As a straight guy in a homophobic world, a thoughtless comment had the power to silence my best friend and impede his inalienable right to be himself. And the worst part of it is that I got away with it. He had to keep a large part of him inside because of my intolerance. Who wants to deal with that? I was such a jerk that my roommate, one of the closest friends I made while in college, nearly transferred to a different school. Can you blame him? One of the first things I told my roommates was how happy I was to have straight roommates, that my biggest fear was being ogled by a gay guy. I was so stupid.Īs it turns out, one of my freshman roommates was gay, but it took him over a year to tell me. Like most straight guys without any clue about the matter, I feared being the victim of their attention. I thought a gay man would take advantage of the situation and deprive me of privacy. My freshman year, one of my biggest fears was that I would have a gay roommate. Men dated Women, and gay dudes just wanted attention or hadn’t figured it out yet.
To me, the whole thing didn’t quite sit right in my mind. Never in my life had I understood homosexuality, nor had I really ever met someone who was openly gay.
