The hot blonde on TV...

I saw something on TV the other night that made me a little sad.

I don't remember what time of night it was, probably around 1 a.m., and I was going to go to sleep. But as I flipped the TV back from my DVD player to a regular station, I caught a scene that held my interest (later to be determined it was The Real World: Denver).

Right away I could tell it was some Reality television program, a genre that I never watch. I was going to shut it off when I stopped and heard what the gorgeous blonde guy was saying.

Stifling tears, he was talking about, "How much I loved him," etc etc. At this point I was interested. Whats this about gays on TV?

The girl he was with tried (not so desperately) to calm him, patting his hand and offering him some simple statements. But he kept getting more adgitated, and kept on drinking. Seconds later, he was pleading with another guy, asking why his boyfriend had left him, when he was all he had. The other guy tried to calm him, but had no revalations to give the blonde.

Then, out of nowhere, the blonde wipes his tears back and says, "I don't want to be gay. I hate it, I want a wife, and a family, and kids and a house. I don't want to be gay! Do you think I'm really gay?"

The friend says yes, you're gay. Don't deny yourself.

"But I've got demons inside me! I'm going to go to hell, I won't be saved. God won't save my soul! Please, pray for me, I want to be saved. Do you think God will save me?"

Moving in, the friend holds the blonde's shoulders. "You're not going to hell. God will forgive you."

It cuts to an interview with the blonde after that night, and I learned a bit more about the story. Seems he cheated on his boyfriend in some one night stand, and the boyfriend left him. Not so shocking, and not really undeserved.

But then the real sad parts come out. How this beautiful blonde is really actually an almost completely lost soul. His family has no connection to him, simply because he's gay. "It's like they treat you like some friend, its an imposition to pick you up at the airport," he explains, as tears slide down his face. There's nothing good in his life, he drinks too much, and the only person that really loves him, the boyfriend who now left him, he drove away because of some stupid decisions.

My heart really broke for this guy, someone who normally I wouldn't think of as having such a sad story. After all, when I first see him, he's in a bar looking hot as hell, with a body and face to die for. He's chatting with his friends, he must have his shit together. I mean, what problems could this guy possibly have? He's too pretty to have problems.

But his probably not-too-uncommon story, about his family and his being unloved, really killed me. Sure, I've got my issues with things, but I don't have anything nearly as bad as him. And there, drunk (and honest), he's proclaiming that he wants to be straight, and to purge himself of the demons that make him gay. I'll admit I welled up a little seeing the pain flash on his face, and hearing the real truth about the pretty boy on TV.

I went to bed feeling thoroughally sorry for this guy, but when I thought about it in the morning, I realized I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I did something that I try to do when I am all to willing to lable someone as a victim of circumstance: change the characteristics of the person in question. Instead of a hot gay guy who cheated on his boyfriend, I thought of a straight girl who had done the same thing, and my sympathy was drastically scaled back. Sure, it's horrible about his family, but he also did something that would, if not for the other parts of his story, seem inexcusable.

Ultimately it boiled down to two different parts. The first being his depressing life story, and how eye opening it was for me to hear it. And the second, his one night stand that ruined his only loving relationship, something that I'm not as ready to forgive him for. Either way, I learned something, and tore down another stereotype that I didn't really realize I had built in my mind.

P.S. And what the hell was with the demons part! I didn't know people who were actually gay bought that crap! I thought it was just hate mongering from the far-right religious camps...poor guy!