“Maybe Dylan should be telling you all this.” When the slippery words escaped from Steven’s mouth, they slithered around the cafeteria, floating above high school students eating their over-priced school lunches, talking about prom, and generally going about their mundane lives. The unwanted words hovered near the ceiling, where the ghost of them would remain until I graduated. But over the next few months, the flesh of these words melted away, leaving a skeleton whose useless memory would last not for the rest of high school, but for the rest of my life.
I found out my boyfriend was gay on April 26 of my senior year. I suppose you could say that my subconscious knew long before then, but it took Steven backing me into a corner of the cafeteria against a vending machine containing Pop Tarts long past their prime to see it. While my back was pressed against the cold plastic of the machine, he put his hands on either side of my head and did the leaning-over-me thing boys seem to do so much. His eyes staring into mine were screaming at me to wake up, to see things for what they really were.
So I did. I woke up the next day with the heart of a girl who didn’t know what was what anymore, but the mind of a girl who was eager to stop staring into her situation through obscure kaleidoscope vision. But new worries flooded my head and obstructed my vision again during second-period statistics. What if every boy I had ever lusted after was gay? Maybe I had some kind of instinctual draw to gay men, and undeniable force that would leave me falling in love one moment, then alone and broken-hearted for the rest of my life. I mean let’s face it, gay guys are more sensitive, they dress themselves better, and they generally smell less offensive. What if my wishful vision could never see past these things into the truth about people? What if I walked around for the rest of my life mislabeling every person I came across?
Maybe I’ll stare straight into things as they are from now on. And maybe I won’t get hurt.