In the late 1950's, fourteen year old Philip Noland is a gay but sexually inexperienced freshman at St. Sebastian’s, a Catholic high school for boys. Alone and emotionally isolated, with the exception of two friends named O’Riley and Carlin, there are no familiar guideposts for Philip to follow, just an excess of rules and regulations that make no sense to him.<br><br>A late bloomer, Philip learns to masturbate effectively and fall in love for the first time, but his greatest challenge isn’t the regimented behavior at St. Sebastian’s -- it's surviving a bully named Molinara who has set his sights on Philip.<br><br>Can Philip navigate the minefields of St. Sebastian's and emerge victorious?

Boys Will Be Boys

I’ve never spoken before in great detail about this experience, other than to say I’d spent time in an all-boys’ parochial high school. Maybe I felt guilty, that what happened was mostly my fault and that I brought it on. Maybe. Yet my story, unfortunately even today, is not unique. No, it is one shared by millions of children and adolescents who daily walk through a minefield. A path so strewn with obstacles that one misstep can literally be a world-shaking incident, a kind of seismic event.


Chapter 2