My parents would never let me go camping alone with a girl, for obvious reasons. It’s quiet, and by the wavering light of the campfire, Matt looks almost unbearably sexy. He twines his fingers with mine and we rock back in the low chairs he’s brought. They hover inches off the ground, keeping us from the chill earth, with our legs stretched out on either side of the blaze we continue to feed.
“Are we gonna have sex?” I blurt out.
“Do you want to?” he says.
I spied the condoms in Matt’s bag and my heart is full of questions. Other parts of me are full and my body shakes, slow tremors pulsing outward from my bones.
“You brought protection.”
“It’s just good sense,” Matt says. “But peer pressure doesn’t work on you, remember?”
“Have you ever—?”
“No,” Matt says. “Except with you.” As far as we know, we are the only two gay guys at our school. We can’t be, of course, but it’s as far as we know.
“Me?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I feel like we already have had sex, don’t you?”
It startles me to my core. “No!”
“Really?” He sounds as surprised as I feel. “That’s defining sex pretty narrowly, don’t you think? What we do doesn’t have to parallel straight people’s idea of sex.”
“The things we’ve done don’t count.” It’s important to me that they not count.
“Relax. That’s not why I brought you up here,” he says, but he leans over and kisses me anyway.