Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture, Andy Cohen [the best books to read txt] 📗

She had a boyfriend back home, so I figured she thought that was why I wasn’t making a move. Still, I did some deflecting. And I now know that she did a lot of wondering.

On October 19 (yes, I remember the date), I took Amanda to Pizza Hut (no comment) to tell her the news. Amanda seemed like the best place to start, like a loving sister with psych credentials. I explained that I had something urgent to tell her, something incredibly personal.

“I know exactly what you’re going to tell me,” she said. I was so relieved: She knew!

I said, “What?”

“You’re in love with Graciela.”

“I am,” I said. “But I’m also gay.”

Amanda’s reaction was one that I didn’t expect: utter joy and complete acceptance. “I think that is so natural and beautiful, and I’m so proud of you!” she said. “This is great news!” What I thought was going to be a tearful pity party, or bitter recriminations about betrayal, evolved into a celebration. I told her about Jean-Marie. I told her that the Tale of the Fräulein Who Took Me … was a lie. She asked me what I was going to do about Graciela.

I wanted to be truthful with Graciela, but the fact that we’d be going back to BU together when the semester was over complicated things. I wasn’t ready yet for the information to return with me to Boston. So I didn’t tell Graciela, or anyone other than Amanda and her accepting boyfriend, Paul. The closet door was finally open—just a crack.

But on the plane home from London something in me shifted unexpectedly. I felt like I was hurtling not only through the sky, but toward a new phase of my life, and a chance to have a new beginning. This new identity I’d revealed to Amanda was shimmering just underneath my dirtbag Deadhead costume, and I needed to devise a plan of action for revealing it. I wanted to be precise about how I told people. I wanted to answer every question that could possibly come to mind, clearly and in one sitting. I wanted to put their fears about me—or the “new” me—to rest.

On the long flight back to the US, I wrote a journal entry that I wound up reading directly to each friend after I told them my secret. It was a pages-long, very intense, and super-earnest explanation of who I was and a plea for acceptance. Some snippets:

I’ve known I was gay for as long as I’ve had a sexual identity. Around the time that I started getting horny, I realized that my affection for men was not widely accepted, and was widely considered abnormal.

I knew I was not abnormal, but that I had to make a choice as to whether I craved acceptance or full individuality. I chose acceptance out of basic social needs. I decided to try to suppress my feelings for other men in hopes that, by thinking heterosexual, I would just sort of become one. It obviously didn’t happen, and no one can begin to imagine the pain and hurt that lurked deep within me when I would hear all of my friends—people that I loved and respected—deriding gay people. This happened daily. I lived two lives. My outer, gregarious, happy self, and my inner self, which thought a lot about sex. The inner self often overrode me, and I became overcome with depression, fear, and self-hatred.

I was born a homosexual. I did not choose to be gay. I did not have a choice. I wondered how I was ever going to live with myself and this sinister need to have sex with men. I was convinced that no one would accept me, and I wouldn’t get anywhere in the world if everyone knew that I was gay. And what would I do otherwise? The other choice, of course, would probably be worse—suppressing my feelings altogether, in hopes of leading a “normal” life. A wife and kids would give me a key to the world, but would also bring me further into hiding, and I would do things completely out of my control. When you have this feeling that you don’t think you can act upon, it is crushing.

I don’t understand why I feel this way. I can’t say the amount of tears I cried just because I didn’t know what to do. I fooled around with people but it was damn hard being hetero and a hidden homo all at once. When I got really down, I would just tell myself that I was strong because I had gotten this far and I was OK and well liked.

London made me confident in myself and my sexuality. I’m not ready to go tell the world. And I know that even my closest friends may have qualms, but this is who I am, and I can’t bear to lie to them any longer about something so deeply a part of me.

*   *   *

I’d been back from London a few days when Dave flew to St. Louis as a “welcome back to the US” surprise. He immediately sensed that something was drastically different about me.

“Andy left his soul in London,” he told my mom one day while I was napping. When I woke up, my mother—naturally—reported back to me what he had said. It was the opening I’d been looking for, but I couldn’t do it, not yet. That night I assured Dave that he was being distracted by my fancy new fashion—sport coats with big shoulder pads and Italian pants—and that I was still the same guy.

A few days after Dave left, on an unseasonably warm day, I picked up Jackie. “We’re going to Shaw Park,” I told her. “I need to talk to you.” I was usually the one getting pulled away for a sidebar about someone else’s drama, so this whole notion of taking her somewhere to talk felt very un-me. My palms were sweaty in the car and I couldn’t concentrate on Magic 108 FM. I didn’t expect