When I was nine, I had a crush on one of my classmates, but never told him. Actually I had a few crushes in grade school. Never on my friends though. It was always some kid I really didn’t know all that well and was a little too scared to get to know. I guess I was too young to put much mental energy into wondering what that was all about—or maybe I did kinda know but chose not to think about it.

When I was twelve, I would sometimes get a hard-on in the locker room. I was good at hiding it though. No one ever noticed, or if they did, they didn’t say.

When I was thirteen, I started to get the full picture. I liked guys, which meant I was probably gay. And if I wanted to be like all my friends, I had to pass for straight. It wasn’t too hard because I was the kind of masculine gay guy that the previous version of me was too ignorant to know existed. The hetero me thought that being gay meant you acted a certain way and talked a certain way—and since there was plenty of ignorance to go around, I was able to pass for straight all these years—and I naïvely thought that if I pretended long enough, it would become real. That the gayness was just a phase that would go away.

But of course it didn’t.

When I was in ninth grade, I made out with a friend the night before he moved away. I think we both felt safe going for it, because if it went wrong, we’d never see each other again anyway. He couldn’t out me, and I couldn’t out him. We wouldn’t have to look at each other in the hallway every day. So by fifteen years old, I was feverishly furnishing that closet I’d be in for the rest of high school.

Then in junior year, Paul started tutoring me in math. After we got to know each other, he took a chance and told me he was gay over a particularly difficult algebra problem. I told him I was cool with that, and we went on to solve the equation. Two weeks later I confided in him that I was, too, and the rest was history. I think he was closer to being out than I was, but he wasn’t there yet. Actually, I think he might have come out if it hadn’t been for me. I didn’t want him to be, because it might out me, too. I know that was selfish. I’m not proud of it. Even though I’m brave in some ways, there are other ways that I’m not. And being an openly gay athlete requires the kind of bravery I didn’t have.