One of the boys the teaser whose homework you do says, You know you cool, you really cool is just… He never finishes the sentence and you never ask him to, but you live in the ellipsis for seven months wishing more than anything that he told you what was wrong so you could fix it.

Dig in the dirt. Find the place where you lost your daydream of grown men. Where a new voice tells you that love is not conditional, something you’ve always assumed by never thinking about it. Who thinks of words with four syllables?

There were people in church who knew things that would horrify your mother. There were people in church who ate sin, absorbed crimes against bodies some of which were illegal, some immoral, some just scary. And there you were, surprised that church of all places was where you found a space for darkness.

…even in the midst of an Ex-British Colonial School For Boys you could watch an episode of Square Pegs and feel as if your life was exposed, and wasn’t the band in that last episode, Devo? Devo, short for devolution but you didn’t know that yet, only that God lived in the radio or at least something that saves the lives of rudderless boys who went to high school to die a little each day.

Hey y’all, he said, sidestepped the ear and went straight for the heart.

There is a particular kind of faggot that runs to the church. Self-hate, self-love, self-help. Could you be Gay? No! It is not God’s Plan! Never trust feelings, trust fate, no, FAITH…