Confessions Part II

I was twenty-one and three quarters when I fell in love for the first time, with a man. To this day, I still have no idea how it happened; but before I knew it, I was under the spell of a gentleman caller by the name of Frederick Davenport. With Pacific Ocean blue eyes and extensive retail experience working at The Bay, Frederick was the Disney prince I dreamed my first husband to be.

To describe myself as a virgin at the time would be an understatement. In high school, while my friends were expanding their sexual horizons, I was having trouble explaining to my girlfriend why I could not stop crying every time we kissed. Graduating with an A+ in English and an F in heterosexuality; it was not long before I flicked the blinkers on the old Ford Taurus and took the nearest exit to Gay Town.

After coming out to my friends and family at The Keg, with a glass of white wine and an order of Mushrooms Neptune, I made the executive decision to be the best gay man I could. Sashaying into a Bachelor of Arts degree, I took on a major in crop tops with a minor in brunch. Embracing the Out lifestyle, I had only one major setback: I was terrified of any physical contact with men.

While my homosexual tendencies should have drawn me closer to the male sex on a date, instead I found myself scrambling to get farther away. The Dawson Leary in me reasoned that my neurosis was likely due to decades of guilt and shame accrued from a heteronormative upbringing and compounded by a Catholic school education. It also did not help that nearly every gay love story I got my hands-on, ended with disease followed by death.

“Sashaying into a Bachelor of Arts degree, I took on a major in crop tops with a minor in brunch.”

The truth was that in my young adult mind, I could not separate sex from illness. It came as no surprise then, that by the time I found myself lying in bed with another man, the next setting I found myself in was a walk-in clinic. During my time with Mr. Davenport, my fear of “getting sick” manifested in a smorgasbord of physical symptoms and multiple trips to the doctor’s office. Making the situation worse, every time I confessed to being a sexually active gay man, my prognosis was always the same, an STI.

Frederick and I were together only five months, and in that time, I was tested for HIV three times, given pills for chlamydia and gonorrhea (why not?) and a blood test for herpes. It was not until months later I received an accurate diagnosis: anxiety.

As the projector in my mind switched off, I found myself back in real time, the Doctor coming back into focus standing in front of me.

“So, your exposure is high?” he asked, responding to my previous outburst about serving in a restaurant.

“That is correct.”

It occurred to me then, that while over the years, I had learned to take active steps to manage my anxiety being “high-risk” as a gay man; I was going to have to start doing the same to reduce my stress level serving in a restaurant. This was already my second trip to the clinic in less than a month and I had no intentions of becoming a regular.

“Now tilt your head back please,” said the Doctor holding the nasal swab, “and take a deep breath.”

To be continued.

But not to be continued too much more.

We have much to discuss.