I Shocked You Last Night

Don't deny it; I know I did. I could tell by the silence that descended when I had finished my brief speech. I sat there, feeling like a bug, silent tears sliding down my face, unable to look up as I waited for your response. So glad that the antidepressants had built up enough in my system to spare me the humiliation of the full-on weeping that would have ensued only a week ago.

Still I felt ashamed to be in that position: needing the help, and having to ask you for it. Some would say that there's no shame in it, but that's not how I was raised. I was raised to believe that to need help is shameful, and to ask for that help is even more so.

But then, I was raised to expect that I would by now have all the things you seem to take for granted: houses, cars, trips all over the world, not to have to worry about having enough to get by. Instead, here I am, working full-time but still living hand to mouth, lurching from one crisis to the next, never knowing if the current crisis (or the next one) is the one that finally costs me everything. And though I have occasionally made reference to being broke, I've never really come right out and told you before just how broke I am.

You think being broke means that you can't go to Europe this year; for me it means counting all my change to make sure I have enough for the transit fare to work and back till payday. For you, it's a question of whether you can put a new deck on your vacation home; for me, it's whether I can pay this month's rent on time. For you, it means paying a slightly higher co-pay so you can have the brand-name medication; for me, it's meant going without my medication so that I can get honey the most critical of hers - not even all of them.

Do you see a pattern here? You represent the affluent gays that the media assumes we all are. I, ostensibly in the same class, have none of that comfort. You tell me about your latest trip, or how you're remodeling your house, or buying another car. I smile and say "how nice", and you never see how every word grinds like glass in my heart.

Please understand: I'm not jealous of what you have; I don't begrudge you a bit of it. When I say that I'm happy for you, I am, really. It's just that you speak of it all so casually, as if everyone you know lives this way. It never occurs to you that I have to treat a trip to the coffee shop as an indulgence. What hurts is that I was raised to expect that I would have all these things that you have, that I would be so affluent. What hurts is realizing that no matter how hard I work, I will probably never have the life you have; that my life will never be so easy, so comfortable. I will never own one home, much less two. I will never have a new car; in order to buy a used car so that my honey isn't completely housebound, I'll have to decide what other essentials to shortchange.

And what really hurts is that last night I had to let you see that, because I had no other choice.