A White Coat Is My Closet (20 page)

He smiled. “Both those conditions have already been met. Look, Zack, I enjoy spending time with you, and if I thought you were a loser, we wouldn’t be together on this damn bike path now.” His grin broadened. “I have a pretty good sense for people, and you’re solid. I wouldn’t care about the honesty thing if it wasn’t important to me that I really get to know you.” He tried to make his expression look serious. “So, tell me about your mommy issues.”

I tried to kick his back wheel but only succeeded in losing my balance. When I was confident I wouldn’t go careening into the sand, I begin to try to pull my thoughts together. “They’re probably both mommy and daddy issues.” I thought for a minute. “You know, when I stop to think about it, I’m not really sure what I’m afraid of. I’m secure in knowing that they love me, and I’m certain finding out I’m gay wouldn’t jeopardize their feelings for me in the least.” I tried to bring my apprehensions into better focus. “I guess what I really do fear, however, is the likelihood of disappointing them.” I tried to elaborate to help Sergio better understand.

“Without getting into great depth about all my psychoses, I think realizing I was gay as a child resulted in me feeling a tremendous sense of shame. Being gay was just totally inconsistent with who I thought I should be. I was a strong, confident, capable guy. I was the son of a football coach, the nephew of a war hero. I couldn’t be gay. I’d been taught it was not only an abomination against God but that it was unnatural. I thought it meant being weak and…” I struggled to think of an appropriate adjective. “… that it meant being defective.”

I felt a little embarrassed about the intensity of my confession, but kept talking before I felt too self-conscious to continue. “I guess I felt like being gay meant I was worthless. So, probably in an attempt to compensate, I worked really hard. I worked to be well liked, I worked to be good at sports, but mostly I worked to be successful. I needed to establish myself as a leader; I had to maintain good grades, and I had to win multiple achievement awards.”

I peddled without looking over at Sergio. “Fortunately, many of my efforts paid off. I’m not sure they succeeded in making me feel better about myself for being gay, but they did succeed in earning me a lot of positive attention. People were impressed by me. Some were even inspired by my accomplishments. Indeed”—my voice became a little softer—“I became the kind of guy anyone would be proud to call their son.”

My voice was little more than a whisper, but Sergio was still able to hear me. “That’s why I can’t tell them. If they knew the truth, I don’t think they would love me less, I just think they would be less proud.” A few tears welled up in my eyes, but they were hidden behind my glasses. “And I’m not sure I could take that, Sergio. I’ve worked my whole life to be someone they could be proud of. It would kill me to feel like I had disappointed them.”

Sergio’s attention was unwavering. He listened intently to each word, then began to consider the total meaning of what I had said. As he thought it through, he became more and more agitated. It was almost as if each of my individual words was a stick of dynamite being dropped closer and closer to an open flame. When one exploded, the whole pile blew up.

“That’s fucking ridiculous, Zack.” His cheeks were flushed and he was visibly angry. “How could they not be proud of you? You’re amazing.” He looked briefly self-conscious, like he hadn’t intended to be so overtly flattering, but then continued his rant. “I mean, I don’t know you that well, but look at what you’ve accomplished. You were top of your class in med school, you’re saving children’s lives in the hospital, and you’re not bad-looking, to boot. You don’t have anyone to apologize to, least of all your parents.”

I was surprised at the ferocity of his response. Sergio wore his feelings on his sleeve, and they were never difficult to interpret. If he was angry, his temper could escalate in less than a second. He had gone from being serene bicycle companion, pontificating on the importance of honesty in a relationship, to a fierce grizzly bear protecting its cub. Initially, the intensity of his reaction was a little disconcerting, but it occurred to me that this was just another example of his Italian volatility, a minor earthquake on the emotional Richter scale. It would take some getting used to.

As embarrassed as I was about talking to him about my relationship with my parents, I smiled at how resolutely he had come to my defense. In fact, seeing him so obviously wound up made me want to calm him. The conversation had taken an interesting turn. I had been the one to share one of my big insecurities, but he was the one all riled up.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Sergio. I do think they’re proud of me. What I said is that I don’t want them to be disappointed in me.” As I tried to explain, I even found myself becoming confused. “I mean, I’ve worked hard to make them proud of who I am. In fact, I’ve worked hard to make them proud of everything I’ve done. But how can they be proud of the fact that I’m gay? That’s asking a lot. I mean, shit, I can’t even say
I’m
proud of being gay. Of course they’ll be disappointed. What alternative is there? They’d have to be.”

Sergio again stopped peddling and motioned for me to do the same. He pulled his bike over to the side of the bike path, and I stopped next to him. We stood side by side, looking at each other. For a while, all we could hear was the gentle lapping of the waves against the sand. His appearance had again been transformed. The agitation that had animated his features just moments before was now completely gone. Instead, he was the epitome of calm.

His voice was quiet, not accusatory. In fact, it was caring and supportive. “So, it’s not so much that they’ll be disappointed in you as it is that you’re disappointed in yourself.” He let his statement percolate through my mind for a second and then continued. “I mean, think about it, Zack. Let’s say you were aware that your parents always aspired for you to be a plastic surgeon, and you ended up choosing pediatrics instead because you loved it. If that had been the case, you would have anticipated their disappointment when you decided to become a pediatrician. In fact, their indifference about pediatrics might even have resulted in you thinking longer and harder about your choice. I doubt, however, that their opinion would ultimately have caused you to change careers. You would have been aware that they were going to be disappointed, but feeling confident in the decision you’d made, their disappointment wouldn’t have devastated you. I suspect you would feel strongly that you were making the best choice for your own life and would hope that with time, they’d eventually see it the same way.”

His brown-eyed gaze bored directly into mine. He didn’t shift for even a second. When I became uncomfortable with the intensity of his stare and tried to look away, I was aware that his gaze followed me. When he did speak, his voice came out even more softly. “So, the question here is, who are you really trying to protect? Are you protecting them from the truth? Or are you protecting yourself from having to face it?”

I looked out over the endless expanse of the ocean. I felt stymied. Certainly, Sergio had succeeded in stabbing into the heart of the problem, but it wasn’t that simple. Deep down, I really did feel ashamed. I would have loved nothing more than to be able to say I was proud of being gay, but I knew that was a lie. The best I could do was to say that for many years, I had been trying to accept it. I had been trying desperately to convince myself that fundamentally, it was just an integral part of who I was. As I matured, it had become more apparent to me that I could no sooner dismiss my sexual orientation than I could decide to ignore my right arm. But there was a significant difference: I hadn’t spent my whole life being told there was something wrong with my right arm. That it was defective. That it was something to feel vehemently ashamed of.

I looked back at Sergio. I was sure he could detect the subtle pleading in my question when I asked, “If you’ve always felt ashamed, how do you make yourself feel proud?”

Sergio immediately opened his mouth to answer but then paused. I think he realized the answer was more confounding than he anticipated. “How do you make yourself feel proud?” It was almost as if the predicament I was facing was foreign to him. He had always been proud. It wasn’t something he’d decided be, it was just who he was: confident and unapologetic.

Sergio was aware that now I was the one staring at him, and it was his turn to feel a little uncomfortable. He pushed his bike back and forth and concentrated on how the wheel crackled against the grains of sand that had blown across the bike path. I wondered if he felt pressured to reveal some great secret to me. The secret to being proud, the secret to being comfortable. In that instant, I suspect he thought the situation was a little ironic. I mean, here the presumably accomplished physician was asking the Italian waiter, who’d been in this country for little more than seven years, what it meant to feel proud.

When he did begin to speak, his voice was halting. “Look, Zack, I’m not perfect. In fact, I don’t even pretend to be.” He gave me another crooked grin. “Bet you’re not surprised by that.” He continued in a more serious tone. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life for which I’m not particularly proud. In fact, I’ve done some things I’m downright ashamed of. But—and this is an important but—I’m not ashamed of who I am.” He paused, apparently trying to think of words that would better illustrate what he was trying to say.

“Let’s take an example.” He thought for a second, then threw out the first example that came to mind. “You’re blond and you have green eyes. That’s just who you are. You might have wanted to be born with dark eyes, but by some fluke of nature, your eyes ended up being green. A genetic catastrophe of sorts. I’d wager a million dollars, however, that despite the fact that their color is not your preference, you’re not ashamed of having green eyes. Maybe the first step toward feeling proud is simply to decide to stop feeling ashamed. At least with regard to those things about yourself that you can’t change. Or…” He again let a smile spread across his face. “… you can wimp out and get brown contacts.” He cocked his head at me as if struck by a realization, and his expression again became more serious. “In the end, though, you’d still have green eyes. You could do a million things to hide it, but behind the contacts, your true eye color would remain unchanged.”

I reflected for a second on what he had said:
The first step toward feeling proud is simply to decide to stop feeling ashamed.
I ran the statement through my brain again. On the surface, it was overly simplistic. But as I continued to think about it, I realized its meaning was incredibly profound. I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that being gay hadn’t been a choice. I knew beyond any reasonable doubt that I had been born that way. In fact, every day, more and more scientific research was pointing to the genetic origin of an individual’s sexual orientation. So, if I had no choice about being gay, and if it was indeed an inherent part of who I was, why feel ashamed?

I began to smile. The burden I had been carrying on my shoulders hadn’t gone away, but I had to admit, it felt damn lighter. I reached toward him, grabbed him in a headlock, and pulled him toward me. I gave him a playful squeeze, but before I released him, I quickly kissed the top of his head. “You should give up waiting tables and think about becoming a therapist.”

“Couldn’t possibly work. One of my clients would eventually piss me off, and I’d end up telling them to fuck off. I’m not sure anyone would be willing to pay me for giving them that advice.”

I laughed. “Yeah, but that’s the exact advice some people need to hear.”

We pushed our bikes back into the middle of the path and resumed peddling. The feelings our conversation had stirred up reverberated in my head.
Decide to stop feeling ashamed.
Easier said than done. Sometimes my shame felt so deeply engrained, it didn’t even require conscious thought. It was just there. Wired into me. Influencing every emotion that entered my brain.

I lifted my head up and let the sun wash across my face. As painful as it was, I also felt kind of energized. What the hell! What better time than now to start feeling better about who I was. The old psyche could use some renovating.

Sergio looked at me without slowing. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just not sure I’m happy about revealing to you how crazy I am the first time we’re out together.”

“To begin with, this isn’t the first time we’ve spent time together. We talked to each other by the pool for more than three hours the other day.” He smiled. “Secondly, I knew you were crazy even then.”

“Damn.” I laughed. “And to think I was trying to be on my best behavior. Well, guess there’s no point in hiding now. You wanna come by my place to see the bodies buried under the floorboards?”

“I said I knew you were crazy, not psychotic. Now you’re scaring me.” He laughed, then looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “How many bodies are we talking about, anyway?”

“Not more than two or three.” I allowed for an appropriately dramatic pause then clarified, “Americans, that is. There’ve got to be a couple dozen Italians, though.” I leered at him and tried to pull off a convincing crazed expression. “They’re my favorite flavor.”

He maintained a façade of seriousness. “My mother warned me about guys like you. If you offer me a piece of candy, I’m gonna run like hell.”

“Come on, Sergio. Your mom would be delighted—I said Italians were my favorite flavor. As a matter of fact, I’m getting kind of hungry.”

“Creepy.”

I laughed some more.

In order to get around the marina, we had to bike down Washington Boulevard, so on the way back we decided to stop in one of the convenience stores to grab a snack.

Sergio dismounted his bike and walked it over to a column that supported the awning over the storefront. He leaned his bike against it, then, hearing my approach, took my bike from me and balanced it against his, facing the opposite direction. He unwound a cable from around his seat, used it to secure our bikes together, and then clamped a padlock on its ends. “We won’t be in here long, but this isn’t the greatest neighborhood. No sense making our bikes easy targets.”