That was the plan, anyway.
The plan didnotsurvive first contact with Google.
At 8:47 a.m., sprawled on the couch in only my boxers, I opened my laptop, made sure the door was locked (yes, I lived alone and there was no one to walk in, but this was a big deal, so give me a break already), and typed my first search query with the gravity of a man launching a nuclear weapon.
“gay love”
I hit enter.
The results were . . . not helpful.
Wikipedia gave me a scholarly article about the history of homosexuality in ancient Greece, which was interesting on a theoretical level but not useful unless I planned to seduce Jacks while wearing a togaand holding an ancient spear (no, that was not a sexual reference).
A psychology website offered “10 Signs You Might Be Gay,” which felt about three weeks too late. Several results were for a movie I’d never heard of, and one was a recipe blog that had somehow been indexed incorrectly.
I refined my search.
“gay dating advice”
This was better. Slightly.
I found a few articles—“Your First Gay Relationship: A Guide” and “What I Wish I’d Known Before Dating Men.” I devoured them with the intensity of a student cramming for finals. Some of it was useful: communication is important (duh), don’t rush into labels (I didn’t even know there were labels), and every relationship is different (so helpful, thank you, Yoda).
Most of the articles were vague enough to apply to any relationship, gay or straight. Hell, most of them could have applied to brothers or sisters or business partners or world leaders. None seemed aimed at a dude in my dire dilemma.
It all felt like I was studying game tape of a team playing a completely different sport. The general principles of competition applied, but the specifics were useless.
I needed better intel.
I opened Instagram and searched “gay dating.”
This was more productive.
My explore page, a curated feed of hockey highlights, workout videos, and sponsored protein powder ads, transformed before my eyes into a colorful mosaic of male couples. There were guys holding hands at farmers markets, guys kissing on beaches, and guys laughing together over brunch, cuddling on couches, and slow-dancing in kitchens.
They all looked . . . happy.
Really, genuinely, radiantly happy.
I scrolled for a while, studying these strangers’ lives with an intensity that bordered on stalkerishly creepy. Two guys with a golden retriever had a whole account documenting their relationship, and I found myself deep in their grid, watching story after story of them cooking together, traveling, and being ordinary and completely in love.
Something loosened in my chest.
This was real.
Thiswaspossible.
Men loving other men was just . . . life.
I could have this.
The thought was so simple and so enormous that I had to set the phone down and breathe for a minute. When I picked it back up, I kept scrolling. Therewere more couples, more happiness, more proof that the thing I’d been so terrified of was simply love. It looked shockingly like the same love everyone else got to have with different packaging.
While I felt better seeing happy men doing happy men shit, none of this was answering my actual question, the one I’d been circling around like a winger afraid to drive the net, the one that had kept me up half the night, staring at my ceiling, alternating between giddy replays of Jacks’s mouth on mine and low-grade panic about what came next.
Because kissing was one thing.
What came after kissing was another.
