he pushed me off. Get off me, you faggot. I couldn’t stop weeping. “Homosexual sex” was a criminal offense in Oklahoma until 2003. And so, when word got around about what I’d done, the bus driver reported what he heard from other children, and the school intervened. The next day, the principal pulled me from class. Dad, the bus driver, Sid, and Sid’s father sat in his office. The school weighed suspension as a possibility. I’m not sure whether my father even paid enough attention to me to think about the question of whether this was a real sign that I was gay. The fact that he was called out
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