JB and Me - 2. The epilogue

Well, that was a little over eight years ago.

They say that after you tell the first person it only gets easier. Whoever said that, seriously needs to get their fucking head checked by the world’s best headpeeper.

Having told JB (even after knowing his real name for eight years, it still doesn’t feel right calling him Jordan), it was only fair to tell Martin and Daphne next. Even with JB there beside me, it was the hardest thing I’ve possibly ever done. To say they were shocked was an understatement! However, they quickly got over their shock, and after realising that I was still the same little hellion dressed like an angel they’d always known and loved, life for us quickly returned to normal.

Sadly, coming out to my seemingly apathetic parents a year later, just after I had turned fifteen, was a disaster of such enormous proportions that I don’t think there has even been a word invented to describe it; even comparing it to Chernobyl or Three Mile Island would be the understatement of my life. My dad tripped off the line in the biggest way, and for the first time ever I felt physically threatened by him. He slapped me across the face and started hurling threats of all sorts at me. I took off for my bedroom and locked the door behind me. Dad was banging on the door, yelling that I’d brought shame to the family, that I didn’t love them and that I was fucking freak. I curled up in a ball as far away from the door as possible and started crying my heart out. Then I did the only thing I could think of doing, I texted JB.

Dad finally managed to break the door off the hinges and just as he lunged at me, Martin grabbed him by the arm; I had never been so grateful to see anyone. ‘What the fuck are doing Mark? That’s your son’ I remember Martin saying, and Dad replied with the words that still hurt to this day ‘That fucking faggot is no son of mine’. I remember Martin and Kris had to physically restrain Dad. Heated words were exchanged and I remember crying a lot. Dad said that I was no longer welcome at home and gave me ten minutes to pack my bags. I don’t really remember much after that, but Martin and Daphne took me in without hesitation. Even now, I still can’t get over the irony of it; the most common, most feared, and most reviled people in my hometown giving me a place to live when my own fucking parents rejected me.

After eight years, my parents and I still haven’t spoken. I heard through a friend of a friend of one of my old neighbours that Dad had a heart attack three years ago; neither he nor my mum even tried to get in touch with me. It was then and only then, that I was forced to finally accept the fact that my relationship with those who had conceived me was truly dead.

My relationship with Mikey quickly died after that night; I guess that he did not intend to have the same experience with his parents that I did with mine. I think the way my dad reacted scared him almost as much as it scared me. The last I heard, Mikey was so far in the proverbial closet that he got married to some woman and she is now expecting their third child. We haven’t really spoken to each other since that night.

Somehow, my coming out became very public, though I don’t remember the details of the how, where, when or who. I guess the fact that the events of the evening of my coming out to my parents weren’t exactly low key didn’t help; three of our neighbours reported the ‘disturbance’ to the police, Kris threatened to rip Dad’s head off, and Martin told Dad to be very careful walking the streets late at night.

Now I never laid claim to being Mr Popular at school before my coming out, and I sure as shit wasn’t Mr Popular after it. The only saving grace was JB. The first day I went back to school after having been taken in by JB and his folks, I was surrounded by five boys from the year above mine. I was a hair away from getting the shit kicked out me, when JB turned up. JB, who, God bless him, has never been one for subtlety, simply broke the nose of the biggest boy, and then asked ‘Who’s next’. After that, I was left alone.

Moving in with JB and his parents actually had one really positive outcome. I was able to spend time with JB on his schoolwork and I found out that he could actually do the work and quite easily at that, it was just that he had no desire to do it. Under my tutelage, he quickly developed such an interest in learning that he not only left school with near enough the same grades that I did (which not only surprised his parents but left our teachers breathless), I had even managed to persuade him to enrol in university with me. Seems that I wasn’t the only one who had hidden something of himself in this friendship; he was far more intellectually gifted than I ever would have known, or had ever given him credit for. He struggled through the first couple of semesters at university but he persevered, and with my help, he sailed through the rest of his degree.

I meet a great guy called Darren in my last year at university, and we got married three months ago. JB was my best man, and he really threw himself into the role. He even organised such a perverted gay bachelor party that I imagine it would have left the best Roman orgies in the shade; I still have no idea where he got such a well-equipped stripper from. Although Darren and I were two guys getting married, I still wanted Daphne to be up there with me as well. She had given me a home when I had none, she had taken me in without reservation, and she had loved me as only a mother can. So, flying in the face of more traditions than I can think of, I asked her to be my Matron of Honour.

I left university last year with a first class honours in classical studies and JB left with a lower second class honours in English Lit. JB is starting out in the field of journalism, and he has aspirations to one day be editor in chief of a newspaper; a far cry from the minimum wage job that he was probably destined for. After a year or so of travelling and general dossing, I’ve decided to continue my studies and will be starting a postgraduate degree in Egyptology next month. My dream is to one day be remembered with such names as Zahi Hawass, Howard Carter, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, and Lord Carnarvon.

I know that where ever life takes me, that what ever road I walk down, JB will always be there with me, and with that knowledge I know that I can face anything that comes my way.

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t told JB that day, eight years ago, that I was gay.

Would I ever have come out to him?

Would he have found out some other way, and then turned on me?

Would Mikey and I be together?

Would Mikey and I still be hiding our relationship from everyone?

Would JB now be serving people in McDonalds, instead of starting, what I hope, is going to be a high flying career for him?

Or worse, would he now be languishing in a prison cell somewhere?

Hell, would I have survived that fucking encounter with my dad?

So many questions, and so many possible answers.

All for the roll of the dice.