Editors Note: We first met Scott several year's ago through the CAMP Rehoboth Youth Group. We asked him to comment on his experience.

Well, I realized that I prefer guys to girls before I reached puberty, but it wasn't until I attended the youth group that I got my first taste of gay culture.

I was just shy of fourteen in the summer of 2001 when I first attended the group, at the time held at the Rehoboth Beach Public Library and later held at the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.

I remember the first night very clearly. It was one of the first times I'd walked around the streets of Rehoboth without a parent holding my hand and blocking my view of anything outside their opinion of normal.

Everything was so new and exciting and seeing two men exchanging romantic gestures wasn't something at the time I was accustomed to.

I was barely a teenager and wasn't really sure of anything at the time except that I wanted to fall in love with a nice boy who could sweep me off my feet.

That first night I walked up those stairs to the upstairs conference room (I was so nervous!) and when I reached the top, though I didn't find exactly what I was looking for (Prince Charming), I found a group of caring and respectful individuals that pulled me out of my isolation and helped me feel like I was a part of a group—and when you're just a kid in a minority of ten percent, that's a great feeling.

Stories of Sand and Pillow Talk
by Scott Spangler

I said that I'm leaving.
Believe that I am.
I'm already gone,
But I miss it here already.

My bags are packed and the door is opened but how do you make these stubborn feet start moving. How do I just walk away and leave the first town that kissed my heart and made me feel warm. How do I turn away from the first love that did the same?

Every corner I turn in this city speaks to me.

Every building has a story to tell and all the street lamps cast spotlights on the intensity of their words like a willing poetic interrogation. Every brick, tile, and shingle still calls out his name as if it makes sense to scream for someone so far away.

"If he could hear he'd just keep walking," I whisper under my breath.

Still, from my favorite seat in the audience I listen as they share their tales. I laugh, I cry, and shake my head in bemused disbelief. I can't believe they still remember all of these things, as if time plays factor in the state of their clarity. I can't believe that out of all the loves that played out on their soil like tiny sprouts growing in the confinements of a ceramic pot, they troubled themselves to take notes of mine.

they recite with embellished conviction,

No matter how many times they read them to me or how many other seats in the audience find themselves neglected over the years, I still love all of their stories. They still leave me smiling but what happens to the stories when I leave. It saddens me to know that no one could love them as much as I.

I try to tell myself that there will be other stories, that these buildings will write new material of children in love, poems of comfort and kisses, cool sheets over warm bodies, sand and pillow talk; and that every brick, tile and shingle will find new names to call and the street lamps will still cast their glow on a stage of fresh new players, but It does nothing to alleviate this guilt for leaving.

I try to convince myself that it’s time to stop listening to familiar stories and write new chapters of a little boy in the big world but it doesn't make it easier to go to a new place, a new city where the street signs are names I've never heard of and the buildings turn deaf ears to blind alleys and cold shoulders to shivering culture shocked tourists.

I’ll miss this commonplace town and all of its various biographies of sunny season intimacy. I’ll miss walking past the vacant dwelling that once housed a myriad of my firsts and the familiar scent of salt air we once breathed together. I’ll miss seeing his smile on the mask of every building, but more than anything else, I’ll miss not being the only one still calling out his name.