Queer boys don’t experience real high school; at least, not the kind the straight boys do. The general roughhousing in the locker room is reserved only for the guys who actually require a jockstrap for athletic purposes, not aesthetic ones. The wild parties, the drinking games, and the shoulder slaps are sacred among those who treat guys like guys, which sadly leaves little Josh in the back row of the choir with nothing to do but nudge the erection under his robe. For some, even the gay college life lacks total fulfillment of the masculine kind. Crushing beer cans against one’s forehead isn’t one of the most logical rites of passage, but it is one, dammit!
I would have given anything to ride around the back roads of my small hometown in the pickup truck of the seventeen and stubbly and straight Jason Tessero. We’d toss empty, generic beer cans into the back and say things like, “Hell yeah!” Instead of this type of manly pursuit, I lounged around the speech and debate room practicing my dramatic interpretation of some long forgotten piece of tragic nonsense that would ultimately leave me with nothing more than third place in the tri-county tournament for the hopelessly geeky.
I was bettering myself, or so I thought. I was convinced that while they were tossing the ball back and forth and hanging each other’s underwear from the flagpole, I would make something of my life, something great.
And I did. Really. But I still felt slighted.
What’s a gay boy to do? Where was I to find all things masculine? When could I get my share of the “dude life”? All I seemed to have were my girlfriends, my sisters, and a whole slew of Marys. Where were my buddies, my amigos, my homies? There didn’t seem to be an answer to this, just another question: Why did I care so badly? But since enlightenment wouldn’t come untilmuch later in life, I unconsciously enrolled in gay high school.
