I’m really not stupid. Despite how much time I spend in la-la land, I really didn’t live my life under a cloud. It did not take me fifteen and a half years to realize I was gay.

I did not wake up one morning and say to myself, “Gee whiz, I think I’m a fag.” Like I’ve said, it was something that had come on slowly for years in little whispers at the back of my mind. Only I had refused to believe them. Denial—each and every day, every time I laid eyes on another boy or on a girl, I denied the thoughts and feelings that arose in my mind. Of course I wasn’t gay—come on, how could I be? After all, this was me. I was masculine and athletic—definitely no girly fairy with makeup and a purse. As far as I knew, I wasn’t even flamey. I couldn’t believe it—I absolutely did not want to believe it. However, deep down, out of reach of my logic and emotion, I had known and believed it for months.

But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

I didn’t want to be gay.

It made me sick. I was ashamed—I felt like such a disgusting freak. Nature intended for male and female to be together. Why didn’t my body understand that? I was male—that meant I was supposed to be attracted to females. It was one of the simplest aspects to life; it was what made life go on and reproduce and all that. It was so simple, so obvious—if people were meant to be homosexual the species would have died off after the first generation. Everyone else seemed to know that. Every other man I knew liked women, and every woman I knew liked men. I didn’t know any homosexuals and never had. Even on TV, the actors who played homosexuals were straight. In my small universe, freaks like that only existed in insults: Pete calling me a faggot for wearing a pink shirt, one of the popular girls screaming down the hallway “Marguerite is a DIKE!”

So maybe I was the only one like this in the world.

It sure felt that way.

“You seem quiet tonight, Arik,” my mother said at dinner a few nights later. “Something bothering you?”

“No,” I lied.

I couldn’t meet their eyes.

“Hey, man, you okay? You’re not yourself today,” Roger noted at school.

“Leave me alone.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. Everything, I thought.

Obviously I couldn’t tell anyone that I thought I was gay. It was such a hideous flaw I feared that even my own parents would shun me. We’d never discussed homosexuality in our family because, surely, that didn’t really exist, and no one in our family was that weird anyway. But I had heard my father refer to other people as ‘fags.’ Surely he’d hate me if he knew. Worse, he’d be disappointed and disgusted that his son would never be a real man. How could he tell his friends and fellow pilots that his oldest son was queer? And what kind of fairy ever piloted an airship? My mother would be heartbroken because I’d never get married and raise the family she dreamed for me.

I wondered if they would disown me if they knew.

Telling the people at school would only be suicide. The moment word got out, the entire school would turn against me—after all, everyone hates fags. The soccer team would kick me out—who wants a queer in the lockerrom? He probably stares, the freak. The horndog brigade would physically attack me; they would have no qualms about killing me. I would be the laughingstock of the school, and I would stand out like I had a rainbow painted on my forehead. If I told my family, they’d break my heart, but if I told my peers, they’d break my neck.

How on earth could I even dream of telling Roger?

And yet, my only consolation was the actual source of my problems: Roger O’Donnell himself. Being with him was what had made me realize I was gay. Whenever I was around him, it thundered in my head and in my chest, and I couldn’t deny it. It was terrifying to be friends with him, because I couldn’t ignore how gorgeous I thought he was, and how he made my heart race whenever he looked at me.

And yet, it was also wonderful. When I was with him, it almost made things okay.

Because, after all, I loved him.

I did, I truly did. I was leery about using that word, that concrete four-letter word, as I am not one to throw it around lightly. Love was what my parents felt for each other. Surely what I had what ‘like’. It was only a crush after all, right?

Gradually, though, I realized this was no fickle crush. I’d been romantically attracted to him for almost two years now, and there was no one else who even remotely challenged that. I thought of him constantly, and even the echo of his voice or a whiff of his scent lit my heart aglow like a midwinter woodstove. When he was upset, I was upset; when he was happy, I was happy for him. I truly cared about his well-being, and I worried about him when he was in trouble or seemed sad. When I was feeling horrible, I only had to hear his voice or see his smile to turn my frown upside down. I daydreamed of him everyday, my hands itching to touch his, my arms aching to wrap around him.

No, what I felt for him was true. I was in love, and I couldn’t call it anything else.

However, that was why I couldn’t tell him. If I told him how much I loved him he’d surely throw a fit. He’d be horrified and grossed out. I could hear him, in my head, screaming, “How could you do this to me, you friggin’ queer?! All this time I thought you were my friend, but no, you’re just some horny fanboy!” And he wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore, and he’d leave me. Maybe he’d even beat me up.

I couldn’t handle that. If I lost Roger, what would I have?

Not that he was particularly homophobic, though. He was admirable about things like that—he wasn’t racist or sexist, and I’d never heard him call anyone a ‘faggot’. However, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be creeped out to realize that his best friend, the one he trusted his soul to, had a gross obsession with him. Heck, a dishonest friend of Marguerite’s had found out that she “really, really, REALLY” liked me and had spread it around the school like the pox, and even that had unnerved me—and that was hetero (and also pretty obvious.)

I was lost.

Sometimes I wondered if maybe I wasn’t gay after all. Maybe it was all in my head. Or maybe I was bisexual. That wouldn’t be so bad, right? At least then I’d be half-normal. I could get myself a girlfriend and suppress my attraction to guys, and no one would have to know.

But of course I didn’t like girls, and I wasn’t bisexual. Fate isn’t particularly helpful to my pitiful life. No, Fate seemed to think it was hysterical to make me hate myself. It was doing a good job at it, too. I agreed; I also thought I was a putrid freak.

I think it was towards the end of tenth grade that my self-hatred truly began. I didn’t want this insecurity and loneliness. I wanted to be like everyone else, so seemingly carefree and sure of themselves. I hated feeling so different: feeling black when everyone else was white. I was disgusting, but there was nothing I could do to change it, and lying to myself didn’t help anything.

I liked to go jogging to keep in shape for soccer. I was a good runner, and I often jogged the five miles or so to Roger’s house, or the few miles to and from the boatyard. Sometimes I would even run the beach (we lived by the ocean) and my feet would pound the sand and the sweat would bead on my body and roll off with the salt and grit, and it would be just me and my rasping breath and the crashing waves—all thoughts suppressed. I’d speed up, and it’d hurt, but physical pain was so much easier to deal with than emotional pain. I would concentrate on the pain, and on breathing, and on keeping my legs moving. I’d speed up, try to go faster, try to go faster, faster!—try to outrun myself, try to pull my soul out of my body, try to escape—

But I had to stop eventually. I couldn’t run forever, and sooner or later I’d fall to my knees and choke for air.

You can’t outrun yourself.

Chapter Twelve...