She sleeps so peacefully. It is good to see the lines of worry leave her face, even if it's only while she sleeps.

She really is beautiful. I know that intellectually. But I can never feel it in the intrinsic way that it's expected to be.

I stay up late doing a crossword puzzle as she rests. I know it will never work between us. I love her so much. She loves me. But we will never make it. I am gay.

I met Kristine when I was 15 years old. She was 21. We worked together in a movie theatre in my home town.

After working together for a year and a half, Kris decided that she would go out with me. She began to pursue me romantically, with the same diligence a predator would employ to hunt its prey.

I had come out to myself six months earlier. Yet even with the knowledge that I wanted to have sex with men, I allowed myself to try going out with Kris. What was the harm in sleeping with a woman? Having sex with a woman -- this is what adults did. This was normal.

We are on the movie theatre stage. The building is closed and no one is around. Just one horny 16 year old gay male and a 21 year old heterosexual female.

She touches me, whispers to me, makes me feel so good, makes me feel so attractive, makes me feel so normal. I am swept away on a hormone tide and before I know what has happened, I have passed that sacrosanct right of manhood. I have lost my Virginity to a woman.

I find it so difficult to explain my physical relationship with Kris. My gay friends never understand how I could have sex with a woman (ehw! FISH!). My heterosexual friends can't understand why I strayed from their path. I am constantly asked, "Aren't you bi-sexual?" But I do not fit in any of these categories.

Sex with Kris wasn't about lust or attraction or "getting off." Sex with Kris was synonymous with intimacy. Sex was a way to get close to her, to be bonded to her. It was not an expression of bisexuality. Instead, it was a very intimate moment that I could share with a person that I loved. And that person happened to be a woman.

"I am gay."

"What?"

"I am gay." We are both crying.

"I knew it was too good to be true," she says. "I knew you were too nice. God, why didn't I see it? Of course you're gay." We have been going out for six weeks. I find the courage to tell her on this October night.

"I don't know what this is going to do to our relationship. You're gay. But let me just tell you, Peter: I love you."

The night I told her that I was gay, she told me that she loved me. We both started a lie at that point, a myth that we would sustain for the next two and a half years. The myth was that I could and would love Kris forever, and the thoughts that I had towards men I could keep away because we loved each other (and goddamnit, why can't I just be happy and normal with my girlfriend? Please, oh please, let me be anything, let me be blind, let me be deaf, but please don't let me be GAY!)

I am fatigued. School, work, people, customers, teachers -- everyone has ground my nerves to a mushy pulp.

I get home. Sleep is my only concern, my haven.

There is a note on my door. Kristine has left me a riddle. I smile broadly because she knows me too well.

She has designed a scavenger hunt for me. Each clue leads me to a small but meaningful blue present. Under my pillow are two blue pens. In a dresser drawer is a silly blue flower. She knows that my favorite color is blue and that today I have the "blues."

The clues lead me to the bathroom. There she is. She has drawn me a steaming bubble bath - blue, of course.

The strength of my love for her scares me. I know that I will never have the strength to break up with her, even though I am gay. She will have to be the one to call it off. Someday.

Kris and I loved each other so much because we were so good to each other. Our intimacy was suffocating. The cutest, most "together" couple would not have been able to compete with our closeness. Any sentence I might start, she could finish. It was always KrisandPeter.

"You never loved me."

"Bullshit! Come out here." I am seeing red for the first time in my life. We are breaking up. These are our worst days. Nerves are spider-web thin.

"You never loved me. Don't lie and tell me you did," she screams through the barricaded bathroom door.

I am livid. I am out of control. She can't take my feelings away from me. I did love her. It's my fault, all my fault that I am gay, that we will never be married, that we are breaking up. But she can't take this away from me. It is my love to feel for her. This is too important, too strong.

I storm the kitchen and grab a plate. My vision has become red around the edges, forming a tunnel ahead. I throw the plate at the door, which she stands behind sobbing. I throw the plate in rage, in frustration, in fury that I am gay, in the injustice that Kris will never be mine, will never be enough to satisfy my desire. I throw the plate wishing that it will destroy everything.

It doesn't work. The plate doesn't even break.

The breaking point for us was a kiss. While in her home town she kissed one of her ex-boyfriends. We both knew it was over. Our intimacy, our connection was broken. It was now Kris and Peter.

I don't blame her for kissing James. With him she found an all important mutual, unconditional desire. With James she found heterosexuality. With James she could be everything he needed.

We are on the hotel room floor. The room is quiet; we are not. Just one 19 year old gay male and a 22 year old gay male.

He lays me down on the bed, whispers to me, makes me feel so good, makes me feel so attractive, makes me feel so cared for. I am swept away on a wave of desire and as I remember and follow every sensual movement, I have passed that sacred right of Coming Out. I have (finally) lost my virginity to a man.

I met Scott at the March on Washington. The sex was everything I wished it would be -- intimate, satisfying, natural. I had high expectations and even those were surpassed. Unlike sex with Kris, this is what I was supposed to do. I knew that now. This, finally, was desire.

Scott gave me my sexuality. Before I slept with him, I had an amorphous concept that I was gay. After we had sex, I knew why I was gay. I knew why I wanted to be held by him, I knew what I liked, what I needed from a relationship and from sex. I understood for the first time just how much I needed to be gay, just how much I needed another man to be there for me in a way that I had never experienced before. He showed me that I did not have to be ashamed. He showed me that after all the pain, this is what being gay is all about. This is what we are fighting for. We marched that day for our right to not be ashamed of our intimacy. We marched that day for ScottandPeter.