Dougie Klein looks up from his foil-wrapped sandwich and gives me what I’m guessing he thinks is a subtle once-over and his lips form into an unbelievable smug, contented smirk. He looks suspiciously post-coital. This is what I refer to as the Danger Zone and I didn’t think it was due for another appearance for a while, but I must have been wrong. Dougie’s about as subtle as an eighteen-wheeler truck heading my way.

I’m guessing he spent several hours last night with his right hand clamped around his dick moaning my name. I guess that, because minus the intense creepiness of it, I get that same look in my eyes when I’ve had a particularly good jerk-off session. The difference is, I don’t go around acting like the other party knows anything about it, because, unlike Dougie Klein, I have a well grounded sense of reality.

His smile widens and I struggle to keep my expression neutral. If I freak out then it’s only going to make it even more awful and real, and worse than that is the reaction I’m fighting. I’m a bit of a social retard – if someone smiles at me I smile back, even if I don’t want to. Right now the one thing I know is that I must not smile.

Dougie is the type of guy you have to watch yourself around. Do the wrong thing and he’ll take it as a confession of your love for him and have his hands down your tighty-whiteys before you can blink. Not that I wear tighty-whiteys.

Ok, so it’s not as if I’ve never let-loose about someone I’m not going out with. It’s not as if I’m freaked out because he’s gay; that would be entirely irrational. I’m freaked out because the thought of him getting hard over me makes me want to take a bath in hydrochloric acid and scrub my skin off.

The problem is, my classmates do a very simple sum that goes along the lines of ‘gay guy in class plus gay guy in class equals couple’, and repeatedly shove us together on report projects, force us to sit together and leave us alone in mysteriously empty rooms at parties. This has been going on since a particularly memorable gym class at the pool left me thoroughly out-ed. I said it at the time and I’ll say it again now - Speedos were always going to be my downfall.

We’ve actually become friends because of being shoved together so often, Dougie and I. Unfortunately for my optimistic classmates though, while Dougie clearly fancies me, I cannot figure out how to run fast enough in the opposite direction. You see the problem?

Doug smiles again and I grimace, ducking down to my plate of cafeteria pasta. I know this breaks all of the rules of being a teenager and I should be shot on the spot for saying this, but our school food is actually alright. I like it. Anyway, Dougie’s pulling out all the stops today, doing a number on a banana. How obvious can you get? Does he really think that’s sexy, because I sure as hell don’t.

Dougie Klein is a pervert, and as one of his reluctant friends I am more than entitled to make that judgement. We’ve had those sex talks that start off when one of your respective other-halves does something entirely gross and then you split up and the next thing you know, you’re getting drunk with you friends going “And then he licked my teeth. I mean, what the fuck, who licks teeth?” Except, straight guys don’t like to have those conversations with me, so it’s usually me, Dougie and the girls. With Dougie though, after the teeth it gets into a little more detail and he’s going, “So he looked at me like some complete submissive and his eyes were begging me fuck him raw and he was shaking – fucking shaking! But his eyes were going, ‘Come on, Doug – fuck me. Hold me down and fuck me.’ And then he punched me and it was so fucking hot. You know?”

None of us ever know. We do get the urge to back away slowly, though. Watching him mangle his banana whilst trying to hold my eye contact gives me that exact same desire to run.

I usually know whoever it is he’s conjured into a sex-starved submissive in his head, and only once has his version ever been anywhere close to the truth. That screwed him up pretty bad; in fact I think I can safely say that his relationship with Collin Rew is what really mangled his brain. Normally his crushes are shy straight kids who, if they had the guts, would punch his face inside out for trying to pin them to the bed. Little do they know he’d probably get off on that. He’s into some pretty twisted stuff. Actually, sorry, I don’t want to think too hard about that at the moment. I already feel uncomfortable enough witnessing the molestation of that poor piece of fruit that I just know his sick little mind is associating with me.

He’s an alright guy when he’s not trying to hump anything in trousers, but the thought of Dougie Klein and me together, makes me think that my sexuality is actually just a phase and that really, I’m straight. I would gladly take performing cunninglingus on all of the girls in this building, including Mrs Waterman the seventy-three year old librarian, over getting down and dirty with Dougie. And he knows this. In fact, I yelled pretty much that exact sentence in his face the last time he groped my arse. He should not be looking at me with those horribly satisfied eyes. I hate it when he’s in the Danger Zone.

I know why he’s there this time at least. He got rejected by Angel-Boy aka James Carmichael – the one sitting over on the art kids table. More the fool Doug. This always happens when he gets rejected. Sometimes I really wish he’d just stop trying – for my sanity if nothing else. I could have told him that was coming. Dougie is not Angel-Boy’s type. Dougie is a geek. We’re all of us a bit of a geek, but Dougie takes it to new levels. He designs characters on this combat game he has purely for wanking over. Since he told me that I’ve never felt comfortable kicking his arse at Tekken. That’s just not right, especially not when he then tries to get me to play using that character. What the hell is that about?

But I digress, back to Angel-Boy. Angel-Boy gets let out of heaven to come to school. They scoop him back up in a feather-filled handful at the end of everyday and lock his pouting lips back amongst the clouds. He looked at me once, caught me drooling and actually laughed before he mouthed “No chance, Nick,” like the overly arrogant, godly being that he is. You know, then he punched me, but that’s beside the point. The boy is a walking wet-dream. No way was he going to come down to earth enough to take Doug seriously, even if he wasn’t straight.

Sometimes I don’t think it’s worth the hassle being friends with Doug at all. It’s not like he even goes after guys he could actually get and I always have to pick up the pieces. When he’s in the Danger Zone, I feel stalked. I feel sexually bloody harassed. But we’ve talked about this - he’s practically begged me not to ditch him as a friend and has sworn on his mortal soul that he doesn’t fancy me at all, so if I was to split with him I’d have to come up with a different reason. On the up side, I guess that means I own his soul now, but to be honest, I’d rather he actually just didn’t fancy me. I don’t really want his soul if having it means I have to keep going through this crap.

When he goes to college he can find himself a nice gimp at a bondage club and he’ll be fine. He just has to get it into his obsessed little head that I am not it.

I suppose it would help if I had a boyfriend, or a love interest at least. Then there would be no question that I was off-limits. Unfortunately, I don’t. Trouble is, he does a good job sticking to me and quite often acts as if we are going out any time we’re near anyone I find remotely attractive. It’s like his very own self-fulfilling prophesy, except I really don’t want it fulfilled.

I stare at his discarded banana skin and take a deep breath. There’s only one way to stop this. I’ve got to find Dougie Klein a boyfriend so that I can get my life back and stop worrying that he has pictures of me on his phone.