I had gone over the next moment a million times in my mind. Was Brandon my “friend”? My “boyfriend”? My “date”? How should I represent our relationship in the most respectful way to people who might not be happy we were there together? I knew there were people who didn’t yet know I am gay (not because I had avoided telling them, but because it hadn’t come up yet in day-to-day conversation), so how would I introduce Brandon in a way that made it clear but still allowed them to avoid being caught off-guard? What about the people who suspected I was gay but that I’d never confirmed it to? How do you tell people something they already know without feeling like an idiot when they look back at you and say, “No kidding. Who didn’t know?” (Trust me, it happened plenty of times before when I had stressed about “coming out” to people who had known far sooner than I did.) I thought briefly about whether any straight Marine had ever asked himself those questions, or even considered whether it would be appropriate to take a date.
I took a sip of my drink and a nervous breath, put my hand in the small of his back and said, “Happy birthday, Corporal. This is Brandon.” Whew. One down, two thousand to go–the entire Depot was here and we were just getting started.
--Matthew Phelps
Read Matthew Phelps'entire blog post on his ground-breaking evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment