Queer as a label, like the many identities that exist within it, has many definitions. Queer can mean alternative; Queer could mean deviant; Queer sometimes means odd; Queer, on occasion, means to rebel and to defy; Queer potentially signifies uniqueness; Queer can be nonconformist; Queer can define many people, many partners, many relations, many actions, and many experiences.
A handful of my queer peers dissociate from this fact, suggesting instead, that ‘queer’ should exist as merely a label, not having to signify anything more than one’s sexuality. Of course, this opinion is valid; No person’s actions should be pre-emptively assumed simply because of a label they associate with. But, I suggest that even in cases where ‘queer’ attempts to exist only as a label, the notion of opposition, of deviance, of an attraction to the alternative, exists deeply, innately, within us and within our communities.
Our attraction to the alternative takes forms in many, many shapes. I know queers whose lives are woven into the underground music scene of Kansas. I know queers whose daily-wear outfits are akin to those worn in queer NYC clubs. I know queers who embrace the subversive alternative – queers participating, and being vocal for both their pride and their faith. I know queers who claim their natural hair color is near-platinum blonde, despite absolutely having been born with deep, rich, brunette hair. I know queers with superior intelligence capacities that refuse our academic institutions. I know queers that find sexual pleasure in traditionally-taboo-ways, inclusive of but not limited to: cruising, foot-fetishes, armpit kinks, non-monogamy, piss play, slime, and vacuum-suits.
I know a queer that portrays his life along the straight-and-arrow. A queer that is not quite out yet, but a queer nonetheless. This queer is driven and motivated by god – a devout Christian. This queer has wonderful, strong relationships with their family and friends. This queer is academically-sound and professionally-ambitious. This queer’s appearance is well-kept, a modern midwestern man. By all meanings of the word this queer man is perceptually, traditionally, straight.
Where, then, does this queer’s deviance lie?
I would like to tell you my story with this modern midwestern man. For our purposes, let’s call this man: Jacob – the most common ‘boy’ name for the years he and I were born. To any Jacob that is perchance reading this, please accept my sincerest apologies to you, your name, and your reputation.
*****
Realistically, Jacob and I probably met in 2014; however the majority of our story takes place a few years later.
2014 would have been the first time Jacob and I attended school together, since we did not attend the same elementary school growing up. That would have been my eighth grade year, where I was an avid Miley Cyrus fan; I partook in chess, robotics, drama, band, quizbowl, and salsa dancing. All, of course, while attempting to conceal the absolute faggot that was desperate to ooze out of my skin. Each of these characteristics – perhaps sans the Cyrus – generalizes towards your average, ambitious-invested-and-soon-to-be-accredited student. A nerd, in more colloquial terms.
These characteristics and this generalization is shared; Jacob was a nerd too.
Not only was Jacob a nerd, but he was doing better at the ‘straight’ thing than I was. Where I participated in drama, Jacob did sports. And in doing so, Jacob became friends with some of my friends. I am sure Jacob and I met that year, I just don’t recall it. Perhaps that’s where our story begins for him.
Queers, even if closeted, have a way of finding each other.
*****
Thinking back to high school, I do not remember ever having a class with Jacob. I vaguely remember having a handful of our lunch periods together, but never at a shared table. Jacob and I passed each other in the hall just as much as any other two students did. Yet, between our individual support for the other’s extracurriculars and our overlapping of mutual friends growing larger, we certainly knew of the other’s presence.
Right on track with our ambition and intelligence, Jacob and I were both part of our district’s gifted education program. A program we shared with around 30 other students in the high school. And, as such, when Shawnee Heights introduced the T-Bird Time Advisory Period to happen each Wednesday, where all students would report to an advisor for a glorified study hall, all gifted students would be sent to our singular gifted educator.
Jacob and I, like the mostly-closeted-queers we were, did not interact during our T-Bird Times together. We probably exchanged small talk on occasion, and not much more. Jacob and I have never been anything more than mutual friends of another. However, it becomes important to mention here that Jacob, at this point, was either dating or fucking another guy that happened to have a very large crush on me. Jacob began to see a competition forming; and I was the prize.
******
My sophomore year was truly when I began to participate in my sexuality. Though I had a plethora of online sexual experiences beforehand, this was the first year that the digital escaped into reality. Not only was I having sex with chicago, but I was interested in having sex with people besides chicago. My only difficulty came in finding one that lived anywhere near me.
My Snapchat provided a private space where I could talk to any guys I thought could potentially work out. And that ‘potentially’ is a generous one; Potential could be found hundreds of miles away. So, when an account with the name ‘Nolan’ – whose full name I am concealing – added me, I added back.
Nolan and I began chatting, and he was nearby. He told me he lived in Olathe, about an hour’s drive from where I lived. He was a year younger than me, and after the basic faggotry questions, we found that we were sexually compatible. The great thing about Snapchat, especially in its early years, was the simpleness of the platform: take a live picture for a friend, post a story, or chat. At that time Snapchat lacked filters, memories, the ability to upload from your camera roll, video calls, subscriptions, etc. So, when Nolan and I traded face pictures for the first time, I was shocked.
Nolan was gorgeous to me. If a lumberjack and a surfer were crossed into a teenager’s build, it was him. And Nolan, like me, wasn’t out. We were both reluctant to send face pics, and we certainly would not be sharing any nudes with our faces in them. Nevertheless, Nolan and I quickly got to trading nudes, and the chemistry between the two of us was enthralling. The pressure of the closet and the tension of being outed by the other is shared by so many of us queers, especially at that stage. Still, on three or four occasions, he sent nudes that included his face. Which, in my book, wholly verified his existence in reality.
Nolan and I wouldn’t talk very often; Once every few weeks, if that. When we would talk, it was only trading nudes until we both finished, and that was it. Of course, being the queer that I am, I would often attempt to get Nolan to talk more, to share more. I wanted to know who he was before we decided to meet in person. He was most often reluctant, but would sometimes share details of his life. Even more rarely, Nolan would send me pictures of what he was up to, regular things like visiting Dairy Queen or going to the lake.
But, when Nolan sent me pictures of these regular things [things that weren’t his body] they were of things that were familiar to me. He was not visiting a lake, he was visiting Lake Shawnee. He wasn’t visiting any Dairy Queen, he was visiting the Dairy Queen nearest me. And I began to suspect that Nolan didn’t live in Olathe; He lived in Topeka.
In the summer of 2018, Nolan admitted to living in Topeka; that he got my Snapchat from a mutual friend because we didn’t go to the same school. He apologized for lying to me. I accepted, and I believed him, thinking he very well could be a student at Washburn Rural or Seaman. With our entire relationship centered on trading nudes, I did not care to verify with my friends that went to those schools. Instead, we would continue trading, with face pictures not being sent again.
Nolan and I continued trading nudes monthly for another year. And, in the summer of 2019, he finally gave me his Instagram. Nolan warned me not to comment anything gay because he still wasn’t out, and I totally understood. After following his Instagram, I felt elated that even though he had lied about a number of things, I was at least talking to an actual person. Nolan had a lot of posts on Instagram and there was no doubt that the face and body matched the pics I had been receiving.
He mostly posted pics from vacations: different beaches, summer camps, and groups of different friends. After a post concluding 2019’s summer camp, I nearly commented on one of his pictures, telling him how cute I thought it was. I remembered that he wasn’t out, and chose to send him a DM instead.
After calling Nolan cute, he thanked me and asked if I had a Snapchat. I called him funny, saying we had been snapping for years.
Nolan sent me his username, I added it, and via video call, Nolan from Instagram proved that he is the real Nolan, and that we had never chatted before.
*****
With absolutely minimal digging, I was able to trace fake-Nolan to Jacob. You see, the only mutual follower between Nolan and I was Jacob. Nolan confirmed that he and Jacob had been trading nudes for years, and that Jacob somehow screenshotted them and sent them to me as live pictures.
With confirmation, on August 17th, 2019, I confronted Jacob. I sent Jacob a lengthy snapchat text, telling him that I knew he was pretending to be Nolan. I told Jacob that I knew who Nolan actually is, that Nolan and I had facetimed, and that Nolan lived on the East Coast. I told Jacob I knew he wasn’t straight, or at the very least was questioning, and that I wasn’t looking to tell anybody. I asked Jacob to tell me the truth, and told him that I didn’t care if we never talked again or if we became closer because of this.
Jacob denied it. All of it.
So, I sent Jacob the screenshots of my conversation with Nolan, and all of the confounding evidence Jacob had provided me throughout this adolescent stint as an actor.
Jacob then confessed. He admitted to sending me Nolan’s nudes, to taking those nudes without his permission, and to being confused about his sexuality. Jacob wasn’t sure if he was gay or bi. Jacob also confirmed that not all the pictures were stolen, in fact, most of the nudes were Jacob’s; only a few were taken from Nolan, always the ones including the face.
I told Jacob that I am here for him. That I was outed and I was not interested in outing him. I told Jacob I would be his friend, or that we could simply remain mutuals. I was mad at Jacob, but I understood why Jacob felt like he had to hide. I told Jacob that there are no hard feelings if we hooked up, and no hard feelings if we didn’t, but I made it clear that we, after so long, were clearly compatible.
Jacob decided they wanted some space to process.
We traded nudes that night.
*****
Now, we aren’t quite finished yet. If I stopped here, it would almost appear that I was attributing Jacob’s deviance to his oppression. After all, it was the fear of public knowledge that caused Jacob to hide behind the image of another, right?
*****
Jacob and I continued trading nudes; not nearly as often, but definitely without stop. Jacob and I continued not talking more than an occasional catch-up. Jacob began college during the pandemic and continued coming out to an ever-growing support network.
It appeared that Jacob and I were happy to watch each other’s lives develop from each other’s sidelines – only using the other when the horniness called. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 when Jacob and I would finally meet on our own. By my invitation, Jacob traveled from Topeka to Lawrence to watch a movie at my apartment. The movie watching lasted quite a bit longer than I was expecting, perhaps halfway. Jacob and I left no stones unturned that day. And it was that day, that he would set the record of the biggest dick I have ever taken.
Jacob and I did not meet for a while after that. With our school and work schedules entirely conflicting, in addition to being a nearly 45-minute drive away, we reverted back to trading nudes on occasion. At some point in the following year, Jacob would get a boyfriend and travel abroad for school. Neither of which stopped us from trading nudes; However, his nudes became more tasteful, as if having the head of his cock out of frame or only showing his load on a pair of his American Eagle underwear disqualified him from becoming a cheater.
Yet, in December of 2022, while he was fully participating in a monogamous relationship, Jacob asked me if I was interested in a threesome. Having not had one before, I was curious, so I inquired if it was with his boyfriend; to which, Jacob declined. In fact, Jacob wanted me to find our third partner. And so, after much deliberation, Jacob and I found and made a groupchat with the third, and scheduled our threesome. The threesome was okay, I would not have had a good time if such a large dick was not present in the room; Jacob, as the one getting serviced, had a wonderful time. I was left wondering if I would have had a better time if his boyfriend was our third participant. Though I was an active, willing, and enabling participant, I left this threesome not quite desiring another with Jacob, or with anyone.
Days later, Jacob would ask me to have another threesome, to which I told him I wasn’t interested.
In January of 2023, Jacob’s boyfriend went abroad for his studies.
Jacob and I continued trading the occasional nude, until I was due to stay in a hotel in Topeka in March. I invited Jacob over, to which he came, and once again, our blistering tension once again broke. Jacob and I fucked for hours, releasing our history of him catfishing me, and releasing the soon-to-be-history of him cheating on his boyfriend.
Ejaculative catharsis!
About a week later, with a guilty conscience, I would inform Jacob’s boyfriend of our involvement together. His boyfriend thanked me, said he had suspicions about infidelity between Jacob and a number of guys for a while now, and informed me that they had broken up two days before I messaged.
Jacob and I have not met since.
*****
Jacob and I are still friendly. We are back to being mutuals, we know of each other. Only now, we don’t trade nudes anymore.
Jacob’s experience, specifically, his actions towards the men he is intimate with, highlights our queer tendency to deviate, to be attracted to the alternative. Jacob began our relationship by catfishing me. Jacob acted as Nolan as a means to get closer to me. When this was discovered, instead of having a typical sexual relationship together, Jacob only chose to interact with me more when the context became deviant again, only differentiated by infidelity.
Jacob isn’t alone in this experience. I know many queers who receive pleasure and gratification via their deviance, whether infidelity related or otherwise. This story does not glorify lying or cheating, instead, it provides a crucial piece of context. Deviance can be innate, and it is not always detrimental. Though Jacob’s actions were wrong, the context shows us that it’s likely that a combination of his oppression and his deviance contributed to these actions.
We should search for this context across scenarios. Where there is deviance, where alternative routes are taken; we should seek context before condemning.
My life is full of queerness that opposes Jacob’s.
My life is full of queerness that mirrors Jacob’s.