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Let's say you were to hear a story about a boy. A cute boy. Really cute, because it's important. Ok maybe not super important, but it helps.

The boy in our story special. He moved a long way from home from his small town to the big city. Now you might be worried for our boy, but don't be. He's smart and funny and has a good friend in the big city to guide him through his transition period. He's going to the big school that he always wanted to. He's ready to conquer the world. Everything is perfect.

Along the way he meets new people and makes new friends. It would probably be appropriate to feel happy for our boy, since nobody wants to go through a change like that alone. But he's ready. Everything is perfect.

Only everything isn't perfect. Somewhere along the way our boy hits snags. He stumbles. People who were supposed to be his friends aren't. He finds out the hard way. He slips. Fighting ensues. A lot of it. He falls.

Suddenly our boy is without people who were important friends. It is safe to say that serious damage has been done to his emotional being. One would assume that you, dear reader, feel upset. One would assume that you, dear reader, feel bad for our boy. One would assume that you, dear reader, are rather unhappy with the people who did this.

You might wonder why anyone would be so cruel. Why would someone go out of their way to damage his friendships? Why would someone be so uncaring, unable to see the suffering our boy is going through? Why?

Now, you might be inclined to take what you've learnt here, go out into the world with this new knowledge and do something. Maybe one day you'll run into friends of the who did this and feel obliged to share what you know. Maybe one day you'll write your own scathing blog. Maybe one day you'll meet the people responsible and finally get to do something about it; if you're so inclined, of course.

Well, let me stop you here. I'd like to remind you that there are always two sides to the story. There are always facts that are fudged. Omissions that are too easy not to make.

What if you find out our boy wasn't as nice as it seemed he was. That'd be a big shocker, now wouldn't it? Let's say I tell you that our boy has a habit of lying. hey, let's be nice and just say fudging the truth. Let's say he doesn't respect other people's feelings. Let's say he has a bad habit of telling people everything they wanted to hear in their wildest dreams, getting "drunk" and then not remembering it. Yeah. Don't feel so bad any more, do you?

And now I'm going to say the blatantly obvious. Our boy isn't the protagonist, he's the antagonist. There are two sides to every story. And when there's hurt on one side, when there's pain on one side, when there's depression on one side, standard normal table will tell you: it's the mirror image on the other side.

"I think I'm gay."

I'm standing on the balcony at a party I'm not sure I belong at, struggling to get inebriated. I never could figure out lighters. They're very complicated pieces of technology if you ask me. Definitely not on my game. At least I'm dressed pretty well.

On the other hand he is definitely on his game. I try really hard what it was like when I still wasn't entirely comfortable with my sexuality, and how I was always on top of things. Carefully observing everything, waiting for an opportunity. Watching for threats. I imagine he must be the same way.

He looks like he got his outfit right off a mannequin at Urban Outfitters: Baseball cap, jumper, Levi's low enough to see bright underwear, with a bright gold belt that doesn't really hold up his pants. He's one big scarf away from being utterly Queen West.

Earlier in the evening he had reminded me of a night where we spent almost every moment hitting on each other. So you can imagine my shock when I find out the cute little girl sitting next to him is his girlfriend. Didn't help that it was after we had re-enacted a robot playfight in the middle of the living room.

I try to figure out what to say. Something witty, to make the moment lighter. Or something comforting, to let him know it's ok.

Unable to think of anything, I got back to fighting with the lighter. I let me eyes speak for me this time.

We've all been told that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. I'm not going to deny that. I'm definitely not going to argue that. I know good and well that power scent has over someone in an emotionally vulnerable position. The last two weeks have been emotional hell for me. Only this time my bed isn't an escape.

My bed is normally what I use to escape from the world. Over the last two weeks I've been feeling down. I had a friend come over one night and cheer me up. It meant a lot that he was willing to brave the disgusting cold that is Toronto at night. It worked well too – sort of. It was nice having him there. It brought a lot of emotional baggage I thought I was done with, but I was ok with that. It's nice having someone there at night. Physical contact is soothing. Besides, he smells really good.

Only the smell came back to haunt me. I was having one of those bad nights where your body is asleep but your mind is still half awake. It's frustrating. After arguing with my body for what seemed like hours, I finally willed myself to roll over and cover my head with my blanket. As soon as I had pulled the blanket down I was confronted by a smell. A good smell. His smell. It was calming. I was in a good place again. I remembered he could comfort me. So I rolled over reaching out to grab his arm and pull him close to me.

I took a second to realise I was only grabbing at pillows. I didn't fall asleep again after that.

Previously:
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine

He woke up confused. He'd had a bad dream; a nightmare if you were to get into the gory details. Admittedly he'd been having bad dreams recently. It had never been anything like this; not for a long time. It was nothing like this though. The other day he'd had a dream where he'd been forced to move out into a house that he had never seen until he got there, with the guy he adopted as a little brother and his floor president's girlfriend. Then they left him in the mouldy old dump and went off somewhere leaving him all alone. He'd hated it at the time, but now he'd do anything to go back to that.

Suddenly he was thrown into a confused world where he was surrounded by allergens and jogging with his Old Best Friend. The Old Best Friend he stopped talking to six years ago. Suddenly The Old Best Friend was on great terms with him now. Worse, The Old Best Friend was buddy-buddy with The Boy.

So while he was running through the field, "exercising", his Old Best Friend was on the phone with The Boy; half trying to hook him up, half trying to hook up with him on his own.

So it should be no surprise that he woke up with a start, and has been afraid to go back to bed since. And it just HAD to happen the morning of one of his term tests. Karma is such a bitch.

Previously:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

When his Best Friend got here they went out for lattes - lattes and boys. Best way to get your mind off things. Unless of course the things your mind was on were lattes and boys. Then you'd have a problem. He spent most of his time bitching. While he was bitching came an attempt to justify all the judging. Of course you can never really justify judging, but in this case it came so easy. Sure, when he calmed down he would feel like a huge ass, but that wouldn't be for a few hours.

Since his biggest problem right now was that he couldn't stop thinking about The Boy and all the associated problems, he listened to stories about The Other Boy From Home. 'Listened to stories' was a nice way of saying he was getting dirt. Yes, he was a gossip. Get over it. It was the best way for him to try and get over it - that and eating a lot of gross caf food.

Previously:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

He phoned his Best Friend and told him to come over a day early this week. He had been fine until the end of the day. Then he cracked. Night classes suck like that when your professor drones on about nothing for hours. He had long phone conversations with three people before he could get a hold of the Best Friend, who had told him he would get in as soon as possible. Until then he would just have to pass the time - like it would be something easy to do.

He had tried this before. It never worked well. He would sit with his floormates and judge people. Only, that could only cheer him up for so long. Then that bad feeling would come back and he would have to think of something else to do. His other floormates would be playing videogames; probably in his room. So he would play with them until the name Roy made him so angry he was tempted to break stuff.

So he kicked them out, and sat. He sat and he waited for a phone call saying his Best Friend was here.

Previously:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

He'd spent most of his evening with his floor mates ignoring his problems. By which he meant he spent the night bitching to as many people as possible; friends from high school, people on his floor, people on other floors, and anyone foolish enough to have been on MSN at the time. It would help him later on, but right now he was too annoyed to be observant.

He didn't just bitch about this Boy. He bitched about people who were skeezebags. Why did he know so many skeezebags? He bitched about the boy from home that he ran into on the weekend. Most of all he bitched about how stupid it made him feel.

He should have been in better control of his emotions. He shouldn't need to spend hundreds of dollars to ignore the things that bothered him. He shouldn't need to tear other people down when he doubted himself. He wished he wouldn't stay up all night watching Grey's. But he knew he would.

Previously:
Part One
Part Two

His head throbbed. He tried to roll over to orient himself with his surroundings, but movement only seemed to increase the pain. He was afraid any more moving and he might throw up. The sun crept in through the cheap nylon curtain and stung his eyes.

Monday meant a return to class and an easy way to avoiding thinking about things he didn't want to think about. He used the remainder of the weekend to sort out his thoughts, and then throw them away. Monday meant a new week; a fresh start.

As he walked back from his tutorial he realized the thoughts had come back and needed sorting again. At least he was in control. He was always control when he was awake and alert. It was when he was tired and alone it became a problem. But right now, he was in control.

The best way to do this seemed to be to beat the emotion into submission with logical attacks, and then lock it in a box. He was good at that. Who wanted to be a big ball of emotions? People like that were looked down on. The problem would come back when he tried to go to sleep. Luckily there were ways of avoiding sleep.

Previously:
Part One

His head throbbed. He tried to roll over to orient himself with his surroundings, but movement only seemed to increase the pain. He was afraid any more moving and he might throw up. The sun crept in through the cheap nylon curtain and stung his eyes.

12:38. He'd slept in through his morning, which was certainly one way to spend it. At least he'd managed to fall asleep. As he rolled out of bed last night hit him like a train. Everything flooded back to mind and suddenly he felt sick again. Worse, now that he was awake, sleep wasn't an option for ignoring the emotions battling in his brain. He could attempt to do homework but there were two flaws with that plan. The first was that homework was never a good option - ever. The second was that he was still hungover, meaning if homework had been a good option he wouldn't be able to function properly anyway.

Something else would have to suffice. Too bad his floormates were nowhere to be found. He could go down and eat by himself, but that wasn't something he was up for doing. Of course! Shopping is a great way to get your mind off of anything bothering you. He also had friends who lived on the Mink Mile.

When isn't it ok to drown sorrow in lattes and designer clothing?

"I'm going to be sick." He rolled onto his back trying to make the pounding stop. As much as he tried to think about something else, it didn't work. Instead, drunk and overemotional, he replayed the night over and over in his head followed by how he would react to a future encounter. Depending on the mood, the future encounter changed. Moods swings were constant; a cycle with extremes at self loathing and self pitying.

"I need Wicked." Musicals always made everything better. Well, not better, but they numbed the right emotions long enough for it to not matter anymore. There was one night where he had stayed up singing along to the movie version of Rent over and over again because it made more sense than dealing with an awkwardness that was bound to arise. That'll teach him to hook up with a straight guy on his floor.

"No more drinking," he promised himself. It always lead to something bad.

His head spun as he tried to get up. He didn't even know how this happened. He had moved on. There wasn't supposed to be any desire for The Boy. He had decided that The Boy wasn't interested the week beforehand. So what went wrong? Everything. It started as innocent drinking with friends. Then before he knew it he was ready to smack just about everyone.

This was the boy that he had pegged as an easy one; a backup in case he couldn't hook up with anyone else. Oh, there's a whole bunch of things he didn't want to admit about himself all at once.

"Fuck. I need a drink."