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Life had never been easy for Posner. He was small. A Jew. He lived in a predominantly working-class town where no one seemed to understand him. He was also homosexual.
He’d figured it out when he was in high school. He figured that his crush on Dakin was a phase, something that occurred because he went to an all-boys high school but that wasn’t the case. Deep down he knew that. He’d taken time to come out. Scripps had been the first to find out. Everyone sort of knew though there were no confirmations until well after university. At their first fresher's party, he had gotten drunker than he had in his life. He was blotto and when Scripps was a gentleman who walked him back to his halls and tucked him in bed he fucked up and pulled him into a massive snog. Scripps allowed him to and then let him fall asleep instantaneously and wake up the next morning with a raging hangover and foggy regret. They spoke of it briefly, Scripps told him he always figured and he didn’t mind – he too was going through things, trying to work out who he was and so he thanked Posner to do something he had never been brave enough to, ‘test the waters'
True to his word Scripps said nothing and the other boys found out in due course. It was the 80s and though things weren’t 100% right with society people were coming around to being more accepting. Well, it was legal now. His parents were a sticky situation. They took several attempts at coming out for them to get on board with the idea though they preferred to pretend their sons ‘situation’ didn’t really exist.
He couldn’t believe what had changed since then.
2018 was a good year for Posner, he and his partner Steve, were celebrating 10 years of marriage (legal marriage for 4). They had raised 2 gorgeous golden retrievers and had stepped into fatherhood for real earlier this year as they had a baby via surrogate. Their friends were loving and accepting of everything they did and they could flaunt their family reasonably well in public though something inside Posner was inherently British inside him that stopped him. He was no longer afraid to be honest with people he met. He didn’t hide away like that scared teenager did all those years ago. Even his parents had come around in recent years and loved the arrival of their grandson. It was amazing what love could do. He understood that his experiences weren’t parallel to everyone like him but he wished they could be. He wished that no one should feel the way he did as a child, teen or young adult.
If everyone had loving family and friends like he did the world would be so different, but he was just a middle-aged drama teacher with a mortgage, husband, two dogs and a newborn surrounded by love. What did he know?