My Desert Haven (BOYXBOY)

chapter one

Arizona. Ari-fri-kin-zona. Do you know how hot it is in Arizona? In the summer? Well, if you don’t, it’s pretty damn hot, and that’s on a good day. And I had to live there. Not just for a summer either. No. I was moving there. I think we’ve properly established that I wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

Why? Well, the why I was so disgruntled had little to do with the heat and more to do with everything else. Starting with my dad. Maybe I should explain. See, my father (and I use the term loosely) lived there. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. No. How could you possibly dislike someone you’ve never met before? And I mean never.

I grew up with my mom, in Nevada. I think I asked about my father less than twice the whole time I was growing up. When I did, the only thing my mother ever said was that he was a good person, but he couldn’t be with us. She never said why, and if I asked, she said that he just couldn’t. And it was left at that.

But that was okay, because mom and me, we were really happy. She wasn’t one of those moms who questioned every little thing I did. Actually, she didn’t have to because I told her everything. Ours was one of those open relationships that would frighten any normal sixteen-year-old. Whenever my friends realized that I had such an open, honest relationship with my mother, they’d either think it was the coolest thing in the world, or they’d think that I had some sort of birth defect that induced a mama’s boysyndrome.

But I didn’t care what they thought because my mother was my best friend in the whole world. Maybe we got along so well because she had me when she was really young. Sixteen, in fact. I couldn’t really imagine that, because at sixteen, I still had no idea how to change a diaper. Not that there were many diapers around to change. It was just mom and me. And, occasionally my Grandma Alice, she was pretty cool too.

So how did I end up leaving my happy life in Nevada with everyone in the world I had ever loved behind for a hot, unappealing desert and a father I had never even met before? Well, when I was fourteen, mom was diagnosed with cancer. I think that was the hardest thing I’d ever had to hear before. No, scratch that. The hardest was when the doctors said that it was too late to do anything about it. I was in the room when they told her.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to be sitting next to someone when they’re told they’re going to die? If you have, you know that the rush of emotions you feel in that moment, are difficult to explain. But I felt a lot of fear. Fear for my mom. Fear for me.

It was my mom.

I won’t spend hours telling you how much we just cried together while Grandma Alice stood by, trying to pick up the pieces of our broken family. But I will tell you, that my mom became a real trooper. She didn’t give any of us time to be sad. She spent as much time with Grandma Alice and me as she could. And she refused to let me drift away from the small circle of friends I had had since I was still crawling.

But, I did spend more time with mom than I normally would have. And it wasn’t enough time, not if you ask me. But it was time well spent. I think that mom and me got to know each other better over the following two years than we had my whole life. And that’s saying a lot.

When I was fifteen, I finally told her that I was gay. I think I had known for sure since about thirteen when all of my friends were discovering the joys of masturbation and I was discovering the joys of watching my friends masturbate. It wasn’t that hard to figure out I wasn’t into girls when Tiffany Toren showed me her boobs on a dare and I didn’t want anything to do with them, but when Jason Cross asked if I wanted to masturbate together and I saw his erect cock, I was about to come all over myself.

Oh yeah. I had to be gay.

And it scared the crap out of me. I heard all the rumors; gays were perverts, faggots should be castrated and left to die. I’d heard all the good ones. I tried not to be gay. I tried to think about girls. I even tried to kiss one once. Nothing. I liked boys, not girls, and sooner or later I realized that nothing was going to change that.