Yes, I knew, thank you. You and any of the other three managers had been reminding me of my awesome totally cool discount every week, but I knew it was your passive way of telling me that the white V-neck I wore to work every other day was getting old. Unfortunately, that white V-neck and like two other shirts were my only non-branded shirts I had, and unfortunately, everything at Promod was shit I would’ve worn as a high school student, and I looked like this in high school:
“Brian, here’s a [from-your-crotch-to-your-face-high] stack of clothes that people left in the fitting room. Put them back plz thank you.”Well, I couldn’t complain about that. Folding clothes was why I was hired. Like a trooper I took the stack to a worn down folding cart unaesthetically located in the front of the store. That was when I saw... (the tone of this entry will now abruptly change to my more usual melodramatic tone)...her: this crazy little brown Mexican girl swooping in between the legs of the cart.
She was adorable. She looked up at me and I looked down at her past the pile of clothes in my arms. She smiled and I smiled back, which made her giggle, if she weren’t so god damn brown, blush. She took off and ran somewhere else in the store, which I didn’t realize doubled as a daycare center, but it was ok. She made an otherwise unexciting day at work a little more special, and that was when I realized:
November 2010? It’s been five years. I thought of the public sex porn I had waiting for me at home so that I wouldn’t cry. Parks, mall bathrooms, stairwells, bridges—oh yes.
Working out didn’t make me straight. Having a girlfriend didn’t make me straight. I was at a dead end. On a rainy night in November 2005, I found myself lying in bed, lights off, staring at the wall through misty eyes. One thing held me back from finally accepting myself. Was I finally going to get over it? No, I couldn’t. I figured I could marry a girl anyway, fuck her while replaying scenes of hot muscle men in my mind, get her pregnant, and boom, a baby nine months later. Because that, a baby, was what I wanted. It was what I always wanted. My own kid. Didn’t matter if I loved my wife or not as long as I could have a happy son, Matt, or a happy daughter, Janelle, or both, Matt and Janelle. (Yeah, of course the wife I wouldn’t love wouldn’t have a choice in baby names.)
Usually when I read stories about guys realizing when they were horny for other guys, they always said they knew from a very early age. I only started to suspect it from myself at the start of the eighth grade, summer 2003. Before I never really understood what attraction meant, and what was associated with it. Boners? I for sure didn’t get them thinking about girls—I didn’t know I was supposed to. I didn’t know I was supposed to want to have sex with them. I didn’t even know what sex was or that dicks were for sex. I always thought that you got a girl pregnant by kissing her and swapping saliva, which was why I always critically judged eighth graders I caught making out in the locker banks. Bitch is throwing her whole life away before high school, I’d think to myself.
You know in the movies, at the happy ending after the guy and the girl get together and marry, they share a kiss and bam, the movie cuts to nine months later with the girl holding the baby. I didn’t know more happened after the kiss that led to the girl getting preggo.
Thus, I didn’t really understand attraction. I just figured I was attracted to girls because guys were supposed to be. But then I stumbled upon homo porn that summer, did some reading, and was like, HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Now here I was two years later, lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. Marry a wife just so I could have my own kid and pretend to be in a happy marriage for him. Could I really live such a lie? My answer was tentatively yes throughout the two years, but I really knew I couldn’t do it. I was still looking at dick-in-male-butthole porn. I was still checking out guys in the locker room. And worst of all, I was alone.
I proposed a solution to myself: don’t be lonely now, figure out the kid problem later.
When crazy little brown Mexican girl’s parents made their purchase, I made sure, first of all, that my boner was gone, then I went to wave bye to her, and she returned the wave. I saw their whole family off. “Thank you for shopping at Pro-mawwwd!”
The girl turned around to wave and smile at me one last time. I sighed. One day.
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