On the Road was the first book I read that profoundly altered my perspective on life. Jack Kerouac's breathless, frenetic, poetic prose opened my eyes to the exotic possibilities of this world. A plane of existence beyond achieving top grades, going to college, working in an office, getting married, having two kids, and the mortgaged future that my parents had mapped out for me.

On the Road spoke to me on many levels. The protagonist was a young man searching for some kind of meaning in his life. Like Kerouac, I, too, came from a strong Catholic background. The older I'd gotten, the harder it had become to reconcile this deeply instilled faith with my current life. In part three, when the narrator, Sal Paradise, is depressed and lonesome, I recognised echoes of my bleak moods. It was a revelation to read about somebody else going through a similar experience to me.

Kerouac became the launchpad that propelled me into the stratosphere of literature. My mind opened to Hemingway and Miller, writers eschewing traditional forms to provide the reader with valuable insights into this crazy experience we call life.

I closed the cover on The Sun Always Rises and set it aside on the nightstand. A marvellous read. One thing bothered me, though, an exchange where the n-word got used multiple times. You could argue Hemingway was staying true to the characters, but not once did they use words like fuck and shit, equally commonplace as racism. It angered me to imagine what Robbie must have felt reading those lines—I knew he had; it was his well-thumbed paperback I'd read.

Each generation applauds itself for the progress it's made. But had anything fundamentally changed? I've never watched Reservoir Dogs in Robbie's company because of the number of times white characters spew that same racial epithet. Art is allegedly for the enlightened and the civilized. If the educated deem this acceptable, what chance do the uneducated have?

I got off the bed and fed my fish. Fletcher; my six-inch convict cichlid. I named him after the prisoner in the show, Porridge. Haunched down before the thick glass, admiring his vivid vertical black stripes as he darted from below the driftwood to devour the floating flakes. Appetite sated, he swam through the slow current, before disappearing behind a clump of Java ferns, sealed in his micro-biosphere.

Restless, I took to pacing around the box room. A proper walk would do the trick, except I had a headache the size of Ireland after last night's exertions. Boredom corroding my cognitive faculties, I needed to engage my senses.

I returned to the plywood bookshelf, running my fingertips across the battered book spines, pausing at a title before moving on, unable to make a clear decision. Almost at the point of being driven to distraction, my finger stopped on Naked Lunch.

I had only recently become familiar with the term, homo-erotic. Reviews for Interview with the Vampire—a movie I had gone to see in the cinema with Robbie and loved, so much so I bought the novel a week later—contained some reference to the film's homo-erotic undertones. If Anne Rice's handsome, sexually ambiguous bloodsuckers afforded me an oblique glimpse of gay sexuality, William Burrough's Naked Lunch ripped down the curtains and shone a spotlight on the subject.

Although the non-linear, hallucinatory narrative left me somewhat perplexed, there was nothing cryptic about the numerous, often graphic depictions of gay encounters. The first time I came across one of those explicit passages, a red hot surge of embarrassment shot through me, setting my cheeks afire. I let the book slip from my grasp. What the hell would the lads think? Or, Nicky? Or my god-fearing parents?

Somehow, it didn't matter. I needed to read more.

Propped by pillows, I sat in my bed holding the book up with trembling hands. Eyes devouring every word on the page, nourishing the mysterious desire bubbling up inside, and that's when the blood in my body rushed southwards.

Naturally, I'd had erections before. Teenage boys get aroused at the drop of a hat. But not over anything like this. Sure, from the black and white nude photo of Kate Moss draped over a couch in the Calvin Klein poster on my wall. Or when I daydreamed about Monica in a certain way.

But this was something different.

Alien.

Unnatural.

Shame slithered up my spine and spread to my extremities. A shame that burned deeper, as the monolith in my boxers stubbornly refused to collapse, a monument to my transgression.

I could sense that metal cross with Jesus hanging from it nailed to the wall over my head, staring down at me. In judgement. I fought the impulse to glance around, as doing so would acknowledge its power.

I shut the book and placed it inside my nightstand, and closed the door over.

I killed the light, not wanting to see those posters of Johnny Depp and River Phoenix. I wanted to sleep. To forget.

But slumber refused to come. Instead, I had one of my favourite Pet Shop Boys songs running through my brain, tormenting and mocking. It's a sin. And for the first time, I understood the meaning of Neil Tennant's lyrics.

After a half-an-hour of tortuous tossing and turning, mentally and physically, I switched the light back on, retrieved the red hardback notebook which I filled with my poems.

Like countless teenagers before and after me, I took to writing poetry to release the tumultuous thoughts trapped inside my head. Letting loose with the pen allowed me to experience rare moments of unflinching honesty. What I loved most about poetry is its elliptical symbolism. The way truths could be distorted and disguised, buried beneath veiled layers. Those badly penned verses were my oblique diary entries, the over-wrought meanderings of an adolescent mind trying to come to terms with his existence.

By the time I finished writing, I was wrung out. Every fear, anguish, pain, and desire drained out of me. It was all there, staining the page in a spidery scrawl.

I flicked the light off and conked out.

The following day, I stepped through the school doors into an alternate reality. Our little group stood around in the yard talking football and bands. Me, the alien in the midst, muddled, rabbiting on at a mile a minute, like an over-zealous preacher on amphetamines. My hands were a blur of kinetic energy, the boys giving me odd looks. Keith asked what I was on. Roley said whatever it was, he wanted some.

The whole time, the thought I was a fraud chasing after me like a bloodhound, gnawing at my brain, forcing me to talk louder to drown out the sound of my inner voice.

I wasn't one of them. I was the great pretender.

A greasy con artist. With less integrity than a snake-oil salesman.

Classes were worse, seeing all those faces, and knowing mine wasn't the right fit. Sat in the uncomfortable wooden desk, wondering what I had done to deserve singling out. Why had I been created differently?

Unable to avoid repeatedly looking at that cross over the blackboard.

If you truly are the creator, why didn't you choose to construct all men equal?

Work didn't do my anxiety any favours. Each fresh face that came into the staffroom seemed to eye me anew, piercing gazes penetrating my thin veneer, seeing the naked verity, like the Emperor in the famous folktale, exposed by the truth-telling boy and the people realise that his new clothes aren't invisible.

Nicky bounced in her usual upbeat smiley self. "Monica's not best pleased with you," she said, wagging a finger jokingly.

"Yeah?"

"She expected you to make a move. She's pissed you didn't. I thought you fancied her."

"Tsk."

"That all you have to say?" Arms folded, unimpressed.

"If you haven't anything nice to say, don't say nothing."

"I tried hard to set this up for you." Laying on the guilt trip.

I'd had enough of guilt. "Maybe you shouldn't have bothered."

"What's up your arse?"

"Nothing." Half-shouted.

"Huh. Must be your time of the month."

The noise of the compactor crushing boxes reverberated around the cold storeroom.

Until ten minutes later, when the door slammed shut, leaving me alone. At the mercy of my thoughts.