Who
doesn’t want to be in love?
Movies are made about it.
Songs find inspiration from it. People
even die for it. But for
a gay television reporter in a small
market, it can feel like you’ll hit
30 before you even experience it. Many
TV reporters like myself
come from big cities and move to small
towns to launch their broadcasting
careers. I accepted a reporting job
in Casper, Wyo., knowing
that being Indian, Muslim and gay
wouldn’t make my transition
any
easier, but also that my love life
would be close to non-existent.
Television
reporters live their lives in the
public eye. Especially in a state like
Wyoming, where it’s so sparsely populated,
the majority know who you are. You
get
approached almost everywhere you go.
But
that still doesn’t make it any easier to find a
potential suitor. You come home after
a 12-
hour day exhausted, homesick, lonely,
only to
wake up and do it all over again. Even
if I
were to find love in a state where
some of its
inhabitants tell me gay people don’t exist,
how open could I be about my relationship?
After all, this is where Matthew Shepard
was
murdered for being gay.
Luckily
for me, I found the apple of my
eye the way most people seem to do
these
days: on the Internet superhighway.
Ah, the
wonders of online romance. These
days, I
find myself putting as much effort
into my
relationship as I do in my work because
of
the distance. He lives two time zones
away,
so we try to see each other at least
once a
month. But that often proves to be
difficult.
Frankly, I don’t see a reason for Casper to have its
own airport if
many people can’t afford to fly out of it. You can get
cheaper tickets
flying out of Denver, but who wants
to spend four hours on the
road and nearly a hundred dollars
in gas? It’s the thoughts about
him being far away that impede my
mind on the job. You shouldn’t
have to feel in despair worrying
about the next time you can fly
out to see your boyfriend, if you
can even afford it, especially
when
you’re on the clock and should actually be concentrating
on meeting
your deadline.
Most
of my co-workers have relationships
of their own. One has a perfectly
framed picture from his wedding on
his desk. Another has a heart-shaped calendar
counting down the days
until her boyfriend comes to visit.
But take a look at my desk, and
I have nothing to show for my relationship.
I’m
out in the newsroom. For the most part,
people at work seem accepting of
my sexuality. But would displaying
a picture of
me and my boyfriend for all eyes
to see make some uncomfortable?
I can’t help but wonder — is it a flaw
within my character that I hesitated
to put
up a picture of the man I see
my future with,
or was I just being careful about
whether
this simple act could hurt my
position in a
culture where physical displays
of homosexuality
are uncommon? In retrospect,
I was
hired for my skills and nothing
else. So once
I find the perfect frame, that
picture is going
up!
I’ve
made a lot of sacrifices to follow
my passion for reporting. I’m a big fish from
metropolis swimming through the
streams
of small markets that will
hopefully lead me
to high waters in bigger markets.
There I
may have an easier time living
out my love
story.
To
me, a relationship is more than just
talking to my boyfriend on
the phone four
times a day and using my
break to hear his
voice. It’s about the everyday things such as
doing laundry together while
you fuss about
which fabric softener is
better. What keeps
me going is the satisfaction
that working hard and growing
as a
reporter will eventually
lead me to a job closer
to him where we
will be in each other’s lives more often.
But
in the meantime, lugging 50-pound
camera gear in mud
and snow while stressing
to get my stories together
are made easier
with thoughts of knowing
that my special someone
is out there
thinking of me too.
