Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles) Read Online Free Page B

can overcome this too,” he says confidently.  
    “I wish it were that easy.”  
    “It wasn’t easy with women, was it?”  
    “In a way, yes.” I don’t elaborate.  
    “How so?”  
    I sigh into the phone and fall back onto the bed. Eric left to run an errand, giving me the chance to call Dr. V without interruption from him. I hate having to run away just to make these phone calls, but when you’re only hearing half of it, they can sound pretty fucked up. “Because a woman is a natural partner.”  
    “Ahh, but is a woman a natural partner to you?”  
    I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, “No.”
    “Then what’s natural about it? Because society tells you that you should be with a woman?” I nod, realizing where he is going with this. “Because your father thinks that you shouldn’t be with a man?” That question is followed by a pregnant pause, one filled with a promise of more to come. “Who cares?” Dr. V says softly, he knows he’s breaking down that boundary, that barrier within me. “Your father certainly doesn’t and society is a bitch you can’t tame on your own. Society is what it is, Calvin. Just because they may not agree with it, doesn’t mean it should stop you from finding happiness. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be with who you want to be with.”  
    I screw my eyes closed. I can feel the wetness pooling. I don’t need to cry over this, fuck, why do I have to feel this knot in my heart, this gaping hole. I rub at my chest, hoping to soothe the ache.  
    “I think you need to decide, for you, who it is important to. Who will care? When you’ve done that, once you’ve decided that the people who matter to you aren’t going to care about who you’re with, then and only then, can you start to let go. You were told that being gay is the ultimate taboo. You were shown some of the most unimaginable things in order to program your brain into liking and loving women. You were shown things that truly do not exist, not in today’s society. Not in today’s world.” He takes a deep breath and continues, “Calvin, there will always be haters, there will always be right-wing nut jobs, religious groups, and people in society who disagree with being gay and I agree that once out, it won’t be easy for you, but that is a bridge you burn when you have to. Not before you’ve even cleared the water from the river to start building it.”  
    I can’t respond to him, my mind is running a million miles a minute. I know deep down, in my heart of hearts, that he is right. Because I’ve been conditioned to believe that being gay is bad - that’s putting it mildly - it’s hard for me to let go of all the pressures of what I think society would tell me to do. But just because my mind agrees with the right-wing conservatives, my heart certainly does not.  
    After some time passes without saying anything, Dr. V breaks our silence. “You have to tell him. Telling him will put him in his place, either beside you or behind you. If he’s beside you, he will help you, support you, and he will be there to stand with you. Hell, he may even stick up for you, but he needs to understand where you stand, what you feel, how you feel and where it is you want to go from there. If he doesn’t know and he crosses the line, crosses into the place you cannot go, he needs to understand why.”  
    “He has to know it isn’t him,” I interrupt.  
    “Yes, but he won’t know that if you don’t tell him. He’s going to think it is him and that you don’t want him.”  
    I sit back up on the end of the bed. “Yeah, I know. I just…fuck, I don’t know how to tell him.”  
    “When the moment is right, you will. I can’t tell you when to do it or how to do it, just that you need to do it. What about talking to someone else, someone you trust?”  
    “That’s a mighty small list, Doc,” I tell him with a humorless laugh.  
    “Try that first. Try it on for size, see if it fits,