GayTrinidad --> Voices

Trinicontact - What I want to say.

In all science fiction prior to 1990, most of the world's major problems are comfortably solved by 1999. In the real 1999, everything is much the same as it was in 1990. I find myself asking "Shouldn't a problem so simple have been solved by now? It's 1999!" And among those problems is the ingrained homophobia I keep finding in my country, chiefly due to ignorance.

I really want my parents to know that I'm gay. But it goes much further than that. This is not an unqualified want. I want them to know, and understand, and accept, and not care, all at once. Intellectually I can say that will happen in time -- probably. But I cower in fear thinking that it may not, I'm terrified of the things I will hear during the stages of dealing with the news. I hate the looks I think I will see on their faces, I'm more scared of those looks than of anything else I can think of. I can't bring myself to tell them, yet, although I know that I will have to soon enough. So as part of the process of getting ready, I'm going to give myself a best-case scenario and figure out what I'd say THEN. Contingency plans will come later...

I don't know where I will say this. I think both of them should be present at the moment, perhaps I will change my mind. The scene is vague, they should both be calm and undistracted and have time to listen to me for a long time and discuss it. But that's not a situation I can think of, that never happens in our daily routines. I think perhaps when I tell them it will have to be a pre-arranged occasion. I can drive now, so I can vacate myself from the premises before and, if necessary, after the event. I will tell them I have something important to tell them, ask them to set aside time, and tell them.

What I want to say

From this point, this is a transcript of my speech. All names have been changed.

I have something to say, and I want you both to listen and say nothing, do nothing, at all, until I tell you that I'm finished. If that's okay, I'll continue, if not, then this is all I wanted to say. Okay?

[I don't know what I'll do if they don't agree...]

For a very long time now, I've always felt different, like I didn't fit in with the people around me in some way. Ever since I was three and I wrote stories about me being from another planet, I've felt that. Those feelings got more insistent from about age ten onwards. It took me a long time to figure out what it was that was making me feel so different. Around age ten, when my friends' attitudes began to change from "girls are yucky" to "girls are hot", I didn't think so. I didn't care, and it didn't matter.

In secondary school, the situation continued. In a French class once, Mr. Johnson was going around the class asking questions in French. He asked if I liked girls -- I answered truthfully, and said "no". He asked if I liked boys, and I again answered truthfully, and said "no". He said I had to like one or the other, and asked me again if I liked girls -- so I said yes, to fit in, and did so from then on whenever anybody asked me the question. You guys never asked me that question, so I never said anything.

[Just writing this makes me incredibly nervous. I'm imagining the looks on their faces.]

I kept that same attitude for the next two years, and the next big change came in form four. I started chemistry with Mr. Peters, and a boy called Jason sat behind me. He was a well-known girls' man, and had them eating out of his hands. I envied him, I thought, just like everyone else did. I wanted to lime with him, just like everybody else did, because I thought he was cool. But as time passed I began to get really troubled, because I got to know him and I knew in my head that he was an idiot, a complete jerk, but I still thought he was cool. I couldn't figure it out at all, I didn't know what was going on. It took me a long, long, long time to get round to the fact that I THOUGHT he was an idiot, but FELT he was cool. I had feelings for him.

But he was a BOY. I couldn't have feelings for a boy, could I? That wasn't right, that wasn't normal, that wasn't NATURAL, and I was all of those things, the belief that I was in every was normal was dead-set in my mind. So what was going on? I had Internet access by then, so out of curiosity more than anything else, I looked. There's a lot of pictures on the web, a lot of those sites are huge, and lots of them cater for all tastes -- right down to the most basic difference: do you want to look at men, or women? They didn't say "gay site" or anything, they just gave pictures and asked you to say what kind, so I figured no problem and when I had finished looking at the pictures of girls, my curiosity led me to see what the boys looked like. My feelings there confused me totally. I wanted to know what was going on, so like any other research project I looked around on the Internet and asked that question of the web. And the answer I got was "maybe you're bisexual. You might even be gay."

That was NOT the answer I wanted to hear. Not by a long shot. I ignored it, and didn't look at the men any more, curiosity or not. I just sat in front of Jason every day at school, and got more and more upset by feelings I was beginning to understand but still didn't accept or want. I had a crush on him, but I forced myself to not even look in his direction. I continued to get more and more depressed until one night, weeping in the shower at the frustrations of the day, I finally whispered to myself "face it, you're gay". I said it, and then I started crying all over again.

That was early november 1997 -- I wrote it down. From there on, I didn't look back. Within two weeks, I got up the courage to tell somebody: James, who with his extremely radical outlook and way of looking at things I thought out of all my friends would be the quickest to accept the way I felt. I told him on something like the 28th of November, at night over ICQ, and I was right. He was quick to accept and support what at the time I still spoke of as my BIsexuality. I thought that I was bisexual, but with strong leanings towards men, but spoke of it as if the attractions were almost equal because I thought that would be easier for my friends to accept.

Two weeks later I told two more of my closest friends, separately. Coming up to Christmas, I found and joined a mailing list (on the Internet) of "gay, bisexual, lesbian and questioning" youth, and it was the best thing I could have done. Feeling depressed and alone, I suddenly found myself in contact with literally hundreds of kids my age, many going through the same feelings I was going through, some earlier in the process, and some much later, totally "out" to all their friends and DATING, actually walking along the street hand in hand with someone of their own sex and not caring or even feeling different. It was a wonderful feeling, and the unexpectedly supportive attitudes of all three of my friends and everyone on the list gave me a huge emotional boost. THIS was why I'd felt different for so long, it wasn't wrong, it wasn't unnatural, it was okay. I needed to hear those things, I needed to say that you could do what you wanted to do deep down and still be happy and accepted.

The release of all those pent-up frustrations was a great feeling, I was on a high. I bought a string of rainbow-coloured Christmas lights and put them up in my room -- it was christmas, and they were christmas lights, but more important to me was that they were RAINBOW coloured christmas lights. The rainbow is a gay symbol, and here I was, finally able to display them if only to myself. They meant so much to me, they were cornily symbolic of being open and free and able to do what I wanted, I laughed every time I saw them, just watching them made me smile. I remember how mystified you were at the time at my behaviour.

Early the next year I took another important step. At a new year's eve party at Ryan's house I'd danced with Lizanne, who I thought I liked. My attraction to Lizanne had been a major point of confusion for me; I thought I was gay but when around Liz I had distinctly un-platonic feelings; this was almost the sole reason I still claimed to be and partly believed myself to be bisexual, and not gay. I finally admitted to all of the friends I'd told I was bisexual that I was really gay when I realised that while I liked Lizanne a lot as a friend, my feelings were in fact for Ryan, who I always saw at the same time. I had literally always seen them at the same time and my heterosexually-conditioned mind did not realise in whom the attraction lay. This last major point of confusion overcome, I felt secure enough to tell others, although there were many other points of confusion still to be worked out.

Initially, I was bringing people into the closet WITH me, where they knew about me but couldn't say anything and I couldn't act any different among friends. This meant nothing had changed in my social life, which was still no good, and at school, things were steadily deteriorating. I had realised I was gay just as the hormones began to really kick in. My attraction to men, no longer hampered by self-denial, naturally grew and I found it harder and harder to keep up my pretence at school. Also, my continued and extensive reading and learning about gay issues and lifestyle began to produce what I called unKnowledge: stuff I wasn't supposed to know, stuff I shouldn't mention because I couldn't mention the source. The mailing list was a particular source of this: I had a number of friends on the list with whom I corresponded regularly, and I frequently slipped up and mentioned stuff they had told me and had to cover up by referring to them as just "a friend". Now that I was no longer denying it to myself, the real me and the person I appeared to be to most people were growing further and further apart, and the constant self-control this entailed put a lot of pressure on me, and I began to get depressed again.

I knew that it was possible to be gay and happy, but I knew that it would be difficult for ME. I was in a small and homophobic country in an intensely homophobic school with parents who were also homophobic. You ARE homophobic, I've been observing you closely for a very long time and I know it. Just because you don't do anything overtly homophobic doesn't mean that you aren't. Faced with those facts, I knew I would have to remain closeted both at home and at school, which together accounted for most of my life, for at least two years: the earliest possible time I could get out of the country. But it was not just the fact of living a double life, it was the continuous series of re-evaluations of my future I had to do. My well-mapped future of going to university, meeting the right girl, getting married and having kids was cut off at the first step, and I had to figure out a new plan, considering all the difficulties I would now face: and there would be lots. There are all sorts of societal and legal obstacles to being an openly gay man in any country. I could not be out in Trinidad to any great extent, two years was too far away, the stress was too much, and I became depressed to the point of suicide.

And there was no way of getting out of having to face these things. I could not change my feelings: all my reading had proven that to me, I'm by no means the first one to consider it. I could not remain closeted, obviously: I knew how hellish that was. The only way to be happy was to be completely open about myself, and that would not be easy. At the time I felt almost as if I'd accidentally caught some horrible disease: through no fault of my own, against my will, I was faced with a vast array of problems I didn't want to deal with, and the disease was incurable. Just thinking about it in those terms would drive me to tears. It felt horrible to be so helpless, I wanted to just go back to the time before my life became so complicated, but there was no way to do that.

My friends became my greatest source of support. I had gradually told more and more of my friends, and eventually there came times when everyone present in a group of my friends knew, so I could say what I wanted to, do what I wanted to, act the way I've always wanted to act. Usually there was no difference, or just small differences, but they meant a lot to me. With the girls, I could finally join in a discussion of the latest boy-band or popstar or whatever and give my opinion. With the guys, I no longer had to be embarrassed and fake interest when they were talking about girls. I was OUT, and it was a great feeling. I would have long, long talks on ICQ to them to do nothing more constructive than whine about how unhappy I was, but I needed that outlet and they gave it to me. I used to get really angry when you made me cut off early.

My period of really serious depression lasted six or eight months, in the middle of 1998. I gradually came to terms with everything, and my outlook improved. I'm finally well-enough adjusted to the fact myself to be able to let you get adjusted to it, which is why I want to tell you now. Mom and dad, I'm gay, and I'm happy that I am who I am, and that includes being gay too. Being gay isn't wrong or evil or unhealthy or even unnatural, and I hope you can forgive me for not telling you sooner.