Open Up Your Mind

Open Up Your Mind Part Two: Let Me Step Inside

The days of the week dragged by, so incredibly slowly for John and Roger, who were getting more and more excited about the nearing of the double date. But for Brian, their not-so-voluntarily-participating-volunteer, the inevitable event was nearing way too quickly. He was not at all ready to go out with someone again, and even though John and Roger told him that it was nothing more than a get-together between four people, he got more and more nervous every morning he woke up only to find the time passing faster than he wished for it to do, every time the clock in the living room announced that another hour was over. And before he knew it, it was Friday afternoon five o'clock and Brian found himself sitting shirtless on the edge of his bed in his room, staring at the two shirts he was holding in hands – a black one and a one he thought had a white and blue pattern on it, but he wasn't so sure since he had picked up the shirts at random, and he was too nervous to really take a good look at his outfit-to-be.

He couldn't focus. The only thing he could focus was the upcoming date they would head off to in only ten minutes time, and he knew he was definitely not ready to go for it. He needed more time to figure out what he wanted.

Cut the bullshit, May, he thought to himself. You don't need more time to figure out what you want. You know so damn well what you want, and what you want is Freddie Mercury. You only need more time to figure out how not to show the world your forbidden desires.

Brian sighed and he threw the two shirts aside, covering his face with his hands. His mind games about his sexual orientation were breaking him up lately. Though back then, he had never really been head over heels for someone, he had always had this feeling that he preferred guys over girls since he was fifteen or sixteen years old. But he knew his friends and especially his family wouldn't accept it in a hundred thousand years. At the time, he was afraid his father would beat him up and kick him out of the house, he was afraid friends would let him down, he was afraid coming out might ruin his career in astrophysics. For God's sake, back then, homosexuality was even forbidden, punishable by law, so he had every single reason to just push the thoughts of a future with a guy instead of with a girl out of his mind. And just like that, he occasionally went out with girls, trying his best to fall in love with them, and he promised himself to conform to society's standards of living.

But slowly, the reasons for staying in the closet faded away. He moved out of his parent's house. Homosexuality was taken out of the Penal Code and was legalised. Equality movements came up and people's attitude towards gays changed.

People's attitudes changed, yes. But his attitude didn't. He was still terrified of coming out, terrified of getting beaten up by his father and getting shunned by the rest of his family, most of his friends, society. So he decided to carry on with his lifestyle of pretending to be straight, which was, underneath all the quiet whispers in his head that this wasn't going to work out for the rest of his life, basically a natural state of being after having practiced it for years and years.

'Being' straight went as well as it could possibly go under the circumstances; he barely thought about coming out, until he met a certain young guy called 'Roger Taylor' who saw absolutely no reasons to hide his love for both women, men, people of questionable gender. It didn't matter to him; if Roger decided that he fancied someone, he'd have the person, simple as that. Brian was kind of jealous of him for this go-with-the-flow attitude, but this envy didn't manage to pull him over the line and make him come out – he just stayed exactly where he was. As expected. As promised. As socially desired.

And then, when Brian thought he was finally growing into liking girls, when he felt like he could, in fact, live a heterosexual life if he tried his very best, all these feelings and assumptions and years of trying to fit into society's standards were shattered into tiny pieces when he met this one Freddie Mercury. Freddie, with his beautiful long, dark hair, his gorgeous features, the cutest smile, the sweetest personality. Freddie, shy yet confident, reticent yet flamboyant. The contradictions that the Persian boy seemed to carry out to the world were confusing, but there was one Brian was absolutely sure of: He was unchangeably, unmodifiably, irreversibly head over heels for Freddie, and he had been ever since. God, if it hadn't happened to himself, he wouldn't have believed that it was scientifically possible to fall this hard for someone, to be attracted this intensely to someone, to have feelings this strong for someone.