I believe the main reason I ever denied my nature was my father. For the first nine years of my life he was practically non-existent, then my parents got divorced and we moved to Searcy, Arkansas to live with my grandma while my mom got a house in the same neighborhood with another divorced mother. He had a part-time job at UPS and the rest of his time he spent sleeping. We started out living back and forth between houses, but eventually my dad got a house and scared my mom away by stalking her. It was just me and my sister with him after that, but his sleeping habits hadn't changed. I tried my best to make the most of the bad situation; I took care of dishes, laundry, trash and cooking. I had unceremoniously become a house wife for a paranoid schizophrenic, though I didn't know it at the time. I can remember perhaps the only time my sexuality has come into question and I denied it. I had just come home for the school year and was still desperately in love with my first girlfriend, Angeleena. I believe I was 11 or 12 at the time because I had just started middle school. My dad was awake this afternoon when I got home from school, already a bad sign. He told my sister to go play in her room while he had a talk with me.
"Dorian," he said, "I just wanted to clear up a few things now that you're getting older. I hear you've been getting teased a lot in school."
This wasn't anything new, but I guess my future stepmother must have said something. "Yeah," I said, "but it doesn't bother me, they're all idiots."
"Well then, why not stand up to him? What's his name?"
There were honestly plenty, but I went with my most hated: a tall boy with a stupid bowl-shaped haircut that was very popular at the time, "Trent."
"Well, what does he do? Push you around? Tease you?"
"He just calls me names, I guess. Honestly I don't really care."
"I've heard he's been calling you gay!" my dad blurted out.
This surprised me, because of all the things I had been called, this was not one of them. "What does gay mean?"
I lived in Arkansas, okay? Sue me.
"It's a sin that's committed when two boys are together instead of a man and a woman. That's not you, though, is it?"
The truth is, I had no idea it was even an option. But I could hear the accusation and fear behind his voice, and luckily I had an easy comeback. "Well, no. I'm dating Angeleena."
My dad let out a sigh of relief and put his hand on my knee, "Well, there you go then. The next time Trent calls you gay just say, 'Well, Trent, at least I have a girlfriend.' After all, you can't let people think you're gay."
And so was the beginning of my dad's obsession with my masculinity, and my half-hearted attempts to keep him appeased. Angeleena and I remained friends for quite some time, we still are as a matter of fact, and this seemed to always be enough to steady his nerves. I did my best to appear as normal and straight as possible to the rest of the world, so my queerness just came out in secrecy.
