As a gay teenager, I wondered how I would ever fall in love
and live happily ever after?
I wasn’t handsome. I didn’t have nice clothes.
In my high school, only the popular kids dated.
I was a freak. I didn’t stand a chance.
For me, hormones and puberty weren’t about sex.
I wanted to feel love. I didn’t feel it in my family.
I wanted to find someone who appreciated me. Who loved me for who I was.
Who thought I was special. Who didn’t think I was a freak.
So I dreamed about that guy who would feel that way.
There were no gay actors or characters to dream about on TV.
So I bought (cringe) TIGER BEAT magazine.
(this would have been a red flag to any parent who wasn’t clueless, lol)
Glossy pages full of beautiful eyes and smiles, hopes and dreams and impossibly perfect hair. But I knew none of those guys could possibly be gay. So it was like looking for clothes in sizes that didn’t fit. I could admire the clothes, but I could never wear them.
So there I was buying TIGER BEAT magazine.
A magazine for GIRLS.
Those guys were safe and out of reach. No way to reject me. But… I tortured myself about it. Those guys … they’d be disgusted and repulsed if they knew some gay kid was looking at their photos… thinking they had beautiful eyes, gorgeous hair and a smile that could melt the paint off a gym locker.
(because, ya know, what a horrible thing to have someone think about you)
I just wanted to feel what the other kids were feeling.
How could I not look at the beautiful guys on magazines, and not think they were gorgeous… and hope? It wasn’t even sexual. It was emotional. LOVE. I wanted the same dream everyone around me had. And I had no idea how that was going to happen.
It didn’t happen in high school for me.
But I met this cute boy first day of college, and I fell in love with him.
We didn’t follow the rules. We weren’t part of the gay community,
which back then, saved us, I think. Today, the gay community can be a wonderful resource.
As long as you’re careful about what you choose to believe about yourself.
You don’t need to be thin, beautiful, rich, masculine, handsome, or have a six pack to find love.
I’m living proof of that. You just need to be who you came here to be.
Looking at TIGER BEAT didn’t hurt me any.
It gave me dreams in a world that wasn’t selling dreams to people like me.
And hey, I think I did pretty good finding my Tiger Beat love:
~Shephard 
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