My Jump Off - 3. Chapter 3

In the past, whenever I was caught by my folks doing something wrong, I was able to come up with some sort of a plan to escape my punishment. One time, when I was 12, I set our plastic trash can on fire and it melted to the ground. My mom caught me red handed in the back yard trying desperately to put the fire out, and when I realized I was busted, I simply stood still and cried. I think I was really afraid of what I had done, but I also knew deep down that if I cried, I wouldn't get in trouble.

At the moment, though, I had no back up plan. My dad turned his head as fast as he could when he spotted us and he was gone. Phillip hadn't even realized what had happened because it was all so fast, but I think he could tell something was wrong when I pulled out and let his legs drop in a panic.

"What's wrong," he asked.

"You didn't just see my dad watching us," I asked.

"I didn't see anything," he said in a shocked voice, his eyes getting huge.

"Shit," I said, feeling like I was about to cry, but not because I was trying to worm out of anything. "What am I going to do?"

For his part, Phillip seemed to be thinking a little more clearly than I was at the moment. He scrambled out of the bed and quickly got dressed. When I noticed what he was doing, I did the same thing. So many things were running through my head as I was getting dressed that I had to stop and take a deep breath just to control my anxiety.

I was busted. I was out. I was out.

I couldn't believe it. I had never really thought about coming out to my parents. To be quite honest, the notion seemed unimportant before today. I had no plans to ever tell them I was gay. What was I going to say when I had to face my dad? What about my mom? How could I ever live this one down?

I felt so ashamed of myself. Here I was, a guy having sex with another guy, who I had feelings for and whom I was attracted to. I just knew my dad was probably sorry he ever got my mom pregnant with me.

My thoughts raced back to the night before, when we had so much fun on my motorcycle. My motorcycle. I just knew that I could kiss that goodbye. Why would my dad let me keep it if I was gay? Of course he'd want to take it back and get his money back. I wasn't really worth it.

Why did I have to be gay?

At some point after we were dressed, I sat back down on my bed and put my head in my hands, not sure what I was going to do. Phillip was putting his shoes on while he spoke.

"Jarred, I think I should go," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry Phillip," was all I could say. I'm not sure what I was sorry for, but I felt a need to apologize to someone for something.

"It's going to be okay," he said in a reassuring voice. I wasn't too sure if he believed that himself or not. I'm sure he was scared that my mom and dad would call his parents and that he'd be outed to them. Knowing his dad that couldn't be a good thing.

I wanted to give him a kiss goodbye, but I felt so awkward and ashamed of myself that I didn't dare. Instead, I looked up at him and smiled before he slipped out of my room. I heard the front door close, and I knew I was all alone in the house with my dad.

My dad, who just walked in on his son having gay sex. His son whom he believed was straight. I wondered to myself how I could have let this happen. If I had just closed my door, he would've never looked inside. I was a total dumb ass for not closing that damn door. Shit. I put my face in my hands and let my tears start to fall. I didn't know what I was going to do.

"Hey bud," I heard my dad say from the doorway. "Can I come in?"

I looked up at him, trying not to cry but having little control over my tears. I just nodded and looked away. He was actually smiling a little when he took a seat at my desk and sighed.

"I'm sorry, dad," I said, feeling desperate to let him know how bad I felt, as if he couldn't tell by watching me sob.

"I guess I haven't been around much, have I?," he said sadly. "We need to talk about this, Jarred."

I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. If someone had told me thirty minutes earlier that I'd be sitting here with my dad, talking about this, I would have laughed in their face. Now, I wondered what we would say.

I remember my dad giving the talk. I was thirteen, and it was the most uncomfortable and uninformative 15 minutes of my life. I think he tried to avoid the awkwardness of it all by using medical terms for things. Instead of sex, it was called intercourse. Instead of a dick, I had a penis. Instead of a pussy, girls had vaginas'.

"Jarred, I have to ask you something, and I expect you to tell me the truth," he said softly. "Can you do that for me?"

I simply nodded as I wiped away tears.

"Good. Are you gay," he asked.

I nodded again, feeling a burning shame in my cheeks as I did. I had to look away because I couldn't face my father. I just confirmed what he had found out only minutes before.

"How does that make you feel," he asked. "Are you okay with being gay?"

I looked up at him, not quite sure if I had heard him right. He had a worried look on his face, and when we made eye contact, I suddenly didn't feel so scared. So I nodded again and looked down.

"Are you telling mom about this when she gets home," I asked.

"Of course I am, buddy," he answered, crushing me. The shame of my dad finding out my deepest, darkest secret was one thing. But the thought of him telling my mom terrified me. I would die if I didn't have her love anymore, and the idea that she would be disgusted with me made me feel even worse.

"Am I grounded," I asked.

"No,' he said simply. "I'm not thrilled about the idea of you having sex in your room or anywhere, though. We're going to have to deal with that, son."

"I won't do it anymore," I promised, and I meant it. If stopping all sex meant that I could erase this moment, I would be willing to join a monastery. Unfortunately, as I looked at my dad, I realized that not only would I not be able to erase this moment, but that my dad was looking at me as if he didn't believe me.

"I want you to know something, son," he said with a sincere look on his face. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, dad," I said as I started to break down again.

"Your mom loves you too, Jarred," he said. "She's going to be okay with most of this."

"Most of it," I asked.

"Well, she won't like the part about you having sex, and she sure isn't going to like the fact that you were having sex in your room. But she and I have already talked about this moment."

"I'm sure you never thought it was going to be like this," I said pitifully. What I wasn't expecting was what came out of his mouth next.

"Actually son," he said as he sucked air through his teeth. "This is exactly what we talked about."

What? Wait a minute. What was he talking about? He expected to walk in on me having sex with my boyfriend. That didn't make any sense.

"Son, we talked about you being gay," he said. Okay, not what I was thinking, but still confusing. This was news to me. "We both got that feeling from you a long time ago."

"Wait. You knew I was gay?," I said, not believing the way this conversation was going.

"We didn't know one way or the other for sure," he said. "I guess in a way, we already knew. We just needed to hear it from you."

"But why," I asked, wondering how long this had been going on.

"Well, it might have been a little uncomfortable if we had brought it up to you and we were wrong," he said, and I chuckled for a moment. The thought of my parents coming to their straight son to tell him they knew he was gay was a little funny to me.

"So what's she going to say to me," I asked, feeling really insecure still about the prospect of talking about not just being gay, but having gay sex with my mom. My dad just shrugged at the question.

We stayed in my room for most of the afternoon, talking about things. I was afraid that we were going to stay on the topic of my being gay, and getting caught with my boyfriend. Instead, we talked about our family and we talked about family bonds.

We did talk about Phillip, and I confessed to my dad that we had been together since September. Then the conversation turned to Phillip's family, and I found myself trying hard to stress to my dad how bad it would be for him if his parent's found out. I was sure his dad would beat him, and I made sure I got that point across to my dad.

It was about 5:15 when we heard the front door open and my mom walked in. My dad stood up and motioned with his head for me to follow suit. As we walked out of my room and down the hallway to the living room, my dad put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a small squeeze. As soon as my mom saw me, she got worried.

"Honey, have you been crying," she asked in a concerned voice. "What's wrong guys?"

I don't think there's a way for me to describe the desperate feeling I had inside of my whole body at that moment. I knew my dad was about to out me, and I knew that there was no way to stop him. My mom was about to find out that her only son was gay. Even though he told me that they had suspected it, I was still scared shit less.

"We need to have a talk about something important," my dad told her.

"Is everything okay," she asked as we all took a seat together on the couch. It had been a long time since I had sat between my mom and dad on the couch. My dad massaged my left shoulder with his hand and my mom sat on my right, looking worried.

"Honey, it's nothing horrible," my dad said.

"Well, what is it," my mom asked, sounding impatient. I didn't like her tone.

"Do you want to tell her buddy," he asked. I quickly and decisively shook my head no and looked down, waiting for him to drop the bomb on me.

"Well, babe," he started. "Actually, it's something we already know. Jarred has figured out that he's gay."

The silence was deafening. She wasn't saying anything at all. I couldn't face her, so I had buried my face in my hands and waited to hear her reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn't there. I turned and looked up at my dad, who had a look of concern on his face as he looked at my mom. Finally, I turned to face her and my heart broke.

There were tears streaming down her cheeks, faster than I had ever seen before. I was about to apologize to her when she shocked me by wrapping her arms around me and hugging me silently. I could still feel her tears rolling down her cheek, landing on my back and soaking my shirt, but the hug felt so good that I never wanted her to let it go.

"Are you sure, honey?," was the first thing she said. It was in a soft voice, and I couldn't detect even a trace of sadness.

I nodded silently and used my arms to grip onto her as hard as I could. I felt my dads arms wrapping around the both of us, and I suddenly realized that I was okay. I was with my mom and dad, and I was out. There wasn't any yelling, and there was no screaming, There were tears, but they weren't tears of despair. Instead, I felt like they were bonding tears.

As close as I was with my parents, I always got a feeling that we were slowly drifting apart. I certainly hadn't ever felt comfortable enough to come to one of them with a question about romance, and up until a few moments ago, I felt like coming out to them was out of the question. At some point, I had started to demand my privacy, and they never denied me of it. But as I sat there on the couch with my mom and dad, I realized that maybe I had demanded too much privacy from them. I had become so detached that I didn't know our boundaries anymore and I was so afraid of crossing them that I just stayed back.

What a fool.

The rest of our evening went pretty smooth. Of course, there was the subject of how my dad found out, and that was about as comfortable sitting on a bed of needles. I had to look away over and over again as my mom and dad discussed the dangers of anal sex, and then came the questions.

Were we using a condom?

Were we being monogamous?

What else were we doing?

Okay, not questions I wanted to be truthful about. I knew that the real answer to the first two questions was no. But I said yes because I didn't know how to tell my parents I was juggling two guys. I also didn't want them to know that I wasn't using any protection at the present time with Phillip.

Andrew and I hadn't gotten that far yet. To be honest, I really didn't care if we ever did. I felt satisfied by being in the same room with him. I didn't need to have sex with Andrew.

Hmm, now that was a shock. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't trying to score with Andrew because that wasn't why I was seeing him. So why was I doing it? I didn't know, and I honestly didn't have much time to process the thought because my mother's voice brought me back to reality.

"Jarred, we're going to have to set some rules in place," my mom said. "I understand all of the feelings you must be having right now, but at your age, sex is a bad idea."

Great, here it comes.

"Son, I agree with your mother," my dad said. "I know you already said you were going to stop, but I think we need to enforce that. You're too young."

"Okay," I said, just wanting this conversation to end. "I won't do it any more."

My parents looked at each other sarcastically, then they both cut their eyes at me.

"It doesn't just work that way, son," my dad said. "You can have the best of intentions, but we're talking about something really powerful."

"Honey, you have to understand why we don't want you to have sex," my mom said.

"It's because I'm gay, right?," I said.

"Oh, no, not at all," my dad said. "Buddy, if you were straight, we still wouldn't want you to do it. This has nothing to do with being gay."

My mother cleared her throat and sat up straight , turning her whole body to face me before she spoke.

"Do you understand the feelings you have when you have sex," she asked. "Can you describe them to me?"

"Mom!," I said, feeling mortified. "That's gross. I can't talk about that with you."

"Not those feelings," she explained. "I mean, how do you feel about Phillip after you've had sex."

This was beyond uncomfortable. I had just been outed to my parents, and now I had to talk about sex and feelings. I was hoping someone could just kill me at that moment.

"I guess I feel like I love him," I said, but I quickly added, "I feel like that all the time though."

"You feel like you love Phillip all the time?," my dad said. I nodded and realized what I had just said was true. I really did feel like I loved him, and even though I wanted to break up with him, part of me didn't want to let go. Maybe that's why I felt the need to dip on the side with Andrew.

Wow.

This was a day from hell. Not only was I dealing with the fact that my parents knew almost everything, but I was dealing with something else. I was discovering my feelings for the first time because I was talking about them. I did love Phillip. I just wasn't in love with him.