#91 - Catching the Gay

Today’s words: Committee, Ray, Blood, Grade

Word count: 482

Completion time: 30 minutes

Summary: A boy desperately tries to chase away any gay feelings he may or may not harbour

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When Cyprus was young, he thought that being gay was contagious. If a gay person sneezed on him, coughed in front of him, or if their blood somehow got mixed in with his, he was certain he’d grow up gay.

To try and battle this paranoia, in tenth grade, he put up an abundance of posters featuring scantily clad women in suggestive poses that were to act like medicine and repel any dormant homosexual feelings. He’d stare at his walls and burn the images into his retinas as he got into bed and touched himself, proving that he was straight, proving that if he came, he was definitely hetero. That was his ray of hope, his light at the end of the tunnel. He was straight. He was sure of it. The orgasms and desire to do nasty, borderline illegal things to the poster-women proved it.

When he reached university age (still a hardcore hetero, in case you were wondering), his ideas about ‘catching the gay’ had been muted by maturity, but he was still homophobic. He got the idea that gay people desired to make straight men gay too, not by a transferring of bacteria or blood cells, but by flirtation and coercion. He had no real evidence for this claim, but it stuck in his mind like a hardened piece of blu-tack.

At the final event for the first years, he followed the swarm of people to check out clubs that he might want to join. Rowing looked appealing, so did Climbing, maybe he’d even have a try at Kung Fu if he felt up to it. His eyes scanned the tables that were manned by students with encouraging smiles, willing people to check out their society. He smiled politely at most of them until he spotted the ‘LGBT community’. The committee members looked just as bright and cheerful as the rest of the groups in the room, which made Cyprus feel a little irritated, even offended.

The guy who was sat in the middle with short, neatly trimmed hair locked eyes with Cyprus and grinned, raising his eyebrows slightly. He had seen the guy before, but had no idea he was affiliated with that group. His temperature rose rapidly.

“Fuck this,” he said internally, pushing his way past the group of first year students to get to the exit.

Once he was out, he sat on a bench by the edge of the university grounds and snapped his eyes shut, grunting under his breath. The pulsating feeling in his crotch intensified, making him cross his legs and rest his forehead on his knees.

Once he had spent a sufficient amount of time burning the guy’s image from his brain, he got up and took the next bus home.

For the rest of the day, he decided to watch girl-on-girl videos in an attempt to detach himself from anything gay.