And I don’t know how to feel about it.
It’s not just about the sex, obviously. Sex never is. It’s about…well, our relationship. This is the only real thing in my life, and I don’t want to change it.
At least, I think that’s what is nagging at me…
I contemplate what he said about me being slightly internally homophobic. I thought I’d made all this progress, but maybe I haven’t. Did he have a point? I always thought I was just, well…masculine. But what does that really mean?
Until River, I’d never even bothered with real, long-term relationships. I was too scared. I know what can happen when two people stop loving each other, because I watched it happen with my parents. And so by a very early age, I’d given up on love entirely.
You know how it goes. My dad stopped showing up at dinner on weeknights and then my mom started drinking more wine at night and then they stopped smiling around each other and then my dad got a tragically sterile apartment in the suburbs and told me he still loved me the same even though he couldn’t live with my mother anymore. I resented him forever for it.
Because that was impossible – I was half of my mom, so how could he love me and stop loving her? Where was the sense in that?
Love seemed so futile. My mother was happy, and then she became sad. And that is the worst thing anyone could ever do in this life, take a happy person and leave them sad. So this paralyzed me, as far as relationships were concerned, forever. (Or until River, at least.)
Another thing that paralyzed me? The fact that according to my dad, boys didn’t cry. He found me crying on the second weekend I stayed over with him, I’ll never forget it because my childhood dog was dying and I thought I’d locked the bathroom but hadn’t. Anyway, he was pissed, but what killed me even more than the anger was…the disgust. The pity. He pitied me, and it coated me like liquid shame.
I remember after my dad barged in, he turned away and said he “never wanted to see any of that mess again,” aka emotions, I guess. And like any good soon, I listened. I never allowed myself to feel anything again. And it almost killed me.
Until River, of course. He is the one person whose heart I could never bear to break. It would kill me, and that’s why I stayed, even though it’s been hard as fucking hell sometimes.
I know this is going to make no sense, and it will never make sense, but I was a straight guy who fell in love with a guy. I’d never looked at another guy, never touched one, never even had the urge to. And then suddenly I liked him, in a way that felt genderless, in a way that did not have borders.
For years I felt like I’d stumbled into the wrong life. Nothing felt like it clicked. I would sit in a crowded sports bar surrounded by my friends and feel totally alone. And all at once, he made me feel at home in myself.
River was happy. He was funny, very funny. There was just something about him I couldn’t stay away from. I started noticing that around him, I felt light, which is something I hadn’t felt since I could remember. He was so vulnerable he just kind of ripped me open. He was peeling back the layers I’d painted over myself, and I didn’t even realize it until someone else told me about it.
~
“You’re smiling so much,” my mom said during one of our sporadic dinners together at the Olive Garden. But the way she said it was weird, like she was surprised.
“And?” I asked, and she gave me a weird face.
“Sorry. It’s just that for a long time, you didn’t really smile. And now you are. It’s just weird, I guess.”
“Weird? That I’m smiling?”
Her face changed. “Chandler, no offense, but something happened to you after the divorce. You just…stopped being happy. For a long time, you were barely even you anymore. And now, it’s just like…I don’t know. You’re you again. And I really missed you. That’s all.”
And that’s when I said it.
“Mom, I think I fell in love with a guy.”
She choked, quite literally choked, on her sweet tea. Then she set down her glass, her eyes wide.
“Are you telling me the truth, Chandler?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Was this something you expected?”
“No.”
“Are you sure of how you feel?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She leaned back in an elegant sort of way. People were always describing her as elegant, and for the first time I really saw why. Because there was nothing ever so elegant as acceptance.
“So date him,” she said plainly.
“What?”
“Date him.”
“Aren’t you confused?” I asked her.
“Yes, very much so. Your whole life, I never once suspected…anyway, yes, I’m confused. But then again, aside from it all, love doesn’t have to be confusing.”
“Explain that, please?”
“Look. You’ve never been one to dilly-dally. You decide something and go with it. This seems the same, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So do it. Don’t do to someone else, what your father did to me. Don’t settle down with someone and then, fourteen years and one child later, decide you want someone else, God forbid. If you like this person, that should be all that matters.”
“And please be safe, Chandler.”
“Oh, God, the whole AIDS speech…”
“No, I would never say that, although I would urge protection no matter the gender involved,” she interrupted. “What I mean is, the world is a fucked-up place, so be careful with yourself. And with him. You remember Colleen Marks?”
I shuddered. Colleen, previously Carl, was a woman from my town who was murdered in her driveway after coming out as trans.
“You know what I mean?” she asked.
“Yes. I do. Thank you for your…your understanding. And please don’t tell Dad.”
“As if I ever would. Talk about the need to be careful…yikes. Just give me a hug, okay?”
So after that was cleared up, I decided to move in on River.
There was just a problem: I didn’t even know how to date guys. That might not make sense, but it does to me. I mean, I knew I liked him, I just knew nothing beyond that.
What did two guys do together? How did the dynamic work? How did the whole thing go?
So I just decided to let it unfold, and find my way as we went along.
~
Of course there were some disasters along the way: I was miserable when he brought me to a drag show, and he rolled his eyes all night when I brought him to a college football game. But other than that, merging my life with him was remarkably easy. The harder thing? All the outside parts of my life, that didn’t involve him.
I both overestimated and underestimated how much a same-sex relationship was going to change my life. On one hand we’re like any couple. We watch Netflix and bicker about stupid things sometimes and have a lot of sex.
But the thing is, I underestimated how much other people would care. Most people – especially women – were exceedingly kind. But with some of my straight male friends, it was like I became invisible, immediately. There was a strange kind of anger surrounding it, because they couldn’t understand it, and what people cannot understand, they resent.