A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

From the poem’s outset, the speaker (identified as “you”) is a victim of both external and internalized anti-gay bias. In the first stanza, when he is violently punished for wanting “to touch [the] hands and lips” (Line 5) of another boy, the speaker feels he “deserve[s] it” (Line 3). Only “in the eighth grade” (Line 7), at the age of 14 or so, he already “know[s] that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy” (Line 10). He has internalized that belief so deeply that it has become second nature, like “how to ride a dirt bike” (Line 8) or “do / long division” (Lines 8-9).

The speaker’s abject lack of self-esteem is evident from the third line in the form of guilt—“and you deserve it” (Line 3)—but it resurfaces only 10 lines later in another form. Though the speaker refuses to keep “his mouth shut” (Line 11), to deny his desire, he does not see this as an act of admirable resistance or protest against oppressive intimidation. In contrast, he frames it as weakness—“you are weak and hollow” (Line 13)—and is paralyzed by a sense of futility, resigning himself to victimization: “it doesn’t matter anymore” (Line 13). This negative self-perception persists and probably informs his eventual predilection for casual and violent sex (Stanzas 2-4).