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Ok, so I haven't been around much lately.

Yeah, I know. I haven't been around much lately. So?

What are you, my mother?

Anyway, it's 1.10am on Sunday morning, and I've got this thing that I really wanna get out there before I lose my nerve and blow the whole bloody thing up.

I do that a lot, you know.

Yes, I know it's destructive.

What are you, my mother?

Anyway, there's this holy grail in gay literature that some of us aspire to at some point, but very few of us actually execute well: the Coming Out story.

To go off on a rant for just a moment...

The internet is full of stories about perfect boys with perfect boyfriends who are already out and now their parents are in PFLAG and they have about 25 female best friends that they talk about fashion with and it's all just f**king PERFECT!!! The internet is also full of stories about boys who are completely comfortable with their sexuality, except they haven't come out, they never intend to come out and, their parents, god bless 'em, well they just never asked. Or even better, they're insanely rich and they're never home. Or even better than that, they're dead.

w00t.

But how many stories have you read that have captured the actual reality of coming out? Stories that have captured the apocalyptic 'oh my god, the world is going to end' range of emotions that a boy goes through before he reveals the deep, dark secret that makes him different from all his friends. Not good kinda different, either. Bad kinda different.

Anyway, back on topic, the coming out story is something that many of us have tried at some point, but we usually come up short in either effort or execution. I could name you some examples, but that would just be rude. And I'm not rude.

What?

I'm NOT rude.

What are you, my mother?

So anyway, now that I'm 22 years old and both comfortable and confident enough to tackle such an overbearing topic, I'm going to present you with my first, desperate attempt at documenting that first, desperate moment of truth. That harrowing moment in every out-and-proud gay boy's life where you just know life is never going to be the same again.

But before you read the scene, I'd better give you a bit of background information about my story (which can be read here, by the way).

There's this boy, and he's relating a series of events to a homicide detective throughout the course of an interview. It's a reasonably simple format: the boy tells the reader about a series of events in first person, and the detective asks him questions about those events in third person. I try to use specific trigger words and pointed questions during the interview to keep the first person narrative moving along, and the whole thing looks alright so far.

Anyway, I had this one scene in chapter three where I had to explain how two characters had met. I kept trying to write it in past tense, but the scene just leapt off the page in present tense. The scene went as follows: