I Think I Love You: Part 1

I Don’t Want To Hear “I Love You”

Is there anything crazier than falling in love in a psychiatric hospital? I’m not sure if it was true love, but it was the first time I said “I love you” and meant it. Where else could I possibly find someone as broken as I am? I’ll never forget my stay at Canyon Ridge Hospital in Southern California my senior year of high school. How can I forget when I’m reminded every time I look at the scars on my wrists? 

When I used to tell the story of my first real relationship, the setting is “summer camp” and I conveniently avoid pronouns. Now I’m a senior in college in New York City and in a much better place in every way. I don’t feel like I have to lie anymore. Instead of arriving in a “school bus,” I arrived strapped down in an ambulance.

Maybe it was Cupid’s arrow or whatever drugs were dripping in my IV, but I fell in love with the first person who talked to me who wasn’t taking my vitals. I was sitting silently in a room with about five other boys who were laughing at whatever teenage boys draw on whiteboards to amuse themselves. 

Then one boy smiled at me and came over. He asked me if this was my first time in a “place like this.” I nodded. The next thing he asked was if I was gay or straight?
He asked it so casually as if he were asking what my favorite color was. If I wasn’t already in shock, I was now. I stammered a jumble of “yes” and “I don’t know.” That was why I was there. I had tried to kill myself because I didn’t know how to handle being gay and Christian. I didn’t understand how I could love Jesus and other guys. I had tried to “pray the gay away,” but I just couldn’t shake these feelings. And when my parents found out…Well, that’s the same night I started cutting myself.

While the other boys were focused on the board, he wrote something down on a scrap of a paper with a tiny pencil that he had stolen. When the others weren’t looking, he slipped it into my hand and gave me the pencil and another scrap of paper. He whispered, “Here’s my number. Can I have yours?”

I read the paper: Dustin Wagner with a 760 area code. He’s in the desert far away from my 714 beaches. I’d probably never see him again when we were discharged. I returned the gesture. He smiled and then I smiled for the first time in too long.

In less than a week, we became best friends. We were together whenever possible. We traded snacks. We either played soccer or just talked while walking laps during mandatory exercise time. The nurses laughed that we were also next to each other in line for our medication since we had the same initials. I liked that too. 

He even asked if we could be roommates. We both had empty beds in our rooms, but we were already in the system as 1A and 2A. So we had to settle with standing in the doorframe and talking without technically leaving our rooms.

He was discharged a few days before I was, and the second I got my phone back I dialed that number I memorized. He told me he left little notes at my door every night. They must have been confiscated before I woke up. If I had known he liked me like that, I would have kissed him and held his hand as we walked laps. So maybe it was for the best that they didn’t let us sleep in the same room.

We talked every day. We watched TV while commenting over the phone. When my parents forbade me from going to his birthday party because they suspected that he was gay, we talked about running away together. Two 16-year-old boys weren’t going to make it very far without a car, but it was still romantically cliché and I loved it. 

Long distance sucked, but for the first time I didn’t feel alone at home. I had the first conversation about my sexuality with a non-heterosexual. He was bisexual, and I still wasn’t sure. The stereotypical thing about being bisexual is that you double your dating options. The stereotypical thing about dating a bisexual person is that there’s twice the number of people with whom he can cheat on you. Or maybe he was cheating on someone else with me.

Breaking up with Dustin hurt more like a double breakup because by being his boyfriend I had to “breakup” with my best friend as well. Elijah was the first person I came out to. The only person I knew who would love me no matter what. And he did at first. He was there for me every dark and suicidal night for a couple years. But when I told him I had a boyfriend, he called me a faggot and stopped taking my calls or returning my texts.