GOD AND DIAPERS

CHAPTER EIGHT: MAARTEN

CHAPTER 8: MAARTEN

At his room Laurens launched his computer and entered the "secret" partition. Immediately he went to the site where gay boys could talk to each other freely. He had no luck this time, Henk wasn't online this time.

Bored he looked at other profiles. He found a sixteen year old boy, who was looking to contact somebody of his own age, just to talk about their feelings. Laurens was curious, and clicked on the link to start a chat session with the stranger.

It didn't take a lot of time and the two boys were engaged in a very open conversation. The other boy was in the closet too. He didn't dare to tell his divorced parents that he preferred boys over girls. No his parents weren't religious, their motto was: "Behave normal, that is crazy enough!". "But how can I behave normal? What is normal for them is awful for me!" Laurens noticed that Maarten was obviously confused.

He was studying biology and lived in a student home. The conversation was very open and nice. Both boys could talk openly about their feelings and they could complain about their parents and ow they could not understand their teenaged kids. Then the conversation went from teachers to people who hate homosexuals.

"Next week is the gay pride, with a great parade in the canals in Amsterdam, Are you going there?" Maarten wanted to know. Laurens had to laugh, the idea only that he would ask his parents permission to go to the sinful city of Amsterdam during one of the most sinful days of the year, the extravagance of the people on the boats (Laurens had seen some of it when he was at a friend's house a few years ago). Those people were doing everything god had forbidden them to do. He told Maarten so.

"Parents are stupid, they do not understand our needs at all. And what they can't understand must be bad for you." With that remark Maarten said goodbye to is new friends. They promised to meet again soon. "You look like a decent boy, I like you", were the last words Laurens saw on his screen.

The chat had made his anger to his mother float away. Giggling he shut down the secret partition and decided he should work on his paper for history class. In the word processor he typed wit large and bold letters: HOW I WOULD TREAT A GAY BOY

He looked at is blank screen. Should e write how he would like o be treated by everybody or would e tell wat he probably would do, based on his religious background. At last e placed his ands on the keyboard and started to write:

When I was gay, I would like that people would treat me just like any hetero boy, I'm not that different you know. The only difference is that I hope to find a boy who likes me in the same way I like him. He will be the only one who can treat me different then the other boys.

But I wonder if I could treat gay boys like I want to be treated. You see, I come from a very religious family, my parents believe that being gay is a sin, a sin that should be punished by death and after that you have to burn in hell for ever. So I probably would be treating the gays in my neighborhood the same way as I'm told. I would tell them how sinful they are, how bad it is to disobey god and that they will burn for all eternity.

But boy, how I would hope that I would be different. The world would be so much better, more beautiful when people could lover everybody they do, boy or girl. It doesn't matter what you are, gay or hetero, white or black, communist or fascist, we all should respect each other and help them were we can.

The world would be so much better when we could do that. We are all humans, why not respect each other as just that: humans.

I do hope that someday I can reach that goal and be the man I want to be, but I'm only human and I'm afraid of failing. But I do need to be that way, because it is the only way that we all can live our lives in a way that we feel is the best for us all.