Author's Note: Don't freak because I'm a "n00b" author because I'm not. I'm just posting under a different penname. This was eating away at my mind after watching High School Musical 2. Ryan is such an awesome character, and I wanted to explore him some. Some of these experiences are based on crap that's happened in my own life and some of the ideas are based on my friend Nate. This is in no way meant to be an anti-gay story, it's just an anti-stereotype story.

Just A Game
by Freedom Fire

My name is Ryan Evans and I'm not gay.

OK, I know, starting off like that makes it sound like I'm just in denial. But since it's the main point of my writing this, I'd just like to start off with that.

I was born May 23rd to Todd and Kendra Evans, seven and a half minutes after my twin sister, Sharpay. It's kind of irrelevant, but I suppose that if I'm going to spill my guts to you, you ought to know a little about me first.

I'm a theatre boy, and proud of it. My sister and I are co-presidents of the drama club in our school and have featured in school plays and musicals since kindergarten. We're in the know about what shows will be put on in upcoming years because we're close with Ms. Joan Darbus, the drama teacher and musical director at East High. It's not something we go around bragging about a lot but – OK, that's a lie, we definitely brag about it a lot.

So, that's where the stereotyping begins. I'm into theatre, therefore I must be gay. Of course.

There's also the way I dress – usually, tight pants and flamboyant dress shirts. But there's an explanation and it's kind of potentially embarrassing, but as long as I'm baring all, I guess I'll tell. Basically, I'm colorblind. Well, I'm not medically colorblind, but I might as well be because I couldn't tell you that pink and red clash or green and blue compliment if Sharpay didn't tell me first. Yes, it's true, Sharpay picks out my clothes for me, usually so that I'll match her. Except for the hats. The hats are all me.

I'm also an incredible dancer because I've been doing gymnastics and dance lessons since I was a tyke. Gymnastics was actually my father's idea, because he decided that no matter what I would do in life, gymnastics could come in handy – speaking mostly in terms of sports or theatre, really. My sister started dance lessons shortly after we turned five and I watched a couple of her lessons, decided I wanted to do it too, and joined the classes. The instructor even let me join for free because Sharpay was already taking lessons and the studio would do anything to get boys involved, even if it meant they wouldn't get paid for it.

So those are the three main reasons that other people think that I'm interested in boys. Theatre, clothing, and dance – which, admittedly, are usually all pretty good reasons.

Let's start when I was five. My cousins were over, Adam and Christopher. Christopher was three years older than Sharpay and me and Adam was eleven at the time. I don't remember why they were in Albuquerque, but they just stayed in our house because obviously it's more than big enough. Sharpay and I shared a room back then, but I insisted on joining Adam and Christopher in their room for the night. Christopher went to sleep pretty quickly, but Adam wanted to stay up and play games with me. I was only three, I didn't know what he was doing. He wanted to play a game where we take off all of our clothes, so we started with that. Next, he wanted to lay in bed next to me. He put his arms around my skinny little body and hugged me close, then asked me if I wanted to try something. I said sure. He wanted to stick his "wee-wee" into my butt hole. I didn't know what it was, I didn't know it was wrong, I just thought it was a game. I let him – he was small anyway, and we were soft the whole time. Then we switched.

We did this every night that Adam and Christopher were there. We would wait until Christopher was asleep, take off our pajamas, and play the game.

I didn't know what it was. To me, it was just a game. To Adam, it was the beginning of his sexual awakening. And he was eleven. Imagine how perverted he was at age thirteen.

Adam and Christopher never came over after that week, and even then I knew I was glad. I think that in the back of my mind, I knew that what we did was a bad thing and I didn't want to see Adam anymore. They would call every once in a while, and Adam bragged to me when he turned thirteen that he had lost his virginity to a sixteen-year-old girl. I didn't know what virginity was then, I was only seven, but I pretended to be impressed.

Adam and Christopher's family was in a car accident not long after Adam's fourteenth birthday, right around Christmas. A drunk driver's car slid on ice and hit them from the side. My aunt and uncle and Christopher all survived the collision with minor injuries, but Adam was killed instantly.

I had troubles being friends with boys as I grew up. Being involved in dance and gymnastics with Sharpay and other girls while the boys were off playing soccer distanced me from them. I was actually best friends with Zeke in kindergarten, before I started dance and before we could play on soccer teams at school. But that all changed in fifth grade when Scott Geoffrey started coming to our elementary school. He was a quiet kid, not really into sports, but not into theatre or dance either. He liked to read and he loved magic tricks and was actually really good at it too. I met him for the first time on the playground. He was staring at the ground and it was Sharpay who approached him first, and told them that if he was going to play Staring Contest he might as well do it with something he could actually win against. So Scott played against Sharpay and I declared that I would play against the winner – Scott won, and I played against him next. I don't remember what all happened during the game, it was just a plain, regular game of Staring Contest, but it was the beginning of a friendship between Scott and me.

Whenever Scott came over to my house or I went to his house, we would watch television, play board games, talk about girls at school. We would see who would dare to go to sleep in the least amount of clothing, but always ended up staying under the covers the whole time and put our clothes back on before we actually fell asleep in case our parents decided to walk in on us in the morning before we were awake. It was just a game.

Ugh. But one time, when we were in eighth grade, things went too far. I hate myself for it.

Really, we didn't do anything. The things I did as a three-year-old with Adam were more risqué. I dared him to get naked. He did. He dared me to get naked. I did. I dared him to get out of the covers with the light off. He did. He dared me the same. I did. I dared him to turn on the light, but he was allowed to "cover himself."

He did.

Dammit. I thought it was just a game.

That moment that the lights flicked on, our friendship ended. Neither of us were aroused by each other. Neither of us were disgusted either – I was rather toned, actually. Skinny, but toned, from all of the dancing and gymnastics, and he was by nature a skinny boy. We both had our hands firmly clasped in front of us, gently holding the packages that we were too ashamed to show. And though there was neither excitement nor revulsion, we just never were the same after that. He started dating Paulette Rodriguez and we gradually stopped talking.

That was when I really started to accept that I couldn't get along with guys very well, and girls were meant to be my friends, and I started to rely a lot more on Sharpay.

I questioned my sexuality a lot after my friendship with Scott ended. I didn't do anything with other boys, but I started logging on the internet a lot more, and my Google searches consisted mostly of the words "gay," "nude," "boys," and "men." I was convincing myself that I was gay, I was stereotyping myself. I never had a crush on any boys at my school, but I would let my eyes wander over Troy Bolton and Chad Danforth and tell myself that I liked what I saw.

I dated Joanna Bobo the beginning of my freshman year of high school. It was all just a game to me – I pretended I was straight in public, I pretended I was gay in private. I didn't know which half was real, I wanted both to be real, but I didn't want either to be real at the same time. I wondered if I was bisexual and keeping the two halves separate. I wondered if I was asexual and just faking it all. She broke up with me over the internet during Christmas break.

I decided to come out of the closet at the end of freshman year. I started with telling Sharpay, then a few other people from the drama club. Before I knew it, even Troy Bolton knew that Ryan Evans was gay. I didn't hear the end of "maybe it would have been better if Ryan and Sharpay had been identical twins" and "I always knew he was, it was just a matter of time before he knew he was" and "I heard he screwed [insert name here." I haven't screwed anyone, unless you count Adam, which I really and truly don't.

The problem was that, even with everyone talking about Ryan Evans being gay, something inside me told me that this wasn't right. I wasn't gay. I was pushing myself into a stereotype that wasn't who I really was. And as I looked around me, everyone else was doing the same thing. Martha Cox, a girl who I had known since kindergarten, and who I had actually taken hip-hop dance class with, began to sit with the nerdy crowd more and she stopped dancing and started reading. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with reading! Reading's a good thing. But if it's not what you love, and if you're giving up what you love to do it, what's the point? Travis Jacobs, an amazing cellist, started hiding his stringed instrument when the skater dudes were around. And here I was, sitting at the drama club table, telling the world that I was gay when I wasn't.

The problem with falsely coming out of the closet is that it's a world of impossible to take back what you've said. Once I was out, I was out, and suddenly the pressure was no longer to be gay but to stay gay.

I tried to tell everyone that I had changed my mind, that I had realized that being gay had been my decision and it was a decision I wanted to take back. That didn't work. I'm not a scientist, I don't understand genes and the human psyche and all that, so I couldn't work out a good argument to explain my case. And East High is ruled by the status quo, and once you've established yourself, it's hard as hell to change.

My chance came and went in the form of Gabriella Montez. She was gorgeous, she was perfect. I'd always had a thing for dark hair – Joanna Bobo had been the only exception to that rule. But Troy Bolton got to Gabriella first. They starred in the musical together that winter, dated, all that good stuff. But then they both got jobs at our country club that summer and my chance came back again. Troy and Gabriella weren't getting along, my sister was working her demonic magic to split them up. I ended up spending a lot of time with Gabriella that summer and we started forming a friendship that was, at least to Gabriella and everyone else on the planet, completely unexpected.

But before the summer was over Gabriella and Troy had made up and were back together. I haven't given up on her, though. High school sweethearts never last anyway, so I'm watching out for that break up. It'll happen, sooner or later, and when it comes, I'm making my move. Because this isn't just a game to me anymore. I'm sick of being called the gay boy. It's my fault, it is, I accept that. I willingly told people I was. But there's nothing I regret more than ever now.

So I've had gay experiences, yes. I've questioned my sexuality more than once, yes. I've even announced that I was gay. But I'm not. And I'm trying so hard to make the world understand that stereotyping yourself will only hurt you. It hurt me. It hurt Travis Jacobs. It hurt Martha Cox and Zeke Baylor, though they've both managed to ease their truths back into the public. It even hurt Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez at one point, though they're helping make it clear to the rest of the school now that stereotyping isn't a good thing.

I'm considering changing my wardrobe. Jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies don't look too terrible and maybe they'll help get my point across. Besides, I think picking my own clothes out would be good for me. I won't always have Sharpay there to support me.

So it's not just a game anymore. And what's that phrase the Wildcats always say? "Get'cha head in the game!" I find that phrase completely inappropriate outside of basketball. Get'cha head out of the game, realize that life isn't meant to be lived trying to see who gets the best hand, or who makes the most baskets, or who gets the loudest cheer. It's not just a game.