But of course, that’s hardly the focus of this message. As is painfully obvious to me now, and was painfully obvious to all who read this letter, the only appropriate response to this disaster of a message is “OK, so you’re absolutely madly in love with Kellan and clearly want him to fuck babies into you.” O. J. Simpson could have written a more convincing denial than this. Birds could have picked up the hints I was dropping. I mean, c’mon! I barely made it two hundred words before bringing his ass into it! It doesn’t get any gayer than that.

And so, I replaced one thinly veiled secret for another, and After Gay life began in much the same denial that Before Gay life had ended.

It didn’t take long into our senior year for my obsession to reach its inevitable climax. One night, we went out drinking. We came back. I pretended to pass out in his bedroom. He yelled at me to leave. I turned it into a whole thing about how he clearly didn’t want to be my friend anymore because he had a girlfriend and because I was gay, and if that’s how he was gonna act, then maybe we should just break up. And I dramatically unfriended him on Facebook for one last time and sent him an e-mail the next day saying it was probably best that we just didn’t see each other again.

It was silly and dumb, I know, but when you finally release the gay feelings you’ve been bottling up for twenty years, a few other emotions are bound to come pouring out with the rest. It’s a lot like using a plunger to get a hairbrush from the toilet hole. Sure, you’ll get your hairbrush back, but that thing’s gonna bring some shit back with it. And I wouldn’t exactly use it to brush your hair.

Kellan was my first true love, and I regret that the gay demon inside me ruined it all. I’m thankful, in many ways, that I learned enough about myself to know I needed to come out sooner rather than later, that being openly gay was not only an inevitability, but a wonderful thing, that I would not only come out of the closet, but come out of my shell and find my true voice.