IMAGINE Magazine Question for 6/15 - "Hope, Hopeful, or Hopeless?"

[JeffsFort]

As summer starts creeping closer, we want to hear from you about those younger years when you were still figuring out that you were gay, or at least beginning to suspect that your brain had been quietly filing certain boys under “important research.” ::grin:: Did summer mean looking forward to seeing a crush at camp, the pool, the beach, the neighborhood, or wherever your heart had decided to make things unnecessarily complicated? Or were your big summer plans less about romance and more about hoping nobody noticed too much while you continued the exhausting Olympic sport of “acting totally normal”? Many of us are gold medalists unfortunately

There are no wrong answers here. Maybe your summer memories are sweet, awkward, hilarious, stressful, confusing, or all of the above before lunch. For many of us, there still aren’t neat conclusions tied up with a sunny little bow. Of course life would have been so much easier if it were.

So for this month's question, we ask: when you were young and summer was on the way, were you hoping for a crush-filled adventure, were trying to hide who you were deep down, or somehow doing both at the exact same time? 💜

[Page Scrawler]

Summer was something that I always had mixed emotions about. Living on an isolated rural road, it meant that I had no other kids to act as a "buffer" between myself and my family at home. No summer romance was in my cards. No cute boys I could crush on, sadly.

On the other hand, it meant that I could visit my friend, Jessie, at his house pretty much whenever I wanted. As long as it didn't rain, but sometimes even then, I'd still walk the mile-and-a-half down the road to his house.

As far as I can recall, Jessie was the first person I came out to, and the first to support me unconditionally.

[JeffsFort]

So I guess you could say I was on the "Look but don't be seen list" even though there were a couple of situations on the books that proved that I could probably have done just a bit more.

To paint a better picture I can say that there was one person in particular that I realized I had a total crush on in the 4th grade. We were inseparable but, I was afraid to suggest doing any more than just hanging out and playing whatever sport he was in to at the time. The occasional adult magazine induced playtime would happen down the road but back then, I knew that summer would mean staying at our adopted aunt's with two boys totally into "Truth, Dare, or Consequences" and nothing was off the table. But, I really wanted my friend to get in on it, for obvious reasons. I had even greased the wheels with my mother, my aunt, and even talked to him to see if he would want to stay at the beach for a couple weeks. As school was coming to a close and we made our plans, I really thought the stars were aligning on this trip until his parents announced that they had decided to go on their own trip and they wanted their son to go with them.

So for the first time in my life, I let myself hope that I could go a little further with a friend and maybe become a little more but, it fell apart and made me feel that maybe that was a line I couldn't cross.

This same crush is someone I have spoken of before and there are plenty of stories where two "straight" friends played around and experimented. But, had he known that I would have gone all in, I can't guarantee I'd have half of the memories that I do today as a result. So, I started out once hoping for a relationship and every year to follow, just to find someone who was willing to help me build up some pretty wild memories, even if it was only as a straight friend who was curious enough to play around. It was fun but always had to end at some point, which never felt good at all. But then again, there was always the next summer