Journey of Guidance [Part 2]

This will be the second part of my coming out story, though it could be read out of order.

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I was about 17 and in the middle of a fencing spar with my older friend, I'll call Cat.  It was during this time we were practicing for the light combat games in the SCA, but that's another story.

After the matches were done, something compelled me to confide in Cat.

"So, I think I'm bi" I said abruptly, looking sulky and ashamed about it.  When I looked up, he was quietly giggling.

"It was kind of obvious." he said.

*Rewind sound effect*

I was as young as 9 when my dad would take me up to his office after school, so he could finish his last few hours of work.  I would spend the time either doing homework or entertaining myself on newgrounds or the then-young youtube.  On Friday nights, my dad and his co-workers would play Starcraft late, sometimes into the early mornings.  Young as I was, they let me join in. I'll reminisce about those nights another time, but the important bit here is that this is where I first met Cat.

Being my dad's co-worker, maybe 15 years older, he was of course much too old for me to start a meaningful friendship right then.  But he had so many cool gizmos and gadgets of his own creation in his office, and over the years he was nice enough to info-dump on me how they worked.

My Dad would take me over to his place on Halloween nights.  Cat had his whole house decked out in some high-effort stuff.  There were fog machines, handmade tombstones, and his own haunted house area made in his own backyard that had this ominous Egyptian style to it, with walls of hieroglyphs and strange lights.  I never cared for the adrenaline-spiked scare-fests of your typical haunted houses, but this sort of creepy ambience was really cool.  

When I was 18, he finally invited me to a large Halloween party at his place on a Saturday night.  I assume he had these parties annually, and I was only just now of age to make it.  It was all guys, and every one of them a very apparent flaming homosexual far out of my age range.  As a closeted barely-teenager, it was not my vibe. ( Honestly still isn't, I like small groups of close friends ).  I was dressed as a Victorian age pirate, with a really nice frilly white shirt that I had used for a recent theatre performance.

At this party, I caught the eye of a guy I will call Jackle.  I forget the conversation, but he ended up giving me his number and asked to get in touch.  Shortly after, I met another guy I'll call Wolf.  He told me I was of age to do as I wished, but to watch out for this Jackle guy.  He also gave me his number, and asked to let me know if I needed anything or someone to be there if I went somewhere and felt uncomfortable.  Outside of those two and Cat, I got the feeling most saw me as a child they weren't sure how to interact with, though they were all nice enough.

I was feeling more isolated than ever from my high school friend group, so I knew this was an incredibly important start to a much needed new chapter of life.  So now, Cat was no longer this older, out-of-reach hero I looked up to, but a friend I could hang out with and my first guide to this new weird world of godless degenerates I was now a part.  And I now had the number of two others I could make friends with and learn from.

And I was still not fully out yet.

I'll talk about those two and more in the next entry.