When I was at the age of 19 and attending Harold Washington College, I would pray every night that my feelings towards the same sex would go away, but they never did. One night I was sitting on my bathroom toilet praying:
“God, I pray tonight that I come to tell you my lord, to help me overcome my miserable feelings and give me strength, and encourage me to do the right thing of being with the opposite sex. I still want you to always accept me having these intense feelings about women. My Lord, I feel that being gay is not for me. I think that lifestyle is hard to enter into for me. I am not asking you to change the word of being against gays, but wanting me to do what works for me. I want to accept myself. I hope the man that I will meet someday would be a good man who believes in you, my God, and goes to church sometimes to hear the holy word spoken. I also hope someday that I will eventually meet a man that accepts me, Amen.” After that prayer, I kept the faith of what I prayed for and I hoped it would come true someday.
In 2015, my third semester at Harold Washington was very interesting for me. During that semester, I took two courses, history and geography. I thought geography was dull and difficult because I did not understand the concepts of reading maps, but I enjoyed learning in my history class about neighborhoods and reading about the Chicago fire. I had a very nice and hilarious instructor named Domenico Ferri. In the beginning of that semester I always sat in the front of the class until one day he assigned us to write a paper about historical and famous Chicagoans.
“For this assignment, I want you to explore different museums to get some ideas to write about in your essays,” Mr. Ferri said. It was puzzling for me to find a museum to go to. After my history class I was walking to the bus stop on Washington Street. I sat down and waited for the J14 bus. I was meditating about my life, plus killing time so that the bus could arrive soon. While I was doing that, a guy sauntered towards where I was sitting.
“Hey, ain’t you in my class?” the guy asked.
He was a medium height and thin. He had Hershey dark skin and wore glasses, and he had his black Nike cap cocked backwards. He was also wearing a dark jacket, and his shoes were spotless, as if he did not like to get them dirty.
“Yeah, I’m in yo class.” After I said that, the bus had arrived. We both got on, and we started conversing about our assignment in history class.
“Aye, you know what musuem you goin too?’’ I asked him.
“Naw, I’m tryin to figure that out,” he said. “I know there is a museum close by where I live,” he added.
Where is that at?’’ I asked.
“That’s on 56th Street,” the guy said.
“Awe, okay, I would not know how to get there,” I said.
“We can go together and I meet you up there,” he said.
“You wanna go this Saturday?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said with a serious look. “What yo name and phone number is? Imma key yo number in my phone,” I asked him.
“Bernie Powell,” he said. “Like Bernie Mac. My real name is Bernard, but my friends calls me Bernie.”
“Awe, okay, Bernie Mac,” I said joking. He laughed and glanced at the window. I was keying his name and number in my tiny government phone.
“Why you wanna key my last name Powell in yo phone?” He asked.
“I said, yeah, I wanna know yo whole name,” I said.
“Man,” he said giggling.
The reason why I wanted to know his name was because I thought I had found something interesting about him that I had never thought I would ever find in any other males. When we were taking the bus home together, I told him all about my life story. I noticed that he was a good listener, and I found that intriguing. I wanted to get to know him more. I was thinking maybe I could do the right thing with him of wanting to build a future and to have children with him.
#lesbian#gay#lgbt#samesex #nature #love #life #inspiration #poetry #thoughts #friendship #nature #life #poetry #thoughts #inspiration #love #friendship
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