One Who Loves
It's quiet at the Silver Horse (a Café) as I enter. A girl smiles fleeting from behind the counter. A guy and a girl is sitting in a sofa to the right just before the stares, discussing something in silent English. The place has a somewhat cold atmosphere, not bad-cold, just not a warm, cozy hangout. The effects down the stairs seem to be partly down in marble.
I find Jacob by a table next to the fountain. The coffee on the table is steaming and the chairs seem to be done of chromed metal. Jacob is gay, but he says he's not open about it. "I've heard so much shit about gay people this should be my foremost fare, to become gay, and in a way it has. But it's something I've come to realize during a long time, so it didn't come as a shock to me, as it will for my surroundings."
He admits that it was something that scared him a lot in the beginning, because, though gradually, there was amore or less sudden moment when he had to admit it, if just for himself.
"But the real scary part is when I find myself acting as I look down on gay people, because that would mean I would look down on myself, and that's a no good starting point. I can't say I know what it's like to live openly gay today, because I've never done it, but listening to some of the conversations my friends have concerning gay people I'm beginning to get the picture. Perhaps I should move to San Francisco," he grins, "there everyone looks gay."
I'm not sure what a gay person should look like, but I assume, 'as anyone else' is the correct answer. Jacob's dressed in blue jeans, gray sweatshirt and a baseball cap, putting him in the same division as thousands of other high school kids in Stockholm. Today he is eighteen years old and lives in the city he's been brought up in. He likes the city but says there's a lot of prejudice in Sweden. In spite of this he wishes to stay in Sweden in the future as well. "But that's probably because I'm to stupid to know any better. Most of my pals wants out of here quick."
He's had girl friends, but still no boy friend. "Girl friends are easier," he says, "I mean everyone assumes you're straight, if you see a guy on the street you automatically assume he's straight. I don't have any girl friends now, I don't date and I don't even try picking up girls. That was mostly during a time I felt unsure about myself. I think I really wanted to be straight, just to fit in, to be like my friends. I've accepted now that I am gay, but it took me some time, I don't really know why. Must have been the way I was brought up, or just the group pressure among my acquaintances."
So far not many people know Jacob's gay. He's told his mother and siblings, but he still doesn't want to speak about it with his father. "He wouldn't understand." For the first time during the interview Jacob looks really serious, lacking that irony, and those grins. "I wouldn't say he's conservative, but he's a hard man living his hard life and I think this would brake him." Jacob pauses for while. "Our relationship isn't the best, but it isn't bad either. I know him good enough as a father, and I'm certain this is something I wouldn't be able to explain to him. He would wonder how come I've chosen this lifestyle, and I can't give an answer to that... because I don't feel like this is something I've chosen, more like something someone else has chosen for me. It's like choosing the color of your skin — you don't."
Jacob doesn't believe in God. "Not the Christian God," he says shaking his head. "I wear a cross around my neck, but I have no faith in it. Ironic, huh?" The Christian God is something Jacob has never experienced, and that's why he can't believe in him. He wasn't brought up in a religious family, so he never had an experience of visiting church regularly. But not that many people in Sweden do. Not the way you do it in many other countries. "Sure we went to church, I've been there, I know what it looks like. But to me it's just an empty building. And sometime full." Both his parents believe in God, but they've never tried to force their faith onto Jacob. Though, he has a faith, not in the Christian God. People with strong religious beliefs also tend to consider homosexuality something bad, as Jacob has experienced it.
His mother took the news relatively good. He gets one of his ironical grins when the issue is brought up. "She didn't take it good, I wouldn't say she did, but considering she's my mom… I had expected worse.
"She read my diary. By accident," Jacob adds, giving me that face expression telling me this was probably the first and only time his mom has been snooping through his private belongings. "It's not like her at all, she doesn't do things like that. Later she said she was driven to it, something made her look in that diary I had laying around on my table. The irony is I don't keep a diary, I did it a couple of day more than two years ago, but I guess that was enough. I think what hurt her the most was the fact that I hadn't spoken to her about it myself. She asked me to take a walk with her. Just to go out and take a smoke. I could she something wasn't right, she was too serious in a way."
And it didn't take long before Jacob found out why. They where out for a couple of hours, just walking around the neighborhood, his mom crying and him trying to explain why he had chosen this lifestyle. Because that's what seems to be on everybody's lips. The question why he chose to be gay. Jacob says you don't, that it's something you're born with. He keeps hearing people saying it's something you choose, mostly religious people, which — is one of the reasons he doesn't have any faith in the Christian God — and he can't understand why.
"It's like if you're straight, could you then just decide to be gay? Most people would simply answer they don't want to be gay, but I think that's something many gay people feel at first as well. I did it, I never wanted to be gay. But I can't ever prove it, and I can't explain why I'm gay. Mom asked me the question a thousand times during that walk. But I simply can't give an answer. It's a nature thing."
This was in the middle of the Winter, soon before Christmas last year. "I froze my butt off walking around Stockholm, trying to explain to mom why I was gay. I never managed, and in the end I think it all was more painful for her than it was for me. In fact I felt easy because now she knew, I didn't have to hide it from her any longer. And I didn't have to lie about it. I don't know when I would have told her otherwise. We have a good relationship, but one of some reason me being gay was one of the worst things she could possibly imagine. So I guess I didn't want to hurt her by letting her know."
"I asked her whether she'd rather had seen me as a mass murderer, and she said that that was two complete different things. If someone had asked me I'd known the answer immediately, a gay person is just a person who loves people of the same sex. A mass murdered is a person who takes other peoples' lives." He pauses, his cap shadowing his face for a brief minute. "Everyone loves one who loves," Jacob says. "It's bullshit, but it sounds damn good. Everyone loves!" Jacob grins one last time, then asks me: "You believe it?"