I tried to pay attention in class without a whole lot of luck. At one point I caught Rusty Shirazi, the swim team's great Persian backstroke hope, staring at me in a way I didn’t like so I flipped him off when the teacher wasn’t looking. He flinched and bent over his notes. After that class, Rusty caught up to me and asked, “Why’d you do that?” kinda half belligerent and annoyed, half bewildered and hurt.

Righteous, I said, “Look, I know your people don’t like fags, but you could try being a little more subtle about it. This is America.” And I walked away, half-expecting him to follow me and beat me up.

{…snip…}

The bell rang.

Uproar of course, but everybody else must have been paying some kind of attention because they all cleared out before I got stuff loaded into my backpack. Lunchtime, and I needed a piss. I went to the restroom down the hall, did my thing, washed my hands, came out again, started for the stairwell. Somebody grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me, threw me against the wall. Something sharp and hard in my backpack jabbed me in the kidneys, making me yelp.

“Don’t make assumptions about me based on where my family’s from,” growled Rusty Shirazi, his face really close as he held my upper arms with a grip that hurt more than whatever was still poking me. “I have my own reasons for watching you, damn you.”

An hour before I’d been ready for him to come after me, not really scared. I can take care of myself pretty much, I’m pretty big, it’s happened before. Gay guys and girls may be able to get married in Massachusetts but it’s not utopia. But he’d surprised me and I was in pain and he looked crazed, eyes big and his jaw working hard, and the only clear thought in my head was that I’d said something really shitty to him and Right was on his side. “Rusty, I—”

“Shut up!”

I felt a drop of hot spit hit my cheek. Rusty’s crazy eyes got even closer. He kissed me.

Instant boner. Freaking hormones.

They don’t tell you in sex ed (or whatever they call it at your school) that you already know how to make out before you do it the first time. You don’t even have to think about it. I’d had no idea. My big nose got out of the way of his without even trying, my lips clamped right onto his, my tongue fought with his to see which would get into the other’s mouth first. The LOLcats caption would read He haz a flavor. It was tasty!

Rusty moved his hands from my arms to my hips. My hands went to his shoulders and used them to pull me away from the wall, partly to ease the pressure from whatever was poking me in the back but mostly to get closer to him and the thing that was poking me from the other direction. His stubble was thicker and bristlier than mine. (I knew from swim practice he had more hair on his chest too.) It scraped the tender skin around my mouth in a way that was intensely exciting. I wanted it never to stop.

It stopped.

Rusty pulled his head back. The vacuum in my mouth made me gasp. “Shoulda done that a long time ago,” he grunted, his eyes still wide and crazy. Then he let go of me and shrugged my hands off his shoulders and stepped back. “Think about it,” he said, “dickhead.”

And then he’d turned his back and was walking away along the empty corridor. Swaggering a bit. A little hop when he reached down to adjust the stiffie in his pants.