1: Mom watches Ellen DeGeneres and doesn’t bat an eyelash whenever Ellen talks about her wife, Portia.
-1: Mom teaches at the local Islamic school.
-5: When one of her students asks about gay marriage, Mom explains that marriage is between a man and a woman.
-20: The trailer for a gay rom-com comes on while we’re at the movie theater, and Dad calls it propaganda.
-2: Mom scrunches up her face at that same trailer.
-1,000,000: We’re Muslim.
To be honest: I didn’t see a world where my coming out wasn’t going to be messy. Pluses and minuses aside, I had bought into the same idea as everyone else, that Muslims and gay people are about as incompatible as Amish people and Apple products. I wish I could say I was better than that, that I ignored the stereotype. But when your safety hinges on a stereotype being true or not, you don’t get to be brave. I wasn’t going to bet my happiness on the fact that my mom watched a talk show hosted by a lesbian.
But none of that mattered anymore. My happiness hinged on a pair of greedy bastards and their blackmail scheme. I had four weeks and two options: either give in and pay them off, or come out to my parents.
Week one: I was freaking out inside my head. I holed myself up in my room. I stopped texting Jackson. He confronted me in the parking lot one afternoon: “Amir. What’s wrong?” I remember staring at the outline of his wide shoulders, the edges of his blond hair, which he refused to cut. I couldn’t look at his eyes—it was our un-staring contest all over again—because all I could see in those eyes was that stupid picture of us kissing, flashing before me like a neon sign.
“If something happened, you can tell me,” Jackson said, shifting his eyes. It was clear he was nervous to be seen talking to me. Even with all the time we spent together in his car, we still barely talked at school.
“It’s nothing, Jackson.”
“Is it your parents?” He turned his face away toward the football field, puffing his chest. “If there’s something going on, I want to—”
“No, you don’t,” I snapped. “You don’t want to help. I just need space.”
Week two: things only got worse. I started hearing back from the colleges I applied to. The rejection letters trickled into my inbox, one after another: NYU, Columbia, Northwestern, Georgetown, Boston College, George Washington. It was like one long, drawn-out funeral, especially around my parents. They got really silent and mostly reacted with sighs and tight-lipped nods. Pretty soon I realized I hadn’t just ruined my future; I had ruined their American Dream.
I was angry, too. College was supposed to be my light at the end of the tunnel—when I would be able to come out to my parents safely, with some distance between us. I was counting on one of those schools to be my escape. With the exception of my two safety schools, they all turned me away.
I retreated into my shell. Turned quiet at home. Quiet at school.
By week three, the blackmail was back to being constantly on my mind. I had less than seven days left, and I still had the same two options: come up with the money, or come out. Since I was in no position to disappoint my parents even more, I decided to give in to Ben and Jake’s demands. But after I did the dirty deed on Wikipedia and sent them the money, I got a separate text from Jake: he wanted another three thousand dollars, this time by graduation day. That fucker.
I thought about coming out to my parents. I kept pulling up that mental scoreboard, but I just couldn’t find a way to make the numbers work. Every time I opened my mouth and tried, I failed. Every time I thought about pushing it just an inch—testing the waters with a what if I liked boys?–type comment—I chickened out. It’s hard enough tiptoeing around your entire life with a secret like that. It’s draining, constantly feeling that you might not be safe around your own family. My parents were already looking at me differently after I got rejected from all those colleges; if I told them I was gay, I would cease to be their son. I’d become a stranger they had wasted their time raising.
A week before graduation, my family was sitting down for dinner when the phone rang. My mom answered, then handed it to me. “Amir, it’s for you.”
“Ameeeer.” It was Jake. My heart started racing when I heard his wormy voice through the speaker. “I like your mom’s accent,” he sneered. “So exotic.”
I ran up the stairs to my room. Shut the door. My mouth was so dry, I could barely speak. “Why are you calling me?”
“Somehow I don’t think your mom would approve of your other life, Ameer.” The way Jake said my name, mimicking my mother’s accent, it was like he had discovered a new weapon that he could torture me with.
Jake then got to the point, demanding to know when I was going to get him the money. I wanted to be brave and tell him to leave me the hell alone . . . but then I thought about my family downstairs, the peaceful dinner we were having. I collapsed onto my bed, shoving my face into my pillow. All I could think, over and over, was: I can’t do this.
After that night, I accepted that there was no universe in which I was capable of coming out. I tried to get the money. I really did. I busted my nerdy ass, reaching back out to every single start-up or D-list celebrity who’d ever slid into my inbox thirsty for a Wikipedia page, but at the end of it all, I was still a thousand bucks short. A couple nights before graduation, I came this close to texting Jake to ask if two thousand—two thousand dollars!—would work. But just before I pressed SEND, it came to me. A new idea, a third option I had never considered before.
Disappear. Just for a little while.
I knew the idea was ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that the fantasy of skipping graduation and going somewhere else was actually comforting for about five seconds. It was the calmest I had felt in months.
Then I kept thinking. And the more I thought about it, just completely removing myself from this entire mess until things calmed down, the less ridiculous it seemed. You don’t just stand aside when a bomb is about to detonate. You run.
The morning of graduation, I was hyperventilating in my car in the driveway, a packed duffel bag on the passenger seat next to me. This is it, I kept thinking. I couldn’t believe I was following through on this insane idea. But in a few hours, Jake was going to spill my secret to my parents in the middle of graduation. He’d already told me as much the day before at school.
I, however, would be on a plane thousands of feet in the air. I would be safe. I would have space. And when I landed, I would have the most important answer of my life: I would know if my family still loved me or not. If they did, then I would come home. And if they didn’t—well, I would be far away, just as I’d always planned.
When I finally started driving, I felt the clash of my two identities stronger than ever. Iranian. Gay. There had always been a wall separating those two sides of me, so they would never touch. On one side, there was Jackson. On the other, my family. Soon, that wall would come crashing down.