"You know, for a guy who grew up in Kentucky, you seem pretty well adjusted to the whole gay thing."

 

I thought about what Greg had said as I drove home.  I hadn't replied other than to smile and nod.  What would he feel if I told him all of it?  I toyed with the idea, but it was too early for that.  He didn't need to know just how damaged I was.

 

Regardless of my choice to keep the entirety of the truth from Greg, I couldn't stop it from replaying in my mind.  It was just as well.  I had hours to go before I was home.

 

____________________________________________________

 

I was raised Southern Baptist in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.  Fire and brimstone were a part of my world, and variation from the word of God was a sure path to damnation.  That's how this begins.

 

Something drove me to join the US Navy.  I was seventeen years old, and I had never been away from home. Yet I signed up for a six-year stint in the military.  I was terrified to go, but something in me knew that I couldn't stay.  The Navy was my way out, and I took it.

 

I made a fantastic sailor because I was great at doing what I was told.  I didn't let myself think all that much, and I just acted on the orders given.  Something is freeing and therapeutic about a lack of choice.  I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it allowed me to function during a time when my mind wasn't ready for the processing it would need to do later.

 

My first duty station after a year of training as a Hospital Corpsman (essentially a medic) and some additional schooling was Okinawa Japan.  I was eighteen, and I quickly found a fellow named Chris who needed a roommate for his apartment off-base.  We also worked together, so it was great.

That first year was good.  I got to know Chris well, and I came to feel for him an amount of fondness I'd later know as love.  At the time I didn't know better.  I just thought we were best friends.

 

We even shared a bed.  That was fine until the morning I woke, and Chris had his arm around me.  He had turned in his sleep, and it was purely innocent (Chris was straight, through and through).  I lay there, more turned on than I had ever been in my life.  I had no understanding of why - and I told myself it was merely the fact that another person was touching me in a somewhat intimate way.  That if it were a girl, I would have reacted the same.

 

After that, I insisted we sleep in different beds.  I was deeply disturbed that my body behaved in such a manner.  I even paid half for his bed, and we put it together.  All was well again, for a time.

 

A few months passed, and Chris met Gina.  They hit it off.  A part of me wanted to be happy for him, but by far the most consuming emotion I felt was a burning ache of jealousy.

 

I tried hard to find someone of my own.  I was still a virgin.  I dated girls, but none of them made me feel anything at all.  Chris and Gina continued to try and set me up on dates, and eventually, I came to dread them.

 

There's only so long that a person can deny the truth.  My moment came to me, just after I had turned twenty years old.  I lay in bed.  It was two a.m., and I couldn't sleep.  I had work that morning at six, so I sat up and said aloud, "What is wrong with me?"

 

The answer struck like a bolt of lightning.  It slammed into me, the undeniable truth, and I sat there, stunned.  It was the worst possible thing I could have imagined, and I couldn't fix it.  I couldn't make it go away.

 

Something broke.  Something just snapped in my mind.  I don't remember deciding to do this, but I got up, went to the bathroom, and I took down a package of Bic razors.  Chris and I had just bought a new set of six, so I had plenty to work with.

 

I started with my head.  Shaving cream, all through my short hair, and I scraped it all off with one razor.  After that, it was dull as hell, so I tossed it.  Then I moved on to the next.  My chest was next, then arms, legs, and groin.  Why I saved it for last, I have no idea, but by the time five a.m. rolled around, the only thing left was a tiny patch of hair on my belly.  As I was shaving that last bit, Chris surprised me.

 

"What the fuck are you doing?!?"  He stood at the doorway to the bathroom, gaping at me.

 

Imagine for a moment what he saw - twenty year old me, completely naked and hairless, covered in splotches of shaving cream.  I jumped when he spoke, and I snapped the razor I had been using against my belly.  I frowned down at the cut I made, dabbed it with some toilet paper, and very calmly spoke, "I'm shaving."  Then I picked up the last razor and continued.

 

Chris blinked.  "Are you all right?"

 

"I'm fine."  I finished up, rinsed the razor, and put it on the sink.  I looked at him.  "I'll buy more razors today."  Then I toweled off and walked past him to get my clothes on for work.

 

The next six months I lived in this weird state.  A few nights a week I would go up to the top of our building, and stare down at the concrete six floors down.  The scary thing now is how fearless I was at the time.  I only had one worry - and that was if the fall would actually kill me.  I didn't want to live through that, because I'd have to tell people why I jumped.  My logic was - since there's nothing I could do to fix me, and I was going to go to hell, then why wait?

 

I got sick of living that way.  So, one night I decided that I was going to either do a swan dive off of my building or learn to live with being gay.  Unbeknownst to my sister, I decided that however she reacted would do it.  It took the choice from me since I couldn't seem to make it.

 

I worked nights at the Blood Donor Center on the island, and I called my sister in the middle of my shift.  She picked up and immediately knew something was wrong.

 

"Bub, what's wrong?"  I could hear it in her voice.  She was worried, and I had barely spoken.

 

"Sis, I've got something to tell you."

 

She was quiet for a beat, then she said it.  "You're gay."

 

It wasn't even a surprise to me that she knew.  There were only a few things which could warrant the tone in my voice, and that was one of them.  I nodded, "Yeah."

 

There are these moments in other lives where we have a tremendous amount of power, and she exercised hers without even knowing it.  "Well, bub, that's okay."

 

And that was how my sister saved my life.

____________________________________________________

 

I pulled up to my apartment in Ridgecrest, California.  Finished with the drive, I was tired.  But the weekend with Greg was fun, and he was worth the time and effort of the trip.  As I unlocked my door, I smiled slightly.

 

"Well adjusted."  I shook my head, entered, and kicked the door shut.