Many friends, coworkers, and online acquaintances have asked about my sexuality. Omnisexual? No, they understand being pansexual. What they’ve asked me to explain is why I am. Within the coming weeks, I’ll be posting recollections of my life to date. Brief memoirs as I recall them, in hopes to shed light on my costly trip down Enlightenment Lane. At my expense, please enjoy!
Enlightenment Lane: Trip #1
On my first jaunt down Enlightenment Lane, I discovered open mindedness is not for the weak of soul.
I can say my mother, the Den Leader, was more than a little shocked to discover she had a gay boy in her Cub Scout pack. An eight-year-old being gay wasn’t the real surprise though. The confusion started at my younger brother’s slumber party two months prior.
Aw, yes. I remember it as if it were yesterday…
“Come on!” My brother dragged me into the flock inside his cramped room. “They really want to meet you,” he said. Me? Well, okay. After introducing me to half a dozen young boys, too young, in my opinion, I headed back outside to ride my skateboard.
As if I hadn’t enough problems, (hormonally active since the age of five), the one boy I secretly wished would notice me, yet deep down inside knew he shouldn’t, was on my heels. One lap around the patio, and there he stood, hands inside his jean pockets grinning like a fool. My thoughts exactly at that moment – fool.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hey. Why aren’t you in there with the others?” I asked, thinking if I covered my ass, I could front the blame, right.
Looking back, his hands rushing from his pockets to encircle me seemed to happen at lightening speed. Yet, at the time, I know it played and replayed in slow motion. So, I had this too-young-a boy hanging around my two-year-older body, and my only thought as he looked up at me, in all his gaiety mind you, asking if I would kiss him, was…Oh my God, I’m robbing the cradle. Of course, with my cursed hormones, my thoughts never seemed to synchronize with my actions. Like many of my experiences, before rationality surfaced I was too far entangled to beckon its call. Christ, for an eight-year-old, the boy could kiss…
“Want me to ask my mom if you and I could go bike riding?” I asked with a wink, fully aware of my premeditated plan to get him alone on Fossil Hill, a well-known make out spot up the street from my childhood home. We neighborhood kids nicknamed it because of the many shell-like fossils we’d found embedded in the shale.
Wouldn’t you know, my ever diligent, all knowing, little brother busted the party by walking outside right then. “Oh man! I’m tellin’ mommy!”
Quickly incorporating my ten-year-old wisdom, I quieted the impending riot by explaining his friend only wanted a hug, which was very much still in full swing when my brother arrived.
“Yeah.” His friend butted in. “From now on, I’m calling you, Mom!” Mom…Huh? “I wish you were my mother, you’re always so nice to me.”
Poor kid, if he only knew my less-than-noble intentions…
Fast forward two months later, and my mother discovering the boy was gay…
“There’s just no way he can be gay,” she whispered to me in the hallway one evening.
I said, “He is, so drop it. You’ve got a problem with it, or what?”
“But, I thought you two were…you know…”
“What?”
“I saw you outside, and don’t try to deny it. I told you before, I’m a witch…I know everything about you. If he was gay, he wouldn’t have been kissing you now, would he have?”
“Well, he did…And, he is gay. So, what’s that make me then, huh?”
Also, my first lesson in rhetorical questioning obviously, for neither of us could answer.
References:
omnisexual. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/omnisexual (accessed: November 08, 2008).
pansexual. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pansexual (accessed: November 08, 2008).
Disclaimer: Any names used in this series are purely fictional to protect the privacy of all involved.
