[Note: To understand this narrative, you need to be familiar with the story Nova on my Cometfire website. Go read it if you haven't already, then come back. And be forewarned: there are some strong emotions in this piece, so skip it if you're feeling vulnerable.]

"Nova" is based on a true incident in my life, like all the Cometfire stories. Most of the action in the story is reported as accurately as I remember it (very accurately, I think.) But the interior aspects - thoughts and feelings of "Danny" - are imagined, because I reversed roles in writing "Nova." I was actually the boy I named "Tyler" in the story, and "Danny" was the other boy.

Why did I do that? Please forgive the repetition, but I can't say it better than these paragraphs I wrote for this website's index page:

In reality, I was the boy I called "Tyler," not "Danny"; I was the boy who went up to another boy in the cave when the lights were out and touched him. All of "Danny's" inner thoughts in that story are imaginary, because I don't know what he was thinking. I desperately wish I did, but I never will. "Tyler" was the kind of boy I was. That was me, then.

... I don't think I'm very sensitive. I keep trying. That's why I deliberately reversed roles in "Nova" and gave the other boy my name - I very much wanted to see things from his point of view, to experience how he felt. I think I succeeded, because it made me realize that "novas" can be fiery-bright joy, while they burn - and then they can hurt people, when they burn out and go away. I hope I didn't hurt that boy. I hope it's the electric joy of that unexpected touch he remembers; I hope that in his mind's eye, I'm the fiery-bright boy with the dark hair. But I'll never know.

Here's what happened: When I was 15 y/o, almost 16, I "visited" my aunt and uncle and cousins in the Appalachian Mountains for a month in the summer (i.e., my mom got rid of me for the month - long story.) Two of my cousins worked part-time at a tourist cave, so they got me a temporary job there, too. My job was to stand outside, directing tourists to empty parking spaces. One of the fringe benefits was going on the cave tours for free, and I liked doing that - I wasn't into cave stuff, but it was damn hot out there in the sun all day, and inside the cave it was around 60 degrees.

I was going through big changes. I had split up with Kenny not long before, after eight months of denying that he was my boyfriend. I was busily telling myself that I really liked girls better; that boys were just a substitute because I went to the military school and there weren't any girls around. Conveniently overlooking the fact that I'd been sexually involved with boys long before that. And in denial that I'd fallen in love with a boy, not a girl - more than once. It was a bad summer, emotionally. I was glad for the chance to get away for a little while.

One day I decided to go on the tour when my shift ended - spur of the moment. The old folks and the little girl in "Nova" were there; that part's accurate. And there was this boy my age, along with the others. I sat down near him on the bench, and he kept looking at me - staring, really. When we lined up, he was behind me, looking at me in the shiny elevator doors.

There's a sixth sense you get that a boy is interested in you. I believe in it, because it worked for me, back then. It doesn't anymore. I won't let it. Anyway, I knew he wasn't "straight" (for lack of a better term), and that he was interested in me.

Before we got down to the waterfall, whenever we stopped to look at formations, he'd look at me, every time. Unlike the way I told the story in "Nova," I started meeting his gaze and smiling at him. He was shy and looked away and got embarrassed, every time I'd catch him looking. I wasn't shy at all, and I thought shy boys were cute, and I always felt like they were flowers, waiting to be opened up. That sounds really dippy, but it was how I thought at the time, in a half-conscious way. You're just waiting for someone to come along and take the lead, cut away that shell, and make you happy, I would have thought, if forced to put it into words. Growing up realizing you like boys, and knowing most of your friends would hate you if they knew how much you liked boys, and being lonely, and wishing some other boy would come along and... well, something. I could tell this boy felt like that. That's what I mean about 6th sense.

We got down there, and they turned the lights off, as per the standard tourist-cave routine (I think every tourist cave in America must do the same thing.) The boy was right in front of me. Impulsively, I did just what Tyler did, except I didn't kiss him. It was all impulse. He nearly jumped a mile when I first touched him, and he let out this big squeak, not a gasp as in the story. But then I ran my finger down his back, and he melted.

That finger down the backbone was something I did, back then. There were certain ways I could touch a boy, not directly sexual, but sensual. The backbone was one place I learned how to touch. It had to be a downstroke, and not up toward his neck. I don't know why. It was all trial and error, my learning process. Another touch was breathing warm air into that hollow spot where his shoulder met his neck, as I did. And another was to run all four of my fingertips in a semi-circle on the outside of where his hip met his butt, down low. A little farther along, his stomach, just a feather touch, also downward. And other stuff I could do.

Techniques. Does this sound predatory? Maybe it was.

I wasn't trying to get this boy to have sex with me; there was no way. I didn't know who was waiting for him (the sections about his mom and brother were imagined), but I knew someone was. I don't know exactly why I did it the way I did, because it wasn't planned or conscious. I think I was just trying to say "You aren't alone... somebody thinks you're cool..."

Back then, I didn't know how to fall in love. So I touched and got sexual, and hoped it would fill up the hollow spot inside me. It never did.

It only lasted 3-4 seconds. When the countdown got to One, I let go, just like in the story. The lights came on, and unlike the story, he turned all the way around and looked at me, and he was flushed. I wanted so badly to follow through. Sex, yeah. It got me hot, and him too, very obviously. I won't get explicit, but you can figure it out. Or maybe I just wanted to kiss him or hug him or just talk to him. But nothing else could happen. I had gone on impulse, and it was a dead end. So we just looked at each other.

Then the guide herded us out toward the elevators. She was actually behind me, last in line. The boy was right in front of me. I wanted so bad to touch him again, or connect with him somehow. But the guide was talking to me the whole time. She was a co-worker and I didn't want to be rude, and I had no idea what to say to him anyway.

We got on the elevator. We didn't touch, unlike the story. I knew he wanted to touch me, or speak, or do something. It was coming off him in waves. It was more "public" in the elevator than I made it seem in the story, and everyone behind us would have seen. And he was afraid of that.

When we got to the upper level, it was just like in the story. I got off and walked away, and I never looked back.

It's agony for me to remember that. What did I do? Got him hot, opened him up, broke through his shyness and fears. Then turned my back on him. Is it evil to do that? Or is it something he remembers as a nova, a sudden burst of brilliance in his life? Was it awesome? Does he hate me or love me? Was I good or evil? Do I need to atone? I'll never know. The only thing I know for certain is that it changed him, somehow.

Sometimes, I feel like my whole past as a boy who liked boys was like that. I was this big magnet, and everywhere I went, I rearranged iron filings into new patterns. Nothing left unchanged. That's fine, if you're talking about iron. But this was people. I have always been told I have "charisma". I'm one of those people who walks into the room, and everything changes. Parties, work- related stuff, everything. Why? Is it good or evil? I don't know.

It's cool to have that kind of power. But it's awful to know you have it and to be unable to always use it for good - and to not know, later, whether the way you exercised power was right or wrong.

I can't ever go back in time, and find that boy and apologize (if that's what is needed), or hug each other and say "Wasn't that awesome?!?" (if that's what is needed). So, I write stories like "Nova", for all the world to see. I guess writing fiction is the way I'm trying to change the past, make it better. I wish it had happened like "Nova", and not like it did in reality.

I write narratives like this, hoping to exorcise demons, and to expose the wounds in my psyche to the light of day, and let them either heal me or kill me. And I hope and pray that grace happens.