12 to 21

Matthew Redding, a talented, bright young man, who has been raised in a small town in North Carolina, has been attracted to men from an early age. However, when Matthew goes off to college and his views of the world expand, his early ambivalence about his own sexuality blossoms into self-acceptance. But Matthew is coming of age in the early 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic is ravaging the ranks of young gay men -- and further complicating Matthew's already confusing progression into maturity.