I didn't know what betrayal was until that moment. I
knew what the term meant but I had never felt the
humiliation and rage and sadness that fused to make the
emotion called betrayal. And from that one exposure, I knew
I never wanted to experience it again; it hurt too much.

His words hung in the air. "Are you gay?" How could I
respond? I wanted to lie, to say, "No, I'm not gay. How dare
you call me a faggot?" But I needed to be true to myself
somehow, even then. I couldn't lie. Maybe I should have.

Jason and I at the beach. It's Saturday
afternoon. We are digging sand tunnels. He takes one end, I
take the other and dig towards each other.

"Are you ready to have sex?," I ask. We are 12, maybe
13. In the two years we have known each other, we have
talked about our emerging pubic hair and our voices
changing. We are helping each other through puberty. Jason
is becoming my best friend.

"Yeah, I think I'm ready," Jason says. "Don't you?"

"I don't know," I say. "I just feel different or
something. I don't feel ready." I am looking down at my
arms, my wrists buried under the sand, my fingers clawing
away the gritty sand below.

I want him to ask me why I feel different, what I mean.
I want to crack the door and then I will tell him about the
crush I have on the lifeguard at the YMCA who showers when I
do and how I feel more for Jason than I ever did for
Shana.

He keeps digging and nods his head slightly. He doesn't
ask.

I feel a wiggling in the sand. The last of the sand
falls away and I am holding Jason's hand under the sand
through the tunnel of our creation. He looks up at me and
smiles. I always loved those deep dimples.

I wouldn't have minded if he had asked me
in private. I had even encouraged him to ask me many times,
dropping hints, asking strange questions and leaving other
questions strangely unanswered. What hurt so much, what
caused me to forever lose my friendship with Jason, was that
he asked me in public. He chose this overcast winter day at
lunch time on the playground to ask me if I was gay, the
eighth grade version of the leper.

I looked around the circle Jason and I and our mutual
friends were standing in. I looked into Dan's eyes, Dave's,
Joel's, Adam's. Each pair of eyes looked hostile now that
the question had been asked when before they had been
welcoming, friendly.

"What?," I asked defensively. Everyone knew I had heard.
I was buying the few seconds of time I needed to figure out
how to lie.

Jason and I in the hills behind his house at
dusk. We come back here to escape from parents and chores.
We are walking back after building a small fort in the
woods.

"Have you ever felt attracted to a guy?," I ask. I know
I am opening myself up but I trust Jason. I need to tell
someone, talk to someone, and I believe Jason would be safe.
I was not always as careful about my sexuality as I should
have been.

"Hell, no," he says. I am not expecting him to say
"yes." I am only trying to open the door again.

"You haven't, have you." It is more a statement than a
question. He is telling me, "even if you are, I don't want
to hear about it."

I lie and tell him that, no, I haven't been attracted to
men. I know I can't trust Jason again.

"You heard him," Dave said. David and I
had competed for the past two years for Jason's friendship.
When he said those words to me, I suddenly saw the
conversations he and Jason had when Jason told Dave he
thought I might be gay and how Dave had been surprised but
then smiled because somehow he knew that this, my gayness or
even just my suspected gayness, would be the ultimate
deciding factor that would make Jason chose Dave over me. In
Dave's eyes, there was no surprise, only a vague and bizarre
sense of excitement which seemed to cry out, "Finally, this
is happening and I'm enjoying watching him squirm."

Jason and I on the floor of a room in his
church. We are in sleeping bags. It is early, very early,
just after dawn. We will leave to go camping in an hour.

I roll over and see Jason's sleeping bag is pushed to
the side. The room is hot; his sleeping bag must have fallen
to the side sometime in the night.

I see his nipples, dark against his already dark olive
skin. They rise with his chest as he breathes, slowly,
deeply. I put my hand out above his chest; it hovers less
than an inch above his taught 13 year old skin. I imagine I
am touching him, feeling his chest. I slowly caress the aid
without touching him. I want so deeply to touch him, to let
my hand drop, to wake him, to make love with him.

As my hand reaches his navel, I notice the edge of his
white cotton briefs. I check; he's still breathing slowly,
deeply. I gently pull back the sleeping bag, a millimeter at
a time.

I stop breathing, hold my breath. I can see his penis
now, straining against his underwear. He is hard and larger
than I expected.

I replace the sleeping bag as carefully as I pulled it
back. I lay down next to this boy I don't exactly love but
feel I could love if he gave me the chance.

Jason's eyes softened a little as he
realized how hard Dave was being on me and I think for a
moment he regretted asking me here, in front of all these
guys. For one moment there, our eyes locked and it was just
Jason and me in that circle. He saw the acute pain of the
moment and saw that he had probably been wrong to tell David
and definitely wrong to ask me such a personal questions in
such a public way. He understood for that moment that this
moment would resound throughout my life and define who I
would become. And he was right. It has been 10 years since
the eighth grade yet I still remember it was overcast the
day he asked me under the pine trees.

"Are you gay?," Jason repeated, softer this time. The
question was directed to me personally this time, not the
group as a whole.

I wonder today what would have happened had I said yes.
I wonder if my classmate would have changed or if I would
have been ostracized like I so feared or if I would have
been a courageous symbol of young gay pride. Would I have
been out in high school? Had a boyfriend instead of a
girlfriend in those first, formative sexual years? But I
always know that these are day dreams because now it all
seems so easy to be out. The truth was, there was no safe
way for me to be how I truly was at that age. Saying "yes"
was impossible.

And I wonder, too, what would have happened had I said,
"no" outright, just lied then and there which is what Jason
was probably expecting from me. Would I have closeted myself
to even myself for longer than I did? Would I have dated
women earlier and more diligently than I eventually did?
Would I have survived to tell my coming out story?

I chose a path as random as it was silly. "I'm not even
going to dignify that with a response," I said and walked
off.

My homosexuality was almost completely assured, but I
had left a crack open; I admitted it without having to admit
it. No one ever talked to me about it again but I don't
remember ever being called "faggot" again by those six guys
in the circle.

I never went to Jason's house again. I saw him only in
class until we graduated to senior high. We spoke very
little. I have not seen him since graduation. He is the
first friend who I lost because he was unable to accept me
for completely who I am. I lost him because I am gay.