Sitting down next to him in a reasonably quiet corner of the Student Union enjoying a conversation, it’s hard for me to imagine him as different from anyone else his age. He goes to school, has a job, and is cramming his way through finals week. But unlike most people his age, maintaining a year-old relationship without public scrutiny and ridicule can get pretty tough.

     Tristan Pirak, 19, openly discussed with me the risks and rewards of sharing in a homosexual relationship. Unsurprisingly, he has many of the same issues and apprehensions as anyone trying to make a relationship work.

     “Recently, I just moved in with my current boyfriend, Mike, and that was a pretty big risk for me because I’m not to into the whole serious relationship thing, or I wasn’t at the time,” Tristan laughs nervously. “Doing that was moving away from all the freedom and stuff that I was used to.”

     When asked what made this relationship worth the risk, Tristan smiles and shrugs casually. “In the beginning, it went quickly through all the stages to getting pretty serious.…The last relationship I had been in lasted just over a month and none of this type of stuff had ever happened. And with Mike, it all happened over a space of three weeks.

     “When he first asked me to move in with him into a new apartment, I was like, ‘ah! I’m not sure I really want to do this.’ After the next couple of months went by, I just decided what the hell. I’ll just go out on a limb.”

     Where did those initial apprehensions come from? He assured me it was strictly a trust thing. “When you do something like that, you have to really trust the other person and trust yourself to be able to deal with any problems that might come up. Once you get to that point, there really is no back up plan if something goes wrong. You really have to trust that this is going to continue working the way it has been.”

     Still in his usual smiling sweet demeanor, Tristan asserted the apprehension “never goes away. There’s always a little bit in the back of your mind. But it’s getting a little better for me and I’ve gotten used to it.”

     When asked why he feels so awkward back home in Seattle, but completely comfortable in Orlando, Tristan says, “it’s easier down here because I started fresh and I didn’t have to break anything to anyone…it wasn’t like I’d been saying one thing and now I had to tell them something new. People know from the beginning when they meet me and can take it however they want.

     “Down here I really don’t give a shit, honestly. I do what I want and if anyone has anything to say I don’t really care. It’s just a little bit different when I’m dealing with people from back home and my family. It’s almost like a different world, you know? A very different way of acting in the two places.”

     He rocked that other world when he decided to “come out of the closet” to his mother. “That was a really difficult thing for me to do. And I kind of did it in a chicken way. Me and my friend were making a message for our answering machine and we called ourselves the ‘Will and Grace’ of Orlando. So my mom left me a message and was like, ‘you need to explain to me what you mean by the whole Will and Grace thing.’

     “So when I called her back we had this big ol’ discussion. And for the first half of it, she thought I might have been joking, which seemed odd to me,” he laughs. “But all in all it turned out a lot better than I thought. She took it a lot better than I expected her to.”

     Although he admits that things never turn out as bad as he imagines them, not all Tristan’s fears are unwarranted. “A couple of kids, who were friends of friends, got beat up at Knight’s Krossing earlier this year because they were gay. And that was kind of shocking because I had never heard of anything like that happening here. It was very upsetting. I try not to think about it because you don’t want to become paranoid.

     “Most of the time you can chalk it up to ignorance and move on. Like one time Mike and I were walking out of a grocery store and this lady comes up to us and says, ‘you know, God loves you, but He does not like what you’re doing.’ Her audacity at trying to tell me she knows what God likes or doesn’t like more than I would, or anyone else for that matter, struck me. So, in that regard, I can kind of say to myself it’s just one person’s opinion.…”

     Putting up with public scrutiny and criticism for expressing love in a personal relationship would make any couple perturbed. But most couples don’t have to deal with the derogatory remarks triggered by having a homosexual relationship.

     “I try not to let other people’s perceptions get to me. So if I’m holding his [Mike’s] hand, I won’t like drop it or whatever. We’ve gotten a few remarks, like guys yelling out ‘no cock sucking!’ and things like that.”

     As our meeting comes to a close, Tristan shares with me his secret for remaining as content and positive in his relationship as ever.

     “I just go for it day to day. It’s really hard for me to focus on one thing for too long or let it get me down for too long. When I do that, it just gets consuming. So I try my best to keep going and do the best I can with everything. Just try and do your own thing.”

To comment on this article, write directly to the writer at april@enliv.com or the magazine at service@enliv.com.