Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:51:50 -0400
From: Nick Forum <nicksstorypage@gmail.com>
Subject: My Jump Off Chapter 3

In the past, whenever I was caught by my folks doing something wrong, I was
able to come up with some sort of a plan to escape my punishment. One time,
when I was 12, I set our plastic trash can on fire and it melted to the
ground. My mom caught me red handed in the back yard trying desperately to
put the fire out, and when I realized I was busted, I simply stood still
and cried. I think I was really afraid of what I had done, but I also knew
deep down that if I cried, I wouldn't get in trouble.

At the moment, though, I had no back up plan. My dad turned his head as
fast as he could when he spotted us and he was gone. Phillip hadn't even
realized what had happened because it was all so fast, but I think he could
tell something was wrong when I pulled out and let his legs drop in a
panic.

"What's wrong," he asked.

"You didn't just see my dad watching us," I asked.

"I didn't see anything," he said in a shocked voice, his eyes getting huge.

"Shit," I said, feeling like I was about to cry, but not because I was
trying to worm out of anything. "What am I going to do?"

For his part, Phillip seemed to be thinking a little more clearly than I
was at the moment. He scrambled out of the bed and quickly got
dressed. When I noticed what he was doing, I did the same thing. So many
things were running through my head as I was getting dressed that I had to
stop and take a deep breath just to control my anxiety.

I was busted. I was out. I was out.

I couldn't believe it. I had never really thought about coming out to my
parents. To be quite honest, the notion seemed unimportant before today. I
had no plans to ever tell them I was gay. What was I going to say when I
had to face my dad? What about my mom? How could I ever live this one down?

I felt so ashamed of myself. Here I was, a guy having sex with another guy,
who I had feelings for and whom I was attracted to. I just knew my dad was
probably sorry he ever got my mom pregnant with me.

My thoughts raced back to the night before, when we had so much fun on my
motorcycle. My motorcycle. I just knew that I could kiss that goodbye. Why
would my dad let me keep it if I was gay? Of course he'd want to take it
back and get his money back. I wasn't really worth it.

Why did I have to be gay?

At some point after we were dressed, I sat back down on my bed and put my
head in my hands, not sure what I was going to do. Phillip was putting his
shoes on while he spoke.

"Jarred, I think I should go," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry Phillip," was all I could say. I'm not sure what I was sorry
for, but I felt a need to apologize to someone for something.

"It's going to be okay," he said in a reassuring voice. I wasn't too sure
if he believed that himself or not. I'm sure he was scared that my mom and
dad would call his parents and that he'd be outed to them. Knowing his dad
that couldn't be a good thing.

I wanted to give him a kiss goodbye, but I felt so awkward and ashamed of
myself that I didn't dare. Instead, I looked up at him and smiled before he
slipped out of my room. I heard the front door close, and I knew I was all
alone in the house with my dad.

My dad, who just walked in on his son having gay sex. His son whom he
believed was straight. I wondered to myself how I could have let this
happen. If I had just closed my door, he would've never looked inside. I
was a total dumb ass for not closing that damn door. Shit. I put my face in
my hands and let my tears start to fall. I didn't know what I was going to
do.

"Hey bud," I heard my dad say from the doorway. "Can I come in?"

I looked up at him, trying not to cry but having little control over my
tears. I just nodded and looked away. He was actually smiling a little when
he took a seat at my desk and sighed.

"I'm sorry, dad," I said, feeling desperate to let him know how bad I felt,
as if he couldn't tell by watching me sob.

"I guess I haven't been around much, have I?," he said sadly. "We need to
talk about this, Jarred."

I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. If someone had told me thirty
minutes earlier that I'd be sitting here with my dad, talking about this, I
would have laughed in their face. Now, I wondered what we would say.

I remember my dad giving the talk. I was thirteen, and it was the most
uncomfortable and uninformative 15 minutes of my life. I think he tried to
avoid the awkwardness of it all by using medical terms for things. Instead
of sex, it was called intercourse. Instead of a dick, I had a
penis. Instead of a pussy, girls had vaginas'.

"Jarred, I have to ask you something, and I expect you to tell me the
truth," he said softly. "Can you do that for me?"

I simply nodded as I wiped away tears.

"Good. Are you gay," he asked.

I nodded again, feeling a burning shame in my cheeks as I did. I had to
look away because I couldn't face my father. I just confirmed what he had
found out only minutes before.

"How does that make you feel," he asked. "Are you okay with being gay?"

I looked up at him, not quite sure if I had heard him right. He had a
worried look on his face, and when we made eye contact, I suddenly didn't
feel so scared. So I nodded again and looked down.

"Are you telling mom about this when she gets home," I asked.

"Of course I am, buddy," he answered, crushing me. The shame of my dad
finding out my deepest, darkest secret was one thing. But the thought of
him telling my mom terrified me. I would die if I didn't have her love
anymore, and the idea that she would be disgusted with me made me feel even
worse.

"Am I grounded," I asked.

"No,' he said simply. "I'm not thrilled about the idea of you having sex in
your room or anywhere, though. We're going to have to deal with that, son."

"I won't do it anymore," I promised, and I meant it. If stopping all sex
meant that I could erase this moment, I would be willing to join a
monastery.  Unfortunately, as I looked at my dad, I realized that not only
would I not be able to erase this moment, but that my dad was looking at me
as if he didn't believe me.

"I want you to know something, son," he said with a sincere look on his
face. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, dad," I said as I started to break down again.

"Your mom loves you too, Jarred," he said. "She's going to be okay with
most of this."

"Most of it," I asked.

"Well, she won't like the part about you having sex, and she sure isn't
going to like the fact that you were having sex in your room. But she and I
have already talked about this moment."

"I'm sure you never thought it was going to be like this," I said
pitifully. What I wasn't expecting was what came out of his mouth next.

"Actually son," he said as he sucked air through his teeth. "This is
exactly what we talked about."

What? Wait a minute. What was he talking about? He expected to walk in on
me having sex with my boyfriend. That didn't make any sense.

"Son, we talked about you being gay," he said. Okay, not what I was
thinking, but still confusing. This was news to me. "We both got that
feeling from you a long time ago."

"Wait. You knew I was gay?," I said, not believing the way this
conversation was going.

"We didn't know one way or the other for sure," he said. "I guess in a way,
we already knew. We just needed to hear it from you."

"But why," I asked, wondering how long this had been going on.

"Well, it might have been a little uncomfortable if we had brought it up to
you and we were wrong," he said, and I chuckled for a moment. The thought
of my parents coming to their straight son to tell him they knew he was gay
was a little funny to me.

"So what's she going to say to me," I asked, feeling really insecure still
about the prospect of talking about not just being gay, but having gay sex
with my mom. My dad just shrugged at the question.

We stayed in my room for most of the afternoon, talking about things. I was
afraid that we were going to stay on the topic of my being gay, and getting
caught with my boyfriend. Instead, we talked about our family and we talked
about family bonds.

We did talk about Phillip, and I confessed to my dad that we had been
together since September. Then the conversation turned to Phillip's family,
and I found myself trying hard to stress to my dad how bad it would be for
him if his parent's found out. I was sure his dad would beat him, and I
made sure I got that point across to my dad.

It was about 5:15 when we heard the front door open and my mom walked
in. My dad stood up and motioned with his head for me to follow suit. As we
walked out of my room and down the hallway to the living room, my dad put
his arm around my shoulder and gave me a small squeeze. As soon as my mom
saw me, she got worried.

"Honey, have you been crying," she asked in a concerned voice. "What's
wrong guys?"

I don't think there's a way for me to describe the desperate feeling I had
inside of my whole body at that moment. I knew my dad was about to out me,
and I knew that there was no way to stop him. My mom was about to find out
that her only son was gay. Even though he told me that they had suspected
it, I was still scared shit less.

"We need to have a talk about something important," my dad told her.

"Is everything okay," she asked as we all took a seat together on the
couch. It had been a long time since I had sat between my mom and dad on
the couch. My dad massaged my left shoulder with his hand and my mom sat on
my right, looking worried.

"Honey, it's nothing horrible," my dad said.

"Well, what is it," my mom asked, sounding impatient. I didn't like her
tone.

"Do you want to tell her buddy," he asked. I quickly and decisively shook
my head no and looked down, waiting for him to drop the bomb on me.

"Well, babe," he started. "Actually, it's something we already know. Jarred
has figured out that he's gay."

The silence was deafening. She wasn't saying anything at all. I couldn't
face her, so I had buried my face in my hands and waited to hear her
reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn't there. I turned and looked up at my dad,
who had a look of concern on his face as he looked at my mom. Finally, I
turned to face her and my heart broke.

There were tears streaming down her cheeks, faster than I had ever seen
before. I was about to apologize to her when she shocked me by wrapping her
arms around me and hugging me silently. I could still feel her tears
rolling down her cheek, landing on my back and soaking my shirt, but the
hug felt so good that I never wanted her to let it go.

"Are you sure, honey?," was the first thing she said. It was in a soft
voice, and I couldn't detect even a trace of sadness.

I nodded silently and used my arms to grip onto her as hard as I could. I
felt my dads arms wrapping around the both of us, and I suddenly realized
that I was okay. I was with my mom and dad, and I was out. There wasn't any
yelling, and there was no screaming, There were tears, but they weren't
tears of despair. Instead, I felt like they were bonding tears.

As close as I was with my parents, I always got a feeling that we were
slowly drifting apart. I certainly hadn't ever felt comfortable enough to
come to one of them with a question about romance, and up until a few
moments ago, I felt like coming out to them was out of the question. At
some point, I had started to demand my privacy, and they never denied me of
it. But as I sat there on the couch with my mom and dad, I realized that
maybe I had demanded too much privacy from them. I had become so detached
that I didn't know our boundaries anymore and I was so afraid of crossing
them that I just stayed back.

What a fool.

The rest of our evening went pretty smooth. Of course, there was the
subject of how my dad found out, and that was about as comfortable sitting
on a bed of needles. I had to look away over and over again as my mom and
dad discussed the dangers of anal sex, and then came the questions.

Were we using a condom?

Were we being monogamous?

What else were we doing?

Okay, not questions I wanted to be truthful about. I knew that the real
answer to the first two questions was no. But I said yes because I didn't
know how to tell my parents I was juggling two guys. I also didn't want
them to know that I wasn't using any protection at the present time with
Phillip.

Andrew and I hadn't gotten that far yet. To be honest, I really didn't care
if we ever did. I felt satisfied by being in the same room with him. I
didn't need to have sex with Andrew.

Hmm, now that was a shock. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't trying to
score with Andrew because that wasn't why I was seeing him. So why was I
doing it? I didn't know, and I honestly didn't have much time to process
the thought because my mother's voice brought me back to reality.

"Jarred, we're going to have to set some rules in place," my mom said. "I
understand all of the feelings you must be having right now, but at your
age, sex is a bad idea."

Great, here it comes.

"Son, I agree with your mother," my dad said. "I know you already said you
were going to stop, but I think we need to enforce that. You're too young."

"Okay," I said, just wanting this conversation to end. "I won't do it any
more."

My parents looked at each other sarcastically, then they both cut their
eyes at me.

"It doesn't just work that way, son," my dad said. "You can have the best
of intentions, but we're talking about something really powerful."

"Honey, you have to understand why we don't want you to have sex," my mom
said.

"It's because I'm gay, right?," I said.

"Oh, no, not at all," my dad said. "Buddy, if you were straight, we still
wouldn't want you to do it. This has nothing to do with being gay."

My mother cleared her throat and sat up straight , turning her whole body
to face me before she spoke.

"Do you understand the feelings you have when you have sex," she
asked. "Can you describe them to me?"

"Mom!," I said, feeling mortified. "That's gross. I can't talk about that
with you."

"Not those feelings," she explained. "I mean, how do you feel about Phillip
after you've had sex."

This was beyond uncomfortable. I had just been outed to my parents, and now
I had to talk about sex and feelings. I was hoping someone could just kill
me at that moment.

"I guess I feel like I love him," I said, but I quickly added, "I feel like
that all the time though."

"You feel like you love Phillip all the time?," my dad said. I nodded and
realized what I had just said was true. I really did feel like I loved him,
and even though I wanted to break up with him, part of me didn't want to
let go. Maybe that's why I felt the need to dip on the side with Andrew.

Wow.

This was a day from hell. Not only was I dealing with the fact that my
parents knew almost everything, but I was dealing with something else. I
was discovering my feelings for the first time because I was talking about
them. I did love Phillip. I just wasn't in love with him.


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