Seventh grade was the year when the kids from the two elementary schools in our district all got piled into the Junior High building to begin middle school. It was a transition period for us children into young adulthood. Lockers, school bells, switching classes, and the dreaded “changing out” in gym class all awaited us.

Along with my fear of changing my clothes around my male peers in the locker room, I also began to fear most male interaction. I knew I couldn’t blend in with them, even if I didn’t know I was gay.

If I found myself surrounded by fellow 13-year-old boys, they often began talking about women in an attempt to show off their budding adolescence.

“Dude, I still think Jessica Simpson is the hottest, man,” one of them would say.

“Yeah, I like blondes,” someone else would answer.

“Yeah,” I’d attempt to chime in. “She is. Hot, that is. Um, dude.”

I couldn’t mimic this speech. And when was I supposed to say “dude?” At the beginning or end of a sentence? What did dude even mean, really? I obsessed over male speech patterns, never getting it right, and eventually removing myself from any situations where I would have to employ them.

I’d already begun drifting away from my boy friends by the end of elementary school, and middle school provided the opportunity to make all kinds of new friends. In my case, it was mostly girlfriends. I was safe with the girls, accepted. I didn’t have to wonder if I was coming across straight enough, even though I was still feigning straightness to everyone, including myself. The girls didn’t scrutinize my language.

Riley was one of my first new friends I met in seventh grade. She came from the other elementary school, so I’d never seen her until junior high began. She was very short and had all-natural bleach blond hair that she kept in a bob most of the time, usually pulled back into a ponytail. She was outgoing, popular, funny, and well-liked by everyone. At the young age of 13, she’d been trained in comedy by her domineering older brothers. She referenced Adam Sandler and Dave Chapelle regularly, and she saw humor in everything. She cursed, made lewd jokes, and grew up in a different world than the bubble my mom had created for my sister and me.

Because her older brothers were known as troublemakers and jokesters, Riley came into junior high with a reputation. While not much of a troublemaker herself, she effortlessly lived up to the jokester reputation, and teachers would talk about how she reminded them of her brothers.

I, too, had older siblings that teachers knew of, but I wasn’t like them. I was shy, soft-spoken, eager to disappear into a classroom full of students. I admired Riley’s outspoken nature and felt honored that she’d accepted me into her circle. This wasn’t the kind of person who normally sought me out for friendship.

My fading friendships from elementary school fizzled out. Most of us had naturally moved on to find new friends in our new school.

Riley and I became fast friends and would talk on the phone for hours after school, often three-waying with others. I felt cooler knowing her. Achieving popularity didn’t matter to me, but being accepted by someone like Riley did. Her comedic nature oozed smartness, and I had never been wanted by someone like that before.

At thirteen, I lived in a fantasy world. I knew nothing about life or the world. I was naive and had no clue what was coming in junior high. At that point, the most dramatic thing I’d lived through was when my lunch group was held back in the cafeteria before recess for talking too loud. I didn’t foresee life becoming much more complicated than that in junior high. For one, we no longer had recess.

Riley was more perceptive. She saw the world from a perspective of your average 13-year-old who was willingly transitioning out of childhood. I, meanwhile, clung to it desperately, wanting things to stay happy and simple. Things rarely stay happy and simple for a young gay child in Missouri approaching adolescence.

Near the end of elementary school, rumors had started circulating that I was gay. I didn’t know at the time that I had begun acting differently than the other boys, but word certainly got back to me. Everyone had decided that I was gay, and because I was 12 years old and had no body hair, they’d added in the rumor that I shaved my legs, something the girls in my class had just begun doing. I was not one to fight back at the time, and I feared that acknowledging these rumors in any way would allow them to keep living, so I pretended they didn’t exist and instructed my friends who’d told me about them to do the same.

By the time sixth grade ended, I’d cleaned up my act. I was more aware of the way I spoke and moved my body. Every action was a performance for my peers to convince them of my straightness. Constantly being aware of my mannerisms was exhausting, but it was better than rumors running wild about me being gay. I spoke slower, my voice thankfully deepened, and I got taller and leaner over the summer as I began to grow. My puberty-induced mustache was coming in. My campaign for the Academy Award for Best Straight Male in the 7th Grade was well underway, and I think I was starting to convince people.

That is, until Riley and I became friends.

Riley didn’t beat around the bush. She was used to real straight boys, not ones campaigning for the Oscar. “What, are you gay?” came out of her mouth quickly and easily anytime my acting slipped below Meryl Streep level. I reacted with horror, embarrassment, and anger. “No, I’m not gay,” I would say, outraged at her for saying something so dangerous so flippantly. In elementary school, no one ever said this directly to me, and when I heard the rumors, I ignored them until they went away, as well as avoided the people saying them at all costs. But with Riley, I sought a deeper and deeper friendship. Whether it was approval from a friend that I never thought would be interested in me in the first place, or a desire to prove my straightness to her, I never took Riley’s accusations seriously enough to distance myself from her. In fact, it seemed to pull me closer and closer to her. I knew Riley wouldn’t have cared if I was gay, but I did, and I wanted my cool new friend to like me, especially in the way that I wanted to be perceived: straight. So, if we became close enough, maybe she would have to stop saying those things, because a real friend would never try to out their best friend, would they?

It may not be a shock to hear that I learned they would. Outside of the “Are you gay?” questions I’d get from her on the regular, Riley began testing this idea out loud in groups.

In the seventh grade, the biggest sensation to sweep over our school was email. All my friends and I had Yearbook class during fifth hour. The class consisted of us playing computer games and emailing each other for an hour while the teacher, Mrs. Reeves, pretended that she didn’t know we weren’t diligently working on the yearbook every day. Realizing we could create an email account for free with any name that came to our 13-year-old minds was one of the most life-changing things that could’ve happened for us. We all made accounts and proudly shared the names we’d come up with. Then we’d delete them and make new accounts depending on our mood or current events we’d lived through.

Kade Vincent’s email was greenmachine5050@yahoo.com in honor of his favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics. Chase King’s email was softballkrush@yahoo.com, for the select softball team he played on. Riley’s was fatlard6969@yahoo.com. Riley was a thin girl who ran cross-country but constantly talked about herself as if she was on the cusp of needing bariatric weight loss surgery. Her email was her way of heading off any potential teasing about her body and acknowledging that she was totally cool with it. Cool enough to be irreverent about it.

But still insecure enough about it to shift any discomfort on to me. One day, she loudly proclaimed to the class, “My email password is claysgay. It was the first thing that came to my mind.”

Everyone got a kick out of that, while I sat in bewilderment that my friend would say something like that. My friends in elementary school would never do that. They ignored the gay rumors for me like I asked them to. Riley started them.

“That can’t be your password,” I yelled back. “You have to change it.”

“I’m not changing it,” she’d retort. “It’s my password and it can be anything I want it to be and I want it to be claysgay. Besides, I’ll never forget that. It’s easy to remember. It rhymes and it’s true.”

My classmates ate it up while I seethed. I stopped speaking to Riley. She called me that night and asked what the big deal was. “You are gay, so why does it matter if that’s my password?”

“I’m not gay,” I protested, feeling my face burn.

“Okay, whatever.” She made a joke about how Mrs. Reeves' breath smelled like her dog’s shit after he ate a can of beans and I’d acquiesce, glad to be back to our joking rapport. The scandal blew over.

If Riley wasn’t picking on me directly or in front of a crowd, she’d find ways to make others do it for her. One day in Yearbook class, I was sitting at my desk on the computer playing Cooking Mama 2. Riley’s friend, Katie Velishek came over and tapped me on the shoulder. Katie was my friend, too. She looked nervous.

“Okay, so Riley asked me to ask you something and it’s kind of personal,” she said.

I instantly felt queasy. “Okay. What is it?”

“Well, she wants to know if you’ve ever checked out a girl.”

I reacted with a start.

“I know, I know. But Riley wants to know. Not me.”

I looked across the room where Riley sat with a group of our classmates, watching on and laughing.

I rolled my eyes and looked at Katie, who looked back sympathetically. “Tell her yes,” I said.

“Okay,” Katie said, and turned on her foot to deliver the news. But self–consciousness hit me. “Yes?” Would a straight guy really just say “yes” if they were asked that question? Probably not. That sounded way too rigid. I felt my Oscar slipping out of my fingers.

“Katie, wait!” I called out. She came back.

“Actually, tell her I said yeah. Not yes.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, and left off once again to deliver the news. But suddenly yeah didn’t feel straight enough either.

“Katie, wait!” I said again, bringing her back. A real straight guy would react in defiance to their sexuality being called into question. I needed to go bigger. “Tell her I said hell yeah, not just yeah.”

“Okay.” Katie nodded dutifully and rushed back to Riley before I could think of another way to edit my message into deeper and deeper straightness.

I watched Katie return to Riley’s group and deliver the news. Before her mouth stopped moving, Riley and all her friends erupted into laughter. I felt my face go red. Either they were shocked by the words I had chosen to use because I never used curse words, or they were laughing because my obvious coverup had failed, and the words I’d chosen had made it even more obvious that I was lying.

“You have not checked out a girl, Clay,” Riley called across the room at me.

“Yes, I have,” I said under my breath as I put my headphones back on. Cooking Mama 2 awaited. My restaurant had fallen into chaos.

This became the pattern: Riley would embarrass me at school, call me in the evening, avoid apologizing, crack jokes until I finally laughed, and then we would be back to normal.

Our phone calls weren’t one-sided though. There were many times when Riley would call me crying.

“I’m ugly,” she’d say. “I’m fat.” “I’m going to kill myself.”

I’d protest profusely. “No, you’re not! You’re pretty! Everyone knows you’re beautiful.” “You’re skinny. You run cross-country.” “You can’t kill yourself.”

I always managed to talk her out of her meltdowns. She’d sniff, finally realizing I was right, that life was worth living, that things weren’t as bad they seemed. I’d feel accomplished after. I’d helped my friend. I’d made her feel better, I’d kept her alive on this earth. I’d done a good thing, and now our friendship was deeper. Now we were closer.

And then, like always, we’d joke around with each other and laugh and laugh. We’d sing songs from High School Musical. I’d tell her in-depth details about my book I wanted to write and she marveled at my creativity. I’d ask to copy her homework. She’d tell me jokes about our teachers. We’d cry laughing about how our cross-country coach treated us like Olympic athletes, following us in her car while we ran, honking and yelling at us as loud as she could while we tried to duck off the road and take shortcuts so our runs would be shorter, and we could talk instead. Riley would make up ludicrous stories on the spot to make me laugh when I felt bad about my run times. We’d play video games together and dissolve into a fit of giggles when one of us would mess up in a ridiculous way. No one could make me laugh as hard as her or feel as funny as her. We could joke about anything; all it would take was a glance at each other across the classroom and we could barely hold it in.

But it wasn’t that simple. It was always a back and forth, and the gay jokes were guaranteed to return. It wasn’t just my gayness that she picked on though, it was anything to put me down while others laughed at her quick humor.

I was never as fast as Riley, but the few times I was able to push back against her teasing gave me confidence to try anyway. One day Riley was boasting again about her password being “claysgay.” I felt rage inside me any time she said those words. I never wanted “Clay” and “gay” to ever appear in the same sentence. I didn’t like to hear the word gay at all. It instantly put me on edge because I knew the conversation had a likely chance of heading toward me if that ugly word came about. So, when I heard her say it one time, I responded impromptu.

“You know,” I told her, the words coming out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying, “sometimes I just log in to your email account whenever I want. Since we all know your password.”

Her face changed. “No, you do not.” I could tell she didn’t believe her own words.

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“You can’t do that.”

“Yeah I can,” I said. “Any of us could. You’re always talking about what your password is.”

I’d never logged in to her email account. I had no interest in prying through her emails. But she certainly stopped mentioning her password as much after that. But it didn’t stop her from broaching the subject entirely.

As the school year came closer to an end, my birthday approached. One day after coming home from school, I saw that I had received what was clearly a card in the mail. It was from Riley and addressed to me. The only mail I usually received was a bank statement for my stagnant savings account, so it was exciting to see the bright red envelope. But then I saw that Riley had drawn all around the edges of the envelope, front and back, repeatedly “It’s okay to be gay!” I ripped open the envelope in a fury. Inside was a Christmas card. She’d drawn over the snowman to add Christmas lights around his neck, and written a note, laughing about how the lights accidentally looked like the snowman was strangling himself, but also finding moments to remind me that I was gay and that that was okay.

I threw the card and envelope away immediately, enraged that she would send something to my home that said I was gay, knowing my whole family would likely see it.

Later that evening, I was playing volleyball outside with my sister when my mom came outside holding the torn-up envelope. “Why does this card say, ‘It’s okay to be gay?’”

I felt sick to my stomach instantly. “Why are you going through the trash?”

“I wasn’t going through the trash, it was right there.”

I ignored her.

“Are you gay?”

I reacted in a way that shocked myself: I pushed my mom out of the way. I couldn’t look at her after hearing those words. She must’ve been shocked too because she didn’t say anything. I couldn’t believe Riley. My mom had never said anything about me being gay until this card was delivered to my house. Now my worst nightmare was coming true. “Well, Clay, this card says it’s okay to be gay so I was just wondering if that means you’re gay.”

“I’m NOT!” I yelled back. “And I’m not talking about this.”

That was that.

I called Riley that night, fuming at her for sending me the card. “Why would you do that?”

“Do what? It’s not a big deal. And you are gay.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Whatever. Did you like the snowman?”

And somehow, even then, I let it go. Soon I would be laughing at her, and she’d laugh at something I said, and I’d feel my chest fill with pride for making the funniest person in school laugh.

As we got older, things started to change. In high school, we had cars and drove around, saw movies all the time, and would drive to the next town over to get fast food. We’d rent movies and watch them at home or go exploring in the woods. We’d take pictures making stupid faces on her digital camera and print them out and hang them up. She was still my best friend, and the gay teasing had stopped altogether. In fact, at that point, we were regularly going through periods of having confusing crushes on each other. Riley still loved ragging on me about anything, and I’d started giving it back to her more and more. We would do anything to make the other laugh.

Around this time, we went out for dinner at the local family restaurant in town. We were sitting in a booth waiting for our food, joking about something, when two older men swaggered into the restaurant wearing camouflage and baseball caps, their faces reddened from working outside. They spotted Riley and made a beeline for her.

“Oh god,” she said, and I saw her face drop. She looked around nervously as they approached us. They sidled into our booth, one on her side, one on mine. They both had mischievous grins and were giggling, looking between me and Riley and themselves.

“Well, well, well,” one of them said. “What do we have here? Riley’s on a date?”

My stomach was in knots. These were clearly Riley’s older brothers’ friends. They were the exact type of man I was terrified of: pompous, loudly masculine, and deeply threatening to a kid like me. I was no match for them.

“Riley’s got a boyfriend, huh?” the other one said. “I think we’ll have to tell your brother about this.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Riley said defiantly. She was clearly uncomfortable, too. Then she added, “He’s gay.”

Their eyes lit up. “Oh really? We’ve got a little queer here?” one of them said.

The knots in my stomach tightened. Immediately, I was furious with Riley. I knew instantly that she was trying to take the heat off of herself, but did she have to throw me to the wolves?

“I’m not gay,” I said, glaring at Riley.

“Well, if you’re gay or not, you better be treating this little lady right,” the first guy said. “Are you paying for this meal?”

I knew the only acceptable answer for them was yes, so I said yes, knowing that me and Riley would split the bill like always.

“That’s what I thought,” the other one said. He had his arm around her, and the other one was sitting so close to me that our arms were touching. They hung around for a while longer, getting more jabs in at both me and Riley and regularly wondering aloud what her brother would think about her being on a date. I couldn’t wait for them to leave, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be alone at the table with Riley. How could she say that to these kinds of people, out of anyone? I thought she’d moved on from that. Would we be locked in this cycle forever?

If I could’ve seen beyond my own fear of being gay, I could’ve looked into Riley’s eyes and seen her fear, too. Afraid of not fitting in, not feeling pretty, not feeling safe with an older man’s arm around her. Maybe if I’d understood that then, I could’ve understood what her taunts meant, what my acceptance of them meant: a yearning for belonging and approval, a willingness to do anything to get it, and a desire for vulnerability that we both craved and had no idea how to open ourselves to.