A Teenage Dream

Back during my angsty adolescent days, the only homosexual icons I had were screen idols tragically stricken with AIDs and the wandering pervert who peeked into sleazy men's rooms hoping to score. Hardly reassuring for an impressionable kid like me then.

Nowadays we don't even need videos to show that It Gets Better because we can see incredibly visible, real-life out gay men who have actually proven that seemingly impossible adage. Not to mention carelessly confident gay teenagers like Blaine ( of Glee fame ) and Griffin ( from the Secret Life ) on our television screens.

We are here, we are queer and yes, we are doing pretty good.


Still I wasn't at all angsty emo. Hopefully my classmates can attest to that. Never threatened to end my life with a fatal leap off a bridge nor did I ever tie a ill-fated knot on a fan.

Of course as we moved into the upper forms, inevitably a couple of them pinged my gaydar. In an all boys school with a population of easily over a thousand, surely there'd be more than a handful according to Kinsey!


Now how could you possibly not swoon over a fellow like Blaine?
Pretty much had to wing it though. No cool cat like Blaine to play my mentor though. One turned to religion bemoaning the fact that he'd be spit-roasted in the fires of hell for his sins while the other stealthily sneaked back into the closet and tripled-padlocked the iron doors. Though the former has untangled the strangling ties of orthodoxy, till now the latter remains firmly closeted.

Hardly the sort you could bare your soul too at the time - so obviously I had to resolve my own issues on sexuality all by my lonesome. Akin to a Penis Monologue, I formulated my own questions and formed my own answers - whether wrong or right. The number of books I read on homosexuality could have filled up a mini Smithsonian.

Only at the twilight of my school years did I find someone to talk to about my forbidden urges. Despite our clandestine outings, never been so glad to have found my ISO. Though I'll admit we never did all that much talking! :) Blame it on the pent-up hormones.

Wonder if things would have been different if I had someone to look up to. Perhaps a teenage dream like Blaine back then would have stirred things up.