thoughts from my blog. and my dreams. by atelier

The room is the bedroom I stayed in throughout high school. I feel as though the house is my parents’ house, but I can’t be entirely certain. Most of the room is how it should be, despite a few changes, as does tend to happen. And there are some fuzzy places as well, where the details aren’t wholly existent, as does tend to happen. I’m sure the walls are probably still the olive drab I chose to paint them. I’m sure the carpet is still the worn and outdated sepia-toned shag. But I can’t be certain of those things. What I do know is this: I am sitting in a chair — one of the changes, I notice — and I am facing my bed, which remains in the center of the room. The bed is still a dark cherry wood four-poster, part of an ornately carved bedroom set left behind from my grandmother’s previous inhabitance of the room. Ever since her death, the furniture had become strange anachronisms, carelessly surrounded by my high school belongings. Or perhaps I was the error all along, out of place among my grandmother’s memories. The blinds on the window that dominates the room’s largest wall are closed, and the door may or may not be open. There is a young man with a pen and a notepad on the bed before me. He is taking down my dictation in full. I wonder: What am I saying? Is it a novel? Fiction? And why is this person here? Despite my questions, I continue to dictate with ease and purpose. What a nice idea, to think I could someday write so easily! Things are changing now, as does tend to happen. Not the room, but the man. He is no longer my assistant, no more so than I am still the dictator. I see more about him now than his paper and his scribbling, and I am no longer sitting, but standing. I am aware that I like his hand on mine, but the action is also a challenge to me. I start to feel a stress, and as he claims more of my arm, I look around the room. First at the door, then at the window. At some point, the blinds were opened, and my dad is there outside. He is angled away toward the backyard, but his head is turned, looking into my window. His eyes see the simple touch that is happening there, but the image does not enter his brain. He knows, but he does not want to know. Time skips. My dad is giving my brother and I what is the last of any financial support he will offer us. To me, the action seems to be about so much more than money. Everything shifts. I live somewhere I have never been, where the society is somehow separated from the world. Like a military base. Or a space station. There is a great gathering in an enormous open hall, and the entire community is there. On the dance floor, couples are just about as diverse as humans can be. Clothing is not a statement of status or wealth, just purely of personal preference; skin color swirls through the crowd in time with the music; and there are just as many men with men and women with women as there are women with men. Suddenly, I’m pulled into a dance I don’t know the steps to. The smile on the man’s face lets me know that he will show me where to move. I allow myself to be led and I try to soak up as much of the dance as I can. I switch partners a couple of times. A bouncing woman, a confident man. They all know the dance so well. But, for me, paying attention to the moves is a secondary concern, mainly because I’m feeling so overwhelmingly content. The moment and the movement and the mood completely envelope me. And the exuberance of the music and the jubilation of the dancing crowd rises up to the ceiling, and pushes on the walls, until the whole room radiates with warmth and unmistakable, impenetrable sanctity.

And then I woke up. My first thought? “Well that was a different dream.” Actually, I normally don’t remember a lot of my dreams. Especially not so detailed as this one. Maybe I am tapping into my lucid dreaming abilities? That would be interesting. But maybe the dream just pulled my consciousness from sleep because I knew it said a lot about my current state of mind.

I debated posting this entry for a few of reasons. One, I typically don’t like to talk about my sexuality in a situation where it could be misinterpreted. I think there is plenty of confusion about non-heterosexual identities already, before I add anything to it. Two, the dream is personal to me. Three, it is possible that my three cousins could find this blog from my Facebook (or even friends of my family), and I am not out to them. You see, my brother is the only family member I have come out to — mostly because he has been the one to show me he could genuinely appreciate it. Granted, if my cousins were to look at the content of my Facebook, they should be clued in anyway.

But, as is now obvious, I’m choosing to talk about it — a choice that has become a bit customary for me over the past year. Before I came out, I had only ever told one person: my good friend, Michelle. And that had happened with me sweating and shaking pretty badly. Then, a little over a year ago, fate stepped in and introduced me to Lowell Kane. Lowell is the coordinator for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Resource Center at Texas A&M University. And he was also assigned to be my colleague for an organization I was involved in at A&M. At that point, I pretty much knew, this is it. And a month later, I was out. Circumstances came about that led me to participate in a activity for the GLBT center called a Guess Who’s Gay panel, in which five people volunteer to be asked questions by an audience in order to ascertain their sexual identity. Michelle was in attendance as I told a room full of (mostly) strangers my Aggie introduction, adding to it my sexual orientation. The panel went really well, and I found that I enjoyed answering the questions asked of me. And after I realized I’d just managed to tell a room of strangers, I decided it was time to tell everyone close to me as well. Except my parents, you know.

Which leads me back to my dream. I haven’t come out to my parents for a couple of reasons. The most cliché reason being: I was and, admittedly, am scared to. My parents and extended family are a pretty conservative bunch, and we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on a few issues. Other than the off-handed comments they say in their ignorance (meaning inexperience, insensitivity, misinformed, unaware — not stupidity), my parents have each said semi-direct, round-about things to me in their own way. I know they have an idea, and I know they want to ignore it. So I am letting them, for now. Because I have this gut instinct that the day I ask them to acknowledge that idea… well, that day may not be a good day. I realize that makes me sound pessimistic, but nonetheless, that’s my instinct on the issue. I’m trying to find a time in my life where I can be better prepared for complete excommunication from my parents — be it temporary or not. And, again, I realize that is terribly misanthropic of me. But in this case, I feel a need to prepare myself for the worst that could happen.

So, with all of the growth I have made over the past year, I still haven’t made that last big hurdle. Even though I am regularly participating in Guess Who’s Gay panels and Aggie Ally training panels, attending GLBT events on campus, trying to become more of an advocate for gay awareness and civil rights, and generally becoming more involved in the gay community, I still haven’t come out to the people who have known me longer than anyone. And I hate the feeling. I hate that I dread going to my parents’ house because of the mental atmosphere it forces me into. So it’s really no wonder I find myself dreaming about some fictional place of sanctuary.

But it is those difficulties I have in my life that drive me to help other GLBT people. To help those who are in places I may already have similarly experienced, to help those in a situation akin to my own, or just to help those with questions better understand a current American hot topic.

I’m Casey Beck. I am a recent graduate Psychology major with a Business minor from Sulphur Springs, TX, but more importantly I am a proud member of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 2009. And I am bisexual.