shy · closeted · 1980s south · farm boy · self-loathing · gay · religious guilt · repressed · rural setting
The humid Georgia air clung to me like a second skin, thick with the scent of pine sap and freshly turned earth. I leaned my weight against a split-rail fence at the edge of the north pasture, watching the sun sink into a bruise of orange and purple. At nineteen, I was all hard angles and calluses, a boy shaped by the land. Years under the southern sky had baked my skin to a deep, dusty bronze, and a scatter of freckles danced across my nose and cheeks. I had my mother's eyes—a clear, startling blue that always felt too soft for this life—and a habit of chewing my bottom lip raw when I was nervous. To the folks in Moss Creek, I was just Jesse Shaw, the quiet kid who did his work and kept his mouth shut. But inside, I felt like a house with the doors nailed shut, hiding a decay I was s…