Serendipity

Everyday without fail, I will always read those links on my blogroll. When I was reading Cowboy, I came across an interesting entry and decide to check the poll out. It’s a poll that is only for heterosexuals to see if we are really against of homosexual or “it’s just government tell us what they think and therefore the nation think the same” – penal code, remember?

My first encounter of homosexuality was in secondary. I have an Indian guy classmate by the name of S. My classmates love to tease him about his name as he sounded like a famous soft drink. And I admit I’m one of them. The reason why we sat together was because during the first day of school, I’m down with stomach flu so when I went back to school the next day, there’s only one vacant seat beside him. We hit it off well as we love academy awards and during my secondary school days, not much friends appreciate those stuffs. And of course we happen to be prefects and in same CCA group.

I don’t remember how I found out he was gay. I think he was the one who announce to me that he was gay. I was only 13/14 when he told me that he was gay. I’m like “okay, let’s talk about something else.” At that age, I’m not exactly sure what is gay. There are no information about them when I was in that age. I just didn’t care and continue the friendship with him until we touched about chapter 12 in our science textbook then I realizes that gay is not exactly “right”. We kinda grew apart or maybe I just wanted to hang around with my gal friends more.

I didn’t realize that gay was ostracized. I just thought that they are just slightly different but that doesn’t mean anything until one incident happen and I realize that it’s not that simple as I think. That day, my class was split into 2 classes for Home Economics and Technical respectively. S was to go to Home Economics and I was to go to Technical since I have done Home Economics for the first half of the year. After 3 periods of sawing and dusting, some of us took our own sweet time to walk back to class as the next period is boring subject. When we reached our class, we heard a lot of commotion and realize that S attempted suicide. Apparently S went to drink chloride. But luckily he couldn’t stand the awful feeling after drinking it, so he quickly ran down to 2nd floor and into a classroom exclaiming that he drank chloride. The teacher quickly gets a student to run to the office to get vice principal to call for ambulance. All of us were discussing why he did that and some of my classmates think he’s crazy etc. The next day, my form teacher told us that he’s fine and staying at SGH. A few friends and I decide to go and visit him.

He was looking fine when we saw him at SGH. His mother was thanking us for coming and told us to take care of him in school. I did asked S why he attempted suicide when he knows that it’s against the law and he will be the laughing stock when he goes back to school. He told me that he never hides his identity and someone took advantage of his love. Apparently he was in love with this boy from secondary 1. This boy knew that S was gay and in love with him, decides to make use of him. The boy get S to buy the latest pager (pager was the “IN” thing then), get S to give him money. And worst when S wrote love letters to the boy, the boy showed it to all his classmates and they all laughed at S’s foolishness. S knew he was cheated when the boy and his classmate jeered at him and laughed at his stupidity. He wanted them to stop and he threatens them that he will kill himself if they don’t stop. They didn’t, they actually taunt him that he don’t have the guts to kill himself. S couldn’t take it and went to drink chloride. After hearing the story, I didn’t know what to do and I felt sorry for him. After staying at SGH for a few days, he did go back to school. Everyone was just talking about him, laughing behind his back. I guess time heals and does make people grew apart. We were not as close as before when we were in secondary 3. He started to hang out with those quiet boys and I hang out with my gals.

The incident makes me realize that human beings are ugly and selfish. Not everyone can accept someone different from them. I don’t know is it because they are afraid of them or what. But I believe that they are still humans and we are supposed to treat them with respect. Who are we to judge what is morally correct or wrong? Why do we have to force them to be like us when they can jolly well forced us to be like them. But they never once did anything to force us because we are all different. The only thing they want from us is acceptance. Is it really that difficult for us to accept them, when they can accept us from being different from them?

The last I heard about him is that he migrated to Canada. He’s happy there as the people are not bothered by his homosexuality. Do take the poll if you are heterosexual and pass around to people who are heterosexual as well. It’s interesting to see what the outcome of the poll is; does the government really think that we can’t accept gays?