I’m beginning to believe that for many gays there is a concept of a defining year; a year where they come to terms with who they are. I’ve always envied those who had this experience in high school because they were able to come to terms with who they were in the most socially pressurized environment imaginable; if you can become an individual in high school then you can survive anything. My defining year was 2002. Being 24 in Dallas shaped me so much more than years of college as I finally came to terms with who I was.

Unfortunately, I arrived in Dallas in January 2001. Why wasn’t 2001 my defining year? To understand that you have to understand who I was in 2001.

For starters, there was the car situation. I didn’t get my drivers license until Thanksgiving break of 2000. While visiting my family that week I asked my dad if he could help me pay for the car since I figured I’d be able to make car payments once I started working. The first problem was that I only had a drivers permit. When we went to the Minnesota DMV they confused my Kansas permit with a Kansas license, so they made me take the written test and gave me a license without making me take the driving test. Score! The car hunt took a little while, but we found a $5000 1991 Acura Integra on sale. My first driving experience was driving that car from Minnesota back to school in Kansas. That car made me so happy. A week later a drunk driver totaled it in a hit and run.

I actually rode the bus to Multi-National Corp the first few months I worked there. I lived three miles away and it took a hour each way, but for me it was worth it. I could buy another car but I thought they were like dogs; they die just when you start to love them. Dallas is not a commuter city, and eventually I had to break down and buy a new car. I lived in Minnesota for 18 years and Kansas for 6, but I learned to drive in Dallas. I still don’t know how to drive in winter.

Furniture was another thing that took me a long time to acquire. When I first moved in my parents bought me a desk and TV stand from Target. I hated that particle board furniture, as it represented another time my parents refused to listen to me and bought me something of their taste because they figured I couldn’t handle making a decision on my own. I bought my television on a whim after working late one night, but slowly I began to furnish my apartment. It was a slow process.

Another thing that held me back was how far in denial I was about my sexuality. I’d never admitted to myself that I was gay all through college, and had every intention to carry on with my denial. The one person I had ever had feelings for was my high school best friend’s brother. He and I had been in the Orchestra together in high school and we had a very loose dynamic between us, but there was something about him that made me want to be around him. Surely it couldn’t have been his gorgeous eyes or boyish good looks, it was our friendship I cherished! After I had moved away to college I had a dream where the two of us were sitting in the school gymnasium at some sort of pep rally. He turned to me and said, “you know you love me, right?” You know you’re in denial when your subconscious has to go literal on you.

What held me back most of all was my picture of where I wanted to be. Back in middle school, circa 1990, I was in a gifted and talented program and one of the exercises we did was to write an image of who we visualized ourselves to be when we grew up, and put that in our wallets to remind ourselves of that. My image was that I was on a studio set directing an interactive “Casablanca”. I had always thought that as a filmmaker and a computer programmer I would be able to make my career bridging the two fields. Adding fuel to this fire was the independent film movement of the late 1990’s, where filmmakers like Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez had been able to tell their stories with little to no money. I put a lot of money and effort those first months in Dallas trying to find a way to bring my dream to fruition. I wanted that. Making films would no longer just be a hobby, it would be a career.

I have a lot of memories from 2001 – the first paycheck, getting used to a regular job, September 11th – but looking back it didn’t define me because I didn’t try to change my situation. My life was riding on rails and I had no reason to hit the breaks.

Disclaimer: despite the potential for all sorts of racy adventures, pretty much all of these stories are PG rated, as they mostly end with me not having sex. Well, except for one, but that’s for later.

Due to being a computer science / film double major, it took me 5.5 years to finish school. Things were looking good when I was going to graduate at the end of 2000. It was an employee’s market, where people with technical skills were in high demand and short supply, and if you asked for hookers as part of your starting bonus they would reply with “do you like Asian?” I was a pretty clueless kid back then, but one smart thing I did was decide that I was going to work for a company that made tangible goods. Dot com’s were everywhere back then, with the brilliant business model of:

1) We put up stuff (and ads).
2) People look at our stuff (and our ads).
3) Profit!

As little as I know about business, I thought that seemed primed to fail. For me, companies that sold things seemed the way to go.

One thing I was not smart enough to do was to get a #$@! driver’s license. It wasn’t because of anything exciting like I had a DUI or I was making up my identity; no, that would be cool. In my mind, I couldn’t afford a car, and if that’s the case, why bother with the license? While my logic was impeccable, it did lead to problems, like say flying into Dallas for my job interview and having my entire impression of the city based on the two blocks around the hotel. Funny story: I called a cab to take me to my interview, only to discover it was across the street. I think I gave the driver a twenty because I felt so guilty. My interview at multi-national corp actually went really well, and I liked all the people I met with. As it was the dot com era, they sent me an offer fairly quickly with all the trimmings – killer salary, starting bonus, moving costs covered, dental, medical, the works. I wasn’t going to graduate for another 6 months, and they still made the offer; that’s how sweet the dot com era was. I said “sign me up!”

One of the benefits of accepting the position was a house hunting trip. When I flew down I made plans to meet with Jeff, a friend since freshman year. The first time I really met Jeff really went very poorly. I had just moved from Minnesota and really knew no one. This was most apparent in the dorm cafeteria, where it’s just as embarrassing to eat alone as it in in high school but you do it for every meal. One morning I came in to get my bowl of cereal and I recognized Jeff, eating alone, as one of the kids from my dorm. I asked if anyone was sitting there, made terrible attempts at conversation, at which point Jeff said “oh screw this,” got up, and walked away to eat with someone else. For most people this would be the end of the story, but I was not one to pick up on a clue. Jeff and my roommate became good friends, and we had a mutual enjoyment of Rollerblading – it was the nineties – and somehow over time we over came the terrible first encounter and became friends.

My first understanding that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore was when Jeff met me at my hotel. You have to understand that Jeff had always been the sharpest looking of my friends. This wasn’t hard; most of my friends in college were engineers on student incomes. We were lucky to wear clothes that fit, let alone dress well. Jeff was always decently dressed, had a good hairstyle, and his apartments always had incredible lighting. Yet, not gay. When he met me at my hotel, he looked very very Dallas: nice slacks and shoes and a leather jacket. I was shocked – my friend left 3 months ago and became a professional! We had dinner at Morton’s Steak House, which was a whole new experience for me. For me, splurging was going to the Olive Garden for a $10 dinner, and here I was paying $25 per person! Then he took me to see his loft downtown. He lived in a 1400 square foot loft just outside of Deep Ellum, the arty district of Dallas. Having barely left campus most of my college career, seeing a pimped out downtown loft made my eyes bug out. This could be my life! I could be cool!

On the way back to the hotel, we ended up going through Oak Lawn. Jeff made the comment “Oh yeah, don’t mind this. This is the gay district. Dallas has one of the highest gay populations in the country, if you can believe it.” Oh really? From that point I was pretty much ready to start my new life. What’s not to like? I was going to be a cool urban-ite who eats steak, dresses sharp, and meets these ‘gays’ I’ve heard so much about! What could go wrong?

My move from school into that new apartment has always reminded me how far I’ve come. My parents picked me up in their mini-van, loaded it with all my worldly possessions , drove down to Dallas, and then proceeded to unload it all onto my new apartment’s living room floor, forming a little sad pile. My first day at work was January 2, 2001, and my parents were determined to drop me off for my first day of work. As it turns out, Dallas had an ice storm on new years day, 2001, and we spent the evening watching Univision’s new year coverage on my 12 inch television. We stayed up until 12:01 and went to bed. As pathetic as it sounds, it was my new beginning.