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Some part of me wanted to think about it as a dream. That it never actually happened. But it certainly did happen. It was probably worse for James. I remember the first time I was dealing with my quote-unquote "gay thoughts." Was it worse or better for him to have done it with a friend? I mean, calling that squirrel was semi-anonymous. Zach didn't kiss and tell as far as I knew, even if everyone on our tiny-ass campus knew that he wasn't picky about who he offered his "services" too.

It took a week for us to talk to each other again. This wasn't exactly abnormal, though. We didn't like to exchange meaningless pleasantries. Why bother talking if you only had time to say "hi, how are you" before rushing out the door without waiting for an answer? We may have shared a tiny-ass room, we weren't really talkers anyway, unless you counted our weird two am delves into our psyches.

Mid-terms was a factor, probably. We both actually cared about or sleep schedule when the academic hammer came crashing down twice a trimester. Besides, He was the kind of guy who'd pull his hair out of an A minus. I doubt he'd leave his study desk if you told him the library was on fire. How could events that brought his sexuality into question possibly compare to his geology exams?

I'm glad I gave him space. I mean, what could I say to him? "Are you feeling any better now that we blew each other?" For a schmuck who studies psychology, I'm not a subtle fur. Besides, I was busy too. I had decided to be an officer in the games club we both participated in, and I had my paws full with trying to turn our reputation of being "that weird bunch of nerds" around. There's something hellish about trying to raise positive publicity. And it wasn't like I was ignoring school. I had psyche exams and spanish tests and biology labs and statistics reports and an english paper due all at once. Not to mention my analysis of a journal due a week after.

Anyone who frequented The Pit, MacInach's underground lounge and resident dungeon of the campus' nerds, would know when James was done with his exams. He'd lug his old brick of a TV downstairs, turn on his playstation, and slug it out in one of his staggeringly large collections of fighting games. He had a taste for what fightan' connoisseurs (which I certainly am not) would call the "anime fighters," and he was practicing combos with Relius.

I sat down behind him and peered over his shoulder. "How does Relius differ from Carl? They both use puppets, don't they?"

"Ignis isn't always on the field," said James, indicating the purple puppet that he was commanding. "Relius calls her in for short periods to extend combos or to catch enemies by surprise, because it's hard to predict a figure that appears out of nowhere. Carl is supposed to switch up between his fast moves and Ada's hard hitting attacks or sandwich between them between the two by positioning Ada behind the opponent."

I gave him an absent muttering of "mmhmm." It was my constant response to fighting games. I certainly wasn't a fanatic and I certainly wasn't good at them. I could never get my paws around even the basic commands, and I felt that practicing for hours at a game to get better defeated the point of a game. I also wasn't a big fan of competitive play, so I never had much incentive to get "get good" anyway.

I still played him some days, mostly to be his punching bag. He always said I never played like anyone else he knew, which was supposed to be a compliment, but I felt it was just a nice way to say "you mash buttons in a very special way." He certainly never intended it to be a stealth insult though.

That was another thing about him. James was always sincere. He never insulted anyone, even in jest. I certainly couldn't claim that. I could be a snarky, sarcastic fuck, even when I was complimenting someone. Still, I picked up a controller. Secretly, I thought perhaps I had a chance while he was attempting to pick up the newest character. "Can I step in?"

"Go for it."

I picked Jin. I had a thing for ice magic in general, and he was certainly the easiest character to pick up, at least according to the forums who eternally bitched about online buttonmasher Jins who had artificially high rankings. Even with James playing a new character, it was no contest. All I was able to ever do was get him to fifty percent. Still, that was more that I'd ever be able to do normally.

"That last one was a good one," said James as I hit the floor for the umpteenth time. "You were closer that time. I keep telling you that's you could beat me if you practice."

I sighed. We'd gone over this enough times that it felt like a script. "Have you done his story mode? I'd like to listen to the story of BlazBlue from the perspective of another villain."

He shook his head. "I wanted to warm up to him so I could fight on hard mode."

I laughed a little in my head. Even in recreation he set goals for himself. "You do that. You feel like duking it out on showdown later?"

James nodded his head, sweeping his raven hair out of his eyes and behind his pointed ears before picking up his favorite red controller. "Did you build some new teams?"

Pokemon was a not-so-guilty pleasure for both of us. I hadn't bought a new game since fourth generation, but I still battled on online emulators. No more building EVs or breeding for IVs or natures. Just *boom* and the master pokemon team would be built. It was another game he'd routinely wipe me in, but I'd come closer a lot more often. I'd even won a few times, and my understanding of the new generation's metagame was growing with each match.

I nodded mutely as I pulled out my sketchpad. I wasn't that good, but I liked to visualize my D&D characters, mostly for fun. I had a weird habit of playing female characters when I roleplayed, perhaps because I eternally search for competent female characters who aren't named Samus. I listened to the BlazBlue script while I sketched out an elegant snow leopard in a long, strapless, shaded dress. I gave Elekah glasses, even though half-moon specs seemed a bit anachronistic in a medieval fantasy land. But then again, she was a magician, so effectively, a wizard did it.

I jumped a little as James' snout peered over the top of my sketchbook. I hadn't even heard him turn off the game. "She looks good. I like the dress. It's sexy without being objectifying."

"You done already?" James gave me a sort of non-committal nod. I picked up my sketchbook and slung my bookbag over my shoulder while James stuffed his PS3 in a bag and lifted his TV over his arm onto his shoulder. "Want to throw down upstairs? Will you tolerate some of my concept builds?"

"I won't go easy on them if that's what you're asking."

I just chuckled as I unlocked our room. James technically owned a laptop, but it was so old and fragile that he never let it leave our room. I flipped open my computer and clicked on my bookmark to Showdown before leaning back onto my bed. Our battles were always prolonged due to James' preference for stall teams. I actually beat him half of the time, and I secretly enjoyed making him grind his teeth at my "trolling team," even though I lost hard in the end.

By the fifth battle I was raring to keep going, but the little light next to his username went out. "Done already? Was my troll team too much for you?"

"Just having a hard time keeping my head in the game."

"Something bugging you?" I had a good feeling I knew something sure as hell was. Still, it was his problem to deal with, and I'd be doing no favors by bringing it up if he wanted to bury it.

"Yeah." He spun in his green office chair to face me. He asked me the question I had been waiting for for days without preamble. "How's you learn you were gay, Sam?"

"Sex with women," I said, quite bluntly. "It was certainly one of the most unsexy things of my life. I've never been much of porn watcher, so I wasn't too familiar with the female body. The first girl I dated was nice and pretty, but I didn't ask her out for legitimate reasons. I was just afraid of being the forever-alone guy that everyone laughs about. I took her out to lunch, I treated her nicely, she was my first kiss too, at sixteen."

I laid back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. James was giving me the look he gave the professors in class, when he was straining to analyze and absorb any piece of information that the words could possibly contain. It made me incredibly uncomfortable. Did he consider me some bizarre Sensei on gayness?

"I thought the sex was bad because I was bad at it. I mean, everyone's first time is awkward, right? But my first time was the first time I questioned myself. I remember thinking that Tiffany was a lot more attractive with her clothes on rather than off. But either way it didn't last too long. Neither of us had much mutual interest, but I thought that was because I asked her out disingenuously."

"If there wasn't much interest, why'd you have sex?"

"It was her idea," I shrugged. "I just sort of went along with it. To be honest, it felt good that she thought I was worthy of her sexual interest. She was pretty and I looked like, well, like I do now, so it felt nice to feel... wanted I guess."

"And then what?"

"Well, like I said, I thought that the sex was bad because I was bad at it. And after we broke up I asked a different girl out a few weeks later. My relationship with Hannah was pretty much like my relationship with Tiffany: Platonic in all but name. Again, Hannah brought up the idea of sex, and I thought I'd give it a try again. She gave me a blow job and I decided to ask if she'd like to receive oral sex. I offered it to be fair, really. Why should she be the only one required to give pleasure by muzzle?"

James was just nodding. He had moved to his bed and was sitting crosslegged. He was leaning in by a fraction, resting his elbows on his knees. I wouldn't have been surprised if he was taking notes.

"Giving oral to her was an incredibly repulsive experience to me. It just felt... I dunno how to put it. But after that the sex stopped. I just wanted to leave the room. Again I thought I was doing it wrong. So after a fairly nasty breakup I started looking for porn, for educational purposes."

"So uh, what did you find?"

"Porn. What else?"

"No, I'm serious. Did you start watching male on male right away?"

"No, no. I was searching for tutorials, and porn sites actually have those. But I did start noticing, well, dicks. I noticed not too slowly that I was keeping my eye on the males more that the females in the videos. And I decided, just once, to try gay porn. And it felt a lot better."

"So that was it? Porn?"

"Not exactly. But it certainly sparked my awareness. This was in high school. I mean, you know that I wasn't out of the closet a year ago. I started noticing guys after that night, or at least, I started consciously noticing guys." Out of habit I switched to my psychologist voice. "I'm sure my subconsciousness was noticing guys since I was a little kid.""

James was flipping a pen between his knuckles as he spoke. "What do you mean 'noticing guys?' I mean, guys made up fifty percent of the local population, so certainly you knew they were there. Do you mean noticing them seuxally?"

"I suppose that you could call it sexually noticing them," I said. "I mean, it wasn't like I was trying to x-ray through their clothes or I was peeping in the locker room. It was more... I dunno, thinking 'he looks good in that shirt' or 'he has nice eyes' or 'his claws look sharper today, he must've trimmed and filed them.' It was something that I'd never done about girls."

"So, when did you first say it to yourself? Like, when did you think for the first time 'I'm gay?'"

"When I came out to you," I said. James cut me off there, raising a hand to stop me. Jesus, it was like we were in class. "What's up?"

"Umm... why did you come out to me if you weren't even sure yourself?"

"I felt I had too. I mean, if you're going to share space with someone, that's a big thing that they should know about it. I mean, not everyone is comfortable sharing space with a gay guy."

"Why'd you think I'd be uncomfortable about that? Because I'm Catholic?"

"Not really," I said, shrugging again. "But even people who are tolerant of gay people wouldn't be as comfortable in close proximity. I didn't want to take a chance: What if you found out later in the year and we had to rearrange housing? That'd be a huge pain in the ass for both of us. And you had the right to know, regardless of your opinion. But when I said to you "I think I'm into guys," that was the first time I had vocalized the thought, those particular words, either in my head or out loud."

"You were looking at gay porn and you didn't think 'maybe I'm gay?' even once before that?"

"Don't underestimate the power of denial or justification," I said, waving a finger. "I did lie to myself for a good time."

James' voice was shrewd and his look skeptical. I had used this argument in a religious debate, and only in retrospect did I realize that maybe it sounded like I was attacking him. "I don't get how you thought that you could look at gay porn and not think that being gay was at least an option."

"Well, If you really want to know. It was because, well, I've never been what you'd call attractive. I thought I was looking at the guys because I was idealizing myself. I was ogling the twinky foxes and the muscley bulls because I was wanting to look attractive like they did. Really I was just there for the cocks, but that's what I was kidding myself into thinking."

"And what sealed the deal? What made you confident to go public?"

"Sex with guys," I said bluntly. "I made a booty call, and it was the first time I actually enjoyed the sex. I came faster, and it felt better than either of my times with a woman. And again, saying it out loud to you built up my confidence in the whole idea. And I was in an environment, here, that was gay friendly anyway, so there wasn't of the 'what will happen when I come out' wobbling that many other gay people have to struggle with. So, yeah, that was it." There was a pause where neither of us spoke. James leaned back and laid himself out on his bed, so that we were two furs on opposite ends of the room laying in opposite directions. "Did that help you at all, James?"

"So... I had sex with you. Does that make me gay?"

"Did you like the sex?"

"It did feel good, yes."

"Would you like to have sex with another male again," I asked. I abstained from implying that myself was in that group.

"Maybe..."

"Than you're as gay as you want to be," I say with a shrug. "If you want you can go back to girls and never touch a dude again."

There was another pause. "Or?"

"Or you can do what I did. Explore. Partake in sexual contact with other guys. Look at porn. You're a scientist, aren't you? Gather data. Or if you think this experiment isn't worth the trouble, leave it behind and put your mind to something more important to you." :

James sat up and picked up his TV and games again. "Thanks for sharing, Sam."

I let him leave without anything more than an acknowledging nod. The door shut with the swish of a tail and a click of the door, and I sat in silence before taking my computer out.