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I’m Mikey Rox and I’m from Glen Burnie, Maryland.

My high school was not a place that I would come out. I remember a kid that I went to high school with who was certainly effeminate and very flamboyant, he stood out from the rest of the kids so somebody threw a book at the kid which made him turn around, and when he turned around, somebody punched him in the back of the neck. And I was standing right there and I knew right then, I mean I knew before, but to see it happen…this was a dangerous place to be gay, or for people to even think that you were gay.

I think I was a little effeminate in high school but I certainly wasn’t flamboyant and there was a period of time where I would go out to my car after school and there would be stuff on my car. One day there was a carton of milk, the next day was, I remember it was like a Taco Bell smeared on the window and a week later someone had spit all over the car. One day I was in a meeting, it was peer counselor, a group of students who sort of mediate confrontations between other students and an administrator came in and he asked, “Have you seen your car today?” And I said, “No, not since I parked it.”

So he takes me out to the parking lot and there were cops already out there and I saw there was something on my antenna. So I get closer to the car and I saw that it was a squirrel. Somebody had shot a squirrel with a BB gun and literally impaled it on my car antenna. So the cops asked me, “How did this get here?” “I have no idea how it got there.” The first thing they did was write me a ticket for parking in the opposite direction of traffic. I was like, what is going on? There was an animal impaled on my car antenna and you’re writing me a ticket for…you know, this is not the problem here. So I just started crying, I had no idea what’s happening.

So it was a big deal at school the next day. This kid really sort of implicated himself. The very next day he brought in a skinned squirrel to some kind of science class and it basically pointed the finger right to him and I had friends who were friends with this person and he was at work and he was joking about it and basically admitted it to himself or to the other people.

The whole reason for him doing it from what I heard was because he thought that I was gay. You know, I look back on that situation and I’m proud of who I am and I feel sorry for that person. You know, his problem is not my problem. I really hope that in the 10 years or so that have passed that he has reconciled whatever issues he has with whatever, homosexuality, anything that causes him to do these dangerous and harmful things to people.