Coming Out

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Law & Order: SVU or any of its affiliated characters. Any additional characters I have created are figments of my own imagination, intended to bear no resemblance to any real persons. Any actual similarities are purely coincidental.

I sat in Mr. Nordstrom's sixth period Chem class in the same spot I always sat, taking notes with the same pen I always used, only this time, I was on autopilot. Nothing that was being said registered with any part of my brain. I loved this class, but today I understood none of it, and I didn't care to try.

Twenty minutes, I can do this. The clock's hands seemed to move agonizingly slowly, as I tried to convince myself that in the next twenty minutes, things would be better, I would be free. Even as I went over it in my mind, I knew it was bullshit. I was never free, and I wouldn't be until the truth was out. In the moment, sitting in my desk, taking notes I really didn't even realize I was taking, I felt like a complete dick.

I had yet again recently broken up with my girlfriend, and not given her a reason. Routinely, I went with the 'it's-not-you-it's-me' cop out explanation. For years I had dumped girls just when they got close enough to make me nervous, telling myself each time that I just hadn't met the right one. You know how when you tell yourself certain things enough times, you start to believe them? That's how it was with me, and the lie that there was a kind of girl out there that I hadn't met. I told myself this so often, it was cemented in my mind as truth- until I met Jarrett.

I had never seen anybody like him before. Once I'd actually grown the balls to talk to him and gotten to know him, I'd learned that he'd moved here from Florida, and chosen not to come to my school because of convenience, but due to the epic reputation of our sports teams. He was on just about every one of them, and failed at nothing. It was like as soon as he switched uniforms, any game was effortless for him. Even if he didn't know the rules, he could probably play and win.

Jarrett was easier for me to talk to than any girl I'd ever been with. Conversation flowed, and even the awkward moments where we made complete asses of ourselves were funny. I never went through consciously deciding whether to open up to him or not, like I did when meeting most people for the first time. People often said that deep human connections were incredibly rare, and I believed it. You couldn't trust everybody, but something about Jarrett told me that his eyes and his soul would hold all my secrets, no matter how dark they were.

I don't really remember a distinct moment in getting to know him that verified to me that I was gay; it simply became obvious that he was the proverbial 'something missing' that I'd looked for in all the girls I had dated. There was no leaving when things got scary with him, because no matter how much I gave him, how often I contemplated that if things disintegrated between us he could potentially use all my secrets against me, it never frightened me.

I often recall the one and only time I'd ever been afraid in his presence, and laugh at myself for it now. The first time I told him I loved him. I distinctly remember the sweating of my palms, the churning of thoughts within my head. What if he's not actually gay? What if he hates me? What if he outs me to everyone else?

None of my fears turned out to be relevant, though. He's gay, I had read his signals correctly, and he had been having the same fears about revealing himself to me. I knew that he would never out me, not without my say so, he wasn't malicious like that.

Despite that he wouldn't out me, I knew that probably most of the school knew I was gay. I never kept a steady girlfriend for more than a month, and some people would tell you that I 'looked' gay. I don't know how much I believed this. I wasn't strictly effeminate, but I wasn't purely masculine either. There's so much diversity within the gay community, I don't think you could possibly pinpoint what gay actually embodies or looks like, but people were set in their ways and would judge and ridicule the things they failed to understand.

It wasn't always what people said, but sometimes the things they didn't say spoke even louder. I went to a school in a city with many different ethnic groups, all of us forced to mingle together in some respect on a pretty regular basis, but it was obvious that gay still wasn't okay. Teachers really adopted the attitude that if they didn't speak of it, it didn't exist. Sexual education didn't include any mention of the fact that there were boys who liked boys, and girls who liked girls, and any questions the gays or lesbians had were kept to ourselves for fear of being judged.

A shrill sounding final bell caused me to startle in my seat, and almost had me mess up the last word of the sentence I had been writing. I hurriedly closed my books, and made my way to my locker. Jarrett was waiting in close proximity to it, as I'd expected he would be.

I wanted to kiss him, but we never did at school. As much as people said you shouldn't care what people think, as confident as I wanted to be, it was high school; no matter what you did, how strong you were, the rumor mill was alive, and people were evil if you were in any capacity different than what they considered normal.

"Hi babe. How was Chem?"

"Freaking long. I couldn't focus. How was calculus?"

"Do you even have to ask? It's Ms. Joyce's class, I'd rather be shot in the face."

For the first time all day, I was able to genuinely relax and laugh. Everything was easier once I was around him, and since he so often made my days, I thought of the one thing I could do that would make his.

"I'm gonna tell them. Tonight."