Strike One
It was about two months into the new school year that I met another gay man. I'll call him Mike (not his real name). Mike and I had met through honors and had gotten to know each other a bit. But it wasn't until an encounter set up by our mutual friend Lisa that things got interesting. Lisa had the idea to watch a movie at Jared's apartment (she and Jared had been getting sweet on each other lately) and invited Mike and me to join them. I have forgotten the movie, but I do remember the tension that was in the room between the two of us sitting on that couch. You see, Lisa had added something to this mix. She told me that Mike was gay and she told Mike tht I was gay, but she didn't tell us that she had told the other anything.
We finally came out to each other after the movie when the two of us left together and I was dropping Mike off at his dorm. We sat for a while talking and sharing pieces of our own stories. Somehow from this I got it into my head that we were about to start dating.
It took me almost a week to be convinced that this was a false assumption. I didn't have the nerve yet to bring it up directly with Mike. It hurt a lot to try and get over him, even though I really should have been more careful and not started in the first place.
Meeting on the Stairs
It was mid-November that the next big event happened. For as long as I live I think I will remember this particular encounter. Looking back I realize that this meeting was a real crux for a lot of stuff since then. It's amazing how one small event affects so much, but had this meeting not taken place things would likely be very very different for a lot of us right now.
It was a Saturday morning and there was a home football game that afternoon. I was downstairs moving my laundry from the washer to the dryer. As I came back up the stairs, there were two people standing on the landing on the second floor. Both were coming back from band rehearsal and were talking about the band's uniforms. Now, I had been in the Tech band last year and knew what they were saying, so I joined in the conversation.
We spent the next hour or so comparing band stories and getting to know each other. The girl was named Heather and the guy was Ryan. Heather lived on the fifth floor of Marshall Hall (the co-ed engineering dorm we were all in) and Ryan lived on the bottom. I lived on the third floor.
After a time Heather left to go get ready for the game. But Ryan and I had picked up on something about each other and stayed talking. In the next fifteen minutes we finally just said directly to each other that we were gay and once again went about sharing stories related to this (particularly involving our friend Mike....). Finally, he had to leave to finish getting ready for the game as well, but we agreed we'd talk again soon. Once again, I felt myself starting to assume things I shouldn't. But this time I managed to control them a bit more, at least for the moment.
It was Monday before we got to see each other again. We met that afternoon after we were both done with classes and after getting dinner sat up in my room talking for a while. We talked about everything and I could feel that we were both getting closer really really fast. By the end of the evening (oh, about two or three in the morning) we were also getting closer physically. As I recall, he was lying on the floor and I was lying just above him on the bed and.....though nothing happened, let's just leave it at that.
The next night was spent in his room until about the same time. Ryan's roommate did NOT know he was gay, so when he was around we had to be a little more careful (unlike in my room, where Dan knew and didn't really care). But I don't think we were careful enough. We started flirting a LOT and when his roommate was around made a few comments we perhaps ought not to have. Fortunately, the only thing that came of it was his mysterious moving out over Christmas break.....but that turned out to be a good thing as well, though I will explain that later.
In the course of the next two days I was getting the feeling something special was about to happen. And that Wednesday I decided to throw caution to the wind and actually ask him out. It turns out that he was just getting over someone else and that it was still a little to early for him. Had I waited a few more days he might have said yes.
But in a few more days my chances were rather stiffled. He met someone that weekend by internet and they met in person at some place in town. By the end of that weekend they were going out and I was still expressly single.
It took me a lot time to get over the fact that Ryan was now dating Chris. I had convinced myself for a time that it wouldn't last, things would change. That didn't happen. When I first met Chris I was terrified to do so. I really wanted nothing to do with this guy and simply wanted him gone from the picture. But that didn't happen either.
That New Year's both Chris and I were up at Ryan's house to celebrate the beginning of the last year of the millinium. I had gotten used to Chris at least by this point and realized by now that the relationship was not changing, so I had a choice. I could either remain bitter and probably drive a wedge between me and Ryan (and we had still become good friends, even if we weren't dating) or I could try to get to know Chris and maybe give him a chance. I chose the latter.
Christmas break was also about the time that I started looking into other forms of religion. I found that Christianity wasn't all it was cracked up to be and started looking at the Wiccan faith. To give a very very overdone summary, I managed to combine the two, then found that I could drop both while maintaining each of them. Ehh...my religious beliefs are complicated, but suffice it to say that the start of getting them to where they are began about this time...in no small part, I think, to being gay. I was questioning a lot of things in trying to acclamate to this part of my life and as with many gay people, questioning (note that questioning is not denying or discarding) my religion was one of them.
Anyway, New Year's came and went and I got to know Chris a little better. I still had a few problems with him but slowly this was fading. Throughout the course of the next semester he was around a lot more and I started to do things with both him and Ryan. Evetually Chris became kind of a part of the close-knit group of us here at Tech. I am very glad to say that Chris and I are now very good friends and I am extremely happy for both him and Ryan.
Jason
But I can't jump the details of that semester that much. Enter on stage Jason. Jason had been dating Heather since sometime that last fall. Like Ryan and Heather, he was a freshman, and like Heather and me he was a chemical engineer. We hit it off fast. A lot in common, similar ways of thinking, and the two of us got to know each other faster than is possible for most people.
I found that my crush on Ryan had pretty much faded and in it's place was developing a soft spot for Jason. I really didn't do much along these lines for a while, though, because he was dating Heather. It seemed rather apparent that he was straight, and even if it turned out that he was a closet case, it was not my place to intervene on that relationship, so I talked about these feelings with Ryan and at times Dan and left things generaly alone.
Early on that semester, once we realized that Ryan's only roommate was NOT coming back, Jason moved in with Ryan. It was right before this happened that Ryan, Jason, Dan, and I all went out to eat together and Ryan and I told Jason we were gay. We figured if Ryan and Jason were going to room together, Jason had a right to know. It didn't phase him in the least, which turned out to be a boon to all of us.
It was about this time that we started coming out to a lot of our other friends. Ryan was a bit reluctant to do so at first and I must admit I was scared out of my wits for a time there. However, as we both got into it and we both came out to the same people and the numbers that knew grew, we both became rather comfortable with this. Ryan could tell them about Chris and not treat him like "just another friend". The two of them could do things together with our friends around and not have to pretend. It took a whole weight off of us both to not have to hide and lie and be afraid when around our friends.
About March, right at spring break, Jason broke up with Heather. Still I said nothing for a time because that was such a tumultuous time for both of them. However, after a few weeks had passed and things had relatively died down I had a talk with Jason. It was in this talk that I made the miraculously daring (or miraculously stupid) move of actually asking him out. Yes, I asked a straight man to go out with me. Well, for a time there Ryan and I had been wondering if maybe he was gay afterall and hadn't quite realized it. You'd have to know Jason. He's rather confusing at times and if you saw things the way we did you'd understand why we thought this. It took a bit of time, but we finally realized rather certainly (through many means) that Jason is straight, very straight, but also very accepting, and a good bit curious, too.
But I digress again. I asked Jason out. He said no (quite given) and I left it at that. But if anything, our friendship grew from that, becuase I had the guts to actually do something of this magnitude. I guess I felt that I could trust him even with saying that and he...well, I don't know quite what he thought.
After That
To sum up a few more things (as this is getting long....again), the end of that semester resulted in a small group of us getting very very close to each other and a lot of bonding that went on. School ended for that year and we all went our separate ways for the summer. A few weeks into the summer most of us met up again to go to Dollywood, which was a good idea on our parts. It gave us one more chance to get together and helped ease the separation time. However, shortly after that I went to Oklahoma to start a ten week internship with the Department of Energy.
The time I spend in Oklahoma proved to be yet another great stage in my growth and devlopment. I've been wanting to date someone for a while now, but have yet to meet someone and get it going. I'm beginning to see that this is for a reason. However, much as I hate teasers like this, I'm not really ready to share that reason on the internet just yet. Perhaps with time. Though if you know me, I might be willing to share it with you in person....so feel free to ask me. :-)
The other thing that this time out here has done for me can probably be best summed up in the talk I've been hearing from others about me. "Have you noticed that Shawn's become more....liberated?" It's true. I've gotten to the point that with the exception of a few people I really don't care who knows that I'm gay. And I suppose that by listing a lot of this up here for anyone to see I really am moving into that stage of ful openness. I don't believe that it needs to be the main issue that I force on people and it doesn't really need to be the first thing people learn about me, but it should be a natural thing that I don't have to hide from others and can let surface naturally in most cases. If I want to be accepted for who I am I have to first accept myself. Completely. God does, so why can't I?
A very direct result of this was the idea to start Safe Haven, a GLBT support group at Tech. But this is not the place to go into that. If you want more information, go back to the main Pink Page and follow the link to Safe Haven from there.
If there is nothing else that I can impart to you from this, I hope that you will at least learn the following: God made you as you are and it is an insult to the Creator to try denying this. Learn to accept yourself and others will follow suit with time. That does not mean you don't have areas to improve; we all do, I do. But you accept those inadequecies and work to better yourself of them. You also take the things that are good and enhance them as much as you can. But mostly you take the things that are neither, the things that just are, and you live those to the fullest for the glory of your God. Fulfillment comes the most from this way.