In the months immediately following graduation, a lot happened to my classmates.
A young bully became a young father.
A shot-put superstar was forced to deal with the sudden death of his mother.
A couple of high-school sweethearts got engaged.
And most of the year level got well and truly sloshed at schoolies.
I stayed at home and waited the four months before university began. I spent most of the time in my bedroom, doing pretty much what I did during my hiatus from existence a few weeks earlier. A lot of TV, a lot of dark thoughts, and very little interaction with the outside world.
Mum pushed me once again to go to a psychologist. I wasn’t eating and I was barely moving. With nothing but time to kill, and feeling completely miserable, I relented.
This was how I met Gary. Gary was cool. He didn’t patronise me. He didn’t have ye olde maps on the walls. He was in a band and he had Tolkien on his bookshelf. I felt like he listened to me. He was my first really positive experience with a psychologist, and I grew to trust him. I began to talk about my most urgent concern.
I’d had unexpected support from a few classmates when I came out in the last few weeks of school, but I had saved the most dreaded announcements for last.
Mum, Dad and Simon needed to be told. I felt that if I was able to be honest with them I might experience some kind of liberation, even though I desperately feared each of their reactions.
I knew I would lose at least one of them.
I came out to Mum in the middle of the night.
We were up having a long conversation about some of her troubles. Mum was perpetually unhappy, and it was something that I was simultaneously frustrated by and sympathetic to. The world had been hard on Mum in all sorts of ways, and I did my best to help her. This particular evening she had been crying, and we talked for hours.
Exhausted by her tears, she got up to go to bed. It was about two o’clock, and she would be up in a few hours. Mum liked to garden at dawn before launching into a retinue of household chores.
As we wandered to the kitchen, Mum asked how I was. I shrugged, non-committed, and turned around to face her. She was in the lounge room, in darkness, peering at me in the dim kitchen. I made a decision.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I think I’m probably gay.’
She nodded, and with barely a pause said, ‘Well that’s fine.’ Her voice pitched upwards, as if she was trying to convince herself, and desperate to convince me.
‘That’s fine,’ she said again, more certain. And she smiled. ‘I’m not surprised.’
And then we said goodnight and went to bed.
I knew it was only a matter of hours until my father heard the news.
A few days later, Dad and I were in the car.
‘Are you ready for an awkward conversation?’ he asked with an embarrassed laugh.
Holy fuck, he’s bringing it up. It’s happening now. Shit, it’s happening now.
‘Um. Yeah?’
He was so uncomfortable. I’d never seen my dad more uncomfortable.
‘Mum tells me, I hope you don’t mind—’
Why would I mind? Jesus, Mum, why would I object to that in anyway?
‘Mum tells me you might be gay. And I just wanted to let you know that that’s fine with me, that’s fine.’
Silence. This is good. I think this is good. Is this good?
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘But I also wanted to let you know that you’re young. You’ve got time. And you might want to experiment a little more before you say—’
‘I’m pretty certain,’ I interrupt.
So he’s not fine. He’s in denial. Mum probably is too. Right. They think it’s a phase.
Even though I had never had a kiss, let alone a sexual experience with either a man or a woman, I was unwilling to tolerate even the faintest notion that I might simply be confused. I was so sick of confusion. I needed certainty. The internet research and countless videos and television I watched taught me that parents often responded to their child’s coming out with the denial-laden ‘it’s just a phase’. According to my research, this was pure intolerance and needed to be combated.
It was not a phase. It was me.
I was defensive, but I was also surprised that I hadn’t been kicked out of home or shunned.
Let’s face it, my parents had always been nothing but supportive, and while Dad was a little hesitant, he certainly wasn’t offended. Mum was more worried about other friends’ or neighbours’ reactions, but by this point I’d had enough positive coming-out experiences to not waste time worrying about neighbourhood gossip.
But the real test was always going to be Simon.
I told him a few weeks after schoolies.
Over the internet.
Good choices, Dave.
His schoolies experience had been a blur of drinking, cheap food and sunburn. Now he was getting ready to leave for Canberra to study engineering in the defence force.
‘It was pretty wild,’ he types.
‘Did you hook up with anyone?’
‘I met a girl called Melissa.’
‘Cool.’
‘We mucked around a bit.’
‘Still talking?’
‘Yeah, she’s online now actually. We’re talking.’
‘Ooooooo!!!!!!’
I tried not to be jealous of Simon’s easy ability to end up ‘mucking around’ with someone. The idea of going to schoolies and striking up a conversation with a drunk stranger made my stomach turn. But Simon was happy. Good for him.
A few minutes pass. He must be busy chatting with Melissa.
I type, ‘What’s Melissa like?’ Just as a question pops up from him.
‘What’s been happening with you?’
Now’s the time to tell him. Before I think, I type, ‘I’m pretty sure I’m gay.’
The words blink onto the screen, set into pixelated stone, never to be erased. There’s no going back.
Long seconds tick past. My confession hangs there, begging for a reply.
Then: ‘She’s from the Sunshine Coast. She’s going to do engineering or something down in New South Wales. We might be able to see each other, but I don’t know how it’ll work.’
Shit. Did he not see it? Or has he seen it and chosen to ignore it?
‘Cool,’ I type back nervously. I don’t know how to proceed. Do we just keep talking about Melissa like I haven’t just said I’m gay? Was this it? Was it over? Do I type it again?
A message appears on the screen.
‘Are you excited to meet the other fags at drama school?’ He punctuates the thought
with a 
.
I read it three times. The first time I’m confused. The second time I’m hurt. The third time I’m angry.
‘That’s shitty,’ I say.
There’s nothing for a long time. He’s probably laughing with Melissa now, telling her his best friend’s a faggot.
‘Jeez,’ he types, ‘I was just joking.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Stop being a girl.’
That’s it. I’m sick of being told I’m a woman, or a fag. And I’m sick of Simon’s bullshit. I close the laptop and sit back in my chair.
I go over the conversation in my mind. I don’t know whether the face meant Simon’s disgust or if it was supposed to be my face offering a blow job.
I need support. I knew he’d be a douche about it. I feel my throat tighten, and my eyes begin to sting.
We’d seen each other almost every day for five years.
I convinced myself I was better off without him anyway.
Simon was the last point of contact I had with high school. None of my previous classmates would be studying in the local arts faculty, let alone in my course. I would be alone. It was a chance to start again.
Crazy Drama Dave could finally retire.
A part of me was relieved. The performance had been exhausting. And now I was ‘out’, I felt way more at ease with the possibility of making new female friends.
But would I even be able to make new friends? I would be completely alone at university. And without Crazy Drama Dave, would I just return to being the scared thirteen year old who was picked on and hid out in the library? Would I plummet to the bottom of the social ladder again?
I desperately needed a new personality.
I decided to make my new-found sexuality the cornerstone of the new me. Confident, proud, energetic and gay. Crazy Drama Dave was dead. Gay Dave had risen.
I was lucky. I landed in the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of sexual confusion: a university theatre department.