(Most dialogue has been added to Part 1 and Part 2. I have also included Part 3, although no dialogue is contained.)

“Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked.

“Yes! I asked my dad, we’re allowed,” Tristan responded.

“He yelled at us last time,”

“No, he changed his mind,” Tristan assured me.

“HEY,” I heard Chuck yell from the kitchen, “I TOLD YOU, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CLIMB ON THAT TREE!” 

Why does Tristan lie all the time? When we were playing at my house he would never even say he wanted to go home when it got late.

“Me and my family are going out to dinner, I have to leave now,” was Tristan’s usual excuse. I would watch him walk across the street to his blue-shuttered house, but there the family vehicle would sit. Tristan was a liar. He couldn’t help himself. And this time, he dragged me into it.

“YOU TWO IDIOTS ARE GONNA BREAK YOUR NECKS. GET OUT OF THAT TREE,”  Chuck angrily yelled at us, “Tristan, what don’t you understand when I tell you that this tree is weak and it can’t support you climbing all through it?”

“Dad, we weren’t actually climbing in it, we were just standing kind of around it,”

The tree was low enough to the ground that it actually seemed plausible. It was a tree that popped out of a small mound of rocks near the back of Tristan’s backyard. It had long limbs but they all shot toward the house rather than the sky. The tree itself looked as though a large chunk of branches fell off of a much larger tree and stuck the landing in a mound of rocks. The rocks that piled around the base stacked up in such a way that we were on the rocks more than the tree before we even got a chance to scale the highest branch. But we would never get to climb and surmount the peak.

“Alright you’re done,” Chuck said, “Aaron, it’s time for you to go home.”

I went home. Why does Tristan always lie? I tried to figure it out. He knew we were going to get caught. He knew we weren’t allowed to climb the tree. Why would he blatantly make a false statement that might get us hurt or in trouble. I couldn’t figure out why Tristan would lie to me knowing that we weren’t allowed to climb the tree.

He knew, and he did it anyway.

But then again, so did I.

PART TWO:

Why did I always do something if I knew it was wrong? My earliest memory of grade school is one in which I went under each stall from toilet to toilet and locked them from the inside. I then scooted out and was on my way. A few hours later, I witnessed the result of my toils:

“Mrs. Reed, someone locked all the stalls in the bathroom,” Tanner informed my teacher.

“Are you sure no one is in there?” replied Mrs. Reed

“Yeah, I crawled under all the stalls and unlocked them,” he answered.

Mrs. Reed grimaced at the idea of someone crawling around on the bathroom floors… especially one dedicated to kindergarten boys– who, you may be shocked, are not very good at aiming. After an interrogation, none of the kindergarten boys admitted to committing this crime. I was deliriously happy. I had gotten away with it, and this excited me beyond measure.

My newfound hobby of “getting away with something” fueled many of my wrongdoings throughout my adolescence: the time I pushed Ivy Tomlinson off the monkey bars, the time I snuck out of swim team practice early, the first time I drank, the first time I viewed pornography, the first time I smoked marijuana… the list goes on and on. None of these sinful feats were fueled by a selfish desire. They were unselfish, and they were cruel. They were a way for me to get back at an authoritative figure, be it my parents, a coach, or a teacher. I ponder the implications this had on my life.

This may sound philosophical, but maybe because it is. I don’t know where my homosexuality stems from. Contrary to the modern homosexual claim, I don’t know if I was born this way. I do know that I have homosexual tendencies and feelings since as young as 5 years old. I just don’t know if they are rooted in biological or psychological factors. This is a topic that is up for debate even amongst the most scholarly researchers. Who am I to ponder where the roots of my sexuality? And I can only answer with the following: Me. I am Aaron Thomas Kreider, and I don’t know why I’m gay.

How are the ideas of my admiration for wrongdoings and my homosexuality linked? That’s what I’m here to figure out. I don’t know the first time I saw gay pornography. I don’t know the first time I saw a naked man. But I remember in both instances that this was something that was wrong. I was not to feel a sexual attraction towards the same sex, yet I kept exploring my attractions. I have found in many instances that self-loathing and disgust is part of the homosexual experience, and I was not exempt from those emotions. As a child of just 12 years of age, I would regularly force myself to watch heterosexual pornography in an attempt to coax myself in to feeling an affection for female breasts and vaginas. I would cry myself to sleep, praying to a God that I no longer believe in that I was not gay. I would indulge in self harm, although rarely, in a cry to some unknown deity that they may help me feel heterosexual. I even engaged in a 14-month long sexual relationship with a woman in order to make sure I was gay. Nothing I did changed my feelings.

But why did I feel this way? Was it possibly a perversion that I held just because I knew it was wrong? There is rarely any evidence to support that those who are heavily involved in the concept of kinky sex like it simply because it is wrong. However, I can’t help but feel maybe I am gay because I know it is a perversion. My mother used to say, fondly of me, “When the world Zigs, Aaron Zags.” And I can’t help but feel that I may be sexually attracted to men just because it is wrong, because I know that it will piss off some established authority figure. I can assure you, I did not ACTIVELY choose to be gay, but that isn’t to say that it wasn’t a choice… right?

 

PART 3:

 

I do not have a best friend. In my opinion, in order for two to be ‘best friends’ they must be the reciprocal of each other. I, on the other hand, have been designated a role coveted by sorority and material girls of the like: the gay best friend. (I like to think of this role as more of a ‘token gay friend,’ rather than any kind of actual best friend.)

I find myself missing my old role in the dynamic of my prior group of friends. It was a simpler time when I was not asked to give ‘the gay perspective,’ as if my coming out instantly gave me something new to add to the conversation. It was a simpler time when people did not ask me if I wished to be a girl, as if being gay is some type of lesser fantasy to having a vagina. It was a simpler time when I actually had a best friend, as if my newly expressed sexuality changed who I am.

Trading the nuance of a lie for the degradation of being seen as different person entirely is not something I was wholly prepared for. I mean, sure, I understood that my friends were going to have trouble with it—as my one friend gave the appropriate summation, he would “kill himself” if his best friend or brother turned out gay—but I couldn’t help but feel marginalized. I was now the ‘gay best friend.’ I was now the ‘token queer.’ I was no longer Aaron. I have had strangers tell me that I am going to hell. I have felt the cold sting of the word ‘faggot.’ But nothing hurt quite so much as being seen differently in the eyes of those whom I love most.