Growing Up Gay Part 2: My Father

I don't know if I'm a lucky princess, but my childhood days were nothing traumatic for a growing Maximo Oliveros like myself. I didn't experience no major conflict with my father, but I remember this one time in grade six. I was studying in an exclusive all-boys school back then, and I remember writing this certain classmate a "letter." It wasn't the type of letter you'd give to a friend, and it's contents were most certainly nothing that a guy would write to another guy.

You have no freaking idea how my father raised hell for me when he found that letter sitting in his drawing table.

I remember playing something downstairs. I think it was chess, but my playtime was definitely interrupted all the same. I heard this thundering roar resonating with an obvious fury, and I became very very afraid for some reason. That voice bellowed "Rommel!" in it's righteous indignation. My name echoed throughout the first floor of our little house.

It had this peculiar effect on me. I don't know what it's called, but it must be the kind of fear that a gay kid goes through when his little queer secret's a few seconds away from discovery.

My baptism of fire into the gay world, my rite of passage certainly was not of the sexual nature. It was this recollection of myself, slowly approaching my enraged father holding that letter in his hands. He was not trembling in fury, but his eyes were those of a Gorgon. I stood still as stone in my tracks as he watched me approach.

He needed an explanation. I fabricated one in my gay confusion and terror. He knew I was lying. I ran. Literally. I stormed down the stairs and out of the house as fast as my queer legs would carry me, and I knew without turning back that my father was in hot pursuit. He was running after me only in his briefs, but that didn't stop him from catching me and grabbing me by the wrist.

He took me back home, but all I can remember, to my greatest relief, was him telling me to never run away again. He never raised in hands in punishment. He never talked about it again. But the rest, on the contrary, wasn't peaceful history at all. It was fucking ironic at the very least.

I never had no idea that the judgment I never received from my father was bestowed by these outsiders, these cretins with one track minds. Maybe I was lucky because I didn't have to endure any sort of punishment from my father, but then I had to suffer judgment from the rest of the world.

The universe has a sick sense of humor, doesn't it?

You know how those old school Jews were stoned to death in the Old Testament? There were no actual rocks for me, but I was heavily punished with character attacks. Although I was physically unharmed with this offensive, I had to nurse emotional scars.

Words are powerful bullets. They put holes in your heart.

I grew up realizing that my father never talked about that incident again because his brain wasn't nearly as small as these gay-bashing sons of bitches. These motherfucking bigots unknowingly shaped my developing mind, and I grew to hold these morons in contempt.

I still do.