John Paul Bramer

People tend to pair up pretty early in Cache, the small town in Oklahoma where I'm from.

My parents, for example, met as sophomores in high school, and I was around that age when I first met Corey.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, big muscles, Christian fundamentalist.

Completely out of my league.

Nevertheless, Corey took an interest in me, the shy, quiet kid.

In Oklahoma, those are synonyms for homosexual.

But I was deeply in the closet.

Being gay in my neck of the woods really wasn't an option.

I remember one kid got bullied for a solid week because he wore a Hollister logo shirt to school.

This other kid was like, he's got a bird on his shirt.

Like a girl.

Still, when Corey sat down next to me in first period chemistry class, my heart fluttered.

I'll never forget his first words to me.

Yo.

So, what's your relationship with Christ like?

I knew that Cory was part of a weird Christian youth group, one of those hip non-denominational churches that's down with skateboarding and skinny jeans, but not women's suffrage.

I, meanwhile, was very busy pursuing becoming a devout Catholic, because it was something to do.

I was actually in the expedited confirmation classes for the elderly and the dying.

for reasons they never revealed to me.

But all this is to say that Corey and I, we were star-crossed from the jump, and I was way too into my Catholic sacraments to deal with his Protestant nonsense.