gay-hunt

last month, i chanced upon a friend's pic in fb. i had lost his contact couple of years back and was happy to see him again. he was one of the few gay military person i know back then and i had taken special efforts to keep in contact with him (as i did with a couple of others). somehow, i have this instinct to want to care and show concern for those who were in the same shoe as me - gay and in the military. and i would play mentor to them and guide them along the way as i strongly felt that as a senior, i could help guide them in their career and wherever possible, we could also support each other given the difficult and highly homophobic environment that gay service persons have to operate in (not in an activistic way but in a way where we can lent each other a listening ear whenever we face any tensions). this person was no exception despite the fact that he was rather nonchalant about our friendship. i supposed i was simply a friend of a friend. anyway, i kept in contact with him and would frequently ask about his well-being. that was until i lost my phone and all the contact details inside.

so, you could imagine how happy i felt when i saw him in fb. without hesitation, i wrote him an email and asked how he had been. he did not reply until a week later. his reply sounded curt and unfriendly. he said something along the line of "don't pretend as tho you do not know how i am...". it was a rude shock to recieve such a kind of email from someone whom you had cared for and had monitored his well-being from afar. i replied simply - no, i do not know. i left service 2 years ago... i simply did not know where he was coming from nor what he meant by the hostile-sounding email.

i got his reply yesterday. when i read his reply, i understood straight away why he responded the way he did in my email to him. but on the same token, it made me sad and angry. sad because his email reflected his lack of trust in me, sad that he was naive enough to believe the lies put forth by his interrogators. and i was angry that words had been put in my mouth. words that wrongly led him to doubt my friendship. and worst still, words that reflect the freaking state of affairs the security personnel in the forces had resorted to as part of their witchhunt for gay servicemen! well, in his email reply, he said that they (altho he did not explicitly mention the security personnel, it was clear to me) had told him that it was i who outed him to them. wtf! if i had ever outed any of my military gay friends to them, may i die a horrible death right now! damned! talk about professionalism and integrity! f-u! (see! tell you i was, and still am, angry!)

unable to contain my emotions, i smsed another friend (another ex-service gay person) and told him about it. like me, he lamented about the state of things. and he added that he was not surprised about the naivety of this friend. i wished my friend well in my email reply and ended with a take care. i saw no need to explain myself too much. sighs... much as i wanted to put my past behind and move on, it is news like this that remind me of the past and i would get all flustered and angry again. how stupid of me to have given my life to them in the name of protecting the country. not only did they not thank me for my service, they even went so low as to use me to kill others. despicable people! f-ing despicable people!

sighs...

man am i glad i can see things clearly now.