The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

sexual reproduction was over, all those old commandments against homosexuality were melting away and millions more men were coming out.
    Other people broke in, talking about how men are treating women like lepers because of the disease. Sal was staring straight ahead but her eyes were glittering. I gently put my hand on her arm and she didn’t take it away. I remembered that carful of lads and the one who spat on me. I thought about Sal sitting in the lavender-scented bath scrubbing at her skin.
    Then they talked about the way MDS women had been treated across the world, how some had been left to die in the streets like dogs, or how they had been rounded up, misinformed, pushed about by police–how none of this would have happened if the victims had been men. They argued that if the disease had hit men, scientists would have found a cure by now. I sat there with these awful things swirling round in my head like leaves in a storm. I couldn’t quiet it. What they said about men preferring to be gay reminded me of college.
    The thing is, there was a change. Back before MDS, if you said a boy was gay, it was an insult. Everyone knew there were gay people, and that it was legal and everything, there were loads of gay celebrities on TV. If they met a gay couple in real life of course they’d be fine and act normally, but still in school it was an insult. If they called a boy gay it meant he was pathetic. And the boys and girls who really were gay kept it hidden. In fact, you wouldn’t have known that anybody was. But in the months after MDS, that changed. It happened so gradually you almost didn’t notice.
    Boys started to cluster together with boys, and girls with girls. Some girls became frightened of boys–even though we were all on Implanon it was still a terrible thought, especially for those girls who knew a woman who’d died. Sex didn’t seem worth the risk. And the boys–well, I didn’t really know what they were thinking, but the atmosphere changed. They got more involved in their own conversations, and less interested in trying to make us laugh. In a way they were more shy with us. It wasn’t everybody; there were people who behaved exactly opposite. Like the gangs, where you often saw boys and girls together–or even, like Sal and Damien had been at the beginning. People bounced from one extreme to another, as if we couldn’t find out the proper way to behave.
    But I was remembering one particular sunny afternoon, soon after the beginning of term. I had a free period before French. I stuck my nose in the library and it was like a greenhouse with all those floor-to-ceiling windows. There was no-one there but the red-faced librarian, her hair stuck to her head with sweat. I went out the back, thinking I’d find somewhere to sunbathe while I revised my vocab. I was just going to sit on the steps behind the gym, but looking across the playing field I could see bodies sprawled on the grass along the line of the hedge. I hoped there might be someone I knew, and it would be a sheltered spot to soak up the sun. The playing field had been mowed that morning and the smell of freshly cut grass lured me on. As I walked across I was scanning the sunbathers, but when I got closer I realised they were all boys. They’d taken their shirts off to get a tan. I started to feel embarrassed; I kept my eyes on the corner of the field I was aiming for, and walked as fast as I could, as if I hadn’t noticed they were there. I lay on the grass facing away from them, with my vocab book open in front of me. I could hear whispering and laughter. They were urging someone on, trying to get them to do something. I concentrated on my book and when a shadow fell across the page it made me jump. I looked up and there were two boys holding hands, silhouetted against the sun.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ said one, and the other laughed. ‘This is private sunbathing.’
    â€˜Gay