Real American Dreams
Jeremy Ott
WBIS 188-030
Has our American Dream become tainted because of a few prejudice, excuse my French, assholes? Why does society force our dreams to be so stereotypical? Our dreams are what shape our personalities and what summons us back to the so-called “real world” everyday. Shouldn’t each and every citizen of that world be allowed to have hopes and desires of their very own and not of what successful people expect them to be? One of America’s rebels, Kevin Jennings, tells his story of hardships in the life of a gay man, in his essay titled American Dreams.
I’ve heard the gays are simply born attracted to the same sex and not provoked into it. I’m not a real believer in that idea but Mr. Jennings admitted to feeling like “normal” with one unexplained exception. He went through a childhood of misunderstanding his feelings until his senior year of high school. He sensed something about him was different than the other guys in his school so he went incognito. He felt the best way to disguise whatever that abnormal emotion was “speed love” and crude gay jokes. I felt as if that was the major turning point in his life because it’s when he actually realized that eventually he would have to accept being gay. It shouldn’t be something that has to be burdensome to accept but unfortunately society today is grounded on the mindset that gays somehow have a negative effect on the country.
It was his senior year of high school when Kevin fell in love with another man for the first time. It was also his first time making love with another man. In that passage he refers to himself as a fag. I still don’t fully understand the reasoning for using a derogatory term when describing himself, but I feel it may be because at that point in his life he hadn’t yet fully accepted being gay. He may have been still denying his feelings because of the shock of what had happened the night before; it may have been a psychological thing....