I realized I liked boys around the 5th grade or when I was 10. However, I did not realize this was different at the time or that there was a word for this. It would be another several years and a lot of stories before I realized it was different and there was a word for it.
It probably really sunk in that I like boys shortly after my dad caught me watching TV naked when I was 12. I was home alone and not expecting him for a while and all of the sudden he showed up. I have always been somewhat of a nudist and I was just watching TV naked because I did not want to wear clothes. Well my dad thought I was up to something else and explained things to me. After he caught me he sat me down for a conversation and asked if I was masturbating. I had no idea what masturbating was at the time and he unwittingly filled me in on all of the details. It was then that I realized that what I was doing with my friend was masturbating, but by that time we had quit doing it.
So of course a little while after our conversation I started masturbating again, but only this time carrying it through to the finish. All of my fantasies while doing this were of my neighbors. They were all I had to go on. It was also around this time that I started noticing my friends at school talking about girls and dating them. I started looking at girls and just wondered why anyone would want to hang out with them and have never figured out the answer to that.
This is when I realized I was different than my friends, but I still did not know I was gay. I was still in elementary school and too sheltered to know this.
It was probably another two years before I realized I was gay. In Middle School I started running Cross Country and Track and met a bunch of new friends. My 8th grade year my friends convinced me to ask a girl out. I really did not want to, but I did it just to get my friends off my back. In the stumbling way all young kids ask people out I asked her out. She politely responded not right now, and that was the end of it. The one and only time I have asked a girl out on a date.
It was when my friends were harassing me to ask her out that I realized I was gay.