[Pi.]

Hello! This contest ended over 2 months ago. Please judge and announce a winner! Thank you!

[zealouzie]

Username: Wileyfangz
Name: Obi
Gender: Male
What two things helped them to discover their sexuality?:
His mother and his Math teacher, Mr. Benson.

It wasn't an easy find, that's for sure. Or rather it wasn't that he hadn't discovered it. He'd known probably since he was a youngster about these feelings. But they'd never had a name before. After a while, he figured they were normal, even though he'd never said anything outright he remembered feeling odd about a boy or a girl, thinking about them always warmed his cheeks and made his heart race in a special way, but he never thought it was so serious. He didn't think he'd need to.

It was his mother who'd asked him if he was gay first before he ever even knew what to look up.

"If you are," he could remember her telling him. "I'll still love you, no matter what anyone else has to say about it." And confused and uncertain, Obi didn't say a word more about it, but he took it as a sign. At the very least he needn't worry about his mother and that was oddly enough, a relief he hadn't known he'd needed. But it opened more questions. How had she even known? Was he gay?

He thought about all the boys and girls he'd met in his life that he had crushed on, or thought were immensely attractive. Was there a sign? A signal? Was his broken somehow? At school, there always seemed to be this need to pick a side that had always kinda bugged him back then. Why should he have to choose between one or the other? What was wrong with liking both?

The answer presented itself to him in the form of his teacher when he caught the man sitting down with his husband one day by accident during lunch hour. His teacher, Mr. Benson, was a calm and charismatic figure in the school, but it was never thought of that Mr. Benson was gay. Obi would've heard the rumors if it was.

He remembered stuttering an excuse to leave, embarrassed to have intruded on them in the first place when Mr. Benson asked him what he had come for in a kind way. It helped him save face to say he'd come for help on the assignment from earlier. And it was in admitting so that he'd mentioned he'd never known Mr. Benson was gay.

"Ah, but I'm not," the Mathematics teacher had grinned while his husband had politely settled at his desk, not imposing or threatening at all. Obi remembered looking to his teacher in confusion when he went on. "I'm bisexual."

It was a strange thing that a word could have so much power and at that moment Mr. Benson held it like a treasure. And confused, Obi had asked him what it was that meant. And when he explained it was like a subtle shift. Not so much a click in place, or an aha! moment but a slow dawning one. He'd never have guessed that the feeling he had was actually named. It rolled around on his tongue like a Jolly Rancher and he'd say it to himself hours after school was over.

But it would be in the day after that he'd muster up the courage to find out. That he'd find himself in libraries discreetly searching up words, books, meanings looking for a glimpse of himself in the pages. The resources he had in writing were shallow at best in a public library and he was well aware of the viewpoint of most towards these topics, but still, he poured and checked out whatever he could find.

And though the word bisexual was shrouded, overshadowed by bigger words like "gay" or "lesbian", he worked with what he could. And in the end, he found a treasure trove of his own.

congrats!!!

[Wileyfangs]

;; O ;; Thank you so much heck!!! ;; D ;;