"It's gay porn, kid."

[elfs]

I was on the bus this morning, making an excellent strike deep into Matt's mind as he deals with his emerging feelings. A few days before this scene, Matt found the Bastet boy Nico lying in a railroad ditch, unconscious, bruised and bloody, naked from the waist down, and nearly frozen to death. Since then, Matt's family, who've never seen a Bastet in their lives, took him in, had the doctor set and plaster his broken leg. Matt's gone outside to chop winter wood, and to get away from Nico. Nico, who has no idea what's going on in Matt's mind, follows him outside:

Deliberately ignoring the yowler's presence, Matt lifted the sledgehammer and brought it down. It bounced off the wedge corner and rattled into the log itself, sending a hard shock up the handle into his hands. "Ow! God bless it!"

"You okay?" Nico said as he hobbled closer.

"Yeah, yeah. Happens all a time. I'll be right. Just, ow." He rubbed his bicep where the pain was greatest. Nico stood close to him. He was smaller than Matt, that wasn't entirely due to the crutches. And there was something else that didn't look right about Nico right now-- those clothes. Nico was too soft, too pretty. He wasn't a girl-- he wouldn't have looked right in Rebecca's clothes at all-- but he needed something else, something finer, than the old farm clothes they'd given him.

Matt imagined what Nico looked like with no clothes at all. He startled, jerked his head up toward Nico and said, "I'll be right. Really. Just... just don't stand too close. Lots a chips flying. Wood's dry and froze in this."

It really is Catboys of Brokeback Mountain. How sad am I? I've been to the library to get more details on what it was like to be a midwest farmboy in the U.S. around the turn of the last century.

Anyway, as I was writing this scene, this kid sat next to me. Probably a high school senior, he was reading a magazine read by rock star wannabees, full of reviews of software that'll make you "sound pro." He kept looking over my shoulder and I said, "It's gay porn, kid. I'm about to write the first sex scene. Do you plan to keep reading?"

He left me alone after that.