Yeah, I'm pretty gay...

And speaking of me being gay...

I was 13 years old when I first realized that I might be ... not-straight.

This is a long helluva memory. I actually recounted this today verbally with Anna but wanted to get at least some of it down. I doubt I'll get as much detail as I did out loud... but here goes.

I was 13 years old. My grandpa had died that year. I was... not myself. I spent that entire summer doing NOTHING but sitting in front of my computer (Yeah.. Windows 95 anyone?). I ate one bowl of ramen per day... and sat there and messed with the computer. What did I do?

I played a few 8bit games. I still remember them... Games like... Castle of the Winds, Crystal Caverns, Cave, Rat's Revenge, Kill the Mice! and some puzzle game I can't remember the name of. Something about Chips.. computer chips that is.

This was the year Cartoon Network first aired Gundam Wing. And I had become... an addict.
It was pretty much my first and most intense fan obsession (and remains the reigning champ until I got into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic this year!!) and I was quite obsessed indeed.

Every day... after the episode was over... that was it. We didn't have... tv on the internet or episodes on Youtube back then. We had whatever came on or a DVD. And I didn't have the dvds. Or even VHS's... fuck... was that too early for DVDs? It kinda was.

So after the episode was over for the day... I was left wanting more of my obsession. So I found... the official website.
And after I'd read every character bio and played with every feature the site had to offer...

I found... FANSITES.

This was the beginning of a hell of a lot for me. I found images... and then... Fanfiction.
This was my first time reading fanfiction. I downloaded 3-4 files and started reading. I liked them.
Then... I came across this one fic called "The Y-Effect" which was labeled "Lemon". I had no fucking clue what that meant.
Seemed good! So I read it.
It was different from the other stories I'd read. It started out with something happening that caused three of the characters (Heero, Trowa and Wufei) to have... something "change" in their brain. I don't remember if they got bumped on the head or hit by some chemical or whatever... but they suddenly started chasing after the other boys. Heero went after Duo. Trowa went after Quatre. And Wufei... well he went after his gundam but that's a long-standing fandom joke.

Regardless... This fic involved Heero coming onto Duo pretty strong and then... well it's called "Lemon" if there's sex in it.
And same story with Trowa and Quatre.

I read through this fic, first having no idea what was going on... getting it! Then... realizing I ... Liked it.
In fact... I *really* liked it.
It was hot.
This was the first thing I remember really every considering hot.
Ever. At all.

The idea of a boy and a girl together was... okay. I'd read a few books that had sex scenes in them. My mom had given me a romance novel once even. Yuck. Those were just... yuuuccck.

But a boy and a boy... This... did something for me.
I mean...
To be honest and remember properly, I know I masturbated ever since I was like 3. I think most kids do in some form or another even if they don't understand it.

But that was the first time I found ... supportive material ... *ahem* for such activities.

Blunt words now. First time I jerked off to erotic media.

And frankly, it was the start of a whole hell of a lot of self-discovery.

From there, I found that there was not just this one fic that had the Gundam Wing boys going at it. There was, in fact, a whole fandom for it. And it was called "Yaoi". (Pronounced 'Yah-oy", tho at the time, I thought it was pronounced "YOW" like "Pow!") And the softer / more romantic stories were called "Shonen-ai" which was Japanese for "Boy's love".

This was my new thing.

I sought out tons of Yaoi fanfics and pictures and anything I could get to further this growing fetish.
I filled floppy drives. YES! Remember those? 30 freaking pictures per disk. I had a red and a black one for Gundam Wing stuff. And a blue one for fantasy art.
I remember having found pictures that were HUGE... 400x400 pixels! Can you believe how big that is?
(Anna and I did not miss the irony when discussing this earlier. Our Resolutions back then were 600x800... we barely save images smaller than 600x800 anymore lol)

And then I started sketching fanart and even wrote a few fanfics myself. Mostly side-stories to this one author I found on this one site that archived fanfiction. I remember a good bit about that author's writing. I wish I could remember her name.

I took two names from that site. Aine and Reishinn. I loved those names. Names of two authors I read fanfics by. I started using "Aine" as a nickname on some sites and later as a password for a long time.
Reishinn... that one really struck me. I'd at some point name a roleplaying character "Rei Shin" as two names and having looked up the meaning, decided it meant "Soulless one" in Japanese which was... close... but it was really just extrapolation on my part.

Rei would even eventually be my middle name, legally... on my licence. Still is.
And I got it from the name of an author on a Gundam Wing Yaoi Fanfiction site.

It just grew to have a lot more meaning to me. I just find that ironic and funny.

Anyway... I made a fan site to Gundam Wing. My VERY first Geocities site!
And I had a chatroom on it and everything. My Yahoo name was duomaxwell3927. My very first email was that @yahoo. lol :)

And then... a very strange thing happened.

I was at school, on the library computer, checking out my favorite GW sites for more content and loading up my floppies... when a couple of guys I went to Gifted class with came up and sat next to me suddenly.

Ryan and Chris.

These guys were polar opposites.

Ryan... I don't remember his last name. He was adorable. He was short, thin, very cute and blond. He was also the smartest guy and had a great personality. He was... gifted, indeed.

And Chris... chunky, dumpy, unattractive, brown-haired and poor. He wasn't unintelligent, but sure didn't have Ryan's gifts. He was hella good at math tho.

They saw my Gundam Wing Fansite and ... "You like Gundam too??"

Yup. We had a common interest. So we went off talking about GW. Then we started talking about my site and the chat room I had there. Then we all agreed to get on after school and talk more.

That's when Asa walked up behind us.

Asa was the only half-black, half-white boy at our school. He was tall, thin, athletic and popular as all hell. He was a basketball player, son of one of the school's coaches... He was SO Popular and athletic. Let me emphasize that.

He tossed a hand on the backs of our shoulders and leaned over to see the screen and asks us about liking Gundam too.
WTF.
He liked Gundam also!

And now he was going to join us on our chatroom too.

So we did it. We met in the chat room and we chatted.

Then the chatting turned into "I'm Duo!" "Well I'm Heero!" etc.
Then the chatting turned into a roleplay.

And I play... a very gay Duo because... that's how he is in my mind.

And it turns out... .... ...

My friends play along perfectly.

Ryan played Quatre, Chris played Trowa and Asa played Heero.

And what... the hell.

I had a totally gay roleplaying chatroom running with three boys I went to school with... none of which are anyone that you would have pegged for being gay.... and I'm still not even sure they were.
But they were playing it with me...
And Asa... the star athlete, so popular and mainstream normal? ....
Played one HELL of a gay Heero.

Perfectly. Just like he was written in my fanfics.

I ... couldn't believe this.

And thinking back on it... it's still hella hard to believe in a way.

But it was true.

And this was the year I first realized... that I wanted more than anything to be a gay guy.
The only problem then was that at the time I was a 13 year old girl.
Damn you biological inaccuracies.  At least I figured out how to fix that later on.

That's enough for today.

I got more detail down than expected anyway.