4
Jack’s dad walked over to Jack, got onto his knees and put his hands on Jack’s shoulders.
“I want you to know that there is nothing that you could say, and nothing that you could do that would make me stop loving you. Nothing. Do you understand me?” Jack’s dad asked.
“Yeah,” Jack replied, still looking down.
Jack’s dad touched Jack’s face to bring Jack’s eyes up to his own.
“There is nothing,” Jack’s dad repeated. “So if there is anything that you ever want to talk to me about, I am here to listen.
Sometimes I will be able to offer you some information that will help you. And sometimes I won’t. But you will see that it always feels good when you can talk to someone about what’s on your mind. And I’m always here to listen. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Jack said with a smile.
“So tell me, what happened.”
“Well, Sandy asked Billy if he wanted a truth or a dare. Billy said dare, so Sandy dared Billy to kiss me. I guess it was because I had just told them about my dream.”
“That’s an unusual dare,” Jack’s dad said, with his thinking look on his face.
“That’s what I thought too. Billy tried to back out of it, but Sandy told him that he had to do it. So Billy asked me if it was alright with me and I said yeah because it was a part of the game. Then we both stood up, and when Billy leaned over…” Jack stopped talking as he gathered himself.
“That’s ok. Go on.”
“I didn’t realize it when I got up but… ummm,” Jack said, struggling to get it out.
“That’s ok, you can say it.”
“I had a boner,” Jack said, looking up into his dad’s eyes. “And Sandy saw it and told Billy. Then Sandy laughed and told me that I was gay.”
“What did Billy do?” Jack’s dad asked.
“First he just stared at me. He didn’t laugh or anything. But after Sandy said I was gay again, Billy looked at me and said ‘yeah dude, you’re gay’.”
“How did that make you feel?” Jack’s dad asked.
“I felt really bad.”
Jack’s dad again put his hand on his son’s shoulders.
“Jack, it’s ok if you’re gay. I would love you just as much no matter what you were.”
“But I’m not gay, dad.”
“Jack, it’s ok if you’re gay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.”
“But dad, I’m not gay. I like girls.”
“What do you mean you like girls?”
“I like girls,” Jack repeated.
“How do you like girls?”
“Like, I think about kissing them and stuff.”
Jack’s dad wasn’t sure what to say so instead of talking he found his ball and finished out the hole.
“Your putt,” Jack’s dad said, as if Jack hadn’t said anything at all.
Jack finished off the hole as well, but it took three more putts than he thought it should have.
The last hole was a long bumpy putt. You had to hit the ball really hard and let it bounce off the rubber wall and land near the hole. Still without a word, Jack’s dad dropped his ball onto the ground and lined up his putt with the grooves in the artificial grass. Staring at the ground, Jack’s dad was inspired to speak. He turned and looked at his son.
“How long have you been friends with Billy?”
“Ever since I was small,” Jack replied.
“Is he your best friend?” Jack’s dad asked.
“Yeah, he’s my best friend.”
“Have you ever hugged your best friend?” Jack’s dad asked.
“No!”
Jack’s dad was surprised by how quickly Jack answered. “Why not?”
“Because that’s gay!”
Jack’s dad looked a little disappointed at his son’s response. “Well, have you ever just sat with your arm around his shoulder?”
“No,” Jack again replied.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s a little gay too, dad.”
As Jack looked at his father’s face, he could see that his father had heard what he was expecting to hear.
Jack’s dad turned his attention back towards his golf ball. “Have you ever noticed that there are little grooves in the artificial grass?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied.
“Did you ever notice that if you line up your ball with those grooves and you hit the ball just right, the ball will go right into the hole?”
“Yeah, that’s how I always beat my friends,” Jack said with a smile.
“Our brains kind of work like that. If a baby were to look at a golf ball, it wouldn’t mean anything to the baby. That’s because it doesn’t have any memories or feelings connected with golf balls. But if we looked at a golf ball, we would have a whole lot of memories and feelings.
That is because our experiences have made a groove in our brain from our eyes to the memories and feelings that we have about golf balls. We have billions of grooves like this in our brain. Some of those grooves were created as we grew up. And others are grooves we were born with.
One of the grooves that we were born with is connected to being touched and hugged by people that we like. In fact, if babies aren’t touched, they will grow up with disabilities. Being touched is so important to us that our brain releases a chemical that makes us feel very good when we are touched by someone we like. Being touched and hugged by people we like is a groove that we can’t change.
But let’s say that you were to put your golf ball on the front of a groove in the grass. And let’s say that you putt it perfectly and your golf ball traveled right to the hole. But let’s also say that just before the ball fell into the hole, I put my foot on top of the hole. What would happen?”
“It would bounce off your foot,” Jack said, very interested in what his dad was telling him.
“Yes. It would bounce off and go in another direction. The same thing happens when you feel a connection to someone and then you prevent yourself from expressing it with a hug. If you were to put your foot over the hugging hole by saying that it was wrong to feel that, then those feelings are going to bounce off and go somewhere else.
What will happen then is that your brain will go around looking for what it thinks is the next best expression of that feeling. Many times hugging is put into the sexual activity category of our brains, so when your brain can’t attach those close connection feelings with hugging, it sometimes connects it to kissing.
This new connection means that whenever you feel close to someone, instead of wanting to hug them, you now think about kissing them. So if you suddenly feel close to your best friend, you might imagine kissing them.
But if you also try to block any thought you might have of kissing your best friend, your brain will then look for the next best connection. The next best connection could be getting an erection. And there is nothing that you can do to prevent an erection, so that is where it would stay.
All of this can happen simply because you won’t allow yourself to hug someone you feel connected with. And when this happens, you might still like girls just as much as the next guy. The only difference between you and the next guy would be that you also have a couple of unexpected reactions to guys you feel close to.”
“I think I understand what you’re saying. But, how is it that…” Jack couldn’t find the right words. “There are people who are gay, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then if this is how people have gay thoughts, and it doesn’t mean that they’re gay, how can you tell if you are gay?”
“What I described is how gay thoughts can sometimes happen in otherwise straight people. But some people are born with grooves that aren’t as easy to block or change. Sometimes when a boy looks at a boy, or a girl looks at a girl, their brains carry those messages down to a certain part of the brain that releases chemicals that make them feel really good. Those are the people that are born gay. Those boys and girls figure t
his out about themselves when they are pretty young.
But that is not how it works for the majority of people that have unexpected feelings toward the same sex. It is a little less black and white for the majority of people who have had feelings for a member of the same sex.”
“Are there a lot of people that have unexpected feelings for the same sex?” Jack asked, very interested in the answer.
“Almost half of everyone who has ever lived has had at least one unexpected feeling or thought for a person of the same sex. And the majority of them would also consider themselves to be completely straight.”
“So how do you know what you are?” Jack asked.
“Well, for those that don’t automatically know, it becomes a personal decision about who you want to be considering the feelings that they are having.
There was this guy years ago that studied this topic. His name was Dr. Kinsey and he created a way to help understand unexpected same sex feelings. What he did was he created a scale that you can compare yourself to.
On one side of the scale are people that have never had an unexpected same sex thought or feeling. On the other side of the scale were people that have never had a sexual feeling for people of the opposite sex.
He gave those who have never had an unexpected thought toward the same sex a score of zero, and those that have never had an opposite sex thought a six. Everyone else in the world got a one though five.
A one meant that you had an unexpected thought or feeling about the same sex, but you have never and will never act on it. A two meant that you had an unexpected thought or feeling and have acted on it, but you know that your feelings for the opposite sex are much stronger than your feelings for the same sex.
A three means that you have just as many feelings for the same sex as you do the opposite sex. A four means that you have had many thoughts and feelings for people of the opposite sex, but you have much stronger feelings for those of the same sex.
A five means that you have had unexpected thoughts and feelings about people of the opposite sex, but you would never act on them. And a six means that you have only had thoughts or feelings for people of the same sex.”
“Wow,” Jack said, amazed at what his father had said.
“People are all very different. And one thought or feeling a person has for their friend or a loved one doesn’t make a person gay or straight. In fact, what Dr. Kinsey also learned was that just because you have a score when you are young, doesn’t mean that you will have the same score later in life. He learned that sometimes your score will go up on the scale, and sometimes it will go down.
There is no right place to be on the scale. And anyone that tells you that one score is better than the other, is wrong. If we were all supposed to be the same, then we wouldn’t have all been made so differently. And the fact that we are all different means that our differences are important and good. Got it?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jack replied with a big smile.
“Good,” Jack’s dad said, returning his son’s smile.