Not so innocent experience.
Senior year of middle school. It's friday and almost midnight. I'm alone with my brand new windows XP pc, first time actually having access to the internet at home. I'm searching for porn. What else could a 13 year old be doing? Yet, I have no clue of the many websites that exist. I only know the porn site that the neighborhood kids were watching, cramped up and in secret, at the local net cafe. That was two years ago. They were watching two dudes, frotting their throbbing members, of all things. "What was it again? 89 or 69.com?". Soon enough I found out... "There's so many categories!", I thought. The site only had 15 second sample videos. After watching a couple, my eye fell on the "cartoon" category. Who wouldn't be curious about THAT? Sure enough, I click on the link and a pop-up window with the video appears. It was a scene of what I now know as "Sensitive Pornograph". In the trance of adolescent horniness, I downloaded the clip -good thing I was the only one using the computer- for later "use".
After a while a friend introduced me to "Naruto". It was the start of my actual anime/manga journey. It didn't take me long to discover the "yaoi" and "shounain-ai" label. In hindsight, becoming an avid reader of these genres really helped during high school. In my world, love between two men was something ordinary. A world distant from the casual homophobia of the society I was in.
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honestly, i thought the ending was interesting. it was similar-ish for me. i ended up seeing a different perspective than my parents, or others around me. i didn't realize i was gay after reading or anything incredible, although it did broaden my scope of understanding for other people tremendously. i find it incredible how drastically it changed my view. i made my stance clear among what same may say 'cooler?' people such as high school jocks and cheerleaders and just let them know any talk of putting down anything gay or along those lines was something i personally found disgusting. i think it really was just an eye-opener for me than people can be irrationally horrible for absolutely no reason, and that i could be an active helper in widening other people's view as well with only a few words. never would i have thought that after reading yaoi on my laptop one interesting night.
Glad you can relate! Honestly during my teenage years it never hit me that I was gay. I don't know why I never gave much thought. I just liked what I liked. I was oblivious to the "repercussions". It was a certain kind of immunity, if you will. The one person that kinda bullied me (although I never took it or him seriously), ended up hitting on me during sophomore year of high school. I endulged of course. He was such an "uke", which was something straight out of the stories I've been reading! That worked as a much needed disillusionment went it comes to people and appearanced. I was lucky.