"I thought, Somebody's gonna get in my computer and find out," he said. Jeffrey was hesitant to explore the online gay world at first, he said, certain he would somehow get caught. during the school year,Īnd for even longer stretches in summertime.Īuthor Jennifer Egan and Web experts discuss what it takes to build a community for gay teens.
But his free time belongs largely to the disembodied gay life he pursues online - from 8:30 p.m.
He took a girl as his date to homecoming earlier this fall. A brainy, ebullient kid, Jeffrey is an excellent student, active in high-school government, with a In whatever public chat room or other AOL area they happen to be visiting - a potential disaster for gay teenagers. This way, no one from his "straight life" can track his forays into the online gay world using the "locate" feature on America Online, for example, which allows subscribers to find online "buddies" (An instant message, or I.M., allows two or more people to engage in a real-time dialogue on screen.) Group 'N Sync, he has separate screen names and "instant messaging" services for these activities. While he uses the Internet to communicate with high-school friends - Jeffrey is now 16 and a junior in high school - and to pursue his avid fandom of the Jeffrey's computer is in his bedroom, garrisoned inside a thicket of codes and passwords. Teenagers is beaten so badly during adolescence that he requires medical attention. From his peers at school he dreaded violence, and with good reason: according to a 1996 study of the Seattle public schools, one in six gay To reach his parents, they might refuse to support him or pay for college. When we were first getting to know each other, he made it clear that he could allow no overlap between his online gay lifeĪnd the life he led in the "real world." He explained, "In our town, everybody knows everybody, and everybody knows everybody's business." He feared that if word of his sexual orientation were Jeffrey and I met when he responded to an online message I posted, seeking gay teenagers willing to discuss their online lives. Her novel "Look at Me" will be published next year.
Jennifer Egan is a regular contributor to the magazine.
You're always spending time on the computer.' My mom complains: 'I can see you becoming more detached from us. "The Internet is the thing that has kept me sane," he told me. It was around this time that Jeffrey first typed the words "gay" and "teen" into a search engine on the computer he'd gotten several months before and was staggered toįind himself aswirl in a teeming online gay world, replete with resource centers, articles, advice columns, personals, chat rooms, message boards, porn sites and - most crucially - thousands of closeted and anxious But being 15, he was too young to drive and afraid to enlist his parents' help in what would surely seem a bizarreĪnd suspicious errand. He called a crisis line for gay teenagers, where a counselor suggested he attend a gay support group in a city an hour and a half away. "My mother's always saying, 'It'll be so wonderful when you meet that beautiful Christian girl and have lots of grandchildren,'Īnd every time she said that, I was like, That's it: my life is going to be hell."
"I'm a Christian - I'm like, how could God possibly do this to me?" he said. Over him, he told me last summer during a phone conversation punctuated by nervous visits to his bedroom door to make sure no family member was listening in, he became suicidal. (He asked that I withhold not only his last name but also any other aspects of his life that might reveal his identity.) He prayed that his errant feelings were a phase. Jeffrey knew of no homosexuals in his high school or in his small town in the heart of But Jeffrey is a devout Southernīaptist, attending church several times each week, where, he says, the pastor seems to make a point of condemning homosexuality. Thisĭiscovery had been coming on for some time he had noticed that he felt no attraction to girls and that he became aroused when showering with other boys after physical education class. N the summer of 1999, when he was 15, a youth I will refer to by only his first name, Jeffrey, finally admitted to himself that he was gay. By JENNIFER EGAN Drawings by BRIAN CRONINĪuthor Jennifer Egan and Web Experts Discuss What It Takes to Build a Community for Gay Teens How Jeffrey found friendship, sex, heartache / and himself / online.