I recall the environment of that rural high school with a clinical clarity that most people reserve for traumatic accidents. The locker room was the epicenter of a particular brand of performative masculinity. The other boys would discuss the female anatomy with a frantic, desperate energy, and I would observe their enthusiasm as if I were watching a foreign language film without subtitles. There was a total lack of physiological engagement on my part. A complete, flat void. A void, a void, a void. I just stood there, clutching my towel, wondering if there was a malfunction in my wiring or if they were all simply better actors than I was. Then there was Mark. Whenever he sat next to me on those splintering wooden benches, my internal systems experienced a localized malfunction. I’ve analyzed the sensation since: it was a sharp, fluttering agitation in the solar plexus, almost like a minor arrhythmia or the onset of a panic attack. It wasn’t "butterflies" in the romantic, cinematic sense; it was a visceral, biological protest. My pulse would accelerate to approximately 110 beats per minute just because his shoulder brushed mine while we were changing into our gym clothes. It was absurd. It was genuinely COMICAL how much my body betrayed my efforts at composure... and he never had a clue. I never participated in the "talk" because I had no data to contribute. I could describe the geometry of a girl’s face, but I felt no impulse to pursue the matter.