In 8th grade, I had a crush on my history teacher, Mr. Kerley, which in a novel would be foreshadowing of a tendency to inappropriately fall for gay men. And worse, for a long time, to not know they were gay!
It wasn't just that Mr. Kerley was well groomed and neatly dressed; it was that he was so smart and so understanding - it seemed like he had the answer to everything. Looking back, I can see now that he was just a really great history teacher. I didn't understand that he was gay. Not when I admired his immaculately color-coordinated clothing. Not when I went to see him perform in a play at the community theater. Not until I was a senior in high school, working as a hostess in a restaurant, and I seated him and his partner at a table... initially I assumed that the man he was with was just a friend. But whenever I glanced over at him, not having seen him in three years, seeing the way he and his partner bent their heads close to talk... for the first time it dawned on me that the man he was with was someone he loved.
Mr. Kerley was much older than I was, so it's not like I ever had a real shot at him anyway. And he was gay, so even if I had been in his age range, I wasn't the kind of person he was attracted to - that's life, I thought.
Little did I know at the time that gay men would give me, a straight woman, the very thing I most wanted from another person.
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