sleepovers

i think one of the first times i spent the night at someone else's house other than mine was with my childhood friend jordan and his sister amanda. i was i don't know, eight? my sister was with me, but that wasn't at all comforting. we were there either it was someone's birthday or my parents wanted to get away from my sister and i for a little, i don't remember. i experienced the expected symptoms of homesickness-- anxiety about when my parents were going to return, being afraid of the dark (but at least there was a night light), sleeplessness, being uncomfortable on the floor, being self-conscious about whether i was going to sleep with my mouth open, or breathe too loud--typical feelings of someone who's never slept somewhere other than their own house. but the thing that bothered me the most was that i was sleeping in the same room as a BOY. you know, the other gender who don't have vaginas, like playing world of warcraft, and think that girls are way sissy. it was understood that at my age that yeah, i talked to boys and was friends with boys, but come on, sleepovers with boys? weren't either of our parents concerned that some sort of late night antics were going to occur? maybe the fact that we had all known each other for a really long time and that jordan was outnumbered three to one was a huge deterrent, or hey, maybe that seven year-olds don't go around feeling each other under the covers.

this pseudo-catharsis is really about how homosexuality is totally ignored when a child is raised. well, i suppose it makes sense; why bring it up to your kids that there are some families that have two mommies or two daddies? how do you explain how that came about to a young person? you tell me. all along i knew that if i wanted to invite a girl friend over, that she was allowed to sleepover at my house. but if i ever desired to have a boy sleep over, no dice. at that young of an age, i didn't even realize what menstruation was, or that people have sex to produce babies. at that age (unless you parents were extremely liberal), as far as you and your parents are concerned. only heterosexuality exists because that's what's normal, that's what's accepted. life to me was that your mom gets pregnant (by miracle, of course), your birthday comes, you grow up and go to school, graduate, get a job, get married to a man, and then raise your own family and then eventually die.

i'm pretty sure watching tv or some other media source was the bearer of good/bad news.roundabout middle school, that's when i realized homosexuality, and other LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) orientations existed. the homosexuality "lifestyle" is really nothing new; the biblical area was apparently aware it existed because the bible discussed sodomy, so that's some 6,000+ years already that men loving men and women loving women have been around. why shroud this in mystery, or pretend it doesn't exist? is it because my parents were so disgusted by two people of the same gender who chose to be intimate with each other that they chose to not acknowledge it to my sister and i, seemingly never, or was it that they were ignorant about the LGBTQ community? was it that their parents never talked to them about it, therefore they chose to do the same with my sister and i?

thoughts?