Two young men in Guyana

Image taken from Smithsonian Magazine

Last week two men chatted with me. One is 25, the other a week short of 25. Both are Guyanese. Both are law abiding, sensible, ambitious men. Both are gay. I want to write about them to honour them but I hate that I have to use Letters which are not their names to do so. So I will call one H, and the other one P.
H lives on the East Coast of Demerara. Almost every day since the beginning of this year, H has been sending me nice messages.. pleasant good mornings on Facebook, and the kind of things. H on his Facebook posts is always positive. I chatted with H. He told me he had met me a long time ago at the SASOD Film Festival. P I had met a few years ago but know slightly. P is ambitious, self made man but I never heard his story until last week. He too has always struck me as positive and working on his goals.
H is Black. P is Indian.
H has been studying and working, since high school. He has been open to different kinds of jobs. He saves his money and is planning for the future, to go to University. P, I never knew this , has been living more or less on his own and has also been working and studying. He has achieved academically what many others have not.
H lives with his mother and his sibling. I met H face to face and while we were talking H received a phone call. It was his mother. H said his mother always checks in on him, but says this in a nice kind of way in that it is not a problem. H has not told his mother anything about himself. Another relative knows. H intends to live in Guyana, he says he will not get married to a woman, but once he has all his goals met, he will think of adopting a child. It is no big deal. He is not too bothered about relationships.. he does not want to get his heart broken. H is careful about who he hangs out with. His workplace he told me has a non-discrimination policy so he feels comfortable there even though he is not out.
P , in the conversation I had with him, revealed that he has been on his own since High school. He is working on his relationship with his mother. P loves his mother but his mother is not supportive or does not understand what being gay is about. P lived outside of Guyana and wants to come back. His primary motivation for coming back is to look after his mother and to build a relationship with her. He also feels after living outside, that unlike many others, and he wants to be himself in an authentic way as possible. He understands that to have a gay relationship would need a supportive environment.
I have no idea why I have to write about these conversations which are just points in time - 25 years old is on my mind because our Ramayana Gole is 25 this year as well. I sat down in the First Assembly of God Church on Sunday morning and thought of these guys, and all other LGBT young people I know whose 'gay militant agenda' is about studying, family and contemplating building a kind of life which many others want to do. I remember the other 25 year olds one who decided to get married to a woman as his religion dictated and who might be a success story for some of the ex-gay preachers.
H and P and the thousands of other 25 year old LGBT people in Guyana and the Caribbean have their lives ahead of them as P told me at the end of his conversation. When the National Assembly later on hears about how gay people are child molesters and are evil and so on, that the stories of people like H and P are told.