Dan's Conundrum - Prologue. Prologue: Confessions

How to begin this damn thing? Oh, I just did. Okay. Alright. You see, the thing is…I am gay.

Actually on second thought, that’s not true. I’ll take that back. The whole statement just sounds wrong, doesn’t it? It isn’t a fact. I have no real evidence and I jumped straight to a conclusion. How stupid of me. Let me try that again…

Hypothesis: I am gay.

In other words, it is quite possible that I am gay. I’ll admit nothing. It’s a hypothesis because I preferred looking at other males in my species as opposed to females. That much is true. Well, I might not be gay. For one, I haven’t done anything to prove that I am gay. I have never kissed a guy and I’m not even sure if I’ll like it. Perhaps I hate kissing altogether. I never liked sticky stuff. All the same, I haven’t done anything to prove I am straight either. But when it comes to being straight people just assume. Not that the assumption is doing me any harm though. The last thing I need is a sea of people staring at me, putting on their bubbles of protective shields, keeping me at an arm’s length and contracting their brows with military togetherness as though I have done something really, really wrong.

But the fact is, even if I prefer guys and may possibly be gay, it doesn’t mean that I jump on other guys and attack them the first chance I get or, that I know anything about fashion, or that I like marching down the street wearing make-ups, lipsticks and a pink wig – a bit like what we’d see on TV. I am not loud, and I don’t think or talk like a girl. I don’t pretend to be a girl. I don’t want to be a girl. Maybe I can be gay without being all these things.

Maybe?

How to convince others that I am not all so different from them? So for example, my favourite colour is blue. Many people like the colour blue. I like science subjects (Biology in particular) and my favourite way to cook a meal is to put it in the microwave. I like dogs more than cats, and I don’t need to kiss them to know that I am not attracted to animals.

You see, people who form conclusions as soon as they know I have a possibility of being gay won’t get this far. They won’t want to know me, talk to me, or want anything to do with me. They’ll think I made an evil choice, batting for the other team. They will walk off saying they are sorry because if I am gay I can’t possibly be their friend – or anybody else’s. They will say they strongly disagree with what I am and what I do, when frankly, I haven’t even done anything. As a gesture of goodwill, they will clasp their hands, pray, and hope that I’ll grow out of this nonsense some day.

Of course, nobody’s done that to me, yet. But I’m not looking forward to making myself a target, giving them a reason to stand on me because they can. Once you’re a target you’ll always be one. I don’t want to be there again. And whose loss is it really, in the end, if you are the only one who is rejected, floating around with no friends, thinking that you can never trust again and actually feeling something about your exile, your punishment? It is certainly not their loss. They are quite happy to carry on as though you never existed.

There is no reason to come out, really.