At school, Noah saw Chad and immediately looked away. Chad did the same.
As he sat in class, Chad absentmindedly doodled a heart. When he noticed this, a jolt of fear ran through his spine and he scribbled over the drawing. When lunch arrived, Tyrone’s chatter became a blur in Chad’s ears as peridot eyes consumed his thoughts. Despite this, he refused to look at Noah.
On his way to his car after school, he saw a girl with thick-framed glasses who giggled and waved at him. He stared at her with lust in his eyes, but that quickly ended when the memory of Noah putting his glasses back on projected onto his mind.
At home, Chad curled his arm with a dumbbell, a manga in his other hand. When the image of Noah staring at him as he stared back popped up in his head, he dropped the dumbbell and swore as one end fell onto his foot.
The memory was replaced with another, but not of Noah. An image of Chad’s old middle school building flashed in his mind.
The sun woke Chad from his slumber. Well, that and the pencil regularly poking his cheek. He looked up and swore. Almost everyone had left the classroom. Everyone except for the teacher, who was packing her things, and the boy with the pencil in his hand.
Chad gazed at the boy’s face, which was bathed in the sunlight. The boy had a big grin that showed his missing tooth. He wore a pair of round glasses whose size made his face almost disappear. He wasn’t quite bald but had a thin bed of hair on his head. His nose bent a little to the side but he had never complained about it. He smelled strongly of supermarket cologne and his breath, as he laughed his loud, hearty laugh, was minty. When he pinched Chad’s cheek, Chad noticed how warm and sweaty his hands were. This boy was Gerry LeGume. He had been made fun of for his name but took it in stride.
‘What were you dreaming about, Sudan?’
Ah, yes. The nicknames he gave people. Usually, they were based on some sort of pun or similar word to their name. He even called himself either Gus or Matt depending on how highly he thought of himself that day (Gus for his arrogant moods, Matt for his ‘humbler’ moods). He derived these names from a film with his name as the title, a film he hadn’t even seen and yet already decided was genius.
Chad looked away. ‘You don’t dream if you only sleep for a little bit.’ He was kind of lying. He had been dreaming, though that dream swirled around his brain long before he fell asleep.
Gerry’s eyes were wide as if he was staring at a doorway to another world. ‘Is that true?’
Chad shrugged before yawning and stretching his arms. He made sure to continue looking away from Gerry, who reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope.
‘A girl gave me this to give to you,’ he explained. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t bother reading it. I mean, she’s a coward if she doesn’t give it directly to you. And why write a letter when she could have just asked for your number?’
Chad grabbed the envelope and stared at it, rubbing his thumb against the heart sticker sealing it. He looked back up at Gerry, who was holding his glasses as he stared at him.
‘So watcha gonna do?’
Chad rested his chin on his hand and waved the envelope around with his other hand. ‘I mean, even if she did ask me for my number, I would’ve said no. I’m not looking to go out with anyone.’ Also a lie.
Gerry scoffed a laugh and turned around until he was facing the whiteboard. ‘Gay,’ he said sarcastically, though that sarcasm was lost on Chad, whose eyes travelled everywhere as if looking for an escape.
Gerry stood up and wrapped his arm around Chad’s neck, rubbing the knuckles of his free hand against Chad’s head.
‘You look like a cat that just discovered he got his own tongue,’ he said. Would it be important to mention he had high scores in English, and that he bragged about this constantly?
His body heat quickly transferred to Chad, who felt warm shivers run through his body. The cologne was overwhelming and the laughter-dispensed minty breath tickled Chad’s ear. Chad held his own arms to prevent them from doing something dangerous.
When the proximity became too much to handle, he pushed Gerry away and stood up, picking up his books and running out of the classroom. He raced home, rushed to his room and shut the door closed with all his strength. He stood against the door and slipped down onto the ground.
‘It’s nothing,’ he told himself. ‘I’ve had crushes on girls, so it’s nothing.’ He remembered Gerry’s cologne and changed that sentiment to, ‘I’m nothing.’ He held his knees up to his chin and let sour tears leave his eyes.
He kept crying for a few minutes but then decided to turn on the TV and distract himself. He took a pillow from his bed and put it on the floor, scooting close to the TV. The channel he ended up on when he turned it on was in the middle of a show. In it, a teenage boy was confessing to… another boy? What was this?
The other boy on the show smiled. ‘I thought you liked girls.’
The confessor laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I do, but I like you more.’
More tears fell down Chad’s face, but this time, when they reached his mouth, they tasted sweeter. When the television couple kissed, his heart, no, all of his organs, jumped up. Part of him felt like getting up and dancing but he heard the front door to the house open and decided against it, especially after hearing his mother call out to him.
The next day, he fidgeted in his seat, waiting for school to end. When the final bell rang, he grabbed Gerry’s arm.
‘Can we talk?’
‘Uh, sure? What is it?’
‘I mean in private. Don’t worry I’m not, you know, going to kill you or anything. Not that I ever would! Um… yeah. I just want to talk somewhere no one will hear us.’
Gerry turned his head to the side while still looking at him, but he nodded. After heading out of the building, they went behind it. Chad took a deep breath. Then he did it again. Then a third time. He quickly started to sound like he was hyperventilating.
Gerry laughed nervously. ‘You going to talk? You were acting pretty weird yesterday. What’s going on?’
‘Do you have a crush on anybody?’ Chad sputtered out.
A blush appeared on Gerry’s face. ‘N-No… maybe… yes. Why?’
Chad forced himself to look at Gerry. He put his hands in his front pant pockets and swayed back and forth.
‘I’ve got a crush on someone.’
‘Yeah? Who?’ Gerry asked with wide eyes and a grin.
Chad lowered his head and looked at his feet. ‘You.’ He turned around to walk away but stopped himself when he heard Gerry’s reply.
‘The fuck?’ Chad turned back around and saw a barely recognisable face. It was contorted, Gerry’s nose scrunched up and his eyes narrow. ‘I thought you liked girls.’
Chad moved his arm up to grab Gerry’s arm but didn’t touch it just yet. ‘I do, but… I l-like you... m-more.’ He almost slapped himself for fumbling that line. He took Gerry’s arm but Gerry shoved his hand away, dragging Chad’s heart down to his feet.
‘That’s weird. I didn’t expect you of all people to be a faggot. You don’t exactly act like one. Why me? What did I do to deserve this?’
‘Y-you’re just… I dunno… funny and… nice… and stuff.’
‘If I’m those things, then I don’t deserve to be creeped on by a faggot.’
‘But…’
Gerry passed him, walking at an angle to keep his body as far away from Chad’s as possible.
When school ended the next day and the teacher left the room to collect something, Gerry spoke to some other friends of his on the other side of the classroom, not bothering to lower his voice so Chad couldn’t hear it.
‘It’s freaky, huh? I’ve never met an actual homo before.’ He was sitting on another student’s desk and leaning back on his hands, kicking his legs back and forth.
The boy sitting in the seat at the desk laughed. ‘Yeah, and you wouldn’t expect it. I guess anyone we know could be like that. Creepy.’
Chad shuffled towards them. ‘’m not gay,’ he murmured.
‘What? Speak up,’ a second boy commanded. He was standing next to the desk.
‘I’m not gay.’
A third boy snickered, leaning back on his chair, which was behind the first boy. ‘Then why did you say you had a crush on Gerry?’
‘I like girls but I like him more.’
Gerry groaned. ‘That again?’
The third boy shifted his chair closer, sending a light screeching noise into the classroom. ‘So you’re straight?’
Chad stepped back and put his hands in his pockets again. ‘No… maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I’m both?’
The second boy laughed. ‘You can’t be both. You’re gay or straight. You’re not making any sense. Do you need to be put in a loony bin or something?’
Tears started creeping out of Chad’s eyes and the boys responded with laughter. The sitting ones stood. Together with the already standing second boy, they loomed closer, towering over Chad’s cowering body.
‘So are you a faggot or are you normal?’ Gerry asked.
The boys kept pushing Chad further down with their stares. He felt like a wounded gazelle in front of an entire pride of hungry lions. He did the one thing he could think to do.
He gripped Gerry’s collar and punched him square in the jaw. The pain in his fist mixed with righteousness in his heart to make a confusing concoction. Gerry pushed Chad to the ground and started repeatedly punching him. Chad pulled his arm towards him and bit it. The other boys pounced on Chad, kicking and punching him.
Chad screamed when he felt one of his ribs crack. He lost all energy in his arms and legs and lied there as the boys continued to bash him. The boys heard the voice of a teacher they knew outside the classroom and headed out, shutting the door.
Chad licked his lips and felt like vomiting as the taste of blood poured into his mouth from the crack in his bottom lip. His gums were in pain, just barely keeping their grip on his teeth after his mouth was punched so many times. He could already feel bruises developing on his chest and cheek, the latter of which stung with tears.
When his teacher returned, she shrieked and dropped her clipboard upon seeing his shivering body. She ran to him, kneeled, held him up and called emergency services.
At the hospital, Chad didn’t tell any of the doctors or nurses what happened, keeping his mouth shut, or at least as shut as it could be with swollen lips.
His parents visited him, but they were always preoccupied with their daughter’s latest achievement, reading articles about her on their phones instead of talking to him.
One day, he asked them to show him the website and he saw a recommended article at the end of the one about his sister. In the thumbnail was a tanned, broad-shouldered man with a neck that still managed to look like a tree trunk under his big helmet. He was holding a football up in preparation to pass it to someone.
When Chad was released from the hospital the first thing he did at home was look up gridiron classes.
After the memory ended, Chad lied down on his bed and did nothing, simply looking at the ceiling and wishing he was tired enough to fall asleep.
Noah posed a question to Incels.me before going to bed. When he returned to the site a few days later, he looked at the poll and saw a mixture of views.
Anicel1919- [Experiment] (POLL) What do you think of gay men?
They’re great- 20 votes
They’re good/okay- 19 votes
I don’t care about them- 45 votes
They’re bad- 23 votes
I hate them- 8 votes
He took a deep breath before looking at the comments. The mixture remained.
Yourwaifuistrash- I mean, they’re not fucking femoids all day, so I don’t care what they do with their lives.
ERdidnothingwrong- They’re degenerates. But hey, at least if we keep them with each other, they can give each other AIDS and die out.
Hopelesscel95- Gas to faggots and trannies.
Ropeourlordandsaviour- They’re fine. Lesbians are trash, though. They claim to hate men until Chad gives them a few bottles. Then see what happens. Fucking sluts.
mxsogklash- Some of them are fine, it’s just the ones that act all effeminate that annoy me. It’s also annoying how much sex they get and despite this fact they’re treated like a protected class.
Joshua69- Soy Boy! Soy boy! Lol, I don’t really care, though. For incels there’s no reason to be against gay people.
Lookcel404- Gay men are just coping incels. They can’t get femoids interested in them so they pretend to be something they’re not and, even though they may act happy and with ‘pride’, they’re really miserable because they can’t get femoids. That’s why so many of them off themselves.
After reading through comment after comment, he noticed how tense his arms were. Was this desire, this want, this need just a ‘cope’? Was he lying to himself? Was he going crazy?
He took a few deep breaths. Just before his breaths had completely calmed down, a memory from middle school jammed itself back into his mind.
Noah closed his tabs as his mother entered the room. ‘Whatcha up to?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
His parents weren’t ready for the truth. To him, they were still sheep following the words of a book they hadn’t even read. It was them who gave him the worst name possible. There was no way they would be able to understand their son’s ascendance into intellectual godhood.
What activity was blowing his mind and causing him to question the fragile foundations of society? Watching atheist YouTubers, of course!
When his mother left the room, he reopened the tabs and clicked on a recommended video. The host looked different from the others. He was a clean-shaven, muscular Asian man in a sea of bearded white atheists. He had a big pearly smile as he made fun of the logical inconsistencies in Ken Ham’s books.
Noah initially listened to his counterarguments with great interest, but around halfway through the video his attention went elsewhere- the man’s muscles. After a while, Noah stopped paying attention to his words completely and started noticing how the man’s biceps were slightly shiny. He pictured someone rubbing oil over those arms.
After a few seconds of imagination, he closed the tab again and looked at his door. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realised his mother wasn’t there.
His head started spinning and he felt a little sick. He could feel his heartbeat through his ears and, when he looked down at his lap, he swore. He unzipped his jeans. When he was done, his shoulders felt as heavy as an occupied palanquin under the weight of the shame he had placed upon himself. He looked at his hand as if putrid smoke was coming out of it.
The next day was spent trying to act like nothing had happened. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he imagined someone chatting with him and him blurting out what happened the previous night. Luckily no one talked to him.
When he returned home, he lied down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He wondered what would happen if he prayed. He doubted something would happen, but then he remembered something his mother always said.
‘A prayer a day keeps the despair away.’
He clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. He whispered his prayer. ‘Hey, god, I doubt you exist because your book makes no sense, but, I mean, on the off chance you are real, you mind giving me a girlfriend? You probably don’t want me repeating what I did last night. Make her a cool girl who’s interested in the same things as me. I want her to be smart. But not too smart! I don’t care if she’s pretty or whatever, just give me someone I can talk to easily. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m bothering with this infantile display of societal conformism. You can’t even hear me.’
The shame returned to his shoulders, as did the imagined smoke from his hand.
A week later, a new student joined the class. Becky White, a girl with messy hair in a ponytail and a constant frown. She scanned the class and sneered at them.
‘I was expecting more competition,’ she said as she turned to the teacher. ‘Are any of these people with an IQ higher than 110?’
Noah raised his hand. Facebook tests counted, right? Becky noted the seat next to Noah and sat next to him with a huff.
‘So, who do you prefer? Xenophanes or Pascal?’ she asked him.
Noah felt a sting from not knowing who either was. ‘Huh?’
‘It’s a very important question. I need to know if you’re a religious conformist or not.’
‘Oh, I’m an atheist.’
Becky grinned and held out her hand. He took it and they shook hands. He couldn’t help but notice how cool, smooth and lacking in sweat her hands were. He gave her a closer look and felt his heart beat just a little faster.
Noah pushed the memory away and watched an anime to let the show occupy his thoughts.
ns 15.158.61.11da2
