Later on, in the barracks room, I lay down on the cot next to his and said, “Matt?”

“Mmm?”

“You know that’s not true, right?”

“What’s not?”

“That you killed him, your ... colleague.”

I heard him sit up, the light went on between our bunks, and there he was, sitting facing me, frowning.

“Well,” I said. “You didn’t.”

“Who did, then?”

“Well, the bear for one thing.” I held up a hand to forestall his objection. “And, I mean -- come on! He went out without a gun. That was kind of stupid. You admit that, right?”

“He was upset -- freaked out. He said he thought we were friends.”

And at this Matt began to sob again. This time I got up and sat down gingerly beside him. Hesitantly I laid a hand on his shoulder, and was surprised when he didn’t shrug it off.

“You probably were,” I said quietly. “You just had that -- other thing too.”

He said nothing, but his sobbing began to subside.

“Did you -- did you, uh, force things -- when you said you -- got frisky?”

He shook his head. “What I did was enough, I guess.”

I considered. “No,” I said at last, in a deliberately decisive voice. “He freaked, you said. That was his responsibility. He could have just told you to keep your hands off.”

“He did. But he freaked, too.”

I nodded. “That was unfortunate. But it wasn’t entirely your fault. Surely you see that part of it was his?”

Now Matt looked at me, his tear-stained face glistening in the light of the lamp.

“Yeah, but he’s normal, right?”

I made a disgusted noise, and Matt stared at me.

“Well, he was -- right?”

I shook my head. “I had a friend, in high school. Her name was Ginger -- it was kind of a translation of her name; she was Sikh. I don’t know whether these were part of her culture or not, but she told me two of the wisest things I’ve ever heard.”

Matt regarded me expectantly.

“She said that I shouldn’t take the world so seriously.”

Matt considered, then smiled vaguely and nodded.

“And she told me that ‘normal’ sucked.”

Matt blinked and frowned. “How’s that?”

“Well, I thought about it and this is what I came up with. If you’re normal, you don’t have to consider, you don’t have to think. You’re just -- normal. And so you accept things the way they are, because the world is made for normal people.

“But if you’re not normal.” I paused, and then continued. “You know, being gay, in a way -- it was the best thing that happened to me.”

Matt’s eyebrows rose.

I nodded. “You see, I had to try to figure what it was all about. I had to deal with the unpleasant fact. I didn’t want to be gay. And I knew that being gay wasn’t generally accepted. And so on. So, I was envious, resentful, even bitter at times. But it got me thinking about life, and all that.”

Matt seemed puzzled. “So?”

“So! So, by thinking about life, I figured out lots of other things too. Much more than if I had been born straight. And, I had to discover who I was -- sexually speaking -- myself; because there was no rule-book, I had to find myself, which was rather fun and rewarding in the end.”

“Huh.”

“‘Huh,’ he says! You have no idea -- or, maybe you do.” I paused, looked at him, and then shook my head. “No. No you don’t. You never made that discovery. You’re still in the misery stage. You’ve never come out of the woods and found yourself and said, ‘Okay! I can live with this!’”

Matt was frowning at me.

“I think it’s different.”

I threw up my hands. “Of course, it’s different! Don’t you see that that’s the whole point? That that’s the amazing thing about it?”

Matt snorted.

“No, no!” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder again. “Don’t fly off the handle. Look! I’ll help. I had people to help me, and I can help you.”

“How?” He gave me a bitter smirk -- the first I had ever seen. “By sucking my cock?”

I gave a small laugh. “I could, if that would help.”