Sexual tension

I’m 14 years old, hunched over my notebook in class, writing your name over and over. I wrote it in circles, in the corners, in the margins, in between words and notes, sentences, quotes from Shakespeare; all of the things I want to remember.

I want to remember you. You’re a boy. You’re a boy four years older than me. You have a beautiful face and the sexiest body I’ve ever seen. I’m obsessed with you. I want to make love to you. I want to make you happy. And I want you to know.

Nobody seems to care, though. I don’t know why, but nobody wants me to like you. Everybody wants me to forget about you. I have this awful voice inside my head telling me it’s not right, but this gut-wrenching feeling in my heart says that it is. There’s a battle waging inside me.

You look at me every once and a while. You give me false hope, but something inside of me makes me think you might be like me because I hear rumors. I’m trying so desperately to find something to hold onto. Why can’t I find that in you?

I take baths instead of showers. Metaphorically submerged in my own thoughts about a boy. I’m scared of what I might do. I wonder how desperate I can get. I want you so bad that it hurts. I wake up in a sweat. I wake up in heat on the floor, sheets tangled and sticky around my legs.

Something is telling me to tell you. Something is dragging me so dangerously close to the edge. Something wants me to tell you that my name is Collin Maier and I’m gay. I’m sorry if that offends you, and I’m sorry if that breaks your heart. I’m gay. I’m sorry if God thinks that’s wrong. I’m sorry if I don’t appear to care.

No one will listen. No one knows, but I have to tell you. Fourteen years old, hunched over a typewriter in pain and sexual anguish, I write the passion and lust I feel for you. I write to my boy of consequence and crescendo, about love, sex, my body against his, sweat, things in the night only reminiscent of the glisten on his bare skin, lying steadily next to mine.

I’m gay. I scream it inside of me. I’m gay. Talk to me. Tell me that you love me because I love you.

I’ll write this letter, and I’ll never send it. Or worse, I will, and my parents will dump me into therapy sessions. I’ll spend a summer painting the porch and spend the rest of my life getting over you. And every time I think of you, I’ll feel sick to my stomach.