The Long Run

by James Acker

There were these two boys playing basketball in a driveway. The house wasn’t as ostentatious as its neighbors and the kids looked like they were having fun. Actual fun. Summer fun. They looked like kids I might’ve been friends with. Back when I made friends. Whatever they were playing, it wasn’t basketball. Not really. It looked like a game they’d made up. Something that was just theirs. And I remembered how beautiful that could be. Finding something that’s just yours. Something that could only exist in the summer. Something simple and silly and the right kind of exhausting. No thorns. Just summer. And I felt a little sorry that I pulled the plug on summer so early.

I watched the pilot of the show Glee online because it seemed like the kind of thing that gay people would watch.

So, no. Glee is not for me. Which was a slight bummer. I thought maybe I’d see something to latch onto.

Sorry, Glee.

“What it do, my faggot?”