The Further Adventures of a Kid Called Casper
by The Duo
People talk about “gaydar” like it’s some mystical sixth sense — a built in radar that pings whenever a queer person walks into the room.
If that’s true, then I must’ve been manufactured out of stealth technology, because nobody — and I mean nobody — ever picked up a signal from me.
Not once. Well, maybe once.
ALMOST every person who knows I’m gay only knows because I told them.
I’ve basically had to run my own PR campaign.
And it’s not like I was hiding.
I just… didn’t set anything off.
I was the human equivalent of a blank loading screen.
The First Time I Came Out (AKA: The Great Cafeteria Confusion)
I still remember the first time I said it out loud.
I sat down at lunch, opened my chocolate milk, and said:
“Hey, I’m gay.”
Just like that.
No build up. No dramatic pause. No confetti cannons.
My friends froze mid chew.
Marcus stared at me like I’d just announced I was a lizard in a human suit.
“You’re what?”
“Gay,” I repeated. “Like… boys. Emotionally. Romantically. Spiritually. Biblically. All the ways.”
Marcus blinked. “But you don’t seem gay.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve been told I give off ‘default settings.’”
My friends thought that, since I was a very white kid being raised by a black foster family, my life couldn't get any more complicated.
They were SO wrong.
My Family’s Reaction (AKA: The Denial Olympics)
My foster mom’s first response was:
“You can’t be gay. You don’t even like scarves.”
My Black foster brother Donell said, “But you played baseball!”
My bastard biological father (who was as white ass I was) squinted at me like he was trying to read fine print.
“You’re too calm. All the faggots on TV are… louder.”
I had to break it to him gently that not all of us come with jazz hands.
One of my foster brothers claimed to have known all along and, when I thought back to the way he never pressed me about girls and dating and so on, I believed him.
He was the one who convinced me to prank my foster folks by pretending I couldn't tell the difference between pumpkin and sweet potato pie.
At my foster parents’ house on Turkey Day, fork in hand, I’d innocently ask, “So... which one is this again?”
And the whole room would go silent like I’d just confessed to a felony.
Mrs. Dickerson would pat my shoulder and say, “Baby, just eat it,” which was her gentle way of saying, Please stop embarrassing us with extended family around.
Growing up, I was basically the neighborhood’s emotional support white boy. People didn’t know what to do with me at first. They’d see me walking behind Mr. Dickerson and whisper like I was a foreign exchange student who’d gotten lost on the wrong field trip.
But the Dickersons?
They didn’t blink.
They didn’t explain me.
They didn’t apologize for me.
They just handed me a plate, told me to sit down, and acted like I’d always been there.
And honestly? That was the strangest part.
Not the race thing.
Not the foster thing.
Not even the pie thing. (because, truth be told, I really didn't know how pumpkin and sweet potato pie differed at first)
It was the fact that they treated me like I wasn’t a walking plot twist.
Meanwhile, I was over here trying to figure out why I didn’t ping on anyone’s gaydar.
I mean, I wasn’t hiding.
I wasn’t coded.
I wasn’t mysterious.
I was just… Me
Apparently, my sexuality came with the stealth settings turned all the way up.
People only knew I was gay if I personally issued a press release.
I had to tell friends, teachers, coworkers — once even a Lyft driver — because nobody ever guessed.
I could’ve walked into a room wearing a shirt that said I LIKE BOYS and someone would’ve said, “Cool shirt, man. Your girlfriend pick that out?”
But growing up in the Dickerson house?
That was the one place where none of that mattered.
Not the gay thing.
Not the white thing.
Not the pie thing.
Not the fact that I once asked what a doo-rag was used for... and nearly got a neighborhood intervention.
They just let me be me — a confused, clingy, well meaning kid who didn’t fit into any category cleanly.
And somehow, in that house full of people who didn’t look like me, didn’t talk like me, and didn’t expect me to be anything other than exactly who I was…
I finally felt like I belonged.
College Didn’t Help with the gay thing though.
I figured college would be different than what I saw OUTSIDE the Dickerson home.
More open minded. More observant. More… gaydar literate.
Nope.
My roommate walked in on a guy sucking my toes and said,
“Oh! Sorry! I didn’t know you were—”
I held up a hand. “It’s okay. Nobody ever does.”
He nodded like he’d just discovered a new species. The feet thing freaked him out more than the homosexuality.
It’s Not That I’m Subtle — I’m Just… Me
People assume I must be hiding something.
Nope.
I’m just not broadcasting on the usual frequencies.
I don’t have the “gay voice.”
I don’t have the “gay walk.”
I don’t have the “gay aesthetic.”
I don’t even have the “gay posture,” whatever that is.
I’m just… Dave.
I wear jeans and T shirts.
I like video games and iced coffee.
I talk normal.
I smell normal (though my middle foster bro will tell you that’s debatable).
I move normal.
I exist normal.
The feet thing wasn’t 100% normal, I admit, but for everything else, I’m so normal that I loop back around to confusing.
People laugh when I say nobody ever guesses.
I laugh too.
It’s funny — in that “if I don’t laugh, I’ll spiral” kind of way.
But the truth is, sometimes I wish someone would guess.
Not because I want to be stereotyped — god no — but because it’d be nice to feel seen without having to issue a formal announcement every time.
Once, late at night, I admitted it to a friend:
“It’s not that I want people to assume I’m gay. I just… want them to see me. Not the stereotype. Not the checklist. Just me.”
And that’s the thing.
I’m not hiding.
I’m not coded.
I’m not complicated.
I’m just a guy who doesn’t fit into anyone’s pre installed categories.
A guy whose sexuality doesn’t come with neon signage.
A guy who has to tell people who he is because their radar isn’t calibrated for someone like me.
A guy who doesn’t register on gaydar because I’m not a signal —
I’m a whole frequency.
And once you tune into it?
You never forget it.
I can recall being at a friend's house. And once DiAndre (my friend) waved his mom off to work, I sat on the bed next to my bud and put my sneakered feet on his lap. He stared at my Adidas’ hungrily. Then he unlaced my sneakers and got them off my feet.
My socks were sweaty and they were plastered to my feet to the point where you could see the footprint outlines. He kneaded them for some time, then he down on the floor, so that he could lie beneath my sock-clad soles. I placed my feet over his nose, and he was forced to inhale my smell. He took in my aroma and really got me excited by kissing my socked feet. He kissed my sweaty socked soles—the ticklish sensation caused my tool to become rock-hard.
Trying to keep myself from shooting my shot so early, I stood up and squeezed my rod—attempting to force it into complying. I took about five steps and felt a sickening squish beneath my left foot. It was a melting Neapolitan ice cream sandwich! I had to laugh upon discovering that I’d stepped on a dissolving mixture of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream (sandwiched between two brownie wafers, of course) that had been left on the floor fifteen minutes earlier by DiAndre’s little brother Quon. I jerked up my foot . . . and promptly banged my toes into the metal stand that supported DiAndre’s “Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace” action figures.
"Shoot!" I yelped, grabbing my throbbing, sticky foot in my hand and hopping on one leg.
“Sorry about that,” said DiAndre, apologizing for his slovenly younger sibling.
"It's cool." I said, tugging up my drooping socks before taking off my pants.
I began scraping ice cream from the bottom of my left sock. Then I plopped next to him on the bed while still in my underwear. I nonchalantly said, "So… are we going to take advantage of this situation or not?”
With this knowledge, DiAndre knelt before me and began to remove my socks. He slowly slid them off each foot. He seemed enthralled upon seeing two slender size 10.5 bare feet, strong arches, and long toes. As I said, I have good feet. And despite the fact that they belong to me, I love them myself. Anyway, after tying my hands behind my back with an extension cord and tying my feet together with my belt, this bronze-skin godling began his treatment by apologetically and tenderly kissing the toes I'd banged on the metal stand. He kissed them one by one, soothing away the hurt in a way that made chills race up my spine.
He then used his fingertips to lightly brush over both my bare ticklish soles, scraping from my naked heels to my wriggling toes. Almost instantly the tickling sensation on the bottoms of my bare feet forced me into a wailing fit of laughter. My pleasurable screams filled the house. Glad his mom had left by then. His younger sibling Quon was still in the house and had heard everything, but that’s a story for another day.
Anyhoo, this is how my life was in the 90’s. But I want to take you back BEFORE the college years. Back to the 80’s. Back to where this coming-of-age adventure began.
You see, around forty years ago, the State of California decided I was a logistical problem and punted me—without ceremony, cushioning, or even a warning label—onto the doorstep of a Black couple named the Dickersons. One minute I was at Loving Hands Children’s Home, the next I was standing on a stranger’s porch like a FedEx package nobody remembered ordering.
People love to theorize about transracial fostering. Some folks want to “connect with their heritage.” Some want to “give back.” Some want a kid who looks like them, even if they have to cross three time zones and an ocean to find one. And some—let’s be honest—are just racists with passports.
None of that applied to the Dickersons. They didn’t even know I was white until my caseworker marched me up their walkway like a surprise audit.
Living with them wasn’t the weird part. The neighborhood was. Nobody hated me. Nobody threw slurs. They just… observed me. Like I was a raccoon that wandered into the yard—cute, but possibly rabid. Later I learned why: in that part of the state, white kids placed with Black families were usually the ones nobody else wanted. The “unstable.” The “unmanageable.” The “oh dear god not in my house!” kids.
So when I showed up, everyone assumed I was one of those.
Spoiler: I wasn’t.
Well… not in any way they could diagnose.
The real reason I landed with the Dickersons was simple: Loving Hands (a children’s home) was overcrowded, and the Dickersons had a reputation for being the kind of foster parents the state bragged about in brochures.
And thank God for that, because Loving Hands was a nightmare with a PR team. Politicians called it “state of the art.” I called it “a pretty warehouse for unwanted teenagers.” You can add all the mentoring programs and computer labs you want—if the staff ignores you when you report someone touching you “improperly,” it’s not a home. It’s a holding cell with inspirational posters.
So yeah, despite the racial unknowns, I was relieved to be anywhere else.
Funny thing: anywhere else, I’d have been considered a handsome kid—sandy blond hair, blue/green eyes, the whole “future heartthrob” starter kit. But in that neighborhood? I was nicknamed Casper. Friendly, pale, safe and absolutely not special. It was humbling. Character building. Ego deflating in a way that probably saved me from becoming insufferable.
One lazy Sunday, the house was empty except for me and Isaac Dickerson—my foster father. Tall, strong, handsome, and radiating the kind of calm authority that made you want to sit up straight even when he wasn’t looking.
He was stretched out on the sofa, back toward me, the cable box glowing red like a tiny digital campfire. I wandered in, bored out of my skull, and just… stood there staring at him. I don’t know why. Maybe I was admiring him. Maybe I was waiting for him to wake up. Maybe I was having a small identity crisis. Hard to say.
Then he spoke.
“I can feel you standing there, son. What do you want?”
I nearly levitated. I squeaked something like “Nothing!” and sprinted down the hall in my socks, making panicked skuff skuff skuff noises like a cartoon character fleeing the scene of a crime. Then I sat on my bunk bed listening to my heart try to punch its way out of my chest.
Maybe I was unbalanced
Because honestly? I did some things that were… questionable.
Like the night Isaac left for Dante’s—a bar/pool hall where grown men played bid whist (a card game) and talked trash until sunrise. I followed him. Snuck out. Snuck in. No kid with sense would’ve done that. But I was operating on pure, unfiltered “bad idea energy.”
I grabbed an abandoned glass of something clear—vodka? gin? industrial solvent?—and considered pretending to be a customer. Then panicked and hid in a corner, mentally drafting my own obituary.
Someone spotted me.
I immediately collapsed into a fake unconscious heap, the glass strategically placed nearby like a prop in a low budget crime reenactment. Playing dead while terrified is harder than it looks.
Word traveled fast, and eventually the talk of some sleepy whiteboy in the bar reached my foster dad. Isaac came over, scooped me up, and carried me out like a slumbering toddler. His friend Earnest drove us home while Isaac held me in his lap, stroking my forehead and worrying out loud about how much I’d drank. Joke’s on him—I barely tasted whatever had been in that glass.
Back home, he and Mrs. Dickerson undressed me like a kid who fell asleep in the car and put me to bed with gentle, parental concern.
The next morning, he wasn’t even mad. He just assumed I was one of those clingy foster kids who follow you around like a cocker spaniel. And honestly? He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t even know I was gay yet—I just knew I wanted to be near him. The Dickersons had fostered enough kids to chalk it up to attachment issues.
Looking back, I cringe so hard I could fold in half.
One afternoon, playing football with my foster bros and some neighborhood boys, three big kids tackled me. Hard, but not dangerously. Mrs. Dickerson screamed like I’d been flattened by a truck. And I—being the dramatic little gremlin I was—saw an opportunity.
I went limp. Played unconscious again.
Isaac rushed over, checked me, then carried me inside. Sat on the sofa with me in his lap while his wife hovered like a panicked hummingbird. When she ordered him to put me to bed, he did.
Mr. Dickerson scooped me up like I was made of blown glass and bad decisions — checking my pulse, calling my name, carrying me to the bedroom with the kind of panic usually reserved for toddlers and malfunctioning microwaves. Mrs. Dickerson hovered behind him, flapping around like a mother hen who’d just seen a fox in the yard.
Isaac laid me on the bed, undressed me down to my socks, and when he pulled them off, he wrinkled his nose like my feet had personally offended him.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
It stung in that special way only a thirteen year old can feel stung — like even the smallest part of me had the power to disappoint him. My smelly socks betrayed me. My socks!
That was me back then: a kid who wasn’t broken, but definitely came with missing parts.
A kid who didn’t know how to ask for love, so he faked unconsciousness like it was a part time job.
A kid who didn’t belong anywhere until, somehow, he did.
The thing about the Dickersons is they didn’t treat me like a project. They didn’t hover or interrogate or try to therapize me with pamphlets and soft voices. They just… lived. And by some miracle, being around them made me feel like I was living too.
Did I understand myself?
Absolutely not.
I had the emotional clarity of a fogged up bathroom mirror.
There were nights I’d lie awake on the bottom bunk (my foster bro Donell slept on top until he forced me to switch with him later under the very real threat of a beating), staring at the wooden slats above me like they held the secrets of the universe. The house would breathe around me — the hum of the fridge, the distant traffic, the soft creak of floorboards when someone shifted their weight. I’d think about how easily I could’ve ended up somewhere worse. How easily I could’ve disappeared into Loving Hands’ machinery and never come out.
And then I’d think about Mr. Dickerson.
Not romantically — I didn’t have the vocabulary for that yet. It was more like gravity. He was the first adult who didn’t flinch when I walked into a room. The first man who didn’t look at me like I was a burden or a case file or a walking liability.
He looked at me like I was a kid.
Just a kid.
And that was enough to make me cling to him like he was the last stable Wi Fi signal in a storm.
A few days after the football incident, I found myself hovering in the kitchen doorway while he washed dishes. He didn’t see me at first — he was humming something bluesy, sleeves rolled up, water running over his hands. The late afternoon sun hit him just right, turning the steam into a halo. It was like watching a domestic deity scrub a casserole dish.
I froze, because approaching him felt like interrupting a spell.
He finally noticed me in the reflection of the window.
“You alright, Dave?” he asked, not turning around, just giving me the side eye through the glass like a dad in a sitcom.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what “alright” meant anymore.
He shut off the water, dried his hands, and leaned against the counter. “You don’t have to sneak around the house like you’re waiting to get caught doing something wrong.”
I swallowed. “I’m not sneaking.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you doing?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. My brain had left the chat.
He didn’t push. He never pushed. He just nodded once, slow and patient, like he was giving me permission to exist in the doorway if that’s all I could manage.
My chest tightened in that annoying, emotional way I hated.
Later that week, I overheard him talking to Mrs. Dickerson in the living room. I wasn’t eavesdropping — the walls were thin, and the room I shared with my foster bros was basically a hallway with bunkbeds.
“He’s not troubled,” Mr. Dickerson said. “He’s just… starved.”
“Starved?” she repeated.
“For attention. For safety. For somebody to notice him without expecting him to explode.”
I sat on my bed, staring at my hands like they’d suddenly become fascinating. Something twisted inside me — shame, relief, maybe both doing a tango.
Mrs. Dickerson sighed. “Poor baby.”
“He’s trying,” he said. “You can see it. He’s trying so hard to be good.”
Nobody had ever talked about me like that. Like I was worth effort. Worth patience. Worth anything. I mean, there were people who had taken an interest in me before the Dickersons. But not in a pure, wholesome way if you know what I mean.
I pulled the blanket over my head, not because I was tired, but because I didn’t know what to do with the feeling swelling in my chest like a balloon someone forgot to tie.
The next morning, I woke up early — earlier than everyone else — and wandered into the living room. The house was dim, quiet, still. I sat on the sofa where Mr. Dickerson usually stretched out on Sundays and pressed my palm into the cushion, like maybe some of his steadiness had soaked into the fabric.
I didn’t hear him come in.
“You’re up early,” he said behind me.
I jumped. “Couldn’t sleep.”
He nodded, walked past me, and opened the blinds. Light spilled into the room like warm water.
“You know,” he said, “you don’t have to earn your place here.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to perform. Or pretend. Or follow me around like you’re waiting for me to disappear.” He looked at me with that calm, steady gaze that made me feel both exposed and safe. “You’re here. That’s enough.”
My throat tightened. Words tried to escape but got stuck in traffic.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He just sat on the other end of the sofa, giving me space but not distance.
And for the first time in a long time, I let myself breathe.
Now fast-forward seven years to the 90’s …
Campus was quiet in that late afternoon way — sunlight stretching long across the quad, students drifting like they were on slow motion loan from a music video. I walked in beat-up Nikes, jeans frayed, Nirvana shirt clinging to me like it had abandonment issues. I’d just finished shelving books in the library basement — a job nobody wanted but I liked. It was quiet. Predictable. Safe.
Then I stepped into the student union and saw it.
The bulletin board.
And right in the middle, pinned crookedly with a red thumbtack, was the photo.
My photo.
The one the Dickersons insisted on taking before I left for school. The one I pretended I didn’t care about.
There I was — clean‑shaven, sandy blond hair doing its stubborn 90’s wave, blue/green eyes bright in a way I didn’t recognize anymore. Mr. Dickerson on my right, hand on my shoulder like it belonged there. Mrs. Dickerson on my left, smiling like she’d won something.
Someone had written:
“Proud of you, kid. — I & E”
My throat tightened. I reached out and touched the glossy paper. It was warm from the lights. Familiar in a way that hurt.
I took it back to my room and just stared at it for a while. Then Jordan — my roommate — materialized like a jump scare, snatched the photo, and held it up.
“Dude,” he said. “Is this your family?”
I froze halfway through looking for my right sneaker.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s them.”
He blinked. “Them who?”
“My foster parents.”
He sat down like he needed emotional support furniture. “You never said you were fostered.”
“Doesn’t usually come up between ramen and midterms.”
He stared at the picture, then at me. “So… they adopted you?”
“No. They just didn’t give up on me.”
He frowned. “But you’re—”
“White? Yeah. They noticed.”
He laughed, then stopped when he realized I wasn’t joking. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He studied the photo again. “They look… proud.”
“They are,” I said softly. “More than I deserved back then.”
Jordan looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“It means I was clingy. Weird. Starved for attention. I faked fainting spells. Followed Mr. Dickerson to bars. Played dead during football games because I liked the way he worried.”
Jordan stared at me like I’d confessed to tax fraud.
“Dude,” he said. “You were a kid.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A kid who didn’t know how to ask for anything without making it dramatic.”
He set the photo down gently. “So they kept you.”
“They kept me,” I echoed. “Even when I made it hard.”
He nudged the photo toward me. “You should frame it.”
I shook my head. “I’m not that guy.”
“Maybe you should be,” he said. “They look like they earned a spot on your wall.”
I didn’t answer.
I just picked up the photo, smoothed the crease, and set it on my nightstand.
Not framed.
Not displayed.
Just… closer.
Close enough to see.
Close enough to matter.