Ramé

Anemoia

(n.) nostalgia for a time you've never known

Fuck. Fuck. This isn't how it was supposed to go. He didn't want it to be like this. He just wanted to be normal god damn it. He wanted to take girls on dates. He wanted to ask Hayley to the spring formal. He needed to feel like he wasn't constantly spinning seven plates at a time just so that one would stay spinning. Two if he was lucky. But fucking of course life didn't work like that.

Because Otto was fucking gay.

He was in eighth grade when three weeks into school, a new kid walked shyly up to the directors podium and handed her an orange slip. The bright orange paper yelling out, 'hi! I'm new and scared! Please don't make me introduce myself to these kids!' The paper was enough of a punishment in Otto's opinion. But of course Ms. Douds made him stand right next to her, a fake smile plastered on her face as she had him introduce himself to the class.

And of course Otto remembered this new kid from eighth grade. Because he was the first boy Otto ever liked. With his thick, round glasses, a crooked smile, and his light brown skin, he instantly weaseled his way into Otto's soft spot. Of course, Otto had no clue what he was feeling at first. He'd just assumed that maybe he just really felt the desire to be this kid's friend. The same way he'd felt towards Jawn and Geoff when they'd all met just the year before. But as time went on he realized, no , this was something very different.

About midway through first semester, Otto realized that New Kid liked him. And although Otto felt deep down that he should probably be upset about this fact, maybe even disgusted, he instead found comfort in it. Because suddenly everything made a hell of a lot of sense. Because maybe, just maybe, he liked New Kid too.

So he went home that night and locked himself in his room, ignoring Geoff's IM's and pretending to be asleep when his mom came in to tell him dinner was ready that night. That was pretty much the routine for a week. Go to school, flirt with New Kid, feel like shit as soon as band class ended, bury himself in his school work, go home and pretend he didn't exist. And it worked pretty well for a while. It worked until he cracked open his laptop one night, pulled up a private browsing tab, and looked up am i gay? while silent tears slid down his cheeks.

He fell down a rabbit hole of clickbaity Am I Gay? quizzes and Six Signs You Might Like Boys articles probably written by twenty-something year old gay white guys. He read as many as he could before he could no longer keep his eyes open. It was creeping up on three in the morning and Otto was just getting ready to shut down his computer for the night when something in the related articles section caught his eyes.

How to Tell Your Parents You're Gay (with steps)

Suddenly, he wasn't very tired. He closed the tabs before shutting the laptop laying on his back, thinking. He thought himself pretty progressive for a fourteen year old. And he had to get that from somewhere, right? But he wasn't so sure. He wasn't so sure that his parents would still look him in the eyes after he told them. He wasn't sure Jawn would still want to spend the night. And he certainly wasn't sure he'd ever get to fall in love. He was pretty sure that New Kid was the only other gay person he'd ever met in Houston. At the very least in his school.

New Kid moved a year later, right before December of freshman year and Otto's heart shattered. Even though they were never official, Otto knew there was something between the two. They'd never kissed (Otto had been far too scared for that) but they were constantly hanging out at one of their houses, holding hands, wrapped up in the others arms, talking about absolutely everything. It felt more real than it ever had with any girl Otto had tried to court.