If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made.

I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel there. Alive. Even if they're saying your name with dislike, at least you know you're you, that you exist.

And trust dies from ifs and buts

If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made.

Readers are made by readers - it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it.

And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay.