Summary

In Chapter 5, which is titled “No Homo,” the author considers his years of experience dealing with rumors about him being gay. He begins those considerations with a story of how his best friend Brian told him, when they were in high school, that his mother had asked whether the author had any girlfriends. This leads the author into a consideration of the friendship between himself and Brian, and how they continued to be close over years of being on the same basketball team and going to different schools. At the same time, he writes, he became aware that he was considered “soft” by many of the people around them, teammates and girls and classmates and parents. “Soft,” he says, meant being interested in, or good at, things that men were not supposed to be interested in or good at – but then, he adds...