Follow Carmen, a young and deeply closeted gay teenager as he navigates the 1980's and 1990's yearning for love and trying to find where he fits in.
This story is rated M because it contains elements of death (including children), homophobia, religi...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
After the loss of Aiden's friendship the summer of 1985 started out very lonely. Ian, Danny and Alex had started to find their own way with the girls, and I was not really interested in making new friends. I was starting into a depression over both the loss of Aiden and the prospect of facing the future. Carman's advice was very good and I will forever be thankful for it, but the problem with good advice is that it's not always what you want to hear. Because of this I was becoming more and more withdrawn, not really showing any interest in hanging around friends. In retrospect I'm sure that I drove the guys away because I certainly would not have been any fun to be with, but back then I just saw them going off with their girlfriends and I was bitter and jealous. The only two things I was interested in were fishing and collecting beer bottles – at least those were the only things I could tell anyone about.
One day while scouting around the woods for bottles I came across another young fellow by the name of Colin. He was a year older than me, shorter and a lot thinner, and had short brown hair. He was also fairly attractive. Colin was there collecting bottles too, so rather than compete against each other we decided to pool our resources. As we worked together I asked him about himself since I'd never seen him before. He lived a few streets over from me and had gone to a different elementary school, which explained my never noticing him before. He lived with his mother, father, and younger brother.
We scavenged the entire woods for bottles, and once we were satisfied that we had found every one we took them to the bottle truck to cash them in, split the money, and went our separate ways.
A few days later I decided to hit the woods again after my brother told me some teens were drinking the day before, and when I got there I once again stumbled across Colin, so we pooled our efforts again and got to know each other a little better. After we cashed in our bottles we started to part ways again, when Colin said "What are you doing now?"
I said "Probably gonna go fishing", which was true. If I was outside I was either collecting bottles or fishing.
Colin said "Cool, I love fishing. Mind if I come too?"
I shrugged my shoulders and said "Sure".
"Cool, I'll go get my stuff and meet you back at the lake." With that he took off.
I did not realize it at the time, but this would be the beginning of a very strange and troubled friendship.
Character Profile: Colin
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
