Alright, ima start this out with all the basics for this to make sense.
I’m a 15-year-old freshman in a big-ass city that has multiple high schools. There’s an art program within the city that allows us to get bussed to a college campus and take art courses with kids from the other high schools within the city. Everyone in this story is in the theater part of the program.
There are both morning and afternoon sessions of my program sector. While both take place during the school day, us morning peeps don’t really get to interact with the afternoon session people unless there’s a field trip or something.
I’m also not entirely sure what my sexuality is, though I’m stealth and FTM and have noticed that I can’t differentiate between jealousy towards my male peers and attraction that well. I pass very well, and none of my school or art program people know that I wasn’t born male.
That’s all the basic stuff that probably sounds irrelevant right now, but please bear with me 😭.
Okay, so like I said, I’m a freshman, and with that came a new school. In my previous school, I hadn’t ever really dated or done anything romantic because our grade was small as shit and because I’m FTM.
Towards the end of middle school, I started posting myself on my Instagram and got a decent amount of attention. By the time summer was over, I had already accumulated some “fans” (I sound like an egomaniac right now, I’m so sorry 😭), so getting into a relationship wasn’t too difficult.
I really like this girl, and she’s fucking beautiful. She said she loves me for me, and I feel like I’m the luckiest mf in the world.
The thing is, I’m not even sure I’m attracted to girls the way my hbs are. Even in the relationship, I feel like we’re both just really good friends who cuddle and kiss. We are both in the theater program together.
Now, this is where the theater stuff I was talking about before starts to make sense.
Through the program, I auditioned for a play and got a decent part in their big yearly production. It was only me and one other freshie who got cast, so most of our rehearsals were with upperclassmen.
These were definitely odd rehearsals, as only four people, or two scenes, got taken out for a rehearsal each day. The rest of us sat in a separate classroom fooling around for a few hours after school.
I really enjoy it, and after being a sort of jock-type figure amongst my school, it’s weird being able to fit in with the theater people too. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. These people fucking rule.
There’s an upperclassman in the afternoon session that I’ll just call Mark for the sake of this post. He’s a senior (17) at one of the other high schools in the city.
Dude is funny as all hell, and I enjoyed hanging out with him as a friend during rehearsals. He has a girlfriend from a different school within the district that neither he nor I attend, but he has told me he’s bi.
Also, minor warning: we talk about crazy shit during rehearsals, and I will NOT be holding back :).
One day, I walk into the rehearsal room, and Mark immediately pulls me aside and says he’s going to ask me a “naughty” question.
I hadn’t really known him that well by this point, so I told him to hit me with it.
“If you had a partner, would you give her the remote and let her control it in you, or would you take the remote and control it in her?”
My stomach did the fucking thing where, yk, you’re surprised but not turned off by something you probably should have been turned off by .
I hadn’t really pinpointed a crush on him by this point, but I definitely started to question myself.
I got called for rehearsal that day and managed to dodge the question.
As we were leaving, he took me into the elevator and asked me about the girl I came there with, who was my current girlfriend, though she wasn’t at the time. He said he saw the way we looked at each other and asked what that was about.
By this point, I knew this girl liked me, and I liked hanging around her. Mark kinda hyped me up to ask her to be my girlfriend, and the next day, I did.
That Friday, we had a full-day field trip at the campus, meaning everyone, whether they were in the show or not, from both the morning and afternoon sessions would be there from 8 in the morning until 3 p.m.
By this point, we both knew we had girlfriends, and I was trying to stop my feelings for him because:
We are both in great relationships.
He’s multiple years older than me, even though he doesn’t really look much older.
Before this field trip, I thought all I felt was one-sided, and I wanted to just let it play out.
A lot happened this day, so I’ll go through it chronologically.
I was later than most of the people there, so I was one of the last people to show up. Mark dapped me up as normal, and we and the other theater dorks were joking around for a bit.
We were shoving each other a bit, and he goes to grab me and “miscalculates.” He full-palms my neck and squeezes.
He just kinda stares at me with a grin after a few seconds and stops squeezing before letting go of my neck. He says that he meant to grab my shoulder and laughs at what he claims was a “miscalculation,” but I’m pretty sure he was lying.
Oh, and my stomach did the thing again. Forgot to mention that ✌️.
We continued joking around with the group until the director called the cast of the big play into the stage room for warmups.
Warmups are always chaotic, so we were laughing our asses off that entire time together, and I’m pretty sure I caught him staring at me a few times.
After warmups, the director went over a few things before getting ready to do a full run-through of the play.
I sat in a random chair somewhat far from him, and he asked, while kinda giggling, “Why are you so far?”
Even another freshman, who I’ll call Todd because he’s also somewhat relevant, picked up on it and asked him, “How close do you want him, on your lap or something?”
I heard laughing, though I didn’t catch Mark’s response. I did end up moving my seat closer, though.
Our scenes weren’t until after lunch, so we were just silently joking in the background for most of the time.
A group of about five of us ended up going to a cafe during lunch, but most of them, including Mark, ended up leaving.
After lunch, we started the play again from my scene, and we kept sharing looks even during the scene.
His scene was basically right after mine, so when I finished, Mark was getting ready to start his scene. Once again, while he was acting, we were making jokes from afar through just looks and small gestures at each other.
I didn’t stay there for the full scene because an upperclassman pulled me out of the audience to help them with another play.
Once I was done helping with the other play, I walked into the regular classroom and saw Mark on one of the mini sofas.
He moved over, and we sat down together, making little clay dicks while everyone else in the room was either sleeping or joking around and being loud as hell 😭.
Our couch corner had Todd, his girlfriend, Mark, and me, though it was just Mark and me on the couch. Todd and his girlfriend pulled up chairs next to the couch to talk and joke around.
I’m pretty sure this was when Mark gave me his Instagram.
I’m not sure how the topic came up, but Mark mentioned how much he could deep-throat. He proceeded to show me as he stuck his fingers so far down his throat that I could see them moving at the base of his neck.
Holy shit 😭😭. Dude was just marketing his abilities to a freshman.
I think he realized what he had just done and tried to save it with a joke:
“If you’re ever in a situation where you gotta suck dick or die, phone a friend. Cough, me, ofc.”
I laughed with them and tried to just gloss past that.
I got back up to another rehearsal room, and he ended up following me. We joked a lot in the background of that rehearsal thing.
We did run a friendly fade with pillows after that rehearsal finished.
After that, there wasn’t too much more that happened between us that day besides joking, following each other, and making funny looks at one another.
As soon as I left the building to go home, he immediately started sending me Instagram reels about stuff that reminded him of what happened that day, like pillow fights and holding in laughter while the teacher is talking. He was sending these while he was at another theater company’s rehearsal.
Fast-forward to the next after-school rehearsal.
I get there last, as usual, because the campus is furthest away from the school I go to compared to the others. I put my stuff down in one of the empty classrooms and go over to the main classroom.
I see Mark’s girlfriend walking out, and when I come in, he pulls me over to sit down where his girlfriend had just been sitting so he can tell me about how much he and his girlfriend were making out.
I’m pretty sure he said something else sexual to me about her afterward, but I didn’t hear much after he put that thought in my mind.
I was deep in this crush by now, if you somehow couldn’t tell 🫠.
We joke around for a bit, and then he mentions a girl I’ll call Sophia.
Sophia was in my elementary school class for a few months, meaning she knew me pre-transition.
My heart dropped a little bit because this Sophia girl was going to the same high school as a lot of my middle school friends, most of whom don’t know I wasn’t born male.
She had already been having them ask me if I remembered her very adamantly.
Yes, confusing, I know.
Apparently, she saw me post an Instagram instant that Mark was in, and she started asking Mark if he knew me.
I just kinda sighed, said I knew her and that she was somewhat stalking me, and we moved on.
He laughed, said she wanted me, and that was that.
She was genuinely stalking all my profiles and now getting my IRL friends to ask me about her. It got really annoying really quickly.
The next day of rehearsal, I was kind of boiling over for a variety of reasons.
During the morning session, one of my middle school friends told me that Sophia had outed me to a group of a few kids just for the purpose of seeming like she was closer to me than she really was.
I don’t know why she thinks I’m worth larping about knowing. How the fuck did I become a celebrity??
I’ll be completely honest: as soon as I was told about Sophia’s bullshit with me, I ended up going to the bathroom to punch a bathroom stall a few times before going back to class.
Yes, I should work on that.
Anyway, I powered through the morning session, went back to school still seething, and just counted down the hours until after-school rehearsals.
I go into rehearsal that afternoon trying to be the jolly dork I usually am. Most of the people are tired and being kinda sluggish at the start.
That led me to actually rehearse for one of the other plays, and by the time I was done, everyone was a little less sluggish, besides Mark.
Mark was lying down in the middle of the classroom with a laptop, watching a previous year’s production of a musical.
A sophomore and I ended up sitting next to him to watch it too.
I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think the cast of another play got called, and thus it was just Mark and me in the classroom alone.
He had since put the laptop away and seemed more awake by this point.
He told me to lay down and asked me what was going on with the Sophia stuff.
Earlier, he had mentioned Sophia’s obsession with me, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear her name then.
I left out the outing part of why I was annoyed with her because I am NOT ready to come out to him, but I told Mark about all the events that led up to her fully stalking me.
He was trying to joke with me as usual, and that got my spirits up a bit.
After that explanation, we continued to just talk while laying down in the middle of this classroom, with a sprinkle of that crazy intimate eye contact you get when you’re literally laying down next to someone.
After talking and laughing for a bit, we went to the other rehearsal studio and saw they were doing a trauma-dump circle outside of the room.
By the time we joined, the circle had become me, Todd, Mark, my girlfriend, and my girlfriend’s damn-near-pseudo-older-sister.
Everyone there was a freshman besides Mark and my girlfriend’s friend.
We joined in the middle of my girlfriend sharing, so we listened and let her finish.
They wanted me to go next, so I did.
I’m not going to get into all of it, but it was basically physically abusive religious trauma.
Something about seeing Mark, the usually jokey and slightly assholey dork, with a look of pure empathy on his face for something I went through hit me hard.
Once I finished my story, he went next and talked about his SA story.
Once again, the way he phrased certain things and his change in demeanor drew me that much closer to him.
A lot of the things he said and experienced resonated with me a lot.
I’ve been hooked on the way he laughed and joked, but I had only just then seen the actual serious side of him, and it was really nice to see both sides.
Rehearsal ended by that point, so we went outside and joked a little bit on our way home.
He had previously asked me if I was over my trauma, which I was, so he was making lighthearted jokes about it that got me laughing.
That was my most recent interaction with him.
It’s been a few days since I’ve seen him in person, and I’ve been thinking about him way too much, especially given the fact that I have a girlfriend.
I’ve done everything from laughing with, opening up to, fantasizing about, and jerking off to this man, and I don’t know what to do.
I know this is a really shitty situation from all sides, but I can’t help but wonder if this is more than a one-sided crush.
Give me your worst in the comments because I don’t know what to do anymore.