I’d always felt different as a kid, the first time I noticed it was at summer camp when I was nine, we’d all ended up playing a game of spin the bottle, when one of the boys there said that if it landed on someone of the same gender you got to spin again. The only emotion I felt was disappointment, not that I voiced it at all. I may not have been able to understand why I was feeling that way, but I certainly understood it wasn’t something to tell others about.

The next time it happened I was twelve, the girls in gym class were all swooning over the latest heartthrob, how he was the hottest man to ever walk the planet, and how they’d kill to be able to kiss him and that clearly his current leading lady was nothing compared to them.  When they asked my opinion, I just agreed with the consensus and hoped I was smiling and nodding in the right parts of the conversation. Did I think he was hot? Not really. Did I get lost in fantasies about kissing him? Again, no. However, did I think the leading lady was hot? Hell yes! Could I get lost in fantasies about kissing her? Yes, yes, I could.                                                                                                                              As with camp a few years earlier I tried to brush these feelings to one side, however unlike then, now it had a name, homosexual.

Was that it? Was I gay? Over the years I heard one or both of my parents mention that there was ‘one of those’ in the neighbourhood. In fact, when I was fifteen, Mom had spent a fortnight heading a protest about one of the librarians being gay, two weeks I had to listen to her badger anyone who’d listen, about how it was unsafe for children to be in a place where a gay man worked, how it was a sin, and goes against the word of God. Naturally, this being the bible belt, the homophobes won the day, and the poor man was virtually run out of town.

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Dinner was going well, no one had insulted anybody, and Mom had stopped glaring in my direction, just desert to go and then I can claim wanting an early night ready for school tomorrow.