People loved this author’s story of the day his dad found his NSFW downloads

There can’t be many (any) of us who haven’t suffered that dread teenage moment when a parent confronts us about looking at the odd NSFW picture or two (but we weren’t working, so that’s okay then).

Author Grant Ginder used National Coming Out Day to share his own tale which was very funny, mildly excruciating and entirely relatable for many, many people.

A #NationalComingOutDay thread! When I was 13, I began collecting pictures of hot men that I found on AOL. I kept them on my family's computer, in a file called "downloads" I thought no one looked at, and I labeled them with the one word I knew to describe hot men: beefcake.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) October 11, 2019

I don’t know where I learned the word, but at night when everyone was asleep and I was at the computer I used it heavily: “Beefcake in a speedo,” “beefcake on the beach,” “beefcake standing under a waterfall” (a personal favorite).

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

(The pictures were of a very specific aesthetic that if you were gay and coming of age in the 90s you would immediately recognize: buff, hairless men in red thongs, tanned to the color of Magda from “Something About Mary.” Herb Ritts, but with more grease and less hair gel)

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

(But I digress)

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

ANYWAY. I kept up my beefcake collecting for a good six months until, one day, my dad was driving me to a friend’s house and he turned down the volume on the OBC recording of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat” to tell me he had a question for me.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

I was not happy. I was going through a very intense “Joseph…” phase and was conceiving of an adaption of it to be done in our living room, with the help of the six year old who lived next door. Still, I humored him. I said, “Yes?”

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

We pulled up to a stoplight (I can still remember which one) and, turning to me, he asked “Who’s been downloading all the pictures of the beefcakes?”

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

I froze. I panicked. I thought of water splashing across a set of airbrushed abs.

Looking him straight in the eye, I said, very gravely, “Dad, I think it was Mom.”

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

READER, DR. FREUD, WHOEVER: I BLAMED MY MOTHER. FOR DOWNLOADING PICTURES OF D-LIST FABIOS, WORKING ON CARS IN THONGS.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

“Mom?” he said. “Huh. You think I should talk to her?”

Again: panic. Again: airbrushed abs.

“No–she’d probably be super embarrassed if you did.”

I reached and turned the volume back up on “Go Go Go Joseph” and he let me. The light turned green, and we drove on.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

Flash forward to now: I don’t know if he ever talked to my mom, though I suspect if he did it was so they could have a good laugh. I was very obviously gay (see: productions of “Joseph…” in the living room), and if anything the beefcakes just confirmed their strong suspicions.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

But Mom! Mea culpa! I panicked, and I’m sorry about that! A braver kid would’ve said “fuck it, those beefcakes are MINE.” But alas, I was 13. I wasn’t ready. Coming out is hard, and it’s something that as LGBTQ+ people we have to do every day, in a million different ways.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

So: thank you, Mom, for taking the heat, and thank you Dad, for suppressing your smirk for long enough that I was convinced that you believed me. I am 36 now. I’m out, happy, and in love, and that’s in no small part because of you.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

And there was a lovely PS.

Update: My mother just called. “There was one of a man on a motorcycle,” she said. “You had excellent taste.”

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

And here are our favourite comments it prompted.

Sorry, but you put them in a file labeled DOWNLOADS? Like…where people go to look for stuff they downloaded?

— Elizabeth G. Dunn (@egunnison) 11 October 2019

THIS WAS THE 90s ELIZABETH NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING.

— Grant Ginder (@GrantGinder) 11 October 2019

I did the same but saved them on DISKETTES and hid the diskettes under a drawer in my desk

— Nicholas Hurley (@nickhurley79) 11 October 2019

We had to work for our porn in the 90’s#DialUp #NoOnDemand

— rerunagain2529 (@rerunagain) 12 October 2019

Try the 80s. We’d have to steal playboys or penthouse from dads in the neighborhood or 7-11 if desperate. Beyond that it was squiggly lines on porn tv or the sears catalogue bra ads.

— Jeremy (@JER_77) 12 October 2019

So, like this one? Amiright? #beefcakeonacliff pic.twitter.com/DVzjXKGlXj

— 🦋 (@butterflyrope11) 11 October 2019

Grant Ginder’s books include The People We Hate At The Wedding and Honestly, We Meant Well and you can follow him on Twitter here.

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Source @GrantGinder H/T Indy100 Image Pixabay