A White Coat Is My Closet (4 page)

I was exhilarated. He had smiled. Was that a sign? Was it an invitation that I could casually say “hi”? Maybe even ask for him to spot me on the next set so I could try to push some impressive weight? If he consented to spot me, I could use the opportunity to initiate a conversation. My mind begin racing through my repertoire of clever one-liners. Had to be something subtle, innocuous. Something clever and engaging but not something that could be interpreted as a come-on. An obvious come-on in the gym was not only uncool but gave the impression of being desperate.

My back was to him as I added another forty-five pound plate to one side of the bar, then, feeling a little self-conscious, I stacked on an additional twenty-five. Now each side of the bar would have one hundred and fifteen pounds. I looked at it a little apprehensively. I knew I was capable of lifting it but also had to concede I was tired and not at my physical peak. I mentally calculated the risk. I didn’t want to embarrass myself and have the bar come crashing down onto my chest, but if I mustered the courage to impose on him to spot me, the weight on the bar had to be enough to warrant asking for help.

At that moment, feeling a surge of self-confidence, I decided: I would ask him for a spot. If he consented, I’d casually say something like, “You look like you’re in pretty good shape. Do you work out here often?” An innocent question, beautifully framing a subtle compliment, which, most importantly, might be the opening to an engaging conversation. I put the lock on the end of the bar, sealed my resolve, and then pasted an appropriate expression of indifference on my face. I didn’t want to appear too eager. Rehearsing the request over in my mind, I began to slowly turn. I hoped my tone would be inviting and sincere but not give the impression of being too desperate.

When all systems were a “go,” I turned completely around, expecting to catch him sitting on the edge of the bench, resting between sets. My anticipation fizzled. In the interval that I had spent changing the weights and preparing my perfect line, he had moved on. I searched the gym desperately. He had vanished. For a few seconds I began to wonder if maybe, in my sleep-deprived state, I had just imagined him. Was I losing it? Had I fallen asleep on the bench, and was Adonis just a product of my dreams?

I was about to give up when, on the far side of the gym, I saw him doing pull-ups. The stream of relief that swept over me was quickly replaced by a feeling of self-consciousness and anxiety. Striking up a conversation with him sitting next to me would have been easy. It was going to be impossible to walk across the entire gym and try to catch his attention without looking like a stalker.

The magnitude of my dilemma resulted in paralysis. I just stood there, resting one hand on the barbell I had just loaded up with weights, unable to mentally regroup after the unanticipated disappointment. I had bolstered myself up for the prospect of a flat-out rejection, but it hadn’t occurred to me he would disappear before I’d even been given the opportunity to speak to him. So much for trying to captivate him with the perfect introduction.

Convincing myself to actually try talking to him had consumed an inordinate amount of energy. When it came to approaching a good-looking guy, I had zero self-confidence. In the hospital, where my intellect was on the line, I was the epitome of self-assuredness. I wasn’t cocky, but I knew I was smart and I had pretty good clinical instincts. If a sick kid was my responsibility, I knew I was capable of rising to the occasion. My personal life was another matter entirely.

Despite being relatively good-looking, I was incapable of believing someone who I thought was handsome would ever find me attractive. I had spent so much time in the closet, believing there was something seriously wrong with me, that when I approached someone I thought was attractive, my assumption was that they would immediately see the word “defective” printed across my forehead.

It wasn’t that I had lost my self-confidence—it was that I had never had any to begin with. I suspected my low self-esteem had something to do with growing up in a small town with three brothers and with a dad who was a football coach. In that environment, it was more preferable to be dead than to be queer.

I recognized early on that I was different, but I also learned early on that not all differences were acceptable. Both my parents had strong opinions about what it meant to be a boy. My mom was the youngest of four and had three older brothers. She idolized them, thought their very existence epitomized masculinity, and was determined that her four sons would grow up to replicate that ideal. Certainly she was loving, and she enthusiastically showered her affection on all of us. In addition, she was compassionate and encouraging, assuring me that she thought I was capable of anything. Unfortunately, however, the impact of her disapproval, though subtle, was equally powerful.

The way she directed her disapproval toward me might have appeared inconsequential to an impartial observer. For me, though, her critical assessment cut to the very core of my being. It felt like she was psychic. Like she somehow knew I’d never measure up as a real man and was tactfully trying to avert what I was sure she believed would be a disgusting and devastating consequence.

Who would have guessed that for a well-behaved, carefree kid growing up, the opportunities to disappoint my mom could be so numerous?

I was high-spirited and loved to run. I would race through the neighborhood either pretending to fly or trying to outrun the wind. I relished the feeling of exhilaration and happiness and was confident that any neighbors who saw me would be impressed with my unbridled speed. When I caught my mom watching me, I tried to accelerate, certain she would gush over my natural athleticism. Instead, when I went whisking by her, I observed an expression on her face that read disappointment. She called me over and said encouragingly, but with a tone of conviction, that I should lower my hands when I ran. “Boys run with their arms to their sides, not with their hands in the air. That’s how girls run.” Whether intended or not, the message to me was clear even then. Who I was as a boy was not acceptable. I fell short of the appropriate standard, and I would have to vigilantly modify the image I put forth to the world.

Of course, some of the other messages from my parents were crystal clear, and you would either have had to be blind or retarded to have misinterpreted them.

Dad had innumerable monologues about the essential lessons of manhood, including the importance of playing tackle football, because real men gained obligatory life insight by being knocked on their asses and having to get back up. “Why, if a young man doesn’t recognize the importance of this rite of passage into adulthood, then he’s simply a sissy and will never amount to anything. Real men prove themselves by being knocked down and by succeeding in getting back up. If a young man doesn’t get up when he’s knocked down on the football field, he will be incapable of getting up when knocked down by one of life’s unexpected challenges.” The message? Real men play football. Real men live to knock each other down. If you didn’t conform to this adage, you weren’t a real man and would never amount to anything in life.

Amidst all of this, I sometimes felt hopeless. I didn’t want to play football. I hated the aggression of the game and didn’t care about the adrenaline surge I was supposed to feel by being physically dominating. I was athletic and enjoyed sports like volleyball and skiing, but in Echo, California, that wasn’t enough. Those sports gave you zero stature as a man. It was okay to play those sports on the side as long you had already earned your testosterone stripes by playing a real man’s sport. Combine that experience with locker-room talk and my feelings of inadequacy skyrocketed further.

The locker room was the inner sanctum where your masculinity was really put to the test. There, you were supposed to brag about the sexual conquests you’d had with any number of big-breasted girls and were supposed to infer how impressed they were with the size of your dick and how adept you were at pleasing them with it. At the time, I didn’t know that most of what I heard there was 90 percent bullshit; I just shuddered at how overtly disinterested I was in participating. Sure, I threw in the jabs I thought would make me seem like an integral part of the sex-craved fraternity, but it was just an attempt to be included. I put up a façade so as not to be made a social outcast.

In the end, I felt being gay not only signified I was inadequate as a man, but meant I was inferior even as a person. As a consequence, it became my life’s mission to conceal who I really was from the world. No one could ever know that beneath the charming, outgoing, confident surface lay a reprehensible secret.

Unfortunately, as I grew into an adult and began to make little inroads into accepting myself, the baggage I carried from childhood didn’t instantaneously disappear. I profoundly felt the disparity between coming to an intellectual acceptance of who I was and developing an emotional acceptance of myself. When for the majority of your life you disliked who you were, waking up one morning and trying to tell yourself that you were actually okay had minimal impact on rectifying an abysmal self-image.

Nowhere did the dichotomy that was my life play out more than at work. I wasn’t out to anyone at the hospital. Since graduating from medical school, I had begun to develop a tight circle of gay friends, but for me, disclosing my sexuality at work was out of the question. My own insecurities led me to believe that in professional circles, being gay would equate to being inferior, and that was not at all how I wanted to be perceived.

I took my towel and wiped off the bench. Becoming more self-confident would take some time, and in that minute, not even a phenomenal internal pep talk would succeed in getting me to muster enough courage to make the pilgrimage across the gym to say hello to a guy who’d offered no encouragement beyond a two-second smile.

Any enthusiasm I had had for working out leached from my body like water through a sieve. I’d been single this long; who cared about the rest of my life?

I dejectedly made my way back to the locker room. I had to concede that I’d only done two repetitions on the bench press, but the depression I felt, combined with the sleep deprivation, made me feel as if I’d been hit by a truck. The challenge of maintaining my physique would have to be left for another day.

A
BOUT
eight days after the disheartening gym incident, I had a Friday night off. Though the vast majority of my life was spent in the confines of the hospital, when I did have the opportunity to go out, I was determined to maximize the experience. I typically only had one weekend off a month, so when I did, I began contacting friends of mine days in advance to guarantee maximum debauchery.

Invariably, any foray into West Hollywood involved my best friend Declan. He and I had been friends for more than five years, and we were inseparable. It was unusual for one of us to be seen out not in the company of the other. We were like the dynamic duo. We joked, we laughed, we encouraged one another, we shared insults, but mostly, we had one another’s backs. Typically, we would talk to one another on an almost daily basis. We knew intimate details of what was going on in each other’s lives, and we were there for each other through good times and bad.

In addition, we shared an amazing group of friends. None of us were in committed relationships, so a night on the town usually meant trying to throw ourselves into the middle of whatever was considered to be epicenter of the gay single scene.

On this particular Saturday night, El Chico Loco had been designated the meeting place of choice. The food was acceptable, the margaritas were strong, and the men were “hot.” It offered all the essential ingredients for a fun night out.

I hadn’t even pushed through the door of the bar, but despite the volume of the blaring disco music, I could hear Declan’s raucous laughter coming from the table occupied by my group of friends. Declan was infamous for his laugh. It was genuine, it was sincere, but mostly it was loud. In recent months I had even shied away from going to movies with him because in the event he found something humorous, I would have to seek refuge from his laugh. Its volume not only drowned out any dialogue coming from the screen, but I swore it could shake the walls of the theater more than its million-dollar Dolby sound system. Sitting next to him could be downright embarrassing and inevitably drew irritated glares from other movie patrons.

Declan, however, caught up in the hilarity of the moment, was oblivious. He’d just continue shoving popcorn in his mouth, ever eager for the next punch line to throw him into another fit of hysterics.

Embarrassment aside, I did appreciate his enthusiasm. He unapologetically approached life with the same zeal he had for comedy. Life was intended to be laughed at. If you don’t like it, best to get out of the way.

Mostly, I found his fun-loving spirit to be infectious. On many occasions, I looked forward to getting together with him after a long shift in the hospital just because I knew being with him would lift my mood. Frequently, we’d just hang out together. A typical evening would include hitting the gym together, grabbing a bite to eat, and watching TV. Invariably, Declan’s choice for perfect programming was reruns of
The Golden Girls
. Didn’t matter that he had the dialogue for most of the episodes memorized, he still laughed uproariously through every line. Same laugh, same volume. Earsplitting. But in the comfort of his living room, his laugh was the elixir that made me smile.