SIGNS (Post #4)

January 1998

I felt I was ready for love. No one else seemed happy for me, or should I say, ready for me. I had moved on from humiliating myself in front of women to wearing my heart on my sleeve in front of men while hiding and lying about it. There had been the 30 something guys I lied to about my age. There had been the 80s fanatic Andrew who broke my heart. The closeted celebrity driven acting student who, shortly after toweling my cum off his chest, told me we could never be and he wasn't even "really gay." Then came Doug. The secrets Doug and I had to keep from everyone. It was so much work and pain. No one wanted us together. I fought and battled with Doug and with those smothering us. It effected my school work, my social life, my sanity--his too.

I came to this city to be myself. But who was that? At this point, I had people dragging me out of the closet. I had other's tell me my acting career would be over if I admitted to being gay. I lost friends who knew me when I was "straight." I thought bisexuality was safer and more accepted. I couldn't distinguish between which gay friend was truly a friend or which ones wanted to sleep with me. And I had people who didn't believe I was old enough to even understand anything.

This wasn't how I imagined discovery in the big city.

That night, I took the stage in a new musical called "The Human Heart." "How apropos," I thought. My parents were in the audience oblivious to my "other" life, oblivious to my strains and struggles. Oblivious to who Doug was to me as we shared the stage. Oblivious to the human-ness of my heart.

My character Sam was to committ suicide in the end of Act I. He couldn't take it. Sam couldn't last long enough to make it to the second act. He felt misunderstood and lost. His perspective on life left nothing at the next bend in the road.

Where was his hope and faith? Maybe the same place mine had gone?
Over the weeks of rehearsal and performance I had developed a very unhealthy connection to Sam and my own personal life's Act I.

So, the end of Act I approaches and as the music speeds up and crescendos, Sam pulls a gun out of his pocket and stands at the top of a wooden stairway with it pointed to his temple. The prop gun goes off and Sam is supposed to drop and dangle over the banister. Instead, my body began to shake as the gun approached my head. My knees were buckling and my heart was beating rapidly. Sweat immediately covered my forehead as the migrane made it's home behind my eyes in an instant. I pull the plastic trigger and begin to topple over the railing only to fall completely over and crash to the stage floor 8 feet below me. The sound of the audience was that of utter amazement of how real the suicide looked.

As I laid in a pile of sawdust and sheet music, the universe began to speak softly to me again. The signs were flashing before my mind's eye as I lay with my eyes closed. Love, too, was speaking loud and clear. As were the stage manager and a dozen actors, and I awoke from my brief blackout with Coca-Cola and aspirin being lifted to my lips.

The show finished. I didn't tell my parents about my fainting spell or my aniexty. I remained cool and collected as any actor could. I recall introducing Doug to my parents as "my friend." It was all too fast and far too brief.

But, I stayed in this life and in this city for two more years looking for Doug to love and save me.