was thrown out. There wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t knocked down or beaten or taunted, and in the end it became part of daily life.

By the time I was able to leave my high school the confident outgoing personality I once was had completely diminished. What remained was an empty, tired and unstable mess. I had numerous breakdowns including several years suffering from Anorexia Nervosa. Even as a young child I was teased and taunted and what childhood I did have was almost destroyed by the isolation I felt.

But turning 17 changed my life; I got accepted into a prestigious performing college which changed me forever. I met all manner of people, all races, all religions, and all sexualities and suddenly I didn’t feel so isolated. I started to develop a personality, I started to find my feet and become a person. When I turned 18 I hit the gay clubs in the city and met my boyfriend who I have been with for over a year and I started to recover as a person.

So last week it finally felt as if everything was beginning to fall into place, I felt as if my life was moving in the right direction and so was my country and I felt proud. I have never made any announcement of my sexuality to my family members other than my parents, partly due to the initial reaction my parents had as they banned me from telling anyone else. So on 5th February I updated my Facebook status (something I do rarely) to say:

“Today the gay marriage bill was accepted. I cannot help but think in a decade we’ll look back and think that this was a long time coming. Love is not gender, love is not something you control, love is love. Everyone is born to love who they love, we cannot change nor must we. Today something spectacular happened and love triumphed prejudice.”

The status was liked by over 60 people, and within those 60 people were family but more importantly several people that had previously bullied me during my time at high school, and I even received an apology via Facebook message from one individual. I felt as if I were in a daze, a moment of bliss, as my parents had accepted my boyfriend the world was accepting me.

But the very next night as I was stood at a bus stop, a man under the influence of drugs who identified that I was gay after attempting to start a conversation with me proceeded to attack me. Telling me that he ends his nights “slashing people’s throats” I feared for my life as he held me up against the screens of the bus shelter. He threw me into the road in front of oncoming track, and as I got back onto the pavement he once again grabbed hold of me and told me how easy it would be for him to kill me.

With dozens of people walking by I didn’t understand why not a single person intervened, he was just one man and I needed help. Then just as I had given up hope a gentleman appeared and took hold of my attacker to set me free, he urged me to walk away but just as I did my bus appeared and on it I went, the gentleman who had effectively saved me followed me on the bus to see how I was feeling, and he softly smiled at me and said nothing.

To many this event would replay in their minds as a negative, but to me I look back and think of it as a positive. It has restored my faith in humanity, although just one man stood forward, it was still one man, one man who saved another life. Those two days are amongst the most extraordinary of my short life, I don’t think I will ever forget what happened in those 48 hours, and I hope I won’t.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Michael Kelly

My story starts in grade eight, which is the first year of high school where I live. I remember my sister was always changing her hair colour and seemed to always con me into practising on my hair first. So the first day in this new world of teenagers and tall people I arrive with uniform and pink hair. I personally didn’t think much of it, I thought it was quite cool and I remember this girl came up to me and asked, “Are you gay?” I had no idea what that meant. I had to ask her what she was calling me. She went back to her friends and they all came giggling back over to me and explained that it’s when one boy likes another boy, which was gross to them. I said no as I am pretty sure I had never really taken any thought of it. But anyways, from this interaction, gossip spread and I had received a label to be gay.

As the years went by, I became more curious about the topic of gay as did everyone else. Only because the other guys and girls where saying who they thought were and weren’t… typical school stuff. I had felt as though I must be gay if everyone else thought so.

Essentially from this time and experience at school, I personally think that I had become gay due to the pure curiosity to find out what others thought defined me as gay. I always had wonderful friends and was told that I was a part of the prep group of people at high school so I wasn’t teased, I was merely a fascinating topic to others.

I wonder if others had felt as though this might have been a similar experience for them during school.

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by Rebecca

Looking back, I remember not always feeling “normal.” In elementary school I wasn’t very pretty, and I had a few good friends, which I still have today. As soon as I was in fifth grade, I was a lot more sociable and comfortable with my looks. But that’s not why I’m writing this. See when I was in fifth grade I felt different. Not as in my religion, my looks, or my friends. But my attractions to girls.

I didn’t know what lesbian, or bisexual at the time was, but I was still young and growing. In fifth grade I had my first kiss. It was special and different; it was my first kiss with a girl. Yes a girl. It felt right to me. As I went through middle school I ignored a lot of my feelings. Because by this time I was told that being gay or bisexual was a sin and not excepted in society. I was pretty much being brainwashed, but I didn’t believe what anyone with hate said. I knew I was made just the way I am for a reason, and that I’m perfect being who I am. That was all 5 years ago. Here I am a sophomore in high school. Freshman year I came out saying I didn’t find women more attractive than men, and that at that current time I did have a girlfriend. A lot of people found out and thought I was “gross” and that I was going to try and “touch them.” I was hated on a lot, but I never let it get to me because I was perfectly fine with myself around school and public. Just last week I went to the beach in Galveston, Texas, with my girlfriend. We held hands and kissed in public, and I felt comfortable doing so. We got uneasy stares from people who weren’t comfortable being around a lesbian couple, but a lot of people smiled and enjoyed seeing two people love each other even though they’re the same gender.

I may face many obstacles in the future with my sexuality and my choice of living, but I sure am proud of myself for who I am, and how far I got myself in this world.

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by Kit Yeung

Dear peers, teachers, extended friends and some family members:

I am gay.

Not sure what will you say about it, but I hope you can spend some time with me here. Being closeted for the last 8 years has been a horrible experience. Of course, if you poked through my cover already, you would have known that in my last year of high school. My mental state could no longer withstand this increasingly bone-crushing stress which came from all directions. I was also suffering from social anxiety. Social workers said it was internal homophobia, and I lost the my motivation for work. In the most desperate days, I could spend a month on my bed wishing that someone could come in and take away my pathetic life. Sadly, I will never have the chance to be out in high school life.

Why now? It is a promise. A promise I made to myself that I’ll be out by my 19th birthday. Of course, it’s impossible to just rush out and scream “I am gay!” so I started with some small progresses. I would use neutral wordings (Girlfriend vs. Partner). But the whole idea really kicked in on a night where a reunion took place. A friend was outed by a question in Truth or Dare (sounds lame, right?). Nonetheless, everyone was accepting. That gave me the courage which I never had and I was then outed later that night. Finally, I outed myself on Facebook the next night.

I realized that time had passed and I should move on. Rather than trying to compensate what I could have done, I’m now giving myself a chance, as well as others, to connect with who I truly am.

-(Share your story with us!)