Letters

Letter 9

November 13th, 2004

Dear Dad,

            This morning, Uncle Alex asked me if I was gay. We sat across from each other in the living room and I responded with a no. He kind of doubted it, but he knew that I wouldn’t lie to him, so he asked what had happened yesterday. I told him that my friends were chasing each other and that one of them knocked into me. He said “Okay, okay I get it. ‘Cause I thought I saw something else. I mean, It’s fine, just not when I’m here, Okay?” Before he left to go upstairs, he looked back at me and shouted “Always use a condom!” and ran up the rest of the steps.

            I just sat there until it was time for me to go to school. I sat in his car silently and I didn’t want to talk about anything. When I met my friends in school, I tried to carry off a conversation, but I found it difficult because of what had happened this morning and yesterday. Richard and Daxus seemed to have no problem forgetting about it, but I could just see Uncle Alex talking to me about this later on in the future.

            I had this sub in math class and he called everyone by their last names. I’d raise my hand to give out answers most of the time, so he had to learn my name. He’d call me Mr. Walker because he thought that since we’re turning into adults, we should be treated like one, like how we call our teachers by their last name. I didn’t get his point because not every adult calls everyone else by their last name. Maybe if they were working in a certain place like school, then yeah. Otherwise, they’d be called by their first name.

            As the days go by, I began to notice that everyone just stares at you as you walked down the halls. I didn’t know what to think of it. It was kinda weird. There was this one guy, a different guy, who made fun of my flower shirt and called it gay. I tried to brush it off like the other one, but it kinda stuck to me. Two people in a row insulted me, or at least gave negative criticism. Nobody commented that they liked it at all.

            After school, I tried to go about my day unaffected. I didn’t have my friends over this time because they felt weird about what had happened last time. Instead, I connected to my friends in a chat room and we started doing our math homework that way instead. It was a little difficult at first, but I managed.

Your son,

Rico