Regrets

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about something that happened to me almost seven years ago. I’ve thought about it from time to time in the last few years — it’s one of those experiences that you file away and always remember. It haunts me.

Toward the end of my first year of college I came out to someone for the first time. It was a magical spring. Then, following a tortuous summer of introspection and self-exploration, I returned to school and started to come out to a handful of other people. Throughout my second year of college I slowly ventured out of the closet. One of the people I came out to that year was my gay friend Mark, with whom I sang in a mixed chorus at UVA. He was a year older than me and he was probably the closest of my few gay friends at the time. Mark and I were going to be living in the same dorm during the following year — my third year, his fourth.

But a few days before I went back to college for my third year, I came out to my parents, and they told me how unhappy they were, how they just couldn’t accept this from me, and I decided to go back into the closet. I figured I’d just put things on hold and hope that my feelings for guys would go away.

It was actually pretty easy to go back into the closet. I hadn’t told that many people. And when I returned to school that fall, I dissociated myself from the very few gay people I’d known. This was easy, as I was moving into a new dorm and the university was big. Except I couldn’t dissociate from Mark, since we were going to be sharing a bathroom with only six other people and I’d see him almost every day.

But a few days after we returned to school, he and I were going for a walk, and a sexy shirtless guy ran by in the late August heat. Mark made a comment to me about the guy, and I told him that I wasn’t interested in guys anymore. He seemed surprised, but he didn’t say anything.

Although I saw Mark several times a week throughout the entire academic year, and we had conversations about various things, we never again talked about my sexuality. I gave him no further explanation, and he never asked. That was that.

I began a year of asexuality. I had never had sex anyway, but now I wasn’t even going to give myself a label or come out to anyone else or associate with any gay people at all. I was just going to be me — well-behaved, asexual me. I still noticed guys, but I didn’t do anything about it or think about it. I didn’t think about the future; this was just the way things were going to be. That fall I joined the Glee Club, which helped; strange as it may sound, joining this brotherhood of fifty good looking, singing straight guys helped me sublimate my gay desires. I was too busy being one of the guys.

The long academic year went by — fall, winter, spring — and eventually it drew to a close. I was 20 years old.

One day in late April or early May, around the time of final exams, I was using one of the sinks in the bathroom when Mark and this other student came in. They were washing a hot pot or something — I guess they had been making a meal. Mark introduced me to his friend, whom I’ll call Scott; Scott lived in the dorm next to ours, and I’d seen him before. He was a fourth year like Mark. He was cute. I suspected he was gay. We said hi, and he smiled at me, and that was that.

Final exams came and went, and after that was Beach Week, the big week after finals and before graduation when it seemed like a third of UVA went down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for several days of partying. At Myrtle Beach I stayed with the guys from the Glee Club.

There was this dance club at Myrtle Beach called the Spanish Galleon. Everyone went there, gay or straight; there was no real gay dance club nearby, which didn’t matter to me anyway, since I considered myself asexual. Every year I’d go to the Spanish Galleon several times, dancing in big circles with groups of friends, male and female. Every night I’d feel this strange longing, unable to satisfy it. Most nights I’d leave the Spanish Galleon in this really poetic, romantic, yearning mood, feeling tortured and pained because I knew I didn’t have it inside me to do what would make me happy; the price was unthinkable. I was destined to live like this forever.

This particular year, I went to the Spanish Galleon one night. I was having a decent time, and then I noticed a bunch of guys all dancing in a circle together. One of them was Mark, and I think I recognized a couple of the other guys. I suspected that most if not all of these guys were gay. Uh-oh, danger flares going off. Get away, get away. I said hi to Mark, and before I knew it, he was drawing me into the group. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I sort of stood there, lamely attempting to dance, not really wanting to be there, because of what it might mean.

Then I realized that I recognized one of the guys near me. It was Scott, Mark’s cute gay friend from a few weeks earlier. He said hi to me, and my heart did a little dance. I said hi in return. We made some small talk. Then he asked me a casual question, just making conversation.

“Are you gay?”

Oh my god. He’d caught me completely off guard; I was stunned. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to say, or what I wanted to say. Of course you know what to say! Say no, you idiot! But I hesitated. And that did it. I’d given myself away.

“Uhh…” I said. “I guess I don’t know…”

I can’t really remember the details, but I think we talked for a little while, and then we decided to leave the club and go for a walk. We walked out of the club and onto the beach. We walked along the sand, underneath the starry night sky, the ocean waves crashing next to us. It couldn’t have been more romantic — it was straight out of a movie. As we walked along the beach, I told him all about my history of coming out of the closet and then going back in. He was going to be graduating that upcoming weekend and then going to Tulane Law School in the fall.

We continued to walk, and eventually we got to a segment of beach that was near the house where he was staying with a group of people, mostly females, I think. So we walked off the beach and walked up to the house.

When we got there, the night’s party was winding down. Scott went inside and got a blanket, and when he came back out, everyone else had pretty much left. He and I sat next to each other on one of the outdoor steps, side by side, a blanket covering our legs, my right leg almost imperceptibly brushing against his left leg. We were both wearing shorts. Pretty soon we were the only people outside. We sat there talking and talking. The sky was filled with stars, a breeze was blowing, I could hearing the waves crashing in the distance, and I was sitting next to this cute gay guy. Oh my god. This was amazing. I had never been in a situation like this. This was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.

We talked for quite a while, I have no idea what about. This was not at all what I’d been expecting when I’d gone to the Spanish Galleon that night. At this point it was around 3:30 in the morning. Where was this going to lead? What was going to happen?

I can’t remember how it happened, but I eventually found myself deciding I had to leave. It was late and I was kind of tired; at least that’s what I told him. So we got up, and the spell was broken.

I was going to leave, just like that, but then he gave me his jacket because it was chilly out. “You can just give it back to me tomorrow,” he said. Tomorrow? Was this just a way for him to make sure he’d see me again?

I put the jacket on. I thanked him for the jacket and for talking with me, and we said goodbye, and I left. I began walking back to the straight world of the Glee Club.

Walking along Ocean Boulevard, the thought that I was wearing Scott’s jacket made me giddy. But thinking about the events of the evening, I was so confused. I was excited but nervous, scared, guilty. I’d broken my pledge not to come out to anyone else, not to associate with any more gay people; I’d broken my self-imposed pledge to be a good, well-behaved son and not to anger my parents.

I don’t know how well I slept that night. I don’t know if I dreamed about anything. But when I woke up the next morning, the jacket felt like a murder weapon. I got up, got dressed, and brought the jacket over to the house where Mark was staying. Mark wasn’t there, so I gave it to this other guy there who knew him and Scott. I gave him the jacket and asked him to make sure it got back to Scott.

I didn’t see Scott for the rest of the week. Then Beach Week ended, and everyone went back to UVA, and all the thousands of fourth years graduated, including Scott. I didn’t see him at all during graduation weekend.

But I saw Mark as he was moving out of his dorm after graduation. Mark’s boyfriend was there with him. Mark was leaving. This was goodbye. I’d inexplicably changed our friendship at the beginning of the year, telling him I no longer liked guys, becoming more aloof from him without further explanation. But I’m sure he knew something had happened that night at the beach; I’m sure he’d seen me and Scott leave the Spanish Galleon; and he must have known about the jacket.

I gave Mark a big, long hug. There was so much we had never talked about, so much I had never explained to him.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, still hugging him.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.

And we said goodbye.

As for Scott — after that night at the beach, I never saw him again.

I wish I hadn’t left him there on the steps that night. Or I wish I’d looked for him on the beach the next day so I could return the jacket. After all, there had been a couple more nights of Beach Week remaining. A couple more nights to hang out.

But I did nothing. I chickened out. I never saw him again.

I’ve regretted it ever since.