By The Way
copyright 2006 by Mark Logan
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Chapter 1
Shit, where to begin, where to begin…
My sophomore year in high school. I think that’s pretty much were this story
started. I was somewhat shy and nerdy. I didn’t wear glasses; they were so
damned big and heavy that I considered them goggles. I always enjoyed school,
even though I was kinda shy, in a scholastic and nerdy sort of way. I was
always up on my homework, was friendly with the teachers; such a good little
nebekh (that's Yiddish for "nerd", pronounced 'nebbish')!
But at the same time I was miserable. Or sad. Or something. Hell, I don’t
know anymore, it’s been so damned long. I never really hung out with people
outside of school, but a hell of a lot of people were having more fun than I
was.
I’m trying to remember when I first became conscious of being attracted to
guys. I’d have to say it was in the eight grade. There was this really hot
football player (surprise) who was a senior when I was a “worm,” as we were so
affectionately called by the upper classmen. Back then in the 80’s, guys wore
really great tight-fitting jeans that showed off all of their equipment. Hey,
God gave it to us, right. Well, he didn’t really give me a whole lot but then I
wasn’t checking myself out. Anyway, this guy's name was Rob Bently and like I
said he played football. Today he’s what we’d call a “bear” because I remember
him having hairy arms and chest. The chest I knew about because you could see
it in his open-collared shirts. He had a mustache and light brown hair. I knew
that I was attracted to him although I had absolutely no clue what thoughts lied
beyond that observation.
In my sophomore year I took an architectural drafting course. It started out
with more crackers (the people kind) than a box of Ritz, but once they all
realized that you actually had to do work in class, most of the trashiest
rednecks dropped the class. There were probably twenty or so of us and only one
girl. Several guys in there were nice on the eyes. One dude sat in front of me
and was a swimmer. Kenny was his name. He was a really nice guy and funny
too. Great swimmer’s build and and sweet lookin’ ass.
Then there was a guy who sat next to me named Steve. Steve was a bit more
redneck than country. I don’t think that he dipped (back in the early 80’s lots
of guys I knew or went to school with dipped tobacco) but he may have smoked.
He wasn’t your average, good-looking guy, but there was something attractive
about him.
And then there was Don Keller. God’s honest truth I never really paid that much
attention to him, then. I knew that he was a junior, just from hearing
conversations. There were four rows of drafting tables in the class; I sat in
the second row, and he was back in the last one. I found out that he was a
baseball player because he and I had a mutual friend. Actually, this guy named
Carlton who was a neighbor of mine had a friend named Mike, and Mike and Don
were both on the baseball team. You know, the “I know your brother’s sister’s
cousin’s uncle’s mother-in-law” sort of thing.
Anyway, Don and Mike sat in the last row. By the end of my sophomore year most
of us were pretty good acquaintances because we’d been together in the same
class for nine months. Still, Don came off as really quiet if Mike wasn’t
around. He and I never really talked like Steve, Kenny and I did, simply
because he sat a couple of rows back. Then one day we came to school, it was in
April I think, and the air conditioning in our part of the building wasn’t
working. At one point I turned around and Don and Mike were standing there
talking, but Don’s shirt was completely unbuttoned. Ok, you gotta remember, in
the 80’s there was peer pressure to look nice, not slovenly and sloppy like kids
do today, so lots of us guys wore button-downs.
I noticed that his shirt was down and you could see his chest. Nothing
remarkable, no hair at all, but it was then that I started paying attention to
Don more. At first I just started hanging out a little bit more with his friend
Mike, who was again a friend of my friend Carlton. Just by association I
started talking with Don more. Nothing more than normal school bullshit. He
seemed like a really nice guy. Okay, description time. He was (and is) just
shy of six feet tall, has dark brown hair and brown eyes. He’s got this great
smile and has dimples, to boot. Just a nice looking, clean cut guy. By the end
of the year he and I would chat a bit more than we had in the past.
* * * *
The last week of the school year is when the yearbooks get passed out and I
always looked forward to this. It was always on a Thursday night that the
school would open up and the students who had purchased an annual could come by
and pick theirs up. The seniors had their names printed on the front cover, I
guess to be different. Tables were set up in the cafeteria and hundreds of
people would stop and flip through their yearbook, mostly looking for pictures
of themselves. Hey, I did it too. It was cool, though, because it was always
at this time when things were so damned relaxed in what was normally a somewhat
rigid learning environment. People would be sitting on the floor in the
hallways and always there’d be people in the gym sitting on the bleachers
reading and signing the yearbooks. We all know that the book signing was
bullshit. All of those “I Love You,” “Keep In Touch,” blah blah blah.
Whatever. It is fun to look back after, shit almost twenty years, and see the
people that you hung out with.
Most of that last week you’d get people to sign your annual during class if
you'd missed them the previous Thursday night. I guess people would start to
get nostalgic and sign crap that they normally wouldn’t say, figuring that they
wouldn’t see you for three months. Whatever. I passed mine to a few of the
guys in my drafting class, including Don.
Out of the several dozen people who’d sign my yearbook very few of them included
a telephone number. Surprisingly, Don was one of the few.
Huh?
Yep, Don put some sort of message in there and ended it by saying "let’s get
together sometime over the summer", and he added his number. I must have read
it three times to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. Nope, it was there,
all three times I read it. I didn’t make a big deal out of it, at least to
him. Hell, I was just happy that someone wanted to hang out over the summer
with me.
I should explain something to you here. My high school was located in the
corner of the district that it served and at the end of ninth grade my family
moved just across the boundary into another school district. Literally, the
road next to my house was the boundary line and I lived on the other side.
Because I did have a few friends my folks decided to use the address of my piano
teacher who lived across the street from our old house, thus keeping me in the
same high school. Needless to say there was nobody in my neighborhood who
attended the same high school that I did. There were lots of apartments around
us; we were sort of in a pocket by ourselves. At my old house I had plenty of
friends that went to my school, or at least we’d hang out. Once I moved that
all ended, so I was sort of a loner at the new house.
Okay so Don wanted me to call him sometime. That was a new one. I say that,
but for some reason I suddenly became drawn to him. I could handle that, right?
Yeah. Right.
A couple of weeks after school was out for the summer I picked up the phone to
call him.
“I’m sorry, Don’s not here, can I take a message?” It was his mom.
“Yes ma’am, this is Paul Lyons and I was just calling to see what he’s up to,” I
said.
“Oh, he’s at work right now. I don’t think I’ve met you, Paul.”
“No ma’am, he and I were in drafting class together.”
“Oh, okay. Well, he gets off work at 8:00. He’s working at Kroger, you know.”
“Ah. Actually, I didn’t, but if you’ll just tell him I called I’d appreciate
it.”
“Okay. Bye-bye.”
But he didn’t call.
Oh well. I knew he had other friends and probably was hanging out with them
after work. But hey, he gave me his number, right? And why wouldn’t he want me
to call him if he gave me his number? I mean, I didn’t ask for it, so he must
have wanted to do something, hang out, whatever.
I called again the next day.
And a couple of days later.
And the day after that.
And you’re correct in assuming that I didn’t have a life. Well, I sort of did.
I was fifteen and the only job I could take was working at the local library..
How fitting. A bookworm shelving books, ten hours a week. God, there’s no
telling how many times I wanted to jump out the friggin’ window, or throw myself
on the train tracks that ran about one hundred feet from the building. I also
got a job working at Stone Mountain Park. I think that everyone who lived in
Stone Mountain worked at the park at one time or another, but I actually ended
up getting fired from there. They said it was because I was only fifteen and
you had to be sixteen to work there. I knew different, though. There was a
girl that worked there, a friend of mine, that the boss was always telling her
to wear her shorts shorter and to wear more make up, or he’d put her running
some sort of vending cart outside in the heat. I was very vocal in standing up
to him about shit like that. Guess he didn’t like it. So I was back to working
only ten hours a week at the library.
Bo-ring!
I didn’t completely stalk Don, but I’m sure I got on his parents’ nerves.
Looking back I realize how immature I was in handling friendships. Finally
after a few weeks I gave up. Bitch wanted to talk to me he could damn well pick
up the phone himself. It’s not like he didn’t have my number by now, right?
In July my parents had planned for us all to go (I have two older brothers) up
to New York and visit our family there. We had moved away when I was a kid and
hadn’t been back since, so I was looking forward to this. Also in the plans
were to make a detour so the three of us could see Niagara Falls for the first
time. The night before we left for our trip my dad took me up to Kroger (at
that time there were only two or three grocery stores on the strip in our city)
to pick up a book or magazine or whatever.
As I walked up to the store, standing near the doorway...okay, I need to explain
something else here.
What Kroger did at that time was that they had little placards on all of their
buggies with numbers on them.. The cashier would write down the number of your
buggy on your receipt and you’d walk out of the store, leaving the buggy with
the bag clerk, who would then push it through a set of short doors to a guy
waiting outside the front of the store. You’d pull your car up and hand your
receipt to the guy waiting outside and he’d load your car with the groceries.
So I walked up to the store and Don was standing near those doors with another
guy and they were just talking and laughing about something. It was dark out so
at first I didn’t recognize him until the last second.
“Hey Paul, how’s it goin’?” he asked. Seemed friendly enough, just like in
school. I decided not to bring up all of the goddamned phone calls he never
returned.
“Don, what’s up, man.”
“Oh, just fixin’ to get off work.”
“Cool.”
“What’cha doin’ tonight?” he asked.
“Well, we’re all goin’ up to New York in the mornin’ and I thought I’d grab a
book or a magazine. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to work. We’ll see y’all.”
I turned and headed towards the main entrance of the store.
“Hey man, I’m sorry I haven’t been callin’ you back. I’ve been so busy with
work, and all,” Don said.
“Dude, don’t worry about it. We’ll see ya later.”
“Later,” he said.
I bought my magazine and some batteries for my walkman cassette player. Hey
young guys! Do y’all know what a cassette player is? I liked listening to my
own tunes and our car only had an 8-track player. Hey young guys! Do y’all
know what an 8-track player is? Anyway I had just bought another Andrews
Sisters tape and I had a bag of some other cassettes that I’d be bringing up
with me as well.
I should also explain some of my musical tastes. My favorite singing group is
The Andrews Sisters. I know that’s a bit bizarre considering I’m only 35, but
I’ve been listening to them since I was 5, when my parents joined the Columbia
House 8-Track club. I’ll bet there are more than a few readers who had also
joined that club in the 70’s. Remember back then you could get reel to reel
tapes also? And good old 78 rpm records? Well, I was always into the more easy
listening music as a kid growing up, but I think what stood out to me was the
harmonies in the Sisters’ songs. Just before tenth grade I was in K-mart and I
saw an A.S. cassette in the “Must Go” $1.99 bin and bought it. The tape turned
out to be some of their original recordings re-released as opposed to the new
orchestrations that they performed in the 50’s, which was the 8-track that I
first hear of them. Once I realized that you could get their original
recordings I went out and bought all of the albums of theirs that I could find
and made cassettes.
On the way up to New York (we drove, by the way) this one song kept sticking in
my head called “How Lucky You Are.” It was basically saying when the one that
you love is in love with you, blah blah blah, how lucky you are. I was far from
in love with Don. Hell, I only knew him from drafting class, really. But there
was something about him that drew me to him. Maybe it’s because he was the
first jock who was friendly to me, I have no idea.
My family spent a week visiting our relatives and friends. I got to stay with
my grandparents, which was really cool. Growing up I'd lived on the same street
as they did and so by sleeping at their house I got to see all of my childhood
friends for most of the time that I was there. Everyone seemed infatuated with
the fact that I was living in Georgia and had an accent. I didn’t think that I
did, but okay. I hadn’t seen my friends in five or six years but it felt like a
lifetime.
And I thought about Don. A lot.
Every time I heard that one song I’d think about him. There was another one on
that cassette called “I Don’t Know Why (I Love You Like I Do)” that also made me
think of him. A lot. Oh well, I must be just really looking forward to a new
friend, right?
Riiiiiiight!
The whole drive from New York to Georgia was a long one and I was really glad to
get home. However, I had decided while I was gone that if he wanted to call me
he would. No more stalking on my part. When we got home my grandmother was so
happy to see us. You see, we had visited my dad’s parents in New York, and my
mom’s mother lived with us. A friend of my oldest brother would spend the
nights at our house so she wouldn’t be alone. Not long after I unpacked I came
downstairs to just relax and hang out and talk to Grandma.
“Paul, someone named Don called you while you were gone,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” I about wanted to rocket over to the phone to call him back.
“I told him you were out of town but he must have forgotten because he called
back a few days later. His number’s on the counter.”
“Thank you,” I said. Damn! Don called me. I decided to wait before I called
him back.
Screw that! I waited, like, ten seconds before I grabbed the phone.
“Hello?” It was his mother again.
“Is Don there?” I asked..
“Paul?” By now she recognized my voice. Poor woman.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Honey, you just missed him, he went to work.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I was just returning his call. You know,” I laughed, “I
actually ran into him at Kroger about a week ago, so we finally hooked up.”
“Well good. He comes back kind of late tonight…do you want me to have him call
you when he get’s home?”
“Nawww. Just let him know I’m playing phone tag.”
“Okay,” she chuckled. “Goodbye.”
“ ‘Bye.”
Oh my! Don called me, finally.. (He touched me. He put his hand near mine and
then, he touched me…) At that point I felt okay about where this was going.
Where what was going? That’s a good question. I just felt better once he
finally made the effort to actually try and get in touch with me. In the
beginning I’d thought that he only gave me his number because he was being
polite, then I realized that he didn’t need to be polite. He was just signing
an annual for cryin’ out loud. Oy! I should remind you, the reader, that
that was my mindset then.
Once we finally were able to talk on the phone the conversations flowed pretty
easy. We didn’t talk a whole hell of a lot, maybe once and sometimes twice a
week. I’d always think of excuses to go to Kroger. Heh heh heh.
Sadly, the summer came and went and it was time to register for school, or pick
up our class schedules. Normally you’d pick up the schedule and then school
would start the next week. You could also pick up your parking sticker for your
car. Since I was going to be a junior and I have a late birthday I wasn’t going
to be even turning sixteen until after school started.
I ran into Don in the cafeteria; he was going out as I was walking in.
“Hey Paul,” he said, “how’s it goin’?”
“Alright, just about to pick up my schedule,” I said.
“I’ll walk with you.”
“K” and he and I headed over to my class table. Damn, in one more year I was
going to be a senior. I couldn’t wait for that day.
I got my schedule and looked at it. First period, computer science (which back
in 1985 meant how to calculate interest on a 30 year mortgage. Nothing fancy);
second period, American Lit; third period, Algebra; fourth period, chemistry;
fifth period, beginning Spanish; sixth period, U.S. History. Looked good.
“So you got Miss Cannon first, huh?” he asked. Actually Mrs. Cannon, but
southerners pronounce "Missus" as "Miss".
“I guess so,” I shrugged. “Whadda you have?”
“P.E.’s first, then just some other bullshit.”
I laughed at that.
“P.E.’s the only one that matters, huh?”
He gave me one of his dimpled grins.. Whew! Okay, calm down Paul.
School started the following Monday and I was somewhat looking forward to it.
Everyone was in the cafeteria sitting at “their own” tables with their friends.
My table was luckily near the football players’ tables. That was really nice
because I got to check out all of that hot jock ass. Thank God for
tight-fitting denim, I always say. God never answers me when I say that,
though. Go figure.
First bell rings and a collective groan rises from the whole school. I went to
head towards my computer class with the dreaded Mrs.. Cannon. Why she was
dreaded, I had no clue. I didn’t even know her. I went in and sat down and
lucked out because a couple of girls that I sat with in the cafeteria were also
in there. As the minutes went by more people streamed in. The hallway outside
was humming with people going to their classes, and rushing as the second bell
would soon be approaching.
I turned to talk to Paige and Reilly, the two girls, to yenter it up a bit.
When I turned back I had the biggest surprise.
Our eyes met and he gave absolutely no sign of “hello” or greeting. I decided
to play it cool and just nodded to him. He crossed the room and took the empty
desk beside me.
“Hey man, how’s it goin’.”
“Fine,” I said. “I thought you had P.E.”
“Nahh,” Don said. “That was a mistake. I already took my P.E.’s”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “Cool,” was all I said.
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