I’m gay.

It took me several years to realise this. What’s more is that I am cursed with the incorrigible shyness. It’s like a being a secret agent and not being allowed to tell anyone that I’m... you know... secret.

I have a crush on a friend. It’s one of those dilemmas. He is someone I have got to know over my younger years and as we’ve grown, our bodies have also grown. During PE, I get to see him out of the sweater and full of the sweat.. hah. How it glistened when we got changed after a few laps around the school playground.

He is tantalising. He would do this thing where he was do a “walk-by” and bite my arm or my shoulder. I would cry in apparent pain but secretly, I loved it. It felt like a forbidden sensual act. Is that weird? I mean it’s pretty weird the whole biting thing.

Anyway, I decided to come out to him via a letter with “read between the lines that I’m suicidal” connotations. He confronted me the next day but being shy I laughed it off. He didn’t bite me ever again.

So that’s my shaky childhood experience. And now I’m walking into this bar on the corner of Chinatown.

It’s got some pretty hunky guys behind the bar and the clientele is mixed. I feel eyes are cross-examining me and so I walk through pretending I know where I am going. After I buy a cider, I find refuge by a table with magazines. I start reading it and seeing all the fun and excitement that I could be having but I’m not. I’m now getting observed by older men who stare at me like vultures do at dead meat. The guys I have interest in are already chatting to guys they are interested in. I’ve run out of reading material and so I take the magazine as research and leave the bar.

The next time I’ll be more prepared.