For some reason I’ve always been drawn to gay men. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s because, I’m going to be stereotypical here, they generally have better taste in clothes and music than any of my girlfriends or perhaps, because they weren’t trying to get into my pants, they looked at me and not my boobs. Refreshing, any girl can attest to the uncomfortable high school years when we don’t really seem to have faces to boys, just body parts.
My first mad crush was a pretty little blonde boy named Trevor. In reality Trevor was so charismatic that I believe that everyone fell instantly in love with him upon meeting him. Trevor was outgoing and spontaneous and terribly vulnerable. His vulnerability was what really won my heart.
I have loved gay men even before I knew they were gay, maybe even before they were sure they were gay. Every crush I had in high-school with the exception of one guy, you guessed it, was gay and Trevor was no exception. We’d spend hours talking on the phone every night, talking about things I actually cared about - music, kittens, and John Hughes. He read Jackie Collins, I was in love!
The problem was, so was everyone else. Girls draped all over him everywhere we went, they stripped down naked and changed their clothes in front of him and asked him to clasp their bras. Trevor lived a straight boys wet dream I’m sure, but to him it was all normal. He’d sit goofy-sweet and ask if he could borrow their jean shorts or quickly hand them something else to put on.
Trevor was my first sweet love, we went to our first ever Madonna concert together, spent endless hours perfecting our Vogue-moves, and he even let me take nude pictures of him for my school photography class. We were a match made in heaven.
By the time he “came out” I pretty much already knew. He said the words and my automatic reaction was a heart crushing, “It doesn’t matter to me.”
His response will stay with me forever. He just looked up at me with big moist eyes and said, “but it matters to me.”
There are moments in life that are so utterly profound, they shape you and that moment with Trevor is one of them for me. In an instant I felt transported into his world. I can’t profess to know what things were really like for him, but I know they were rough. He was teased and harassed constantly through high school, now we’d say bullied. Then I think we all tolerated too much, we even expected it and sadly a lot of those “bullies” were adults and even teachers.
One night while he walked the block and a half from his job at the movie theater to his home he was shot thirty-two times with a BB gun. At midnight, in the dark all alone on a city street. How terrifying. Twenty-one years later he’s still picking the pellets out of his back. That’s a lot of scars, outside, but especially on the inside.
He moved to Georgia towards the end of high school. To the bible belt, and sweltering summer heat. The next time I saw him he was a man, but he was still wearing some borrowed jean shorts and humming Madonna and it would be a good guess that he is currently humming some Madonna right now as you read this.
Trevor is still one of my homies. He’s my partner in cleanliness, and occasionally my arch nemesis, but forever my friend.
Sweet sweet post.
ReplyDeleteThank you! :)
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