AI Summary
5 min readIn the summer of 2013, a shy eighth-grader named Caden went on a church mission trip to Oklahoma to help clean up after a tornado. His youth pastor paired him with a kid named Andrew, described as loud and chaotic. Caden, who ate lunch alone and kept to himself, was horrified. Within minutes of meeting, Andrew had dumped his clothes everywhere, started doing push-ups on the dorm floor, and found a box of tampons he swung by the string like a lasso. Caden wondered how he was supposed to be a good influence on this kid.
But the moment that changed everything came when they took a break near the van. Caden was sitting with some girls from his youth group when they asked what his roommate was going on about. He looked over and saw Andrew holding court before a group of kids, declaring, "I'm bisexual, I'm bisexual." It was the first time Caden had ever heard someone say those words in real life. "I had this drop in my gut," Caden recalls. He had been questioning his own sexuality for years, taking early 2010s "am I gay" quizzes online and manipulating the answers to say no. In his conservative church environment, being queer was something you stuffed down and buried. But Andrew just said it out loud, to strangers, on a church trip.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:08) **The Setup: A Quiet Kid and a Chaotic Roommate** - Caden introduces himself as a quiet, rule-following eighth grader. His youth pastor pairs him with Andrew, a loud and chaotic kid, for a church mission trip to Oklahoma.
- 2 (06:26) **The Revelation by the Van** - During a break from disaster relief work, Andrew loudly declares to a group of kids that he is bisexual. This is the first time Caden has heard someone say those words in real life.
- 3 (09:12) **Andrew’s Influence: From Fear to Fascination** - Over the course of the trip, Caden begins to emulate Andrew’s boldness, doing push-ups and sneaking into off-limits areas with him.
- 4 (11:02) **Caden’s First Coming Out** - Inspired by Andrew, Caden texts a friend the word “gay” for the first time, using Andrew’s example as a model for his own courage.
- 5 (12:28) **The Unfinished Business: Finding Andrew** - Caden has never been able to thank Andrew directly. He wants to tell him, “Thank you... he just provided like an open field of you can just go and do that.”
- 6 (16:57) **The Search and a Troubling Discovery** - Months later, Caden has found Andrew’s Facebook page, but the profile picture and memes raise red flags.
- 7 (19:56) **A Changed Cultural Climate** - Caden reflects on the shift in social acceptance, noting that being out feels “radical again” compared to the mid-2010s.
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Show Notes
As a kid, Cayden was repressed, quiet, and very much closeted. But on a church mission trip, he met Andrew, who inspired him to come out. Now, as an adult, Cayden wants to know what became of Andrew.
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