"That must be hard for you to find a guy," Rob said.
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"I don't know, just finding another guy who's gay."
"Why do I get the impression, Rob Velarde, that you think there's like, maybe six gay
guys on the planet?"
"I didn't say that."
"But that's what you think, isn't it?"
He paused, watching his feet hanging off the jetty, then said: "I don't know any, or at least
I didn't till now. No one really talks about it like there's a lot of people who would be something like that."
"Take my word for it; they—we're—out there. In numbers, too. There's this figure
going around that gays make up ten percent of the total population—"
"How in the world would they know something like that?"
"That's just it. It's from some survey. Done forty or fifty years ago. And you gotta realize
up until around 1972, the year you were born, being gay was considered an official mental illness. And illegal. And even though
things aren't that peachy for us today, the further you go back in time, the worse it gets. So how many folks do you think
would actually admit to being something that was considered perverted and criminal in some survey way back then?"
"It can't be that much more."
"I may be the first person you know is gay, but I'm not the first gay person you've known."
"No way."
"Absolute way. Teachers, doctors, coaches, parents, kids at—"
"Come on."
"Just because you see a person one way doesn't mean that they live up to your preconceived
expectations of them twenty-four hours a day."
"Yeah." Rob laughed. "Skeeter and I both thought you were a pro athlete when we first saw
you. Pretty stupid of us, huh?"
"Because I'm gay?"
Rob's face froze. His eyes widened with embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, Derek. Please, don't get mad."
"You think athletes can't be gay."
"That's not what I meant. Don't be mad."
"I couldn't be mad at you if you cut off my right arm," I said. "But that was what you meant,
wasn't it? Be honest."
"Well, sorta."
"You wanna know who's gay in sports?"
"Noooo," he said incredulously.
It was at that moment that I realized that, until now, I had no idea just how naive and impressionable
Rob Velarde truly was.
"It's been some day," he said. "First finding out about you being gay, then possibly seeing
an alien spaceship … geez."
"Tell me, Rob, which seems stranger to you? Which seems harder to believe you'd encounter
today?"
He cocked his head back so that he was gazing directly above us, then looked at me, then straight
ahead into the darkness.
"I don't know," he said, his voice full of wonderment. "I really don't know."
