That first time in his room, Micah and I only kissed. Let me say that kissing, when you’ve never done it before, is sensational. Not only because it’s so erotic and sensual. Sure, there’s that, and it’s wonderful and earth-shattering, but there’s also this awareness that hits you while you’re doing it that you’re together with someone who likes you as much as you like them. That someone wants to be intimate with you as much as you want to be with them. That’s an incredible feeling. It means you’re wanted! You! You’re okay just as you are. You’re lovable just being you. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re desirable! This is proof of that, and it’s a brand-new recognition. Most boys my age no doubt have the same fears I do, that I’m somehow defective, not good enough, unattractive, or maybe smell bad. Kissing someone who’s kissing you back just as ardently dispels those thoughts completely.
So we kissed—and we did it for a long time. We lay on top of each other doing it, and we’d been as aroused as we’d ever been, but we were still a little nervous, a little shy about this whole making-out business. I guess when you’re old, like eighteen, and experienced, then perhaps kissing is no big deal; it’s just a prelude to what comes next. When you’re thirteen and this is your first time doing this stuff with someone else and that person is also into finding out what it’s all about but has strong feelings for you at the same time and is showing it with his lips, like you’re doing for him—well, kissing isn’t just foreplay. It’s a great thing in itself and pretty near overwhelming.
When we stopped, we were exhausted.
I was nervous about what came next. I could see he was, too. You read about sex in stories, you see it on TV and to a more graphic extent on the internet, but I didn’t want to do much of that stuff. I don’t apologize for that or feel immature. What I did feel was that I was thirteen and inexperienced. So when we both felt we’d had enough kissing for the time being, I sat up and said, “Do you feel as nervous as I do?”
He nodded. I wasn’t sure he could speak. I mean, kissing! That was so new, so extraordinary, we both had to get our heads around it.
“I think I know how we can get past this nervousness we must both be feeling. This is all so new! I guess we just have to learn as we go, go slowly, and don't rush things. I think if we’re both a little timid that that’s good.”
He managed to sit up next to me. He put his hand on my leg. I loved it that he wanted contact. I did, too, and put my hand on his. “To take away some of the nervousness, I think we could agree to talk about what we are going to do next. That way, we avoid some of the uncertainty we both feel, and we’ll both be aware of not going too far.”
He smiled. And so we agreed we’d talk about everything we were going to do together before doing it. I thought we’d probably always start with kissing, and there wouldn’t be any talking going on then. After that, before moving on, we’d talk about what we wanted to do next if it was anything new. That might take some of the spontaneity out of it, but it was a balance. No spontaneity, but no worries or fears or awkwardness, either.
But that was all we did that day: kiss. That was enough. The rest would come another day.
But I need to lead up to that. Because what eventually happened came when we were at my house, and I can’t just stick us there without some background. So back to the morning after Micah and I kissed.
My mom wasn’t talking to me any longer. Well, she hadn’t for the first three days since I’d laid down my ultimatum. I thought I’d been smooth and gentle with it. I guessed she was still digesting it. I gave this some thought and decided her silence didn’t bother me. She’d come around or she wouldn’t, but most likely she would. It would be for her own good to take the suggestions I’d laid out for her. Or, if pride was a problem for her, accepting what I’d laid out instead of finding a solution on her own, she could always look for something else. Volunteer at the library? Start a dog-walking enterprise?
Something.
She could be stubborn, and her pride could hold her back, but she was too smart to carry that too far.
And I was right. The fourth day, when I came down to breakfast, she’d heard me clomping my way down. Why do so many of us at that age clomp down stairs? Perhaps it’s because we’ve put on weight and grown since we were twelve, and we’re enjoying how big we are now and taking advantage of it. Clomping is fun, and something we couldn’t do as effectively last year.
Mom was taking up some scrambled eggs and bacon that had been sitting on the stove to keep warm. She laid a plate in front of me, scraped the pan contents onto it, then took care of some toast that had just popped up in the toaster.
“This is for me?” I asked, mildly shocked.
She smiled. I had to think back to remember the last time she’d smiled at me. “I’m trying to make amends. I hadn’t realized how bad I’d gotten. You made me see and did it in a helpful rather than demeaning way. I’m grateful to you.”
She set the toast in front of me. “I also took your advice. I called the numbers on the back of that page. I applied for the teaching job and also signed up for a refresher course. There have been advances in nursing since I worked as one, and so I need to sharpen up. But, too, they looked at my resume and hired me to teach Nursing 101. I’ll be doing both. Because of you! I have a new outlook and a new attitude. You can withdraw your troops. No WW III for us.”
Okay, that was the start. I got up and hugged her, and she returned it. Then we talked.
Normally, when I say I talked with someone, what I mean is that they did ninety-five percent of the talking, me the other five percent. That’s just how it is. I’m not a big talker. I shocked myself with Micah. I don’t know why I was more able to flap my lips with him so easily now, with none of the reluctance I felt with most other people, but I was. With Lina, I was lucky to get in like two percent of the talk. She was a talker, and I liked to let her do so. I generally, as a default position, liked to let the people I was with do the talking.
But this time, Mom was curious about me. All our recent chats—well more like for the past few months, actually, and which could better be called skirmishes—were her screaming at me and me silently folding and acquiescing. Accordingly, she had no idea what my life was like now.
I allowed my former feelings of closeness to her to reassert themselves. If she could change, so could I. I told her about Troy dumping me, which she knew but had basically ignored, how he’d been replaced by Lina, which she’d also ignored other than telling me to keep my bedroom door open while she was there, how I was in the school choir, and that I was in the anti-bullying club and an officer and had broken up some bullying already. While I was talking about those things, what was running through my head underneath were questions about whether I wanted to tell her about Micah.
I didn’t know her feelings about homosexuality. It had never been discussed in our family in a way where I’d know her feelings about it. Perhaps, had we been a normal family, I’d have known. After all, the subject had certainly been in the news a lot lately. But what she and I normally did was, she’d shout and I’d cringe, and this was a topic that simply hadn’t appeared on our radar.
So, should I tell her or not? I decided I shouldn’t. The reason? Because it was Micah’s business as much as mine, and I wasn’t going to out him without his permission. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t discuss him at all.
“Oh, and I’ve made a new friend at school. His name is Micah. He’s in the choir, too, and is an amazing singer. He’s teaching me to read music. I’ll bring him home with me soon and you can meet him. I think he’ll be a better friend for me than Troy was. Maybe he can come for dinner, too. What’s your schedule going to be?”
There. I’d done it. No problem at all. The rest of it? That we were boyfriends? That could come later. Soon, I figured. I had to see what Micah thought.
≈≈ ≈≈
I felt really good about how things had gone with my mother. I hadn’t known I could make that work, and I had. Pretty amazing. I had another surprise at school. Another good one.
Our Gym class coach had been fired, and the school was looking for a replacement. Not easy to find after school had started as most people working in education were already employed for the school year. Our school was getting teachers during their off-periods to act as fill-ins for Gym classes.
Our class period already had one person in charge, the girls’ coach, who had taken charge of the girls when the head coach had separated the genders for certain activities, like basketball or soccer where boys played against boys and girls against girls. Otherwise, like for track and field exercises or conditioning drills or some games, boys and girls were together. But with the male coach gone, the woman coach, Mrs. Tolson, took over the class. She didn’t come into our locker room, of course. So we didn’t have anyone monitoring that unless the aide that day was a man. The men who did that seemed to take great pains to keep their eyes elevated.
Mrs. Tolson came to me her first day running the entire show.
“Can you see me in my office, Scottie?”
“Uh, sure. When?” I was out on the floor, dressed out and warming up or goofing around like everyone else.
“Right now.”
So we headed to her office. She shut the door. “I understand you were the one who got Mr. DeBassi fired,” she said. I think I paled. She laughed.
“That’s okay. He was an asshole. Glad he’s gone. But it presents a problem. There should be someone making sure everything’s fine in your locker room, and sometimes there won’t be. I understand you’re an anti-bullier, and you must have some grit to do what you did to get DeBassi ousted. How about I assign you to control the locker room this Gym period when I don’t have a male teacher assisting me? You up for that?”
“Uh, well, I . . . ”
“Good! Thanks, Scottie. That’s great. Now, anything I should know about running the boys’ side of the class? Some girls are very competitive, but a lot aren’t, and I have to spend a lot of time motivating the slowpokes. I don’t know a thing about how to handle a boys’ Gym class. What can you tell me that would help?”
Before writing how I answered that cry for help, I have to admit something. I’ve never been very outgoing. Not a bit. My guidance counselor, someone we all had to meet during middle school, told me I was an introvert. I had to look that up, but she was right. And my introverted nature meant I spent a lot of time listening and watching and assimilating what was happening around me. I’d absorb it and evaluate it. Judge it. I did this in my classes in school. I watched teachers, saw what they did well that worked, and what didn’t. I’d see things from a child’s perspective. I could tell every teacher I’d ever had what they could do differently that would be more effective in certain ways and situations. It was the same in gym class as in every other class. Never, though, did I think I’d have the opportunity to tell anyone any of my suggestions or the guts to actually do it if I did have that chance.
Now I did. Both. “Mrs. Tolson, I do have one thing to suggest. There’s one thing the boys in class hate. They put up with it because they have to, but it’s awful. It’s when teams are being chosen and two of the better athletes in the class are doing the picking. Some boys will always be picked last, it’s always the same ones, and it’s humiliating. If you want to do something to stop that humiliation, it would be to end that practice of letting students pick the teams. Do it yourself.”
We discussed that, figured out how to implement such a system, and from then on, there was no more degradation of less athletic students in our class. It quickly spread to the whole school. I couldn’t believe I’d had a hand in that! Amazing what can happen when you open your mouth.
≈≈ ≈≈
“I don’t know,” Micah said, and I knew him well enough now to see his usual sense of humor in most things he said was lacking right then. “You say you don’t know how your mother feels about gays. Why risk telling her, then?”
“Well, I know my dad’s fine with me, gay or straight. If I tell my mom, and she’s fine with it, too, then we can have sleepovers at my house.” I stopped to give him an evil leer. “With the door closed.”
He gave me a half-smile back. I knew the idea appealed to him, but the worry was still there.
I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll feel her out. We need to know. I’ll find out without giving anything away. So, how about this? If she’s okay with gay people in general, I’ll tell her I’m gay, too. If she doesn’t blow a gasket about that, I’ll tell her I want to have a sleepover with my new best friend. I won’t mention my being gay in the same conversation when I tell her I want you to sleep over. We should be fine.”
“And what if she asks?”
Hmmmm. I had to think about that. I really wanted a sleepover. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll play it by ear. But I won’t do anything or say anything that’ll jeopardize you.”
“Okay, then. I, uh, wouldn’t mind a sleepover, either. It’s been too long since I saw your amazing boner.”
There was that sense of lively, wicked humor, resurrected.
≈≈ ≈≈
Over dinner was the best time to broach the subject. Dad was there, and if Mom blew her top, I could hide behind him. But she was in a good mood these days. I really didn’t know her views on homosexuality, however, or if they were one thing for the population in general and something else for her only son.
I thought it would be good for her to hear Dad’s views before asking her hers.
“Dad,” I said, after chewing and swallowing some overcooked pot roast. My mother’s cooking, if anything, had gone downhill since her conversion from ogre to mom. I hadn’t known that was possible. “I heard in school today that in some Southern schools, they’re making law restricting teaching kids about gay people. That’s seems absurd, like gay people don’t exist. Of course they do. They’re shielding kids from the real world and who knows how much harm they’re doing to kids who are wondering why they feel so different from other kids. How can they get away with this? Do they want to have a generation of kids who don’t understand anything about homosexuality?”
There. That ought to get the ball rolling.
Dad had just taken a bite of pot roast, so I knew he wouldn’t be answering right away. Preparing that stuff to make swallowing a safe proposition took some time. And an awful lot of chewing.
My mother answered. Darn. There went the edge I was hoping to have with my father’s supportive answer.
“Politics these days seem to have taken a turn away from reality into what some people hope is moving the clock backwards to when homosexuals had no rights. Go back far enough and you’ll get to women, then Blacks. These politicians are playing to the racists and homophobes and misogynists among the population.”
Hah! My golden opportunity! “So you disagree with the politicians? You support gay rights?”
“Of course. They’re just people like everyone else. What if this kind of thing blossomed? Pretty soon gays couldn’t get the health care they needed. Or housing, or education. They’d be discriminated against in all sorts of ways we probably haven’t even thought of. It used to be illegal for two men to be together. Not all that long ago, either. A lot of the male nurses I worked with were gay, and they were mostly wonderful people. I think going in this direction is horribly wrong.”
Dad had finally swallowed. “I agree totally. The politics in this country are giving voice to some extreme positions, and we can only hope enough rational people vote to get these guys out of office. I shouldn’t just say guys, either. There are some radical women in office who are just as bad.”
Okay, I now knew where both my parents stood, not just my father. How far could I take this? Could I get personal?
My mother solved the problem for me. “They’re teaching you about gays in your Sex-Ed classes, aren’t they? Do they give the opinion these people are somehow a shameful, opprobrious segment of the population?”
Well, I could answer that. But not till I found out what opprobrious meant. I looked at Dad.
“She’s asking if the teachers are demeaning gays. Do they speak derogatorily, degrading them? Or do they do none of that and simply treat them exactly like they do straight people?”
“Oh. Yeah. They do mention gays and nonbinary kids and transsexuals and say these people are now being recognized and it’s a big step forward for our society. And personally, I know some boys who have come out. No one at school seems to care one way or another. The out kids act like the rest of us do, and they’re all treated just like everyone else. It’s even in the school handbook that there can be no discrimination for differing sexualities.”
Mom said, “Good.”
So I took the plunge. “It is good. I’ve been wondering if I might be gay, and if the feelings about gays were, uh, opprobrious—” I stopped and smiled at her “—I wouldn’t have the nerve to even think about it.”
Okay, so the plunge I took was into the shallow end of the kiddies’ pool. But it’s always good to leave yourself some wiggle room.
“Well, you’re still a little young to know that for sure,” Mom said. “This is actually the age when boys often get crushes on other boys and even experiment.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I did that? Well, both those things? Experiment and maybe decide I am gay?”
“It’s not like you have a choice, Scottie. Your body will tell you who you are about your sexuality.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She laughed. “No, I wouldn’t mind. Sex is a complicated thing. But I want you to enjoy it whatever gender turns you on, and I want you to live a fulfilling life. I want you to be happy.”
I didn’t mention Micah. I didn’t mention sleepovers. I’m not stupid.
≈≈ ≈≈
That was then, this was now. It was a week later and the ’nother day mentioned earlier. In a light and trivial sort of way, I told Mom that Micah’s parents had a dinner engagement having to do with his dad’s work, that they’d be out late, and Micah’d be alone all evening. As I’d been meaning to bring him over to meet her anyway, this would be a good time for that, and it might as well be for dinner since he’d have to get a pizza delivered otherwise, and as long as he was here and his parents wouldn’t be back till very late, could he spend the night?
I didn’t mess it all together like that and make it sound rushed or anything. I was smooth and nonchalant and engaging. When I finished, she looked at me and said, “Is he gay?”
Damn. Better if you don’t have smart, insightful parents. Much better.
“Uh, I think that sort of thing is generally private, and it’s up to the person himself to tell you that, not someone else to out them if they are. That would be rude.”
She looked at me for a moment, then grinned. “Nice try. If he weren’t gay, you’d have just said so. But you didn’t. So I guess it’s very safe to assume he is.”
“What difference does that make? If he is or isn’t, he’s still a good friend, and I haven’t had a sleepover since Troy hooked up with Alyson. Besides, you said there was nothing wrong with me experimenting. Not that I’m saying I’m about to do that, or even if Micah would want to. But you said what you said, and you’re not a hypocrite.”
“I guess you got me there. And what I said was true. If you want to learn about yourself, you should do so, and you’d be a lot safer doing it here than in a back alley somewhere.”
“Like I’d make out with anyone in a back alley,” I snorted.
“No, I don’t expect you would. So, okay. Dinner and a sleepover. You have my blessing.”
Unfortunately, that meant he’d have my mom’s food, too. He might not be in the mood for sex after that. And, if we had pot roast, he might have a sore jaw.
≈≈ ≈≈
He was. In the mood, I mean. I shouldn’t have worried. It was a good thing he was because I was about crawling out of my skin.
We decided to shower first. Our house wasn’t like Micah’s. Each bedroom there had its own bathroom. We just had one upstairs with our two bedrooms, and we all shared it. I thought it would be too much for us to shower together, so I told him to go first, and he did. He also stripped in front of me. He was as hard as I was. The only difference was his wasn’t hidden behind layers of cloth like mine was. He grinned. I guessed he liked me admiring it.
I did the same for him when he got back. He didn’t bother to dress. I guess he assumed we’d be sleeping naked. What a wonderful assumption! And the together part, too. If sleeping was the correct verb to use there.
He was in bed when I came back. I shut and locked the door, one of the very few times it had ever been locked. When I’d first started jerking off, I’d locked it but then sort of forgot about it because no one ever came up when I was up there doing it. Tonight, I didn’t want any surprises. Sure, Mom knew what we were doing, but that didn’t mean I wanted her looking on and making suggestions.
Off went the lights and I got into bed next to him. And then we were kissing. Being naked, we of course were quite soon pressed against each other. I was in heaven.
Eventually we stopped, and I panted, “We are going to talk before doing anything else?”
“Yeah.” There was a full moon, and there was enough light in the room for me to see Micah give me as alluring a grin as I’d ever seen. “Though it’s hard to stop when you just want to do what you want to do.”
“It is,” I agreed, “but we’re young and embarrass easily and it’s all new, and it would easy for one of us to do something the other wouldn’t want done, or at least done yet, and then there could be hurt feelings on one or both of our parts. Too, I think if we’re old enough to be doing things, we should be mature enough to be able to discuss them first.”
“Okay, what do you want to do tonight, and what don’t you want to do?”
“See, this is good! By taking the time to talk, we won’t let the emotions of the moment dictate our actions.”
He gave me the funniest look. “That didn’t sound like you at all!”
I reddened a little. “Yeah, I read it in a book. I kinda looked up what boys do together.”
“Where’d you get a book like that? You didn’t ask a librarian, did you?”
“No!” I squirmed a little, thinking about doing that. “No, I looked it up online.”
”Okay. Well, tell me tonight’s agenda then.”
“No, I’m not telling you what we’ll do. We’ll discuss that and decide together. It might be easier if we talk about what we don’t want to do and see if we agree.”
“When did you get to be the boss?” He laughed, which was good right then because I felt really hurt for him to say that. I didn’t want to be any kind of boss. I just wanted some ground rules to be set. I’d be more comfortable that way and enjoy what we were doing if those were in place.
He saw my expression and quickly kissed me. “I’m sorry. That was supposed to be a joke, and you didn’t take it that way. And I like it that you’re making sure we agree on this. It makes me feel better doing that, too. Not so nervous. Okay, I’ll go first. I don’t want to do anything involving asses.”
“Agreed!” I said and giggled. This should be fun! “I assume we’ll be touching everything else. Well, what about blowjobs?”
He hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“Easy. Then we won’t. No point in going past what we’re ready for. I’m a little uncertain about that, too. It almost seems nasty, putting that in my mouth knowing you peed out of it. I think we’ll get to that eventually but not right away.”
He gave me another quick kiss. “This was a very good idea, Scottie. Now, less talk, more action.”
Which is what we did. And because we knew we weren’t going to do anything that either of us would be uncomfortable with, there was nothing slowing us down.
I got to love the body I’d been dreaming of, the face I’d been fascinated by, the lower parts I’d only imagined seeing and touching and stroking. He seemed as fascinated by my body as I was with his. I sure ran my hands over all of his, every bit of it, and he did the same. I thought about telling him how smitten I’d been with him since I’d first laid eyes on him but decided that was for later.
We both discovered what the books called erogenous zones we had no idea we had. We did have to get up twice because I’d forgotten to get a washcloth from the bathroom before we started. That was an adventure in itself, running across the hall and back in the nude. With a huge grin on my face and a half hard-on down below.
I got two, and we used them both. We did end up getting some sleep, but it was late, and it was a good thing it was a Friday night, because there was no way we’d have been able to get up for school the next day on time. In fact, we didn’t get up till noon.