{"id":14058,"date":"2025-12-15T21:13:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=14058"},"modified":"2025-12-15T21:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:14:10","slug":"moment-of-truth-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/14058","title":{"rendered":"Moment Of Truth Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty-Four years ago…<\/p>\n

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December 15, 1971…sometime around twilight I took a walk from the apartment mom and I shared, up Parklawn Drive to Twinbrook Parkway, then across the railroad tracks and to Rockville Pike. I sat down on a curb near the Radio Shack and watched the twilight deepen over Congressional Plaza. A classmate I was madly crushing on, but could not admit to myself that I was crushing on, had put an arm across my shoulders as we walked together down a school hallway to a side exit where he always parked his little motorcycle, and given me a quick little squeeze, and my head went into the stratosphere and I’d been walking on air ever since. I was watching the colors in the sky deepen, but all I could see was his face, and all I could think about was how it felt to have his arm around me.<\/p>\n

Eventually I could think it: I’m in love. And then I could think the rest of it and not be afraid or ashamed, because nothing had ever felt so wonderful. And from that moment on I was never afraid or ashamed. Life was better than I’d ever thought possible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It didn’t last. He left the country the following summer for parts unknown. A classmate told me he probably went back to Germany which surprised me because he always led me to believe he was a Brazilian. It wasn’t until many years later I found him again and we reconnected briefly. I should tell the rest of this story at some point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty-Four years ago… December 15, 1971…sometime around twilight I took a walk from the apartment mom and I shared, up Parklawn Drive to Twinbrook Parkway, then across the railroad tracks and to Rockville Pike. I sat down on a curb near the Radio Shack and watched the twilight deepen over Congressional Plaza. A classmate I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[81,190],"class_list":["post-14058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-message-in-a-bottle","tag-the-gay-kid-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14061,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058\/revisions\/14061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}