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| Last one... | | Date Created: Feb 11, 2005, 03:46 PM |
This is Part Four of "Events That Made Me Gay." In case, by now, you're thinking that I'm just telling you the lowlights of my dating career from High School and College, let me assure you that these are both the highlights and lowlights. In fact, they're the only lights. No really, they are.
Picture it, Sicily, 1924, a young peasant girl... Oops sorry, wrong story.
Picture it, Grand Rapids, Michigan, September 1990, A young peasant boy arrives at collge full of dreams.... (insert fancy dream sequence special effect here)
My Sophomore year, I arrived on campus full of confidence that I would meet the woman of my dreams. Or at least, I'd meet a woman. I'd completely recovered from the nasty case of mono that I'd been given my freshman year. In fact, I was now about 30 pounds lighter because of it. So, wiser (yeah, right) and more svelt, I decided, "Once more into the breach..."
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I had completely given up my Senior Goal from high school because the girls at Calvin are too prim and proper for that. I figured I'd just continue to be virginal until either: 1) I got married, or 2) I was thrown into a volcano. I was beginning to think that the Volcano Option was more likely, frankly.
Anyway, early in the school year I started hanging out with a girl we'll call "Colleen." She was nice, pretty, intelligent, had a beautiful soprano singing voice, and laughed at my jokes. We were in the same singing group so we saw each other often. She also lived in the same dorm that I did. She even got to ride in my Dad's truck -- that 1984 metallic midnight blue Ford F150, which had seen my earlier romantic failures with the opposite sex.
A few months roll by. We're hanging out more and more, going to concerts on campus, studying together, the usual stuff. Unlike the previous girls I "dated," she appeared to have no communicable diseases, she had no love for fuschia, and she appeared to be into affection. (Get your mind out of the gutter, not that into affection, this was Calvin, for crying out loud.) It was almost as if we were dating. Almost...
Then Thanksgiving came around. When I got back to campus on Sunday night, I got a phone call from Colleen. "Want to go for a walk?" she asked. Calvin's campus had strict open house rules so just about the only way to have any private time between members of the opposite sex is to wander around campus.
"Sure," I responded, anxious to see her after a few days away.
We're wandering the campus, talking about Thanksgiving and she says, "I talked to my ex-boyfriend Scott over the break."
"Really?" I respond. ("Who?" I think to myself.)
"Yeah, and I don't know what to do because he wants to get back together."
"Hmph." I respond. ("Shit." I think. Then I think, "God dammit, I'm at Calvin, I shouldn't think 'shit.' I should think something like 'gosh darnit." Then I think, "Wait, she's still talking.")
"... and I don't know what to tell Steve. What do you think I should tell Steve?" she asks.
"Uh ... well, I think you should... Wait. Who's Steve?"
"He's the guy I've been dating for the last few months."
"Oh. That Steve." ("Who the hell was this Steve guy?" I ask myself. " She and I have been dating for months. Well, not really dating, but mostly dating. When did she even have time to hang out with some other guy? She had never mentioned him before.")
Then it dawns on me. She didn't care what she said to me ... I'd never even been in the picture. We'd never been dating. Shit. I mean gosh darnit.
"Well, I think you should tell Steve the truth." I respond, going on as if nothing were wrong at all.
At the end of December, she moved down to Florida with her boyfriend Mike. Mike?? Yeah, not Steve, not Scott, and certainly not me...but some completely different guy named Mike. Go figure.
(Yeah, what is it with me and girls who move to Florida with their boyfriends?) Last I knew, the little hussy was a student at the insanely fundamentalist Moody Bible College. Serves her right.
Thus ends the stories of "Events That Made Me Gay." Some people know they're gay all their lives. Others suspect it, deny it, ignore it. Sometimes it takes several practical jokes played on them by The Universe, until they finally figure it out. In my case, it took another 4 years before I figured it out.
I've always been a little slow on the uptake.
By the way, thanks to Pony for inspiring this series of posts simply by talking about his truck. Eventually, my Dad gave me that old 1984 metallic midnight blue Ford F150. It was my second favorite thing in the world, until one fateful October afternoon in 1993 ... but that's another story. |
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