Rafe: „Please tell me, my mother hasn’t given me a book on how to properly suck a guy. But of couse, she had.“

Claire Olivia: „But that’s awesome, Shay Shay. Maybe you can send her pictures one day!“

— Rafe about his embarassingly tolerant mother

Always being in the spotlight, filmed by his father with his cell phone camera at every turn like a celebrity, and everybody takes him for “the gay”, but nobody just for the person he is. Taking a shower after gym class is odd, all the people are considerate of him, when they say something that could be considered offensive, and expect Rafe to borrow the cliché. To be just like the others, is, despite the openness and acceptance in Rafe’s hometown Boulder, impossible for him on these grounds.

Foremost, the novel has a strong message to LGBT* people: Tolerance and acceptance is not enough, as long as everybody sees one as different. We only want to be equal. Coming out is still necessary for many—since others still attempt to assume one’s sexual orientation due to heteronormativity and pigeonhole them.

The idea behind the plot is without a doubt good, but after half of the novel, the plot turns into a run-of-the-mill LGBT* coming of age novel, that tells the nth “crush on the best friend” and “is the love interest straight” story. That’s everything but new. For the most part of the plot, it’s not important that Rafe already came out in Boulder. That takes a bit away from the idea of the plot to work opposite of other LGBT* novels.

»[...] It was more like: I could eat chocolate ice cream just as well but I like strawberry better. I should tell my parents so that they stop buying chocolate ice cream.«

— Rafe's metaphor about coming out

Rafe says, one comes out to find a boyfriend. That contradicts his ice cream metaphor. When he meets Clay, everything runs like a clockwork and Rafe acquiesces that as if that’s just what you do, and it was only logical to date Clay. That seems to be quite unemotional, more objective, but not averted. He says, people would stare less, or he would care less if they did, when he had a boyfriend. But these two things are not really linked.

There are sections in the novel, that—if one were nitpicky—are offensive, even if one wouldn’t expect that from people in that particular scene:

»Rafe, you are not a faggot.«

— Rafe's dad, after Rafe was molested homophobically and Rafe was on the verge to bandy blows

Isn’t it discriminating, to assume, that faggots are something bad while gays are not, since the former is meant to be an insult and the latter as a rectification?

Then, to cheer him up, his father tells him, how great he is. Don’t get me wrong: It’s good to reaffirm to your child that it’s a great person the way they are, and you love them no matter what. But I don’t think, this was the right place and time. I would have liked his father to react by telling him that he doesn’t have to lose his temper and get involved in a fight.

Rafe thanks his mother for the coming-out meal, which first looks like a cool gesture that also comes full circle narratively. But at the same time, it also marks the beginning of his plight: He describes that his mother took his coming-out into her own hands and at the same time took away the opportunity of an internal coming-out from him. To really come full circle, he would have had to explain to his mother, what went wrong back then. It’s not about recrimination, but about the possibility, not just for Rafe—or the reader—to learn from it.

Foremost, Rafe—pretendedly being straight—doesn’t attend the GSA but decides to do so after his second coming-out. For Rafe, this U-turn might make sense, because only now does he experience his real internal coming-out: To feel safe within the GSA and be able to consider its members friends, quit playing sports, and consider his homosexuality an important part of himself. This might be an important first point of call, but on the other hand, it shows how lapses into clichés—the very ones he distanced himself from. This way, the author relativizes his message, “You don’t have to act gay to be gay”.

He tells himself, he hasn’t judged Carlton, a GSA meeting attendee. Yet, the way he thinks about his feminine appearance, discriminating in a way. This shows the classic problem that feminine gays are not necessarily accepted by other gays, and that feminine men were gazed at. And this in return emphasizes the fear to appear feminine besides being gay, and what others might think about that.

But there was one thing, they talked about in the GSA, that reflects what I think about it: It is after all just one of many personality traits, even though there is no point in denying it. If one is just at the beginning of his internal coming-out, gay youth groups might be helpful, but in my opinion, one should not get dependent of them. That’s very similar to what he had in Boulder. Furthermore, he mentioned, taking You-know-Caleb as an example, that gays don’t necessarily like each other just because they are gay. Frankly, I don’t really like sports and jocks like Ben, but in my opinion, that matched partly with Rafe. This part of him just shouldn’t have suppressed the rest of him, and instead could have coexisted. After his coming-out, he just turns his back on that part.

The end of the novel shows Rafe being back in his hometown Boulder, enjoying its open-mindedness. Thus, he accepts his gilded cage, which he tried to escape. Yet, in my opinion, that last chapter was weak, even though I get the symbolism behind it. I just believe, the author makes a huge mistake this way. Sure, protagonists can and should sometimes be wrong, but hereby he says that the way it was in the beginning was okay and relativizes the critic from the very beginning. The end paints a beautiful moment that actually is everything but, because Rafe just lost his best friend and didn’t seem to have achieved anything with it.

Conclusion

Despite the shortcomings in the second half of the novel, the plot is entertaining and socio-critical in the beginning and raises questions for the readers that offer the potential for self-reflectiveness. The growing friendship with Ben and the backstory of Bryce are frankly quite beautiful and emotional to follow along with. Also, Rafe’s diary, annotated by his teacher, gives the novel another dimension.