A coming out story: Bowflex and the Devil

Ever since I was a little boy in kindergarten, I knew I was different. I felt different.

When 3 o'clock recess came around after milk time, all the other little boys began chasing after all the little girls in our class, pulling at their pigtails as they bounced in the sunlight.

But not me.

No, instead I wept for my soul, for there seemed to be a secret demon inside of me with claws like razorblades struggling to break out. Indeed, in those early years, I really did believe that I had sinned in some way for God to punish me with this parasite. Yet no matter how hard I repented, the feeling never went away.

Years passed. Though I managed to reach secondary school, the demon only became stronger. How I quaked at the knowledge that I had forever left the protective circle of the Lord's good grace. The demon must be none other than Lucifer himself, I knew, so great were His torments and His wicked pleasures. It was He who first said, "I will not obey" and amidst the painfully unnatural contortions of my body, how it was so!

He was ruthless and would strike at any time. How shame filled me when, watching a Bowflex commercial and sipping a protein shake, I found a peculiar feeling come over me, forcing me to retire. I tried exercise, baseball statistics, and thinking of England, but it mattered not on what my thoughts focused. There was no escaping the Beast.

Or so I thought.

It was a particularly cold afternoon in November. A friend and I decided to get some ice cream and on the way back home, he began speaking in graphic detail about a girl he had been seeing lately. I began feeling queasy.

"Are you okay?" he asked, nervously pulling over to the side of the road in the likely event I needed to puke.

He turned off the engine. I could feel his stare upon me like a brand, like the gaze a saint might inflict on a demon. Is that what I had become? At that moment, I knew I could not bear the rift between us any longer.

I told him everything — the lonely nights of painful writhing underneath damp sheets, my confusing experiences in primary school, my hopeless belief that perhaps one day I might be saved. It flowed out of me like some vile liquid that had gone bad from being bottled up too long, one tale after another until at the end of it, I felt cleansed.

He listened thoughtfully and waited until he knew I had reached an end. Then he spoke.

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"Dude, did you ever think you could be allergic to milk?" he asked.

Salvation had arrived.

Ever since, I have identified myself as a "lactose intolerant person." Unfortunately, this has meant that I have lost not a few key players from what I call my "milk days." There are many old friends with whom I no longer share the frequent visit to the ice cream parlor or the occasional milk-chugging contest. Indeed for many, I share nothing at all and only see them in glimpses of memories still lodged in the period's heavy cream-like ether.

Such ignorance is not limited to the past either. Sometimes, though rarely, strangers on the street who find out about my condition will call me names. "Lactard!" or "You're lactarded!" they will scream out the windows of passing cars.

Yet on the whole, the experience has been a positive one. I have found others like me, both lactose intolerant and mildly intolerant, and we go to special bars created especially for people like us where they serve soy and rice alternatives.

In the end, I think most people just want to understand what this lactose-intolerant thing is all about. Oftentimes I'm asked by a well-meaning lactose-enabled person, "Do you ever wish you weren't ... you know ...?"

It took me a few years to develop because I'm hardly a poet but I always end up reciting the following as an answer:

"It's true that most drink milk and that's okay/But if you're different, you can still be gay/For there's always Silk to save the day!"

Today is National Coming Out Day, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign to empower everyday Americans to live openly and honestly about their lives. Ryan James Kim is a sophomore from Los Angeles, Ca. He can be reached at rjkim@princeton.edu.