This is somewthing that I have never told anyone. But after reading some of the stories here, I wanted to share my own. When I was a kid, I met another boy, and we had a romance. I cannot explain how it got started, just that when we met there was this really nice rapport between the two of us. He had sandy-brown hair, was average looking, but there was something about him that I found myself attracted to. Apparently, he felt the same attraction towards me. At first we shyly more or less flirted with one another, and as we felt more comfortable, we talked about how nice it was to be together and how much we liked one another. It felt really nice being open like that, and one day we bravely put an arm around each other's shoulder as we were sitting there outside in this secluded spot. That felt brave and really special doing that together. Then, because it seemed like the thing to do, we kissed. That was incredibly wonderful. After that, we secretly started having this romantic relationship, kissing and saying how much we liked each other. We didn't think of it as being odd or queer. We were just friends and, like I said, it was so wonderful to be close like that.
For the entire next year we had this love affair, and then his family moved away. The two of us wrote to each other, and two years later we managed to get back together. We tried being romantic, expecting it to be the same, but sadly it somehow wasn't. Still, we both have such wonderful memories of that time to this day.