My Gay Boyfriend

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love music. I’ve seen more live shows than I can count, and nothing else has the same ability to transport me to another time and place entirely. Whole relationships are captured in a single song. There were albums I didn’t listen to for years because of how much I played them with a former boy/girlfriend. Music moves me, rocks me, shakes me up and makes me think, remember, stop. It demands my attention, and I give it, willingly. 

Yesterday I was cleaning out our van post-spring break road trip. I’d put on a Spotify station, 90s alt rock, and was scrubbing the floor when Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town” came on. I felt something in me react, like a hunger pang, but I didn’t think much of it at first. Then it grew. I’m singing along…

I swear, I recognize your breath
Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising

…and all of a sudden he’s there, it’s all there, and I remember that it was my last real boyfriend, Jessie, who introduced me to this song, included it on a mix tape. 

Flooded by emotion I was. It was like a torrent at first, coming fast. No amount of bailing could contain it. 

Jessie* and I met when we were 13 (or thereabouts). I don’t remember when it was that he asked me if I would “go with him,” but I do recall that he strung me along for two weeks, easy, telling me that we were going on a picnic and he had something to ask me. I was so excited; I really had a crush on this guy. We spent hours on the phone pouring over The Preppy Handbook as I fingered the buttons on my Pappagallo purse cover. He called me Muffy and I called him Biff. I loved holding his hand. 

Right before the big picnic day, Jessie was again teasing me about those five words. “I’m just going to ask you,” he said. I waited in anticipation, my stomach full of butterflies. I was waiting for those magic words: “Will You Go With Me?”

He continued. “Do you like tuna fish?” he said, and then laughed and laughed. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I tried to laugh, too. “Ha ha, Jessie,” I croaked. 

Secretly, I was crushed. What I didn’t know then was that this was a sign of things to come. An ominous, telltale sign. 

_______

I changed by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that’s what no one wants to see
I just want to scream hello

Jessie and I dated through most of high school, though he attended a Catholic school and I was in the public system, so we didn’t see each other every day. We talked on the phone often, and hung out on the weekends. Sometimes I’d go to his house or he’d come to mine, and I knew his family pretty well. His father wasn’t around much when I was there, but I’d met him. He had a wonderful smile and he drove a van, and I’d catch glimpses of him occasionally. His ghostly presence did not prevent Jessie from telling me what his Dad thought of his girlfriend, however – he’d apparently laughed at the fact that we were hanging out, said I was fat. Jessie reported this to me with a big dose of glee. It was as if he’d wanted to say it all along but used his father as a foil. These jabs hurt me, deeply. 

We went to my Senior Prom together. I wore a pink silky dress with a drop hem that made me feel like a princess mermaid, and Jessie wore a tux with pink cummerbund and black Chuck Taylor high tops. The theme of prom was “The Time of my Life,” which was accompanied by the song from the movie “Footloose,” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, one of my favorite songs at that time.  

Jessie and I danced and danced and I marveled at the fact that my little white purse never fell off my sloped shoulder. 

I believe it was sometime in that same year that Jessie “went down on me” and it was a dismal failure because he kept complaining about every little thing: my position, the blanket, the lighting, his comfort. Then he bitched for a week about how his neck hurt. I was ashamed and mortified. We would not be repeating that.  Again, it seemed that Jessie reveled in my discomfort.

All these changes taking place
I wish I’d seen the place
But no one’s ever taken me

_________

Since we were a year apart in school, I went away to college while Jessie finished his senior year. We were on again, off again, though I had entered another world entirely and wasn’t sure that I wanted to be “on” anymore. For Christmas during my freshman year at The College of Wooster, Jessie presented me with his college acceptance letter — to The College of Wooster.

We were sitting on the grand front staircase of his brick house. The box was red, or the wrapping was red, and there was even tissue paper to part for the reveal. I don’t think I reacted appropriately, to be honest. I knew he was considering Wooster, but this letter solidified it. He and I would attend the same undergraduate institution, and maybe we’d keep dating. 

But dating did not happen.

Jessie ended up joining a “club,” which was Wooster parlance for a fraternity. He did his thing and I did mine, and we saw one another occasionally, but I was much more interested in living off campus with my friends, which you could do after the first semester of your second year. I went to campus for class and sometimes to study, but that was about it. I rarely partied in the dorms.

The LGBTQ scene at Wooster, in the early 90s, was comprised of those who enjoyed the Medieval Society lyfe and/or those who were closeted. I didn’t think much about my sexuality, not in concrete terms, until my junior year. That’s when it became apparent that dudes weren’t my jam. I even went on Meghan’s Last Ditch Sex Tour at the beginning of my junior year – slept with two guys back-to-back – and it was terribly lackluster. Nice to be considered, but drunken escapades and the Day After pill did not romance make. 

I’d told myself in no uncertain terms that if I “found out” I was gay, I would take my own life. It seemed very cut and dried. Growing up in an Evangelical family, you learn quickly what’s acceptable and what is not. No philandering. No taking the Lord’s name in vain. Eat what you’re given, the Lord provides. Divorce is not an option. Don’t even think about wearing anything black. And I learned, very early, that there were few things my father despised more than gay women and their “gay Birkenstocks.” 

My need to share my suspicions about myself became a loud bell that rang in my ear every quarter hour. Finally I told one of my best friends as we sat in her VW Fox outside our apartment in Wooster. She was wonderful. Supportive, loving, accepting. I believe I have told her thank you many times, but one more bit of gratitude never hurts. She saved my life. Thank you, JCTB.

I still wasn’t OUT out, though, and would not be for another two years. In between, things with Jessie started getting super weird.

_________

First it was a mutual friend who pulled me aside at house party who informed me that Jessie was in a relationship with Clark, a gay student who *gasp* helped run the theatre department. My friend, who acted like she meant well but was really just conveying juicy gossip, told me that perhaps I should “talk to my boyfriend” since he seems to “have a boyfriend.”

I was confused. And I felt stupid.

Soon thereafter I went to talk to Jessie. We were standing outside my freshman year dorm, by the tennis courts. He was wearing a green shirt and biting his thumbnail as he approached me. Small talk first. Then I looked him dead in the eye and, asked him, simply, Are you gay? 
If you’ve ever known someone so well that you can read emotion their eyes, you’ll get what happened next. 

I watched as Jessie’s eyes closed – not the lids, but his very person, shuttering. He left his body until what remained was a shell that would have no problem lying to me. I’d lobbed a grenade, and he ran. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He denied it when I told him I’d heard he was in a relationship with Clark. He denied it all. 

What could I do? I was 20 years old, standing before a man with whom I’d been romantically involved with since I was a young teen. And he was long gone. Swallowed by shame. 

So I went home. 

Me, you wouldn’t recall for I’m not my former
It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf

_____________

Around 9:30 pm that night, I heard intense knocking on our apartment door.  I lived with three other women, and our apartment consisted of the second floor and attic of a turn-of-the-century farmhouse. I lived in the attic. You had to enter through a vestibule, go up the first set of stairs, then enter another door and head up another flight to our place. 

The knocking persisted. I’d been washing dishes, and finally wiped my hands so I could see who was there. I got as far as the top of the second set of stairs when suddenly Clark was at the bottom of them, his face red, rage spitting from his eyes. 

He started yelling. It appeared that Jessie, after our conversation, had gone to Clark and cried about my “accusing” him of being gay. Clark ripped into me as I stood there slack jawed, unable to process what was happening. Two of my roommates were home, but they were locked in their rooms and dare not come out. 

The last thing I remember Clark screaming at me was, “You’re just pissed that I fucked him and you never did!” He slammed the door so hard that from that day forward, the handle was messed up. I went to sit in the living room, my knees buckling, my body unable to stand any longer. The next day my roommates presented me with flowers because they didn’t know what else to do. They were freaked out too. It was a very kind gesture. 

At some point in time Jessie and I talked, but he was never honest with me. He never apologized, never accepted responsibility for the verbal abuse I’d endured when Clark broke into my house, most likely with Jessie’s blessing. Like so many times before, Jessie reveled in my suffering. It seems so sadistic now, but it wasn’t then. It took a long time and much reflection to fully understand how I had been the repository for much of his disdain for women, especially women who weren’t stick thin. Jessie had always been obsessed with his weight.  

I wanted to be there for him, work through this, and I told him as much. Despite what others may assume, I never thought Jessie was gay. There was a time in my life when I wondered if we would marry. I loved him, genuinely, and I thought he loved me. But it was just the opposite. I was a woman he could pretend with, play with. I was never what he really wanted. 

________

When some of our old Wooster classmates heard that Jessie moved to San Francisco and finally came out, and then that I too came out post-college, they said things like “well of course, it all makes sense.” Except that it doesn’t, and it didn’t. Perhaps Jessie and I recognized something in one another that was unnameable and unspeakable and we gravitated toward it – it’s a mystery. I can only speak for myself here: Jessie was my boyfriend, and I was proud to call him that. He was quirky and smart and handsome and funny. I may not have been more than a blip in his life, but he was more than that in mine. 

Years later, while visiting the San Francisco area with my wife, I saw Jessie and met his partner. We had lunch near his place in the Tenderknob. He also came and visited where we were staying, in the Oakland hills, and it was good to hang out, albeit a bit awkward. We got stoned and talked. He seemed pretty disinterested in my life, distant. The visit felt perfunctory, somehow. 

But now here you are and here I am

Not long after that, I posted a meme on Facebook and Jessie commented on it, perturbed. He didn’t like the framing of the post, and was being combative. To me it was transparent, what he was doing. My sense is that Jessie will always play the victim in our relationship; perhaps I disappointed and hurt him when he came to Wooster “for me.” He didn’t, though. We all know this now. It was all a ruse. 

Frankly, I can’t help but wonder if Jessie just hated strong women who spoke their minds. Or he hated what I came from, which was indeed a high degree of privilege, and he resented that. He never seemed to understand that having some money did not automatically mean one was happy.  

Jessie lied to me for years. He sent Clark to do his dirty work and punish me. If Jessie could have bought front row tickets to that show, he would have. For a long time, far too long, he was my psychic heckler. 

I used to see Jessie pass by on my social media feeds, and I tried, a couple of times, to engage on a surface level, but he never acknowledged me. Nothing as much as a like, let alone a comment. Eventually it became too painful to feel rejected by a man who had served me the ultimate rejection, so I unfollowed him. I’ve been off of Facebook completely for months now, and that’s where he popped up the most, so no more being triggered by my old gay boyfriend and his convenient shunning. 

Even the deepest wounds have a way of healing from the inside out. The scar remains so you remember how far you’ve come.  

Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away

__________

*Certain names have been changed in this piece to protect the privacy of those individuals.