Yes, I Am

Chapter Thirty Two.

June 12, 2016.
Sunday. 4:50 am.

"Did you just come here with that boy, Caleb? Or are you gay?" Mom asks me as simply as if she's asking me what day it is. Never mind that I've just been saved from a mad shooter, rescued from a hostage situation, my boyfriend is lying somewhere in a filthy bathroom in a pool of his own blood and yet my mother wants me to face my biggest denial. Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot for making this easier for me.

"Mrs. Taylor, maybe we can talk about this later," Austin says gently.

"Yes, I am. Deal with it," I roll my eyes. I am standing outside a gay club wearing a mauve T-shirt with streaks of mascara running down my cheeks. It ain't rocket science.

I'm sure where the sudden confidence and indifference came from. A part of me still wants my mother to behave positively and not be an ass about it. But there is more shit to deal with it. There simply aren't enough fucks to allocate towards her homophobia. And I promised Caleb that I would come out. I kept seeing his hopeful smile in my mind again and again, and even the tiny speck of fear I held vanished.

"Oh, honey," she sighs, placing a hand over her heart. "It's okay. This is the 21st century. I'm sure we can find something to make you better."

People underestimate the amount of anger a human being can contain inside of him. I had exhausted myself cursing the shooter with everything inside me as I ineffectually attempted to compress Caleb's wound. At least I thought I had exhausted myself. My anger arises anew when my mother, in all her motherly kindness, decides to refer to my sexuality as some sort of an illness. Regardless of my confidence in myself, I am at a point in life where I have accepted that being gay is not a disease, a sin or something to be fixed or worked through. It was thinking like hers that killed so many people today and I have had enough of that toxic mentality to last a lifetime.

I open my mouth to say something I am sure I'll regret in the future when I am turned around by the sleeve of my T-shirt and hugged ferociously. Blake is clinging on me like I'm the last lifeboat on a sinking Titanic and I hold him back just as tightly. I can't believe I met the guy mere hours ago and now he's the primary source of comfort to my tattered soul.

"Where's Quince?" I say, my voice muffled in his neck.

"I don't know. We came out and there was such a huge crowd that we got separated," he replies.

I untangle myself from him with a pat on the back. Ignoring my mother, I introduce Austin to Blake and brief him about how Quince looks. "Let's go find him."

"But..." Mom futilely struggles to come up with words. "I'm sure he's safe, Matt. You need to take care of yourself."

I step close to her until we're nose to nose. "What I need to do," I say coldly, "is get away from you."

You would think that it would be a slap on the face to listen to her half disowned son tell her to fuck off in public, but no, she still only looks confused, as if she cannot fathom why I wouldn't want her around. I shake my head in disgust. Austin places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes, pulling me away. He says something to mom but through the blood roaring in my ears, I hardly hear him.

We find Quince sitting in the back of an ambulance, a bag of ice pressed to his temple, the scowl on his face reminding me of sunflowers standing tall after a thunderstorm. We pat Blake on his back, who Was showing Quince's picture to some police officers, and furiously point towards Quince. When his eyes find his boyfriend, he pushes past us and tumbles into Quince, both of them a flurry of arms and lips and need.

I bite my lip and look away. I hate myself for being envious of them. They are good people who are obviously in love with each other and yet there is a part of me that would selfishly exchange one them for Caleb, who would be all too willing to inflict the pain I'm suffering on them just so that Caleb doesn't have to feel it anymore. It's a special kind of hellhole to not know if someone you love is alive while knowing they might be dead.