“I’m not abnormal!” I screamed, collapsing on the bed and clenching my fists around my mother’s duvet. Shame throbbed behind those words, a snake brushing past, underneath a blanket of leaves. Late some nights, when the growing unwanted desire stopped me from sleeping, I would yield to its current. I would let the hidden fantasies sweep me away, listen to their murmur, of the boys and their bodies, the hard forms of their whiteness, the smell of sweat and musk and skin. Moments from PE would flicker: thighs in shorts and armpits in sleeveless tops; Henryk, the strongest boy in the class, on
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