Dave Karofsky is a football player. He's a tall guy, maybe 5'10 or 5'11, and stocky, compact, solid. He probably weighs two hundred pounds. In full pads, he is like a charging rhino on the football field. He runs the other team down, as if he doesn't see them, as if they aren't there. His passion for the game allows him to immerse himself in it. In high school, this is what matters. His primary identity is that of a sportsman, a man driven by the noble, primitive instinct to defend his honor on the field of battle. This is how Dave Karofsky thinks of it. He read a book about the origin of American football, once, and the author said something like that. It sounds logical, poetic, when it's put like this. The truth is that Dave did not really choose to play football—he wasn't against it but it seemed, at the time, the only possible path. His brothers, who have graduated from high school now, were both football stars as well, and his father signed him up for the middle school team when he was twelve. Dave spent most of middle school with at least one sports-related injury, but it paid off: at thirteen, he was part of a group, a circle, a gang. He had friends who supported him, and who he could call for help on homework, and who he could complain to. At an age where other kids struggled to find their place, Dave had his. Now, at seventeen, he still has it. People respect him, teachers know him, and his teammates thump him on the back after games. And this is what is important. He has a place, near the top of the pyramid if not quite at its peak. He is seen and noticed and at once overlooked—for when people look at him, they see only the jacket, the build, the number on his jersey. Being a Titan gives him identity and anonymity all at the same time, and what more could someone want?

Categories are oversimplifications. Dave knows this.

He and the other Titans push kids into lockers. They do things like throw people in dumpsters and throw frozen drinks at kids who aren't as close to the top of the social pyramid. Dave has realized that it doesn't really matter who they bully, because when you're doing something like stuffing a guy's head down a toilet, you aren't supposed to think about the guy's name, or whether you have any classes with him, or whether he's okay. You think about the category he's in—he's a nerd, or a dork, or a freshman. By putting him down, you put the category down, and place yourself above them, separate yourself from them. It's not personal, or that's what Dave tells himself.

He is always the first to laugh if someone pours an ice-cold drink all over a pimply fourteen-year-old, because that tells everyone that Dave was never nervous or insecure. He'll smile good-naturedly around at everyone, and pretends that he's never been given a swirly or been called a name. When the guys wait after school for some poor boy with a lisp, and gather around him, calling him fag or homo or queer, Dave joins them, Dave is the one throwing the most insults, and making the most cruel jokes. He sometimes even slides in a few good punches.

When this happens, when the kid is on the ground and screaming or protesting, Dave is thinking, That could have been me. As he hits someone, he hopes that hurting them will ensure that he never feels their pain. His wide, uncertain eyes go unnoticed, the nervous laugh unheard.

He looks around at his teammates, at Azimio and Finn and Noah, and wonders, Do they know? They don't seem to. In the locker room, Dave keeps his eyes cast downwards toward the floor, keeps a towel wrapped securely around his waist. He feels uncomfortable. To the other Titans, a naked boy is ordinary, unremarkable, like a doorknob, or linoleum. The locker room is what Dave hates most about high school. He is always slightly nervous that one day, someone will glance over and notice his blush, or the way he lowers his eyes whenever someone starts to undress, and they'll make the connection. He is secretly sure that his desire is tangible, that it is visible. Dave is incredibly afraid. High school is the only reality he has. He doesn't have a plan for what he will do after graduation. He has no friends that live outside of Lima. If he ever makes public the secret that has been tearing him up, then, he is sure, the world will actively collapse around him, and he will be left alone, and more isolated than any of the lisping orchestra members that he now ridicules.

Dave used an online search engine to look up "gay" when he was fifteen. He already knew what it meant, more or less. His church was actively anti-gay rights, and his parents used the word to imply irresponsibility and corruption in politicians who they disliked, like Hillary Clinton. The kids at his school had been calling Kurt Hummel gay for as long as anyone cared to recollect. People knew that gay guys liked other guys, and that they wanted to have sex with other guys. However, the internet search was the first time that Dave had made the connection between the incredible, personal, hidden longing he felt and something real, something that had a definition. He spent hours reading about Oscar Wilde and Harvey Milk and the gay rights movement of the seventies. He read a few blogs, and watched a few videos in which twenty-something-year-old men with soprano voices talked about how they had told their parents, and how their lives were better now. He looked up the date for the New York Pride Walk.

Dave had deleted his internet history. He had gone downstairs and eaten a slice of pizza, and then returned to his room, where he spent hours looking at the centerfold picture in a Playboy magazine, and tried, as much as he possibly could, desperately, even, to make himself feel something.

Now he is seventeen, and he knows what he is. He continues to hope that he will be fixed, somehow. He still buys the magazines that the other guys buy, and looks at them, but more and more he barely skims through them, and he just folds over a couple pages at the corner to make it look like he's read them. He looks up pictures on the internet instead; ones that make him intensely embarrassed but also better than he ever has with a girl. Dave is at the point where he almost accepts himself. However, he realizes that the possibility of anyone else accepting him in this town is next to nothing. Dave doesn't know what is going to happen after he leaves high school, but for now, he has to keep doing what he has always done.

Or that was the plan.

There was a running joke for a while that Finn and Kurt were going out. Dave had to turn on Finn, too, and make fun of him with the rest of the guys, even though he could tell that Finn wasn't gay in the least. Finn was insecure, though, and too easy a target. Joking about it turned into throwing slushies at him and ripping up his football jersey, and eventually, Finn became a victim too. Dave felt sorry for the guy, but hey, at least it wasn't him.

Kurt was the best. He had a voice like Grace Kelly and held himself like Fred Astaire. He was out, and he was proud, and no matter how many times the football team threw him into a dumpster, he would come back the next day, hair gelled and cardigan pressed and head held high like he was the queen of the motherfrigging universe. Dave imagined being that brave. He thought about coming to school in a jacket like Kurt had, or even a fedora like in Esquire. He imagined buying a rainbow pin and pinning it to his bag. He imagined coming out to the football team, and bearing the subsequent blows with dignity, even haughtiness. He thought about asking Kurt to Senior Prom one day.

After he was done thinking, Dave would inevitably pull himself out of his head and slam Kurt into a locker.

Dave started dating for a while. Her name was either Tori or Laurie, and Dave made out with her exactly seven times, and always when someone else was around. Once he'd kissed her on his couch, and after four seconds, he had to stop. Her lips were sticky and pliable and receptive, unmoving under his own. She wore short skirts and eye makeup so thick and dark that it made her look like a victim of domestic violence. Her tops were cut low and she wore push-up bras.

Tori/Laurie dumped him late in September. She told him that he wasn't what she was looking for, exactly, but though he was a pretty like nice guy still and she hoped they could be friends. Dave had thought, this is it, she is going to tell everyone that I don't like girls and that I'm a raging homo. She didn't, though.

Dave had French 2 with Kurt. He wasn't exactly sure why, because he'd barely passed French 1 the year before. He didn't excel at languages. He explained to his friends that he couldn't speak French because it was a faggot language, and they laughed, more because it sounded ridiculous than anything else. They were all in Spanish, concentrating on the difference between the difference between vosotros and nosotros. They didn't see Dave looking at Kurt all through every class, copying the way he pronounced words. They didn't notice that Dave put more effort into his French homework than he did the work from any other class. Once or twice, Dave had even worked up the courage to ask Kurt for help translating a sentence. Kurt had leaned back in his chair and given him a questioning look that quickly turned into one of triumph. He gave Dave the translation and smirked when Dave had to ask how to spell it. Dave had, briefly, smiled at Kurt, and for once it was a smile that said, yes, you are cool. You are amazing. And then he'd stopped, and gone back to his seat, and glared down at his paper like it was ruining his life.

In between classes, though, in the halls and after school, Dave pushed Kurt into lockers and called him names. When everyone was watching, Dave was the aggressor. The worst part was that he didn't know how to stop.

Dave came home late last Saturday night after a party, stumbling home exhausted, ready to fall into bed. He hadn't expected either of his parents to be up, but his mother was. She waited inside and crossed her arms. Dave had thought that she was going to tell him off for coming home late. Instead, she pointed to the couch.

"Sit down."

Dave sat.

His mother held up a picture, one that had obviously been printed off of the computer. Dave didn't recognize it at first—it was dark in the living room, with only a vague light from the kitchen to shed a glow on the black-and-white, poor-quality photo. However, the basic idea of the picture was pretty easy to make out. Two humanoid forms, devoid of most clothing, entertwined.

"What the hell is this, young man," his mother said thrusting the photo closer to Dave's nose. Dave recoiled as if she had slapped him. He denied knowing how the picture had gotten onto the computer, and blamed it on a virus. He told his mother that social networking sites were always trying to spam you with porn and stuff. His mother seemed about to argue, but stopped.

"Are you sure? It seems like someone would stop them from sending obscene stuff like this to people's computers."

"Spammers are always one step ahead, Mom," Dave said. "I can't help it if homos are all freaks."

His mother seemed appeased, or pretended to be. She told him to limit his time on the computer, as she had before. She told him to watch what sites he went to. She let him go to bed, but as he went upstairs, he saw her sit on the couch, staring at the printout and the URL before lowering her head to her hands.

Today, Dave was worried about his mom.

Today, Dave couldn't take anyone doubting him.

Today, Dave shoved Kurt into a wall of metal lockers, and he watched Kurt's self-confidence slip a notch, and he felt cold inside, and satisfied with himself for a second.

Today, he was at his locker in the shower room when Kurt followed him in. Kurt yelled at Dave, which he's never done before.

Kurt said, "I'm talking to you!" and Dave couldn't look at him. Dave wasn't talking to Kurt when he called him a girl. He was talking to the stereotype, to fags. He was trying to deny what his mom had found on his computer. He was trying to tell himself it would turn out all right.

Today, Dave was called an ignoramus.

Today, Dave started to use his fists and stopped.

Today Dave's brow wrinkled and he took a half-step back as Kurt Hummel called him a fat loser. Dave hasn't been called a name since the sixth grade. Since sixth grade, Dave's hidden behind football. He's never had to worry about anything, because nobody questions you when you're popular. Nobody questions him. But now Kurt has ignored the façade that was all anyone else saw.

Today, Dave couldn't figure out what to do, once all his labels were stripped away. He wasn't better than Kurt, and Kurt knew that.

So he pulled Kurt closer and kissed him, hard and fast and ugly and passionate.

Today, Kurt looked genuinely scared of him for the first time. Or, Dave guesses, if not scared, then confused. Dave knows how Kurt feels.

Today, Kurt pushed him away as he moved in to kiss him again. Dave could have kissed him anyway, if he had really meant to. But Kurt's rejection hurt more than anything else, and Dave knows he shouldn't take it personally because it was totally out of the blue and Dave has been nothing but nasty to Kurt until now.

But he does anyway, and when he gets home his mom wants to take him to counseling to "fix this" and she's told his dad, and Dave can't talk about what happened today with her because then she'd probably ship him off to a correctional facility or something. And he has Doctor Pat to look forward to next week and until then he has no computer. Dave has nothing to distract him from his thoughts.