You can still feel the Texas heat battling through the last breaths of its waning strength. It’s mid-October and the heat has barely claimed the day as another victory. Inside, the Nest has our new home set to a warm, eco-friendly 79 degrees. Despite all the attempts, including the sweater hugged tightly around my torso, all heat is evading my body. I sit at our kitchen table, surrounded in an invisible snow globe of unfeverish flurries. Across from me sits a boy, his back draped in warm sunlight, his hair, copper as the table we both share. He is entranced, lovingly trapped in one of the ever changing hypnotic hooks dancing through his head. His eyes are locked on his computer, floating out of his work only to inquire about my day. I turn the pages of the book I pretend to read, and my hands show a slight tremble as I do. He is completely unaware of the cold I am harboring in the middle of this warm fall day. In-between the small batches of words we exchange, the only sound is the silent anxiety of anticipation that I feel. Like a low hum, it builds inside my head, growing into a THX cinema surround sound blare. I can feel the pressure send occasional shivers down the back of my spine. Every single muscle in my body is a tensely corded string, waiting for me to strum out the words I’ve been holding in for 26 years onto another human being. In an instant, a short snag of wind catches my sail, and I seize the brief moment of internal bravery. The words run from my throat, and upon meeting the air of my mouth, slow to a casual walk as if they had not been escaping hell milliseconds before.

“Oh, hey. By the way, I’m gay”.

One month later, I’m lying in a bathtub, barely wearing a white Calvin Klein button down shirt, the top of my blue jeans suggestively unbuttoned. The person I can see reflecting in the lens of the Canon DLSR is nearly unrecognizable. Jesus is crouched above me, his feet firmly planted on either side of the tub. The camera strap drapes across the back of this neck as he snaps another photo. In this light, his hair is darker than the light copper it was the afternoon of October 11th. He is a lot of things to me. The art director to my copywriter, a close friend, accidental roommate, amazing photographer, and now he claims the spot as the first person I told I was gay face-to-face. His reaction is an overly casual “oh, cool” nearly spilling out onto the cusp of dismissal. It’s not until later that day when we have an open honest conversation about my sexuality, that I realize his reaction is a result of my own casualness.

“Are you going to tell your mom tonight?” he asks.

“Yeah...” there’s a long pause between us, as he knowingly waits for me to find the correct words to express. A memory plays in my mind. My dad, through a bout of gregarious laughter “It’s Adam and Eve,” somewhere an arrow nocks “not Adam and Steve” and shoots into my lung. I am in a room full of blood, and they are all laughing. I come back to the present.

“Tonight has the possibility to be the worst night of my entire life,” and for the first time that day, the voice catches in my throat, my eyes glossing over. Jesus lifts from his chair and the blizzard surrounds us both.