NEWPORT, RI— High school sophomore Sam Nash was peacefully eating his lunch when his former friend, and current nemesis, Katie Wolfe dropped a rainbow bomb that stopped his heart. The devastating betrayal was the likes of which had not been seen in the cafeteria since the last time she did this two days ago.
“As we know, I’m 100% straight, but I’d love it if Sam was gay.” Wolfe said, flipping through her annotated copy of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. “It’s so weird that our friend group doesn’t have a single gay person, like someone should volunteer to be gay, just to get it over with. And that someone should be — could be, hypothetically — Sam.”
The table turned as silent as it did the day Wolfe asked Nash why guys like boobs so much, because she was “too straight to know.” Somehow, Nash thinks his answer, while a masterful ode to Dolly Parton, wasn’t convincing in the way he wanted it to be.
Nash later noted that thirty seconds of ambiguous silence is actually thirty years in Closeted Teenager Time. He said so from the childhood swing set in his backyard where he does his best yearning. He spoke in hopes that people on the market for a Gay Best Friend™ might realize that their potential GBF is actually a CFJTTGTTD (Closeted Friend Just Trying To Get Through The Day.)
Normally, Nash would ignore Wolfe, just like he does his most innermost thoughts and feelings, but when she went on an unprompted riff about the power of self-acceptance and how “love is love is love,” Nash snapped, asking, “Katie, wouldn’t it be cool if you were gay?”
“Suddenly, the out-er was the out-ee. Imagine a Pride Parade, but the whole thing takes place under the bus, because that’s where everyone’s been thrown,” said a witness who spoke on the condition that they remain both anonymous and presumed heterosexual.
In response to Nash’s question, Wolfe responded, “I wish I was gay! I know we’d all be really supportive and not homophobic at all, right? Right?”
Though Nash regrets using Wolfe’s diversionary tactics against her, he is nevertheless keeping his distance, a choice he admits he should’ve made when he showed up for her birthday slumber party and Wolfe’s father tried to tell him to sleep on the couch, only for the birthday girl to yell, “Sam doesn’t count, Dad!”
