This Might Offend You

When I was a kid,
I thought that “gay,”
Was a new thing.
It was my understanding,
That it began in the ‘80’s,
Preceding the HIV/AIDS epidemic,
Which it was directly linked to.
When my dad took a moment,
To explain to me what gay meant,
I remember that it didn’t bother me,
But I knew I didn’t understand it.
I’m fairly certain I responded,
“Why?”
He didn’t have an answer,
That satisfied my curiosity.
But at the time my interest,
Was more in the disease,
Then the “new” social thing,
That sprung up out of the blue,
Just before I was born.
When I was a teen,
Fag became slang,
For everyone I didn’t like,
And gay an insult to everything else.
I didn’t know anyone gay,
At least I didn’t think I did.
It seemed like one of those things,
That only happened in big cities,
With posh people,
And access to all those crazy drugs,
Which DARE to say No,
Eventually explained,
Were the main culprit,
Behind the AIDS conundrum,
That had piqued my curiosity,
So long before.
I remember coming into my sexual age,
And being very uncomfortable with who I was.
I didn’t like myself,
Couldn’t imagine anyone else,
Who could either.
I had always liked girls,
From kindergarden on,
But all the sudden,
Some part of me,
Questioned if I wasn’t different.
Some part of the rhetoric,
I had grown up listening to,
And shouting out myself,
On the blacktop at recess,
Had sunk in and made me think,
That maybe the parts of me I didn’t like,
Might be because I was,
One of the gay kids after all.
It was around that time,
That I started to learn,
That gay wasn’t as new as I had thought.
Turns out it may have been around,
Since at least the ‘70’s,
At least that’s what,
The lesbian porn I saw,
Made me think.
I remember sitting silently in my room,
Maybe 15, maybe 16,
And wondering if I was so weird,
Because I was “a gay.”
Because at 15 or 16,
I still associated weird with wrong,
And wrong with gay,
And didn’t see anything wrong,
With that correlation.
Whenever I had those thoughts,
Usually after the girl I liked,
Didn’t like me back.
Or whenever I would hear,
One of the bullies at school,
Say it to a friend,
About me or someone else,
Because we were one of the different kids,
That they just didn’t “get.”
I would always conclude,
That I just couldn’t be.
Guys are gross.
They held no interest for me.
As I got a little older,
I came to learn,
Yet again,
That gay wasn’t just a thing,
That was new to our world.
It seemed that the ancient Greeks,
Had a thing for boys,
In generations past.
“Must be a cyclical thing,”
I though to myself.
Like bell bottom pants,
Swing music,
Or snap bracelets.
A fad that comes for a while,
Then leaves again suddenly.
That’s what I thought.
Gay had a 2000 year gap,
From Socrates to Liberace.
It explained why no one knew much about it,
And why,
As a society,
We weren’t dealing with it very well.
I sure wasn’t dealing with it well.
In retaliation for having been bullied,
I became one.
Tore my best friend to shreds,
For reasons unknown,
Because I became a homophobe.
I wouldn’t let men I thought might be gay,
Touch my stuff,
Let alone shake my hand.
If “some homo” even talked to me,
I would visibly cringe,
And act disgusted.
But the worst part was,
I knew deep down,
That I didn’t care.
I wasn’t worried.
I just didn’t want anyone else,
To think I was gay,
Because of how strongly,
That negative connotation was.
So I was absolutely awful,
To truly wonderful people,
Based on some peer pressure piece,
Of guilt laden bigotry,
I had picked up,
And shoved in to my own psyche,
Because that’s what I thought,
I needed to do,
To fit in better.
Because it was easier,
To unite in hate,
Than it ever was to do the opposite.
As time went on,
Men and women I knew,
Started to come out.
I had done some reading,
And more importantly,
Some logical reasoning,
Leading me to uncover,
The fact that there had been no gap,
And gay had been around all along.
It hadn’t skipped over the ‘50’s,
19, 18, 17 or otherwise.
Men had loved men.
Women, women.
For as long as men have been men,
As long as women been women.
It was only our self imposed,
Puritan values.
Leave it to Beaver fantasies.
Hatred and oppression,
Of the things we,
As individuals,
Can’t wrap our heads around,
That had taken a perfectly natural thing,
Then degraded it,
Defaced it,
Criminalized,
Persecuted,
And shunned it.
We made it socially acceptable,
To hate someone.
Hate a million someones.
A hundred million or even billions of someones.
Past, present and future someones,
Because of a preference for something,
That we don’t necessarily have.
We made it ok,
For our children to see us hate something.
Hate someone.
Well it’s not ok.
Hate is never ok.
Not for race, religion, sexual preference.
Differences shouldn’t push us apart,
They should bring us together.
Because the only way we learn,
Grow,
Adapt,
Change for the better,
Is to ask questions and listen to the answers,
And not be afraid to love someone,
For who they are,
However they are,
As unconditionally as we can muster,
Because,
Let’s face it…
Religion,
Race,
Sexual preference,
Didn’t start,
The day Moses was born,
Or the first slave ship landed on African soil.
And they all certainly didn’t pop-up,
As some new fad,
In the 1980’s.
None of those things are going away,
None of those things should go away.
The only thing that should,
Is hating one another for being different.