Unforbidden Love — Part 2

The first day back at school, I was a bundle of nerves. In Ipoh, a town where most people spoke Cantonese instead of Mandarin, I had few friends, despite this being my second year there. I was placed in the afternoon classes, in Form 2, following the British system Malaysia had inherited after colonisation. On the first day of class, we met our classmates, and he sat behind me. We were in the lowest classes of Form 2, ranked from A to F, with the higher achievers in Class A. My class was the second lowest of the form, which meant we were among the students who had failed most of our subjects and ranked lowest in our age group.

A typical class size was about forty students. The classroom had a blackboard at the front, with four rows of desks placed side by side. I was in the third row, facing the blackboard, and he sat behind me.

In Malaysian schools, we were required to wear uniforms: a white-collared shirt with green shorts. He was tall, with neatly combed hair and a well-ironed shirt and shorts. He was tidy and quiet, catching my eye with a sense of maturity and security that I found attractive.

I was a skinny, pale, and timid boy, constantly worried about being bullied. In an all-boys school environment, my softness stood out like a sore thumb compared to the rough and tumble nature of the other boys.

Back to the night, under the yellow light saturating the bedroom, it was just him and me. I thought if anything could happen between us, it would be tonight. We both agreed with little pinky fingers that no matter what, we would remain good friends. I summoned my courage and said, “It was you. It is you that I have been secretly having a crush on.”

We paused, and my heart was racing. I turned my head around and stared at him, hoping he would say something. Suddenly, he started laughing — not a big laugh but a teasing laugh. I said, “What?” He replied, “You didn’t know?”

“Know what?” I was anxious and uncertain about what he was trying to tell me. My head was spinning, and I told myself, “See, you made a fool of yourself again.” Suddenly, I looked sad, and he stopped laughing. He had a serious look on his face and said to me, “It was always you.”

At that moment, I thought, did I hear it wrongly? Despite this being what I had always hoped for since we were in the same class, I asked, “For real?” and said, “You are not teasing me, are you?”

He looked at me and said, “So you really had no idea all these years?”

I said, “No, how could I know? We were both only sixteen, and that was around 1988. There was no internet, no access to information about what being gay was, or how to find love or acceptance from society.”

He said, “Yes, from the moment I saw you, I already liked you.”

“Do you mean when we were in the same class?”

He said, “Not the first time I saw you, when a group of us came to your class to talk about the Boy Scouts. I still remember where you were sitting and was really hoping you would join.”

I was bewildered because he remembered exactly where I was sitting.

He said, “I liked you for a long time, and I thought you knew.”