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summer was sit in your room alone. If you were gay, you could tell your mother!”
    Teri always talked about herself in the third person when she addressed me in any serious way.
    David , your mother wants you to read this sexuality book for preteens .
    David , your mother wants you to be open-minded at the metaphysics workshop today .
    David , your mother is going to pee her pants if we don’t find a gas station .
    â€œDavid, listen to your mother,” she insisted, gripping my hand tightly. “I would understand if you were a homosexual.”
    Ho-mo-sex-u-al . It’s a weirdly clinical word, like something you hear in chemistry class to describe a type of combustion.
    â€œYou’ll be fifteen soon! You’re becoming a man and you’ll have needs,” she explained. “Your mother wants you to be secure in those desires and . . .”
    â€œI’m NOT gay, Mom!”
    â€œBut being gay is perfectly okay! I’d much rather that than a son who was a pervert or schizophrenic like on one of those Lifetime movies your mother watches. Or a pedophile clown! Now that would be awful, honey.”
    My mother had always thought herself an amateur forensics expert. Her bookshelves were packed with a mix of PreciousMoments angels and Charles Manson biographies. It was an odd collision of interests, but that was Teri: a forty-year-old maternity-store manager who’d rather be dusting for fingerprints over the corpse of a partially cannibalized stripper.
    â€œYou could be a sex-freak murderer like Ted Bundy,” she continued. “Granted, he was handsome, but he was a maniac-rapist!”
    â€œMOM! I’m not a rapist!” I huffed as we pulled through the drop-off circle in front of Gunther High.
    â€œBut your mother would love you even then. Even if you had multiple personalities like Sally Field in Sybil ! We’d make the best of it,” she assured me. “It would almost be like I had more children !”
    â€œI don’t have a split personality!” I said as I slammed the car door. “And I’m not gay!”
    By the time fifth-period gym class rolled around, I had never been more sure that I was gay. Eleventh- and twelfth-graders were like fully grown men. They shaved and sweat and layered thick streaks of deodorant onto their hairy armpits. Those ten minutes in the locker room after gym class were the single most nerve-racking part of my first day at Gunther High.
    The entire campus was covered in boys who, although they were only a few years older than me, looked like college kids. In the courtyard they roamed in packs, wearing tight jeans and laughing in deep, manly voices. In the cafeteria they gave each other tight, one-armed hugs and threw around the word pussy like it was their profession. In the parking lot after school they sat smoking cigarettes while bouncing giggling girlfriends on their laps. As I walked home through the athletic field, I saw them at football practice. Ablack-haired Mexican boy in a sweat-drenched T-shirt was helping a small, stout blond boy up after a particularly rough tackle. “It’s cool, brah,” he replied as they slapped each other’s asses.
    Was this a cruel joke? I thought, watching them grunt and hustle across the field.
    I got home at four o’clock feeling like my heart was going to pump out of my chest. My breath was shallow, and my stomach felt like a pincushion full of tacks. How was I going to do this for four years?
    All the careful planning and structure I’d established for myself in middle school wouldn’t work in high school. It was going to be tough, and I needed a new game plan. So I developed a locker-room manifesto.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  1. Avoid any boy-on-boy interaction.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  2. Keep a towel nearby for coverage at all