Adso, un adolescente de hoy

I'm nearly fifteen, and the world is still rather daunting for me. I have fallen in love with a pair of chestnut eyes which reside above a sweet smile; the eyes and the smile belong to a man. Falling in love was such a wonderful thing that I wanted to share it with my nearest and dearest, so I told my best friend.
	He looked at me with a face filled with horror: - "Hey, dude-are you telling me you're a homo?" - "No! I'm just in love." I looked in the dictionary: "Homosexuality: a loving relationship between two people of the same sex." I breathed a sigh of relief. My friend's words had scared me that it was some kind of fatal and highly infectious disease. Clearly, I hadn't expressed myself well. I wanted to share it with my family, who were always asking "Hey, when are you going to fall in love and bring a girlfriend home?" completely unaware that it could be so terribly important to them whether I brought a girlfriend or boyfriend. My father shouted and pulled his hair out. He threatened to give me a beating if I ever let him see me dressed as a woman. My mother wept and asked herself what they had done wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. Yes, surely my front, my back, my teeth, my left ear, my fingers, my belly button-they were all just as they had been before I'd fallen in love. My eyes were still either side of my nose, my voice sounded no different, and those four moles hadn't moved. Again I breathed a sigh of relief: I was still me. And I didn't have the slightest inclination to dress up like a woman. Quite the opposite-I was proud of being a man. Obviously my father had been mistaken, and, clearly, I hadn't explained myself well. I drew a heart with the name of my lover during my religious education lesson. The priest saw it and took my to his office by the ear.
- "What sort of abomination is this? Don't you know that homosexuality is a mortal sin and is against God's law?" - "Father, is God infallible?" - "Of course he is!" - "And, Father, aren't I a son of God?" - "You'd better believe it! And that's why you must suppress what you….blah, blah, blah…" But I'd stopped listening. He'd already told me what I wanted to know: according to his religion, God had created me; he'd made me gay; and God is infallible. So who am I to go against His wishes? It seemed simple enough to me, but perhaps I hadn't explained myself well. I have tried to explain it to my friends. I told them, "While you kiss your girlfriend, I seek my lover's lips. While you caress their hands, I hold my boyfriend's. While you go gooey over a lock of her hair, I'm captivated by his brown eyes. "You kiss, I kiss. You caress, so do I. Your gaze, and mine. What's the difference?" But now I don't try to any more. I know I will never change. My father caught a bird in the wood and put it in a cage in the living room. It's in no danger, and nobody can hurt it. It doesn't even need to look for food. But even so, whenever I see it beat its wings against the bars of the cage I realise that as comfortable as its life is, the bird is unhappy. Nobody ought to be made to lock their heart away in a cage. I'm nearly fifteen, and the world is still rather daunting for me. Adso, Madrid, 21st of March, 2000. (Translated by Al)