Chapter Ten

Nuel's POV

I had liked a boy way back then when I was still in college, before going into the seminary. I was a third year student doing a program in Engineering Geology and I fell for Basil, a final year student doing a program in mechanical engineering.

We lived in the same dormitory and were both altar boys at the school's local church. I had known him ever since my first year but nothing of him seemed appealing to me; not his looks, his aura, his dressing, his grades, nothing. To be precise, he was even a jerk, a jerk that has a few notable leadership qualities, nothing else but that, but I started falling for him at the beginning of my third year.

I couldn't tell what had sparked the feeling, it was probably because of the fact that he just started acting all nice and caring literally our of nowhere. There were times when I would catch him stealing glances at me, glances that seemed so much like he was checking me out, and for some reason it seemed as if he always wanted to be around me. He would come to my room just for no reason to check up on me and leaving would be a problem.

I kind of had a British accent back then, I actually still do, thanks to the fact that I was into British movies like “ Me Before You and Romeo And Juliet” and he formed this habit of mimicking me when I spoke, acting all cute and unclear, and given the fact that I wanted something serious with someone, I couldn't help but fall for him, thinking that he was falling for me too.

I waited for him to open up to be about his feelings but he never did. I graduated into using body language; being nice to him, playing along with him each time he mimicked me, staring right back into his eyes each time I caught him staring, but still he didn't open up. I even retweeted a message on my social media handle, writing a message that said and I quote “ Do not be afraid to open up to me about how you feel” and I tagged him, making sure that he saw it, but no, he never said or do anything, and it seemed like my only option was to do it myself. I figured that maybe he was the extremely shy type and couldn't find the morale to do the needful, so I told myself that I was going to take the bull by the horn.

Now, I wasn't that damn stupid to walk up to a guy and just tell him that I liked him without at least being 99.9% sure that he was gay - I never wanted a scandal, and Basil; the previous jerk that he was, was definitely the type to cause a scandal, and so I did my research. I spent weeks studying every possible sign or inclination of identifying if someone was gay.

YouTube became my teacher, a very good one at that. I looked out for those inclinations in him and yes, I found most of them. The long stares, the sometimes uncomfortable eye contact, the mimicking, the nice attitude, the clinginess, all of them, and what even cemented all of this was the fact that on few occasions, I had seen him slap butts, other guys’ butt, and even in a way that could be interpreted as sexual. He never slapped mine even though I wished that he did, but the fact that he was slapping butts made me quite sure that he was either gay or bi, and was definitely into me, and so I summoned my special courage from the Amazons, from the depths of the ocean, and approached him.

“ Good morning”, I greeted as he opened his door that morning, wearing just shorts, letting me feast on his abs.

“ Oh, good morning Nuel, how're doing?”

“ I'm good”.

“ Come in please”, he said, making way for me to take his study chair while he sat on the bed.

His roommate wasn't around. The school was in vacation and he had left two days ago, and I figured that we definitely will be needing some privacy if I was going to talk about what I wanted to talk about, so that was definitely the best time for it.

“ How are you doing?” I asked, trying to make myself comfortable.

“ I'm cool. Just trying to see if I could finish up. Like really, I'm holding on tightly. Finals ain't a joke. You've got seminars, projects, research, everything is just put together”.

“ I feel your pain bro, I do”, I said, chuckling jokingly.

“ Well, that's by the way. Forgive me for disturbing with my problems”.

“ No problem dude. Feel free to tell me anything, anything at all”, I said, and I literally meant it - anything at all.

“ Any problem?” He asked, tilting on his bed, so much that I could see his morning boner.

“ Should there be a problem?” I asked, starting to shake up a little bit.

“ No, not at all, it's just that you being in my room this early is like, the first time it has ever happened”, he said, sounding really surprised.

“ What do you mean? That I don't come around that much?”

“ Yeah, you don't”, he said sarcastically and we both laughed it off. I was basically still freaking out. “ So, seems like you want to talk about something”.

“ Yes, I do want to talk about something”, I said, feeling a little bit confident.

“ Okay, go on”.

“ Do you mind if I lock the door? Like, what I'm about to tell you is really private and you know, I don't want anyone walking in on us or anything like that….”.

“ Sure. Okay”, he said and I bolted the door, making sure that it was safe to talk.

“ So, what is it?” He asked.

“ Firstly, I don't want you to be too surprised or anything….”, my legs were visibly shaking at this point. The confidence I thought I had like three seconds ago just vanished into thin air, “ but umm, there's something I've been really…….. like, there is something that i really want you to know”, I was stammering.

“ Okay. What is it?” His facial expression was cool and chill, and so I went on.

“ Umm, ohh my gosh, I don't really know how to say this but um……… I'm gay”, I said it. His facial expression was turning from normal to shocked, a warning sign that what I was doing was a bad idea, but I couldn't stop, I had to continue. “ And I um…….. I like you. I do. I never did, but at some point during this past session I just started developing these feelings for you and I literally can't do anything about it. I'm not really sure if you feel the same….. I don't even expect you to feel the same, I just………. I just wanted to let you know”, I said, changing the direction of my confession.

Of course I expected him to feel the same, I wanted him to feel the same, that was the main reason why I was confessing in the first place, but being the facial expression reader I was, I could sense that things weren't going to go as planned, he wasn't gay or bi, and he was shocked that I was, and so I tried to be the normal considerate human being that I was and not put the burden of guilt of not feeling the same on him.

“ I don't expect you to do the same, I don't expect you to feel the same”, I continued in shame, “ I just wanted to let it out of my chest……….”, there was a knock on the door after an unknowing person just tried to barge in and we both fell dead silent.

Good thinking for having closed the door.

The knock came again.

“ Who is it?” Basil asked.

“ It's Ganja, open up”, the voice behind the door said and Basil got up and opened the door.

“ Can I borrow your laundry iron, mine is broken”, he asked.

“ Okay”, Basil said and got his laundry iron from his wardrobe. “ Here you go”, he said, handing him the steel colored pressing iron with a plastic handle.

“ Thanks man, I'll return it later”, the Ganja guy said and zoomed off immediately.

Basil closed the door and went back to his bed, but this time he sat up.

“ Okay, um…………. I don't even know what to say because um ……………. You should know, I'm not actually…… you know…….”.

“ I know you're not”, I cut him off, lying to both him and myself, “ as I said, I just wanted to let you know just so that I can get over the feelings, nothing else”, I said, trying to preserve the last shred of dignity I had.

“ Okay”, he said, nodding. There was a kind of uncomfortable silence between us for like two minutes. We both just didn't know what to do or what to say. I felt like standing and leaving the room but that would be super awkward. We definitely needed to end things differently, for our sake and the sake of casualty.

“ But…..”, he spoke up, “ how are you……… I mean……….. . Look, I really don't want to sound offensive or anything, but I just can't understand how being gay is possible”, he said, sounding like a confused child.

“ What do you mean?”

“ Take for instance, I've been super intimate with girls, I've kissed many of them, even received blowjobs from some of them; although I've not actually had sex because it's against my beliefs to do so before marriage, and trust me, all the experiences were the incredible, and I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there are guys, guys like you who do not actually fancy that”.

“ Well, they do say that one man's food is another man's poison, don't they? Some prefer girls while others prefer their kind”, i said, sounding so defeated.

“ But like, can't you, you know, change?”

“ Telling me to change will be just like telling you to stop liking girls and start liking boys. Will that ever be possible?”

“ I don't think so”, he responded.

“ I didn't think so either, and it's the same for me, okay. Being gay is not a choice, it never was, I was always like this, I've always been this way”, I was starting to feel comfortable again while talking.

“ But then, you and I know how homophobic our area is, what are you gonna do when you're all grown up and expected to settle down with a woman?” He asked, and I sensed that there was real concern in his voice.

“ Well, I don't actually see myself being with a woman. Never. Even if I end up with one, I'll have an open marriage. She'll know that I'm gay and will have to look for sexual satisfaction elsewhere. I don't care if she gets a baby through it, in fact I would love her to have a baby, and even though the baby wouldn't be mine, I would gladly raise him/her, or better still I could go into the seminary and become a priest. That way my family wouldn't have to expect me to marry a woman”, I said, exploring my options in life for the first time.

“ That is surely gonna be hard”, he said, a look of pity on his face.

“ It will be. But this is who I am, and I just have to live with it”, I said, feeling less burdened that I had told someone about my sexuality for the first time.

“ So what are you going to do about the feelings? You know”.

“ Well, you're leaving, and I do know that out of sight ultimately means out of mind, so don't worry, I'll get over you”, I said, sounding so sure but knowing so well that I wasn't.

“ Okay. No matter what the case is, you'll always be my guy”, he said and my heart couldn't help but melt.

Why the hell was he being so nice? Why the hell….. How does he expect me to get over him if that was how he acted?

“ Thank you bro. And please, keep this between us?”

“ Sure, I will”, he said and we did a little bro hug before I left the room.

I seemed fine but I wasn't. I had said things that I didn't actually mean, things that I didn't want to say, and it hurt me so badly. I spent the next few weeks crying myself to sleep, waking up with nightmares of Basil rejecting me and telling me off.

The whole saga died after a month or two, and I never felt that way again, not until I had to involuntary break up with Collins.

And again, after thinking that I was never going to go through that ever again, here I was, crying myself to sleep again, after saying things that I didn't mean.