I was clueless about sexuality for the majority of my life…including the twelve years I spent in the Coast Guard.  I could not figure it out, so I didn’t question, didn’t worry and didn’t think about it.  Besides, I had a job to do and I was totally married to the mission and my job(s).

So it was that I was a virgin at the tender age of 35-years, and I’d never questioned it.  Ignorance is such a tenacious thing.  And, not even six months out of the Coast Guard I realized exactly how gay I really was.  I was shocked (but not incredibly dumbfounded, mind you), I cried, I resolved to confide in the one person I could truly trust (my best friend in the hole world).

I felt pretty good about this because she had a couple of gay friends that she always talked about, and it was clear that she loved them to death.  I’ll call her M.A., and I make no pretense about her or her friends not knowing exactly who she is with that reference (not out of spite, only out of a need for honesty).  You see, it is time to get this off my chest.  Set it loose so that I can be free of it.  No, this is not a warm-fuzzy of a story (and this is the abridged version).

So, we (me and M.A.) are sitting at a lunch (I pre-arranged with her to talk about “something” because I lived in Fall City and she lived in Tacoma, or approximately 100 miles), and I told her that I was gay.  She, a bit angrily, exclaims “Well this is a bit sudden!”  Is awful, is kinda, is sorta, you get the idea, but it was hugely exclamatory in a large restaurant containing many more than two people.  I nearly died; she wasn’t done with it yet.

Her next, very-ruffled outburst was, “Well, don’t expect me to help you tell my parents!”  I totally did not get any of it.  It amounted to two, complete non sequiturs coming out of her mouth.  I got up and left, and I only ever talked with her again when I went down to get my things out of her garage (remember; abridged version).  At that time she was barely civil with me, much less communicative.

It is only well after the fact that I have realized that she was very likely throwing off clues like porcupine quills for many years; I never noticed.  I was incapable of noticing.  Nevertheless, the utter-and-complete betrayal of trust I felt has never gone away no matter how much benefit of the doubt I throw at M.A. and the equation.  I was crushed by someone whom I trusted without question, and my trust isn’t something that I have ever thrown around with any amount of abandon.  Multiply that flattening with the absolute invalidation of my person that I felt, and you come close to explaining the impact this made upon me.

I’m not inclined to want to go back and attempt a re-trusting (and re-friending) of M.A.  The entirety of our “friend” relationship was based upon perilous assumptions that we both made and never actually talked about.  I had never told her that she was the only person in the world that I felt I could trust in every measurable capacity.  Every reason she ever gave me to believe she was the person I could trust was totally destroyed by her own hand within thirty minutes in one restaurant.  And with that, M.A., I bid you good bye forever, you set me free with the “shocker” reality check that I truly needed.  The world is not always a kind place, but I can choose kind friends.