Growing  up Gay in Augusta Ga:

“When all you wanted was to be Wanted.”

Every Time I hear this song it makes me think of what high school was like growing up gay or with same sex attraction in a rural southern town.  It makes me remember what it was like growing up with a queer gender expression and how hard it was…

I spent my four years of  high school, desperately trying to fit into a heteronormative culture which had no place for me. I spent my high school years being the “best friends” of some of the most popular heterosexual women in the school, vicariously attempting to experience through them what I could not have; a place in a social script where my attraction to men would be considered “normal”. Where I, myself, might be considered normal..Where i could date boys, have relationship drama, have a boyfriend and be an “it couple”..I desired so much to be heteronormative..I desired so much to be apart..but I never felt that I was.

When I look back I see  how desperately I wanted to be wanted. And i wanted to be wanted in a way that would challenge the social scene idea of me being “othered”. Challenged in a way were he would hold my hand and Publicly express his care for me. I wanted that I could be so wanted that all the homophobia and heterosexism in the world didn’t matter…

But it did.

And so i covered up  my pain of isolation with success; I had good grades, was the president of clubs, worked 40 hours a week, became obsessed with brand name clothes, developed an attitude of “above it” that was really stemming from my pain of feeling excluded.. I found ways to avoid the pain and stay busy.

All while secretly, doting on many guys; and those men knowing it; using it to get what they wanted; all while remaining “heterosexual” in the social scene’s eyes, and sometimes even while dating some of my friends.

It was hard..

“Cause All i wanted was to be wanted”; Isolated socially at school and emotionally disconnected at home, I ran away from Augusta as quickly as I could; seeking a space where I thought I could fit…

It’s not till later in life that I was able to really confront the pain of that experience. It wasn’t until later in life I was able to see that many of the young men who liked me; socialized in a world of binary and homophobic sexuality;didn’t have the courage to confront their own desires.

It was until i got older that i realized that as a child of the universe, where ever I am I belong. Even if society is to ignorant  to see that. I started to realize that my life and self worth was not bound up in male approval, that the pinnacle of my life could be more than just “dating the guy on the football team.”

But it was a long road to get there.

And as always..the path continues.

So every time I hear this song, written by and about a white girls’ experience in suburban America which in so many ways was so not representative of my own,i still feel the sentiment behind it. Cause I didnt’ know alot at fifteen.  And I didn’t know in my life at that point “that in my life I’d do things greater than dating some boy on the football team”..back then that was all I could ever want. Because to me, somewhere inside that meant validation…it meant Acceptance and approval into a socially destructive world. But it was the only world I knew.

Sometimes..when some of the young gay men in my life talk about their experiences in the present; having boyfriends in high school; being out; having a clik of gay friends; I have to admit I become jealous. I always wonder, what would it have been like If I had had that? What would high school have been like then?

But such was not my destiny. And all pain teaches, if we chose to learn. & I’ve chosen to learn.

-Yolo