Chapter 4

When he wasn’t pursuing his masters or delivering Chinese, he wrote. He was fifteen when he told his ma that he was gay. She didn’t throw him out, but she wasn’t okay with it. His da was more philosophical about his homosexuality. Gay firefighters worked at the firehouse, and the firehouse was all his da knew after he and Kathleen separated, that and the pub.

Kathleen tried to make Colin go to a priest. She thought a priest could exorcise his gay demons. She brought the priest to the house and attempted to force Colin to submit to the ritual. By that time he was seventeen, and he ran to his father and never went back except to collect his things. He moved out of her house while she was at work. Using scholarship and grant money he moved into a studio apartment. That apartment served as his dorm for the four years he attended NYU for his creative writing degree and where he still lived while he worked on his masters.