Within a week of meeting my first partner, he just sort of moved in with me. I was working as a manager, running two different movie theater complexes for a single chain operation out of California. I loved movies, and feel I have somehow always been connected to them. I was making a decent living, for my age, had a great apartment, nice clothes, the whole status thing. The University didn’t quite work out so I was just resigned to work. It turns out this whole first relationship thing wasn’t quite working out so well either. He was here going to the University, was a smoker, and turns out to be very inconsiderate of everyone who was around him, including me. The sexual attraction was still pretty hot and it felt like those spring nights were spent wrapped in each other, but the days became turmoil. A couple of weeks after we met we were in bed one morning when I heard a knock at the door. I slipped on my shorts and went to answer it. Peering around from behind the closed door I saw it was my parents. They were in from out of town and stopped by out the blue, which they never did. Panic rushed through my mind as I told them to give me a moment to get dressed and closed the door. I frantically went back into the bedroom and as I shuffled to put my clothes, told Mark it was my parents and asked him to please stay in the bedroom and I would get rid of them as quickly as possible. I shut the bedroom door, and invited my parents in. We began to chat and after a few minutes, Mark came wandering out of the bedroom, naked, only wrapped in a sheet and said “I left my cigarettes in the bathroom, do you mind if I get them?” My heart sank as my parents faces turned white as a ghost and they B-lined for the door, all of us aghast, except Mark of course, unable to speak. What can you say? It’s one hell of a way to come out to your family. I spent the rest of the morning agonizing over what had happened, trying to comprehend what they must be thinking, wanting to talk to them, back when there were no cell phones and I could not reach them, my stomach churning in knots the entire day. When I finally did reach my parents later that evening we began to talk. They said they were a bit more uncomfortable than anything else. They said they had always thought I was that way, but didn’t really know how to approach it.

Mark and I where together for a year, and when we broke up, my parents finally admitted they never really cared for him. But sometimes love puts a blinder on us that blurs the truth and looking back I realize it was one of the most awkward and probably not the best years of coming to terms with what I was becoming.