For as long as I can remember, on the first day of school I’d wake up feeling strange. It wasn’t like the flu — no fever or stomach ache. It was more like I would be sort of dizzy, sort of spaced out. My stomach would feel like butterflies were flying around inside. My shoulder and neck muscles would be all tight, my palms would be sweating, my heart would be beating fast. I’d be nervous, I’d have a headache, and I’d feel sort of depressed. I don’t know how this started, or exactly when, but the why was clearly the first day of school each year.

I don’t know why this continued to happen every year. It wasn’t because I was reluctant to go to school, or that I hated school, or had problems at school. I was a good student, had lots of friends, and liked going to school. After the first day, I’d be fine. My mom told me it was first day jitters. I told her it was more than jitters; it was like having ‘first day blues’ and she agreed.

So, I still get ‘first day blues’ every school year, and nothing I do will prevent them. Even now.

Even now. Here I am, an incoming college student, a freshman at the University of California in Berkeley. And I have the same old ‘first day blues’ and they’re driving me crazy. People here call this the ‘freshman blues’ — turns out I’m not the only one with the problem. I can understand why. College is a huge change from high school, especially when the college is an enormous university. Different classes. Tougher schedule. Over 40,000 students.  No one caring about whether I succeed or fail except me — and, of course, my folks. Not living at home any more. Moving into the dorm. Sharing my dorm room with a roommate. With a stranger.

Those are the main reasons for my freshman blues, but there’s another, too. And it’s going to be more difficult for me to explain if anyone asks; it’s something I don’t want to talk about. About a year and a half ago, just after my seventeenth birthday, I finally admitted to myself that I liked guys more than girls. A lot more. I’m gay. Coming to that conclusion, and accepting it, was a long and complicated trip.

At Lakeside Middle School when I was in the seventh grade I’d fooled around with a few other guys. We’d just feel up each other and jack together, nothing more than that. That stopped in the eighth grade when I started dating girls. I even got into some petting with a couple of them.

At Oak Ridge High School I dated girls, had dates for the major dances including the Junior Prom, and was popular with all the girls I went out with. I even had my date lined up for the Senior Ball. But I didn’t have nor wanted a girlfriend. A girlfriend requires a lot of time and effort. I wanted to get into Cal and to do that I had to concentrate all of my time and effort on studying. While I’m a good student, no way am I a brain. I had to work hard to get top grades, and I did.

The Saturday after I turned seventeen I was at the Ravenswood mall with Linda, my best friend. Okay, a girl was my best friend in high school. We’d known each other since first grade, and we didn’t have any secrets from each other. We were sitting in the food court having a Coke and munching on fries and chatting about whatever. This was back when Abercrombie had those live model manikins, and I could see they were in the store’s display window.

“Let’s go look at the hot girls,” I suggested.

Linda agreed. “I’ll look at the hot guys. The girls are too skinny.”

So after finishing our snack we walked across the concourse to the front of Abercrombie. There in the window were three guys and two girls, and they were wearing nothing but very brief briefs. Well, the girls had tiny tops, too, but you know what I mean. I was very impressed by the guys. Toned and tanned bodies, impressive bulges in their briefs that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and not an ounce of fat anywhere. They were really hot.

I turned to Linda and made some comment about the girls, that even though they were skinny they looked hot. She looked at me and said, “Come on, Kevin, you know you were totally looking at the guys.” I thought she was joking and I laughed, but I could see from her expression that she was serious.

“I’m thirsty,” she said. “Let’s get a Coke.”

We went back to the food court, got Cokes, and sat down at a table as far away from others as I could find. Then we had a very interesting and, for me, very stressful conversation.

“What the hell did you mean, I was totally looking at the guys?” I asked.

“Kevin, we’ve been friends since elementary school. I love you to death, you’re my best friend. I know you’re into guys. I don’t know if you’re gay or bi, but you like guys. More than you like girls. A lot more.”

I leaned forward and glowered at Linda. “I. Am. Not. Gay!” I hissed.

Linda just smiled at me, reached across the table, and patted the back of my hand. “Trust me, Kevin, I know when a guy likes guys. My brother Jared is gay. I knew he was gay before he did, back when I was twelve and he was sixteen. He claims I have gaydar, you know, ‘gay radar’?”

I couldn’t believe it. “How can Jared be gay? He’s a football player at San Diego State.”

“So what? You can be a macho jock like Jared and still be gay. You don’t have to be swish to be gay. Most gay guys look and act like regular guys. Just like Jared and his boyfriend, and you too, Kevin. The only difference is gay guys get turned on by — and want to have sex with — guys instead of girls.”

I blushed. I could tell because my ears get hot when I blush. My ears felt like they were burning up. “Oh, jeez, that’s so…” I couldn’t think of what to say. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What? Being gay or having sex with guys?”

“Both!”

“Think about it. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, or being bi. It’s in your genes.” Linda started laughing. “Come on, Kevin. When you go to bed and have fantasies before you beat off, who do you fantasize about? Girls or guys?”

I looked around, then leaned in and whispered across the table, “Linda, keep it down, someone might hear us. I’m not going to talk to you about things like beating off! I’m not going to talk to a girl about… about masturbating.”

She whispered back, “Why not? You don’t do it? Like anyone would believe that. NOT! Almost all guys do it. And did you know that girls do it, too? I do it, too!”

“We cannot be having this conversation!” I whispered.

“Why not? You’ve gotta grow up and get real, Kevin. You’re going to be in college in the fall. You need to accept who you are.”

“Linda, why are you doing this? To me?”

“Because you’re my best guy friend. You need to accept that you are gay. I watched you while we were sitting here earlier, and you didn’t look at the girls walking past. You looked at the guys. Didn’t you?”

I thought about it. Linda was right, I did look at the guys, and thought about how hot they were or weren’t. What they’d look like without clothes on. But I’d  never allowed myself to think that I might be gay. Never. Oh, shit!

“I can’t be gay! It would ruin my life.” I whispered.

“Kevin, it’s genetics. You’re born with your sexuality; it’s defined by your genes. You can be 100% hetero, or 100% gay, or anywhere in between. But you are who and what you are. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s like being right-handed or left-handed. It’s up to you whether it would ruin your life or not. I don’t think it would. Look at Jared. My brother’s life wasn’t ruined when he accepted that he’s gay. In fact, his life got better and he’s a lot happier since then. Now Jared has a great boyfriend, another football player, and they are a very cool couple. Accepting who you are is really important, and Jared’s a good example, someone who accepts who he is. Now it’s your turn.”

We sat there in silence for about five minutes. My mind was in turmoil. Maybe I wasn’t gay. Maybe I was gay. Maybe I was bi. I liked to look at girls. But girls didn’t turn me on. I could tell which ones were pretty, which ones I’d like to be friends with, which ones had great personalities.  But which ones aroused me?  Which ones could I fanaticize about?  That was easy — none of them. I did fanaticize about guys. I wanted to think about naked girls. I didn’t want to perv on guys. But I knew I was fooling myself. Whether or not I wanted to think about naked guys, I did think about them. I wanted to perv on guys. NO! I didn’t want those things! I knew I should want to have sex with girls. But I wanted to have sex with guys.

I couldn’t be fucking GAY! But in the back of my mind a little voice, a smug little voice, kept telling me that I was gay. And no matter how I tried to push that little voice out of my head, the stronger and more persistent it became. It was like a caged animal that found a way to escape and devour all of the “I can’t be” and “I’m not” thoughts that had become stuck in my mind. I realized and had to accept the fact that Linda was right. I liked guys. I liked them that way. A lot more than I liked girls. It was amazing to admit it, even if I was only admitting it in my mind. And it was like a lightbulb had been switched on and was illuminating everything. At the same time it was freaking me out.

I looked at Linda. “What can I do about it? This whole thing is freaking me out.”

“Look, talking with me isn’t going to work. You need to talk to Jared. I told him about you, and he suggested that the two of you sit down and have a conversation. Can you come over to our house? Jared’s home for the weekend. Lemme find out when he’s going to have some time. I think he’d be a great person for you to talk to about being gay. Things like coming out, and finding other gay guys on campus, and having a boyfriend, and having gay sex, and what to do about telling your friends at school and your family. Things you need to talk about with someone who’s been there, done that, and has answers that worked or didn’t work for him.”

Linda got out her cell and dialed. I wasn’t sure about this. I didn’t really know Jared; he was four years older than us, and we’d never been in the same school at the same time since elementary school. He had a boyfriend? And they were both on the San Diego State University football team? I remembered she’d told me Jared was the fullback, or something like that. I wondered what his teammates thought about playing with a gay guy on the team. A gay guy with a boyfriend!

Linda had been talking, and I’d sort of lost track of what she’d been saying. I started paying attention again to her side of the conversation. “Okay, we’ll be back in about a half hour…. Yeah, you’ll like him, he’s a nice guy, my best guy friend…. No, not that way…. Okay, see ya…. Love you, too.” She ended the call and put her cell away, then looked at me and smiled.

“He’ll be home until about six-thirty today, so let’s leave now and you two can talk in private for a couple hours.”

“A couple hours? Jeez, what are we going to talk about for a couple hours?”

“Maybe you won’t talk for that long, but I think once you start you’ll have lots to talk about with Jared. You’ll have lots of questions and he’ll have answers for most of them.”

“Okay.” I sat and thought for about a minute. “I’m not sure about this, Linda. I mean, he’s so much older than me, and his experiences about being gay must be really different than mine.”

Linda looked at me with a disgusted grimace. “Kevin, you haven’t been listening to me. I told you, Jared accepted that he was gay when he was sixteen. So he’s not only been through what you’re going through now, he knows what it’s going to be like for you in the future.”

“How’d he figure out that he’s gay?”

“Like I said, I told him. I was twelve years old and one night when my folks weren’t home I went into his bedroom and sat down and said, ‘Jared, you’re gay, aren’t you.’ It wasn’t a question, more like an accusation. We talked and he finally admitted to me that he was gay and he started crying. We hugged and talked some more, and he asked how I knew. I told him that I’d figured it out about a year earlier.”

“So how many years have you known about me being gay before we had our talk today?” I asked.

Linda grinned. “Since middle school, seventh grade. You were pretty obvious even then, at least to me. I watched you watching boys while we were sitting at lunch in the quad — and you spent a lot of time looking at them, mostly the really cute, good looking boys. You dated girls but you never seemed interested in having any of them as a girlfriend.”

“How come you never said anything until now?”

“I could tell you weren’t ready.”

“How the hell could you tell I wasn’t ready? I wasn’t… I’m still not… but how…? Oh.”

“My gaydar is very sensitive. Fine-tuned. I should get some sort of big research grant so I can figure out why it’s so powerful. And accurate!” She grinned. “Not only did it let me figure out that you’re gay, it let me figure out that you weren’t ready to come out of the closet, and that you just weren’t ready to accept what you are yet.”

“So you decided that today I was ready to come out of the closet?”

“Absolutely. And it worked, didn’t it!”

I shook my head and finished sucking the last of my Coke through my straw.

“Okay, I’m done. Lead me to your shrink. What’d you say his name was? Doctor Jared Nelson, P-h-D, right?”

“No, I’m the shrink. That’s what I’m gonna major in when I go to college, psychology. Jared’s more like an advice columnist. You ask questions, he gives advice.” She looked at me for a few seconds. “I’m glad you seem to be comfortable doing this, Kevin.”

“Who the hell says I’m comfortable doing this?” I shook my head and laughed. “That was hysterical laughter, for your information. I’m freakin’ freaking out!”

I was surprised when we got to her house and I saw Jared. He had really grown since the last time I’d seen him, back when he was at Oak Ridge High and I was in middle school. Now he was about 6 foot 3 and must have weighed over 200 pounds of what looked like solid muscle. I wasn’t a shrimp at 5 foot 11 and 175 pounds, but compared to him I felt like a three-year-old. I was nervous as hell, and was thinking I might need to get to the bathroom really fast if my bowels cut loose. Yeah, that’s how nervous I was. But Jared stuck out his hand, and smiled. We shook hands. Suddenly I wasn’t so nervous.

“Hey, Kevin! It seems like it’s been years since I’ve seen you. You’ve really grown!” Then he laughed. “Oh, my God, I sound like some ancient relative telling you how big you’ve gotten! I apologize. Let’s start over. Hey, Kevin, how’re you doing?”

I smiled. I realized that Jared was a friendly guy, and funny, too. “I’m great. And you’re the one who’s grown. You look like a football player. You ever think about trying out for the football team?” Now it was my turn to laugh.

Jared and I both looked at Linda, who was rolling her eyes in mock disgust. Then he looked at me. “Oh, I love it — you’re a wiseass, Kevin! Just like me! Sis, we two are gonna get along great!”

“Just so I don’t have to listen to your lame banter, thank you. You guys want anything to eat or drink?”

We both shook our heads as a no.

“Okay, then I’m heading to the family room; I’ll be watching some TV. You have your meet-and-greet and chat. And Jared, Kevin’s my best friend. You treat him nice, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am, got it, will do, Roger-Wilco, and all that.” Jared turned to me, “Okay, Kevin, follow me. We’ll go up to my room where we can talk.” He glanced at Linda. “In private.”