By my senior year of high school, I began to suspect I’d never date as long as I stayed near home, where everyone knew me only in relation to Mikey. I couldn’t come out, not when we were so close, because it’d cast our friendship into a different light; everyone would nod and say they’d known all along we were queer, when Mikey was as straight as they come. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t score with the ladies—he was a big-ass bully who hung around with me all the time, who salivated whenever a pretty girl walked by, who stared at jiggling boobs and offended women without even trying. I knew I was in a different league—I’d had guys checking me out ever since my balls dropped my freshman year—but as horny as I was, I couldn’t diss Mikey like that. I just couldn’t.
Plus, none of the dudes l
