To say that I have been overwhelmed by the response to these stories would be an understatement. I have always wanted to write, but couldn’t find the time or my voice. I sent the first chapter out expecting no one else to read it. I felt better for having written it, regardless of whether or not anyone else read it.
When I arrived at a small Southern liberal arts college (not unlike Westmore) in the mid-1990s, I stepped into a world with clearly drawn lines—what to wear, how to act, who to be. It was easy to blend in, so easy that the masks became comfortable. Fraternity life promised belonging, something that I desperately craved, so I followed along. I laughed at jokes that weren’t funny, stood silently through rituals I didn’t quite believe in, and carefully hid away feelings I didn’t fully understand.
I did everything expected of me. I took the path of least resistance, chasing approval and connection, believing that safety and acceptance were enough. My life unfolded along lines drawn by someone else’s hand—friendships built on partial truths, romances that felt safe, a carefully constructed identity designed not to stand out too much, not to cause questions, never to invite scrutiny.
And then in 2020, in the midst of COVID, I lost someone I cared deeply about, and everything changed.
Losing him clarified things I’d spent decades obscuring. It was a sharp, painful reminder that life is brief, fragile, and uncompromising. He had been brave in ways I never was, authentic in ways I hadn’t dared imagine. I owed it to him—and to myself—to stop hiding.
Coming out wasn’t just about sexuality; it was about reclaiming my story. For the first time, I was honest about who I was and what mattered to me. It was terrifying. It was liberating. It felt like stepping out from behind a curtain after a lifetime in shadow, blinking at how bright the world could be when you finally stood in your own truth.
I started writing Line & Verse not because I wanted to relive those years, but because I needed to rewrite them. The story is fiction, but the feelings are real—the anxiety of acceptance, the raw ache of unspoken desire, the pull of something deeper that feels impossible to name.
I write this story for the nineteen-year-old version of me who didn’t have the language or courage to ask the questions he needed to. I write it for anyone who has ever felt trapped by expectations, anyone who has ever believed that love had to be hidden, anyone still wondering if it’s safe to step into their own truth.
Mostly, I write this story in memory of a friend who reminded me—painfully, beautifully—that happiness isn’t something we earn or apologize for; it’s something we deserve simply because we’re alive.
Line & Verse is my way of saying all the things I wish I’d known then, to anyone who might need to hear them now.
I hope you enjoy it.
If you’ve been reading Line & Verse consider to subscribing to my sister Substack - Caleb’s Reading List, think of this as its nonfiction sibling. This project imagines what it felt like to be closeted in the 90s; that one looks back at the bookshelf that wasn’t available to me then, and what it means to read it now.
👉 Subscribe to Caleb’s Reading List to follow along as I build the queer syllabus I never got — one book at a time.
Writing to your nineteen-year-old self and to anyone still without the words, feels like a hand held out in the dark.
“Happiness isn’t something we earn” stopped me cold. Thank you for honoring your friend by turning pain into permission.
Line & Verse reads like a lighthouse: steady, compassionate, unashamed. I’m grateful this exists, for who we were, and for who’s reading it right now
So glad I stumbled upon your Substack. Really looking forward to reading your work. You write from a deep truthful place.