Follow Carmen, a young and deeply closeted gay teenager as he navigates the 1980's and 1990's yearning for love and trying to find where he fits in.
This story is rated M because it contains elements of death (including children), homophobia, religi...
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***Author's Note*** It's been a long time coming, but things are finally getting gay. At this point in my life I was tired of denying myself, and it was time to start living. If you've read through the previous false starts, censored sections, tragedy, and normal straight boy stuff leading up to this point I thank you. Now it's time to put the Love into Boy Love. Don't worry, there will still be plenty of false starts, tragedy, and straight boy stuff. But now we're getting into Adult Carmen times, and Adult Carmen has some big gay adventures to go on.
For the next several days, before and after work, I would call the number to see if I had any replies. According to the messaging system my ad was getting lots of listens, but I did not get a single reply. This kept going on for the next two weeks, and I was getting increasingly despondent. What was wrong with me, that I couldn't even get any replies on a voice personals thing? The ad would run for a month, so if I wanted to keep it going with no interruptions I would have to call in and renew it very soon. I wasn't sure I even wanted to.
"Are you crazy?", Wendy said. "You're giving up that easily?"
"I don't know what else to do. People obviously aren't interested in me."
"That's because they haven't met you. Give it time, somebody will like your ad and reply."
Wendy and I looked over the other ads with a fine toothed comb, trying to see what those ads had that mine might be lacking. We couldn't see anything, except...
"I just noticed something. My ad is the only one with the word 'gay' in it."
"What? Let me see." She took the paper and went through every ad. "You're right", she said. There were several that said 'bi male', others didn't mention sexuality at all, but mine was the only one that said 'gay'. Maybe that was it. Maybe I was scaring people off with that word.
"Hmm...", she said. "Maybe if you say you're bi".
"But I'm not bi. I'm not interested in meeting women".
"You wouldn't have to. The ad would still be under 'Men Seeking Men', so only guys would apply."
I thought about it. "I suppose it couldn't hurt", I said. I dug out that old piece of paper with my original ad, scratched out the word "gay", and wrote "Bi" on top of it so that the ad now read:
"Single Bi Male, 19, 6'3, 180 lbs, reasonably attractive, closeted, straight acting and looking, into cars, hunting, fishing, music, drawing, etc. Smoker, non drinker. Looking for similar for LTR. Discretion a must. Not interested in hookups or one night stands."
I phoned the number and updated the ad and my voice message, replacing any references to 'gay' with 'bi'. It would take another two weeks for the updated ad to show up in print, so the waiting game began again. During the remaining two weeks that the original ad ran I kept on calling and checking to see if I had any new messages. I did not get a single reply. My hopes were low that the new ad would change anything. What difference could one tiny word make?
