Free The Boy Who Came in From the Cold by B. G. Thomas

start out slow, but he found himself running full tilt, letting his feet pound and his heart race and the music pour through him like the demons of hell were after him. After all, it had felt like that lately.
    In no time, he was drenched in sweat, his eyes stinging, his lungs burning, and a stitch beginning in his side. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t. He wanted it to hurt. He wanted it to hurt on the outside like it did on the inside, and that was a lot.
    Lady Gaga sang about how she was going to marry the night, and he ran. He ran from all the things he’d cried about the night before. Cried! He’d cried like a kid. Worse, he’d cried in the arms of a man. A gay man. Todd couldn’t remember crying like that in his life, at least not in the presence of another living soul. Sometimes he would go into the woods behind his house, to a secret little place he’d found when he was a kid, and there he could cry or read or do whatever he wanted. It was there and only there he’d felt free. One day he’d even dared to take off all his clothes and sit in the sun. Where the idea had come from he had no idea, but it was one of the most liberating experiences of his life. Soon he found himself naked in that clearing more and more often. He would stand and spread his arms and let his head fall back, eyes closed, bathing in the sunlight. Not long before he moved to Kansas City, he thought about inviting Austin to join him in the woods. The idea had really taken him over those last few days. About how maybe they could repeat what happened in his friend’s basement, but this time with no porn tape to ruin things. What would that be like? Maybe more would happen.
And did it make him a faggot?
    No. He wasn’t in love with Austin. It was just friendship. Hadn’t he read in that book from the school library it was normal for young men to play around together? Something natural because they had all those hormones raging and no way to release that sexual energy with someone of the opposite sex?
(Although of course, Todd had been doing that for months.)
    The feelings would go away. He would get interested in Joan. He was just a late bloomer. Soon—any day he was sure—his desire for vaginas would begin and the thoughts of what he might do with Austin would just fade away.
    Todd had found the little clearing in the woods the day his mother told him she was getting married. He’d been stunned. She was remarrying? And worse, it was to that creepy guy Urston, the one that always looked at him funny? The guy with the black eyes and the pockmarks all over his face who worked on cars down at the gas station on the edge of town. The guy who came into the diner where his mother worked nights and drank endless cups of coffee and always ate a couple slices of apple pie, the first with a big wedge of cheddar cheese and the second with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream. And hadn’t that just been weird?
    When Todd’s mother had broken the news to Todd, he’d run out of the house and deep into the woods, and that’s when he’d found what would become his secret spot by the creek. That first time, he’d come to a complete stop, the air whooshing in and out of his lungs (like now!), and stood there in awe. It looked like a magic place, where elves or fairies would be at home. There was even a ring of mushrooms. Somehow he’d run right into the circle and not damaged even one of the little lovely orange umbrellas.
    It had been his secret place from that day forward and was the only thing he missed about Buckman. There were no good woods anywhere near him except the trees near Liberty Memorial, and he’d heard fags went there for sex. There was no way he was going to a place where some queer tried to get at his dick.
( “The word is ‘gay’, and yes I am.” )
    God. How could Gabe be gay? It seemed impossible. The only gay man Todd had known before he moved to Kansas City was Mr.
    Tanson, who ran the town library, such as it was.