At this point in my 'emerging from the cocoon' phase, I had told just one person about my sexuality, my friend Ashleigh. That's not to say there weren't others I wanted to tell; I had, in fact, created a running mental list of those I would tell and those I would not. It took several months to actually finish that list, but it would eventually happen. For now, though, I'd told one person, and wasn't really prepared to tell any more.

The problem was, I had begun seeing a guy- Dave, my first 'guy'. So I guess two people knew, but this guy really didn't count- he wasn't a friend, he was just 'on my team'. Dave wasn't just 'a guy'; he was very open about his homosexuality, a member of the campus gay group, and he couldn't hide it if he tried. His hair was dyed this deep shade of blonde that just screams 'I'm gay', and he had 'The Voice'. If he wasn't gay, he had an awful lot of explaining to do.

I was with a group of friends- fraternity brothers- at a restaurant late one night after a party. It was very late- those hours of the day that are really early morning but you mentally group them with the previous night. After all, the next day can't start until you've gone to bed. Then Dave walked in and approached me. He had that look that says 'we know each other a little better than just friends', and I suspect I had a similar look when I saw him. One of my fraternity brothers, Steve, there is bisexual- and had been to one of the meetings for the campus gay group. He knew who this guy was, and began wondering how I knew him.

We- 'we' being the fraternity- had a rush event a couple nights later. As the event was winding down, Steve approached me and asked from where I knew Dave. I led him into another room and said quite plainly "we've been seeing each other for a couple weeks now". I hadn't told very many people about my sexuality- I think only three people knew at this point- but Steve just seemed so unthreatening. After all, he's bisexual, so this should be an easy thig to tell him, shouldn't it? He had this look of both shock and joy, then smiled and laughed. Quite a shock, but not entirely. He thought I might 'have tendencies', primarily because I had become extremely concerned with how I dressed. Is that all it takes to give it away? I'd thought I was doing such a good job of hiding it, but now I began to wonder.

There was another guy in the fraternity, Chris, that Steve had had a crush on. I didn't understand the attraction, but everyone has his or her own taste. Chris also happened to be one of my best friends. What I didn't know- and what Steve did know- was that Chris was also bisexual. He was now guarding both of our secrets, but from what? From each other? Wouldn't we want to know? After some deliberation (or perhaps none- how would I know?), Steve decided to break the news to both of us.

My immediate reaction was to think 'is everyone gay?'. I knew that was just a dream, but people seemed to be coming out all over. These were people I thought I knew well enough to have known something like this. In truth, I did know, but I don't like to put too much faith in instincts; I'd have to hear it from their mouth before I'd consider it truth. I was excited to finally have a close friend that I could talk to on a level where he'd understand and relate. More importantly, though, I suddenly had a gay friend (well, bi, but I don't differentiate much) who was over twenty-one, so I could finally go to some of the bars and clubs. I never go anywhere alone, and I was still too intimidated by my sexuality to get there on my own will power.

So my first question to Chris was "have you been to any of the clubs?". After we determined that neither of us had, we determined that both of us should go- together, and soon. Spring break was approaching- next week actually (were we really this far into the semester? I'd better start working on that list of people to tell.). He had Wednesday night off from work- not a big night for bars and clubs, but we thought it best to ease ourselves in to them. As much as I wanted, even needed, to be amongst a large group of gay men, the prospect of that still frightened me. going with a friend greatly depleted the apprehension I had for the club-going experience. The arrangements were made- we would go on Wednesday.

Wednesday came. My anticipation made the time leading up to this evening seem especially exaggerated. I dressed as well as I thought I could. I always dress well (it makes me feel better and more secure about myself), but this evening I dressed even better than usual. I suppose that's understandable; I finally had something to dress up for other than myself. I went to my Chris's place, and it was very apparent that he was taking as much care with his dress as I had. He walked out, dressed in his finest outfit, and I simultaneously thought 'He looks better than he ever has before' and 'I'm in no way attracted to him'. We did the required research to find the location of the few bars and clubs we had heard of- The Complex, The Loading Zone, Magnolia's, Nero Bianco. After the itinerary and logistics were worked out, we set out for a night of discovery.

Our first stop was Magnolia's, not because we were more or less enticed by going there than the other places, but because it was most conveniently situated as the first stop on our journey. The crowd there, as with our subsequent stops, immediately besieged my expectations with reality. My expectations and my fantasies had become so alike as to be indistinguishable from one another, and I was expecting to find scores of beautiful, thin, young men. Instead, my first entrance to a gay bar greeted me with a dozen or so men of varying ages upwards of thirty whose average girth let one wondering if they could in fact visualize their own genitalia. Or, as Chris so eloquently phrased it, "Dude, you're Ethiopian compared to these guys". Up to this point, I had harshly considered myself fat, and the only fat gay man ever. This experience eschewed that theory.

The other places on our tour had similarly sparse crowds, although the makeup of those crowds was considerably better. For some reason, we ended up back at Magnolia's, perhaps for some nostalgic desire to return to where our journey began. We had thus far had a rather uneventful tour, but this was about to change. So many errors in judgement can be attributed to some manner of intoxication, and we were about to have one that was no exception. Standing at the bar in an alcohol-induced haze, I began talking to Chris when it occurred to him to grab my head and pull it towards his until it could go no further. A long, deep kiss, neither initiated nor objected to by me, thus commenced, followed by a series of shorter, yet equally deep, kisses. This continued for quite some time. the next day he would recall me having said "You've been kissing me a lot", simply a statement of fact betraying no signs of objection. Perhaps it was just the vocalization of my surprise.

By some manner unbeknownst to either of us, we made it home that night. His most prominent memory of that night would be my saying "You've been kissing me a lot", while mine would be the actual kissing, which I suppose simplify to the same memory. From then on, any mention of the incident would cause him to cringe. A while later- probably about a month- he told me that he had decided he wasn't bi, meaning he was 'straight'. This prompted "You didn't seem straight when you had your tongue shoved down my throat" from me, which produced the desired effect of cringing, an uneasy laugh and an equally uneasy glance around to see who might have heard. I'm not sure what prompted this announcement- perhaps his heavily Catholic upbringing, perhaps he had in fact been 'experimenting' and nothing more. No, it couldn't be the latter- he had said he often thought of men while having sex with his girlfriend, which I take as a good sign that he is not straight.

We still talk on occasion. We have, however, grown apart substantially, as he tries his best to be heterosexual and still have highlights in his hair. I imagine he'll be one of those forty year old men with a wife and kids who finally comes to terms with his homosexual tendencies, and spends the rest of his life engaged in occasional discreet relations with younger men. Give him twenty years, and he'll be engrossed in the 'Men Seeking Men' section of the personals, trying to regain what he had for so long repressed.