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How to Eat a Rattlesnake

In my native Oklahoma, snake meat was a masculine trophy, edible proof that you were willing to tangle with death.

I learned that gay people were targets who existed to be mocked and condemned, that “smearing the queer,” in the slang parlance of bullies, was another way for guys to prove their manhood. After high school, I moved an hour and a half away, to the city of Norman, to attend the University of Oklahoma, but I made regular trips home, where Corey had stayed for college. All of a sudden, I heard a rattling sound and looked down to see a tight coil by my hiking boot: a beautiful diamond pattern, a flickering tongue, a vibrating tail.

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