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...
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As soon as Troy was gone I picked up the phone and called Rodney.
"'ello?"
The sound of his voice was already irritating me. "Yeah, it's me. We have things to discuss, as I promised you last night. I need you to come over."
"Look, b'ye, I'm sorry abou' las' night. I didn't think..."
"Yeah, we've already established that you didn't think. Just come over. I want to talk to you."
"Ok, ok, I'll be there in a few."
He hung up, and I started thinking about breakfast. I hadn't eaten anything since the movie. I looked around in the cupboards and decided on Froot Loops. How fitting – I was about to tell one of my only remaining childhood friends that I was gay, and here I was eating Froot Loops. I smiled at this thought: by the end of the day I'd surely be shitting rainbows. About an hour later Rodney knocked on my patio door.
"It's unlocked", I said. He came inside, wearing a worried expression.
"Sit", I said. He hesitated. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hit you or anything. I just want to clarify some things with you."
He sat in the chair by the fireplace, so I sat on the couch and faced him.
"Right, then. I want to start by saying that was a really shitty thing you did last night. All of it. From showing up at my place so late, to asking Troy to drive you to your drug dealer, to making us wait in the car while you smoked weed inside with those kids, it was all shitty. You should have known better to do that."
"Oh, come on! It weren't tha' shitty o' me! Troy didn't seem all tha' mad!"
"Troy was being polite, you dumbass. He didn't know you at all, and hardly knew me. You put him on the spot by asking him to drive you there, and he didn't know how to react, so he took the easy way out and agreed to drive you. And then for you to sit inside and smoke your weed! What the hell were you thinking? That would have been shitty to do to me, an old friend, but to do it to Troy! A person who didn't know you from Adam!"
"Even still, you shouldn'a got so mad. You embarrassed the fuck outta me in fron' o' me pals."
I could feel my temperature rising. "Are you fucking kidding me, Rodney? After all of that, you really think I give a sweet whistler's fuck about what those kids think of you? You want to talk embarrassment? How the fuck do you think you made me look to Troy? He must have thought he'd gotten himself involved with a bunch of lunatics!"
Rodney went on the defensive. "Jesus, b'y, I dunno! 'Oo the 'ell is this Troy, anyhow?"
The time had come. This was it. I gathered my thoughts, took a deep breath to put my anger behind me, and calmly said:
"Troy is my boyfriend, Rodney. Yesterday was our first real date, and you came very close to fucking it up for me."
Rodney looked like somebody had smacked him across the face with a codfish.
