"Will you go out with me?" I heard him say, though he wasn't saying it to me. "Will you go out with me?"  

I heard it replay in my head for the rest of the day, a day that had struck me as good but I had now seen as a lie, a mask just covering the truth; a mockery. There was no point in trying to pretend that it didn't happen, there was no point in me keeping up a smile, a bright face, and act as if it hadn't happened.  

This is why I hate Valentine’s Day.

I had only been sixteen, I had only been a sophomore in high school, and I had only just recently moved to Bellingham, Washington. I had been born in this city; this city secluded, surrounded by giant evergreens like armed guards at the on-ramps, daring anyone to try to leave. It was a town that I had loved throughout my childhood, even though I had moved away at the age of four, and only returned for vacations and holidays, but still, it was only for the figments of my imagination.

Between the time of my moving away at four to my return at sixteen, many things had happened in my life, the most important and prominent being my Coming Out; a journey that had been hard, to say the least. I struggled through high school as the only openly gay person, I became the token fag to many people, the "best friend" to people who thought having me around was trendy and made them unique; that by breathing the air of my presence somehow set them apart and made them a much better person because they could say that they had a "gay friend".

When I moved to Bellingham, Washington, to live with my grandmother I thought how great it would be, that I was returning to this sea-faring town that I had loved, this bohemian Mecca, and how I would surely find people like me and fit in. I was wrong. I felt so alone, my friends three hours away south, in Tacoma Washington, and I up in the north, so close to Canada.

I arrived at Sehome High School, a place that my uncle, my aunt, my mother, and my three cousins had attended; it seemed as if I was fulfilling destiny, a cycle I couldn't escape it even if I had tried. I was caught. In Tacoma, I had attended Curtis High School, a place known for its upper-middle and upper class families, all of new money, people who had birthed children with the same spoiled MTV arrogance as you would expect, but at Sehome it was different. I didn't know how to handle these people - students who had known each other since they had been shitting in their diapers. Kids who were bred with education, bred in a way that made them think that they were superior, many of them living in the old neighborhood of South Hill and in the hills of Edgemoore and Lake Samish, teens in big houses with nice cars. I didn't know how I was going to find my footing.

I spent my time manoeuvring under breezeways, having to come out to people all over again, something that I thought I had finished doing three years before. Many people didn't want to know me, many of them thought I was too different, too out-of-bounds. I had come in and shook their quiet world of secrets that had afforded them and their alcoholic parents quite nicely for decades. 

I had never felt so alone.

There had been a decay in the air on my first day at Sehome, the kind of decay felt in the winter time, when dead leaves carpet concrete and stick to shoes, when fires burn in chimneys, sourcing themselves from dead wood, cut from the towering being that had stood the test of time. Winter is always cold and lonely, it was something that I felt and mirrored perfectly on that first day. I couldn't explain it, but then again I didn't have to; the look on my face said it for me.

Bellingham had always been strangely behind the times, and yet not. It had the look of the 80's blended with the current years and fashions. Boys walked around as if they were part of 80's hair-metal bands, and goth flourished in a very New-Wave kind of way. People listened to top-twenties hits as often as they listened to music from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's. I loved the 80's as much as any gay boy, but to step through what seemed to be time itself, to walk into the past but still teeter on the present was awkward at best.

I had moved down darkened halls as my escort, a senior, showed me the location of all of my classes. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone; things you only see in movies or on television because you have nothing better to do at the moment than to watch it. When I arrived at my biology class for my first period, all I could do was stare back at the faces that stared back at me, trying to figure out my mystery as much as I was trying to figure out theirs. If it wasn't for Amanda I wouldn't have continued to stand on my toes.

Amanda was a girl that I had known since the summer of 1994. I had met her at the local Boys and Girls Club, and now here she was, a friend at my new school that I had never thought I would have; I had come in not knowing anyone, only to find that I had a pal that I had known for years. After class, Amanda introduced me to all of her friends, many, who, like her, would identify as goth; though I didn't. But it was because of this that this tale even exists. Nervously meeting all of her friends and having to come out, I felt sick.  I felt as if I was thirteen again, I felt as if I was having to introduce the real me to people I had known my entire life, like my parents and family all over again.

Standing there, spotlighted with interest, was intense and shook me, I wanted to retreat.  Then suddenly, inexplictly, everything stopped.

His name was Bracken, and he was gorgeous. Goth, but in a very masculine way, there was no black lipstick, cape, or tons of piercings; none of that clutter. He was taller than me by a couple of inches. His face was strong, with nice lips that made an even nicer smile. His skin was tanned, dark eyes lined with black eye-liner, and short black hair which was styled with gel. He had elvish ears that made him cute, and a lean body which, on this day, was clothed in a crushed red velvet shirt with the collar open and a couple of chains around his neck, crisp black pants and black boots, a soft black faux-fur waist-length coat keeping him warm. I couldn't speak when I saw him; I couldn't form words or even thoughts that went beyond him while he shook my hand. I could feel it in my bones - I was hooked.

For days and days, I thought about him.  At lunch I sat next to him, on breaks between classes and after school, I hung out with him. Quickly and violently, he was encompassing my world, taking over my thoughts, and I couldn't escape that, though I wanted to. I couldn't have known the trap laid, the thing that I was falling into, though it was right there, so heavy, so thick that it was suffocating; I didn't want to see it. I couldn't see it.

The ticking of a clock, though mundane and constant, seemed to me to be the most prevalent, for it bridged the moments between my shared space with Bracken.  The clock was the gauge, the ticking, the countdown, all of these things inescapable as I fell further and further into myself and my longing, my addiction. Bracken caused me to unravel more times than I would have liked to admit. When he wouldn't call my house or pick up his own phone I would become sick to my stomach, I would cry, I would feel as if the very thought of my existence was a waste of air. Was it because Bracken existed on another plane? That he was somehow a god? A golden being that illuminated a world that for me was constantly dark and blinding? It was all of these things. Bracken played with makeup and was beautiful, yet no-one questioned his manhood, no-one questioned his level of testosterone, while I was somehow lacking in not wearing make-up or a big fur coat.   

Bracken was everything that I wasn't, everything that I could only hope to strive to be, though I would never get there. Gay boys have a long history with men, men more butch than we are, men who seem to be everything that our own fathers had wanted from us but were disappointed in not getting, and we in turn were shunned by the men who bred us.

"Why are you so sad today?" Bracken asked me once after school. I shook my head. How could I tell him that I was sad because I wanted him, because I loved him, because I thought he was so beautiful and amazing, so sweet and glistening that it hurt? How could I do that and hold my own integrity? I couldn't.

Bracken hadn't bought my denial and decided to walk me home. What can I say about this? What could I have possibly said then? My hands were shaking the entire time, though, if asked, I knew that I would have told him it was from the cold, but he didn't ask and I didn't volunteer.

It was the week of Valentine’s, a holiday that is terrible for gay kids. We're bombarded with images of straight couples, schools do Valentine’s Day ‘grams complete with balloons and chocolates, and they even do compatibility quizzes to find out who in the school would make for a student's perfect mate. These things were everywhere, and as a result, many gay kids ignore the holiday altogether.  That, or we fall into its misery and become reminded of how lonely we are, ten times more lonely than a straight person ever could be. Being gay is a lonesome existence, and high school is the worst of it.