Death wears many masks... - 1. Chapter 1

Death wears many masks…
Death wears many masks; I learned that the summer I fell in love. You wouldn’t think that death and love go together, but sometimes they do. Learning to love means learning to let go; learning to love means dying to different parts of yourself; learning to love is learning to die.
I fell in love. How simple that statement is, but I fell in love with a boy, and that’s a whole different thing. I loved his hair, his eyebrows which grew together above the bridge of his nose, his deep chest and ridged belly, his laugh and smile, his quick twinkle as he turned to tease me. I fell in love with him, all of him, his great, dimpled ass and thick, veined cock that tilted to the right, his caring and sweetness, his determination at learning despite his learning disabilities. I fell in love with all of him.
We embraced, hesitantly, touching tentatively, beginning to explore what this relationship could be, what it might be like to be in love and to spend time together. Afraid, we kept to ourselves, unwilling to let others know that we had found each other or to risk censure.
That’s one of the deaths. Growing up in a culture that celebrated young love, which idolized it even, not to be able to proclaim it from the rooftops was a death. There were no plays or musicals written about two young men finding each other. There were no poems taught in schools about Romeo and Mercutio, no, only Romeo and Juliet. There was no place to celebrate -- except the bars. Who wants to take their love to a bar? Where they will both be pawed, and leered at, where others will try to come between the two young men beginning to discover each other, caught in their own little deaths of jealousy and spite. Where can young gay love be free?
We stole time together, finding reasons that others could accept, unwilling to come out and celebrate the truth. Eventually we did share – and were betrayed. A secret delight brought out into the light was ripped down and trampled -- another death.
“Give him up,” we were told, “Or face catastrophe.”
For me, ruin, for him, censure and ridicule -- that was the choice – him or my career – him or my other love.
Death wears many masks. I loved my career. It was my vocation, not just my job. To lose that would be a huge death. To lose him would be one, too. I had a few years in the career. It was beginning career, yet one set on the path upwards. I had a few months in love with him, a love that was still at its beginning.
Him or career? Just forcing the choice marked a death, a death of hope, of possibilities, of a future not alone.
I chose career – and died a little that night.
I cried and mourned, and even began to plan my own death. What was the use of going on alone? I began to wind up my affairs, to think of the lack of future. I saw “Amadeus” and wondered about insanity, about giving up and turning my face to the wall, turning my back on the world around me.
I reached out to others around me, and yet could not tell them what was really going on. I began to build walls to hide behind, walls to keep me safe and hidden.
Yet another death.
I exist in the darkness of loneliness, wondering if this life was worth that death, wondering what he looks like now.