Chapter 2: Another Gay

So until my freshmen year of high school I genuinely thought that I was the only gay person in the entire world. Something was so terribly wrong with me deep inside and I couldn’t control it. I was determined to squash out whatever gay tendencies were in me. No one else in the world was like me and I had to conform to the standards of everyone else.

That was how I lived my life until my Freshmen English class. A woman, who was in her forties or late thirties at least named Mrs. Royce, taught the class. She was nice just a little weird. Anyway, I sat down at a desk near the back of the room and a few seats behind me was a boy named Josh. I noticed Josh looking at me and smiling at me after a couple of minutes and I honestly had no clue what was going on. I was so confused and so I completely ignored him. After a couple more days past I caught him smiling at me again and I smiled back this time. That was when I was sure that there was at least one other queer in this big world.

Josh was and is about as gay as it gets, especially at 14 years old. Josh was on cheerleading squad. In fact he was the only boy on the cheer leading team in our big giant school. And he wasn’t just on the freshmen C squad. He was on the varsity team and was the star performer. It didn’t take even hearing his voice to know that he liked boys.

About four weeks into the semester a girl named Danielle came up to me and asked if I was gay, because her friend wanted to know. I couldn’t speak. It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever said anything about me being gay. That’s when I became totally paranoid that people could tell. After staring at her for what felt like an hour I finally said, “Um, no.” She took that and went back to Josh. Of course neither of them believed me. Josh went on to become a better and better cheerleader and what’s worse, he got HOT. Along with that it turned out he was a gifted artist. You know, hot and artistic aren’t two things I look for in a man of course….

Josh kept smiling at me from across the classroom for the length of his high school career. I could never tell if he had a crush on me or if he was just really nice, but once he finally started talking to me he told me on several occasion that I was cute and really needed to just come out of the closet. I was always so threatened when he brought up the fact that I was gay and I completely shut off and might have even been a dick to him from time to time just so he would leave me alone, even though I developed a crush on him as he continued to get hotter and hotter.

Josh graduated a year early and moved to Texas. I still kind of wonder what would have happened if I said that I was gay that day when Danielle asked me. I don’t think I would have gotten a boyfriend out of it or anything, but maybe an awesome gay friend who could have helped me figure out the whole gay thing as apposed to having three horrible years of high school in a closet.