As we counted down the days to the end of the second quarter of the school year, Mr. Wyman introduced a basketball unit in Phys Ed class. He didn’t ask me to teach my skills to any of the other kids. Really, I think he despaired of ever teaching me any basketball skills at all. There was something about that game that never really connected with me. I don’t know why. I was at least passably good at any other sports I tried.
Nicky was still in the same class. And somehow or other we often ended up on the same team. If Dante was also on our team, he would usually pair us up in the backcourt. He said that he didn’t want us to have to play inside where we might put our delicate little heinies at risk.
Nicky wasn’t much more skilled at basketball than I was, but he played with his customary enthusiasm. I figured that the least I could do was try to match him. We didn’t accomplish much, but we were always dashing and diving all over the court. Dante took to referring to us as Smurf Force. I was starting to wonder why Dante and I were still friends.
At the end of each class, Nicky would always end up next to me in the shower. He chattered away about everything! Class. Skiing. Our next class. Our next ski trip. Anything he liked and thought I might like, too. He chatted a lot about me.
In the shower, he grew less and less careful about personal space. We were often bumping shoulders and elbows, sometimes more. But I noticed that he never got excited. Well, he was Nicky, so of course he got excited. But I never saw him get excited in that way. That seemed unusual to me. At moments when shoulders, elbows and hips were bumping and rubbing together, it was all I could do to avoid sending up the Bat Signal.
I can’t imagine that other guys in the shower hadn’t noticed. But I guess they must have liked us or something. Nobody ever made crude remarks where we could hear them except for Dante. He told me he thought we were cute together. Fortunately, he never said anything like that to Nicky. I really don’t know what he would have made of it.
Nicky had also managed to grab a large portion of a lunch table for him and his posse that was located next to the table where Jason and I sat with our friends. I still hadn’t figured out if any of them shared our more personal interests, but they seemed to enjoy being around us. If they weren’t on the team, they certainly didn’t mind that we were.
With the soccer season well behind us, Brian would sometimes join us at our table, or sit with Nicky and his crew if our table was full. We hadn’t had much contact away from soccer, so it gave me the opportunity to get to know him better. He was a solid and dependable person, not too caught up in himself, who appeared to be very aware of the people around him. He also didn’t appear to be very judgmental about other people. Even if he didn’t play for the team, as Jason had suggested, I doubt he would have cared that we all did.
But in his own solid, reliable, caring, non-judgmental way, Brian was proselytizing. Baseball, it turned out, was his religion.
For some reason, he set his sights on me as his first disciple. He suggested that I try out for the team when practices started in the middle of March. I don’t know why he thought I could play. I had gotten involved in neighborhood games a bit as a kid. And in eighth grade, buoyed by my success in soccer, I had tried out for the middle school team. Maybe I had mentioned that casually during soccer practice sometime. But I was never a big contributor to that team. I was speedy and could get to any ball hit near me, had a reliable glove and a pretty strong arm. But for some reason, the hand-eye coordination that made me a very good fielder never translated to bat-eye coordination. I was a disaster at the plate.
I tried to explain this to Brian. He seemed to think he could help me become a better hitter. Once he figured out how close Nicky and I were becoming, he turned his powers of persuasion on my mini-me. And Nicky, as it turned out, wasn’t difficult to persuade. He had played Little League ball locally and was actually a decent player.
With Nicky successfully recruited, Brian and Nicky both trained their sights on me. They started to wear down my resistance. I was beginning to wonder if there might not be some sort of Guinness Book record for being one of the better players on one high school state championship team, and the worst player on another championship team, all in the same school year. It might be nice to have my name immortalized in print that way.
I was still engaged in this same battle of wills with Brian and Nicky a few weeks later, the day that the third quarter of the school year started.
I had dashed out of Phys Ed class after my usual dangerous dancing routine with Nicky in the shower. Dante had been taking his time, drying his balls and making salacious promises to his penis. I ran through the lunch line, filled my tray, paid, and found a seat at our table. I must have been hungry or something.
The rest of our lunch crew started to trickle in. Jason sat down next to me. Trevor and Adam strolled in. Becky and Linda took their places. I was shoveling a bite of eggplant parmesan into my mouth, wondering whether the government really thought they could get away with counting eggplant as a main course, or even as a vegetable, when I glanced in the direction of the serving line.
Nicky and a few of his crew had clustered together and were starting in the direction of their table. Brian had just paid and was headed our way with his tray in hand. And standing just a few places back in line for the cashier was probably one of the most remarkable looking people I had ever seen!
He didn’t appear to be any taller than me and had a slight build. Dressed in heavier clothes for winter, it was hard to tell, but he looked like he might possess some athleticism. He wasn’t carrying himself confidently. But he still managed to carry himself well, like he was at least comfortable in his own body.
His face was symmetrical to the point of perfection, the bone structure was delicate, and his facial expression and body language reminded me of a child that was lost. But the most striking aspect of his appearance was his coloring. His hair was a very pale gold, worn straight and just a little long. His skin was also pale, with a faint blush of pink at his cheeks. His lips were barely dark enough to distinguish them from the rest of his face. And his eyes, when he turned to scan the dining hall, were a blue so faint that they resembled ice. I was left with an impression of social camouflage, like he was someone burdened with remarkable beauty and was trying desperately not to be noticed.
I watched his eyes pass over our table and an uncomfortable expression skittered across his features, like he recognized something that brought up bad memories. He kept looking around the room but couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for.
Next to me, I was aware of Jason trying to get my attention. Then a few more voices joined in.
“Damn! What’s wrong, Ross?” That sounded like Jason again.
“He’s awfully pale. He must be sick!” Maybe Trevor?
“Guys, Ross is staring right at Perry!” That was Adam’s voice.
There was a hubbub of noise and several voices speaking at once: “Perry! What’s he doing back here?” “I thought he was being home-schooled.” “Shit! We don’t need him back here again!”
Adam had a different concern. “What about Ross? Should someone get the nurse?”
But Jason started laughing. I felt him pull my seat back from the table a few inches. “Probably not. We don’t want to traumatize her. Ross was staring at Perry. And look! All of his blood went to his dick! He just needs to get some oxygen to his brain.”
Like the well-trained emergency medical team that they were, everyone had suggestions. “Does anyone know CPR?” “Lay him on his back. Let gravity get the blood out of his dick.” “Rub his wrists. That will get his circulation going.” “He was looking at Perry. Cover his eyes!” “That won’t work. He’s already hard.”
And then Jason’s distinct voice took over. “Yeah! We need to do something about that. Somebody needs to get under the table and blow him!”
“You do it, Brian!” Tracey sounded like her head might combust from the excitement. “You’ve been standing in a puddle of drool since you first saw him at the start of the year.”
“That wasn’t drool.” Jason was apparently trying to be helpful. “It was flowing from someplace lower on his body.”
Brian must have reacted. I heard a sound of utter disbelief and disgust.
“Come on, Brian. You’ve wanted to since August. This is your chance!” Jason sounded desperate to save my life . . . or something.
And then Tracey and Jeannette started to chant. “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
Dimly, I became aware that I had to save myself before peer pressure made someone do something right here in the dining hall that might kill me. So I pulled myself together enough to ask a question.
“Who is that?” I mumbled, gesturing in the direction of the lunch line with a slight movement of my head.
“That’s Perry!” Jason said.
I glanced questioningly at him.
“G. Perry Nolan. He used to go to school with us.” Jason added. “He was in our class.”
“G?” I don’t know why, but it seemed important. “What does the ‘G’ stand for?”
“No one knows. But it isn’t ‘gorgeous’,” Jason snickered. “Trevor tried that line on him last year and got shot down faster than Snoopy getting jumped by the Red Baron!”
“It seemed reasonable,” Trevor defended himself.
“Except that Perry is a real ‘phobe!” Jason declared with some finality. “But,” he added generously, “you were new here last year, Trev. You couldn’t have known.”
“Oh.” I was trying to pull my scattered thoughts together. I wondered absently about Perry’s teeth. He hadn’t been smiling. “Why hasn’t he been in school this year?”
And one-by-one, around the table, snippets of information and gossip were shared. It was good. It took their attention off of me. I learned that Perry had moved to East Grange about six years ago with his mother and father. At first he had seemed like a pretty good kid, kind of shy but getting more involved with the other kids once he became comfortable with them.
But a couple of years ago he had started to withdraw from most of his friendships. And he really turned on the kids who were starting to identify as gay or lesbian during seventh and eighth grade. By the time the class had arrived at the high school last year, Perry was openly homophobic. He wouldn’t even let anyone approach him if he thought they were gay, using insults and homophobic slurs to keep them away.
Everyone had something to share. The conclusion was that he wasn’t anyone they wanted to know anymore, although they did appear to be awfully interested in him. Tensions between Perry and some of the guys had finally come to a head the previous year. The school administration had become involved. The GSA had insisted that Perry’s homophobic actions be punished. Perry and his mother had demanded that gay students leave him alone. The administration gave Perry a five-day suspension for his behavior, and he had never returned to school. According to Becky, his mother had home-schooled him ever since.
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen him around yet,” Jason added. “He lives about a half mile past your house, in that little Mountainview development. I know he used to spend a lot of time hiking on Ball Mountain and through the woods near our homes.”
“Well he should hike right back there,” Trevor insisted with some asperity. “There’s no room for his kind of hate here.”
That was a lot of information to digest. Much of it didn’t make me feel very good. This Perry kid looked incredible to me, he appeared harmless, but everyone at our table seemed to dislike him rather intensely.
I looked over toward Brian, sitting at Nicky’s table. He was eating quietly and was avoiding making eye contact with anyone at our table. Nicky wasn’t looking at us, either. He was sitting with his shoulders slumped in what appeared to be quiet contemplation.
Over the next few days, I learned that Perry was in three of my classes. We shared a History class in the morning—he must have slid in the back of the room very quietly and left just as quietly for me to have missed seeing him the previous day—and Biology and English in the afternoon.
Every day Perry would buy lunch in the cafeteria and very quietly slip away to eat at a private table in a far corner of the lunch room. There was a lot of frustration at our table. A consensus was building that there really wasn’t room at our school for people with his attitude. Mark and Mason, a couple that usually sat together, were claiming that we shouldn’t have to go to school in a place where we didn’t feel safe.
I noticed that Brian stopped coming to our table to eat. Sometimes he ate with Nicky and his friends, but more often at a table where he and some of the other baseball players were eagerly waiting for the snow to melt. From what I could determine, it would be a while yet. We were still in late January and, according to my sources, the ground didn’t even start to clear until mid-March most years.
The conversation at Nicky’s table had become more subdued. Something had happened to bank the level of excitement that usually surrounded him and his friends.
I was beginning to become obsessed with Perry. Obviously, I was attracted by his appearance. But I also couldn’t reconcile his demeanor with the stories that the other guys told about him. He was acting like someone who just wanted to be left alone. And while I should probably have taken that hint, I was curious.
Occasionally, I would come face-to-face with Perry in the school corridors or as we were entering or leaving classes we shared. I tried a smile and a brief ‘hello’, but he reacted like I had injured him. I got nothing more than a clipped ‘hi’ back before he was scurrying off in the opposite direction. It was starting to annoy me.
I was friendly. I was making an effort to welcome Perry back to our school, a place where I was beginning to have a good reputation, and he was reacting like I had the plague. I couldn’t see where it would hurt him to try to be friendly in return.
In Biology class, I became desperate enough to seek a second opinion. I asked Aislinn if she knew why Perry refused to say anything to me. She didn’t have any more idea that I did.
“He used to be in school with me, in sixth and seventh grade, I think,” she said. “He was quiet but nice. We always got along. But I haven’t really seen him in years.”
I needed a third opinion.
In Phys Ed class we had started a unit playing volleyball. Unfortunately, Max Packwood had joined our class at the start of the quarter. A quick and athletic guy who stands five-foot-four doesn’t stand much chance against a six-foot-seven monster when playing volleyball. Max had figured that out. And he hadn’t forgotten that he didn’t like me. When we were on opposite teams, I spent much of the time in class dodging his powerful spikes. When we were on the same team, I spent a lot of time dodging his deliberately clumsy efforts to go after balls that I was diving after. I paid a couple of visits to the nurse before that unit concluded.
After class, I noticed that my shower shadow had been replaced by another, much larger one. I’m fairly self-confident, but his presence looming there was seriously intimidating. I really wasn’t sure what he might do. His whispered comments that a ‘little fairy dust’ might be just the thing his cock needed to experience a real magic moment were deeply disturbing. It didn’t help my equilibrium at all that the cock in question appeared to be almost as big as my forearm.
Dante commiserated with me afterward as we walked from class to lunch.
“If he was that close to you, you probably also noticed that one of his balls hangs about three inches lower than the other,” he remarked.
“God, yes!” I said. “What is wrong with that guy? Everything about him is deformed! Inbreeding alone couldn’t possibly account for all of that!”
Dante snickered, then he shared a little secret. “A few years ago Max was playing golf at a course up on the mountain with one of his older cousins. The story is that the guy managed to convince Max that the ball washers were there for a reason that the course designers never considered. The med techs that responded to the emergency call claimed they had never seen anything like it!”
The story was amusing. But I’m not sure it was in any way comforting. A guy dumb enough to believe he was supposed to put his ‘nads in a ball washer on a public golf course might be stupid enough to do almost anything to me in the shower. And he really was huge.
After that conversation, Dante was kind enough to stay in the shower every day until I was finished. I wondered where Nicky had gone until I noticed him on the far side of the locker room, casting occasional and inscrutable glances in my direction. I guess he found Max intimidating, too.
I didn’t want to become a stalker, but I really needed to get to know Perry better. There was something about his story, demeanor, and his appearance—especially his appearance, if I had to be honest—that I found compelling.
I tried to avoid being obtrusive, but I paid close attention to Perry whenever we were in the same space. There wasn’t an awful lot to learn. He dressed reasonably well and was neatly groomed, but he never stood out. He never spoke to anyone unless spoken to, even the teachers. His demeanor and the way it kept people from paying him much attention appeared to be intentional.
When people did approach him, a flat affect and brief answers to questions didn’t encourage further contact. But he wasn’t hostile. The only thing I really noticed was that whenever someone from Jason’s crowd was around, Perry always looked like he was trying to find an escape route.
I always said something friendly to him when he couldn’t avoid contact, but I kept it brief. A couple of time I noticed him looking for something in class and I tried to help. But I avoided being intrusive. I offered a pencil once when it was obvious that he needed one and it looked like it almost pained him to take it from me.
I got the message. ‘Leave me alone.’ My obsession would have to be pursued with patience and subtlety.
Perry continued to be an important topic of conversation around our lunch table. Someone always noticed when he tried to slip quietly into his corner table for lunch. I didn’t learn much new. Mostly, the crowd at the table didn’t seem to like Perry. It wasn’t clear what he was doing to annoy them.
Mason and Jack, another member of our lunch team, reported that Perry was in their first period Phys Ed class. After a couple of weeks, they started to report shower sightings... in great detail. I immediately became intensely jealous of both of them.
Apparently, Perry had managed to dodge the mandatory shower after gym class for a while. But Mr. Wyman got wise to him eventually and started to monitor the situation more closely. That probably explained the slightly haunted look Perry started to wear on his face when he joined us for History second period.
Those shower sightings only encouraged more table conversation about Perry. Jack or Mason would drop a few details, a number of guys around the table would become entranced by the conversation, and then talk would eventually turn to how terrible it was that Perry was such a ‘phobe.
It felt wrong, but I hung on every word in the conversation when Jack and Mason were discussing their gym class. I found myself wondering whether or not I could transfer into first period Phys Ed class. It’s wasn’t like I really needed that Math class. And I could get rid of my Packwood problem, killing three birds with one stone!
By the middle of February, we had moved on from the volleyball unit in Phys Ed and began a few weeks of conditioning to get us ready for Spring activities. It wasn’t much fun, but it gave Packwood fewer excuses to try to injure me. Besides, I think Senioritis was starting to affect him. He didn’t seem to have much interest in anything beyond the basketball team’s brief run in the playoffs and getting out of high school.
I realized that I really hadn’t seen much of Nicky for almost a month. Running around the gym, or sweating over calisthenics, I started to look around for him. I knew that he was still in the class since I had seen him there after the start of the third quarter. And even distracted as I had been, I had subconsciously been missing his infectious enthusiasm.
It turned out that he hadn’t gone far. He and a few of his friends were working on core exercises in another corner of the gym. It was strange that we hadn’t been interacting with each other.
Watching Nicky, I noticed that he and his friends often appeared to be caught up in rather intense conversations, occasionally looking over to where Dante and I were engaged in similar strength-building activities. Once or twice, I thought I had caught Nicky’s eye, but his gaze seemed to sweep past me to other people. Eventually he stopped looking in our direction.
I resolved that I should talk to him, when I had a chance. But my curiosity about Parry was taking most of my time and emotional energy.
About the same time, I also became aware that Tim Dillon, one of Nicky’s freshman cohort, seemed to be spending an awful lot of time lurking near Dante and me. It was hard to be sure since Dante and I were usually busy talking about things that interested us—mostly Perry at the time, to be fair—and weren’t paying close attention. It became a bit more obvious when Tim started showering near Dante and me, then toweling off and dressing at an empty locker near us that he had apparently claimed.
I didn’t really give it much consideration. Tim was a nice enough kid and I had helped work with him on soccer skills in the Fall. I might have even appreciated his presence if I had thought about it. He was a good looking kid, about average height and build, who wore his thick, dark brown hair rather long. It wasn’t that I perved on every good looking guy I saw. But when you’re busy making your way through life, there’s nothing wrong with taking a few moments to enjoy the scenery. It helps reduce stress.
Odd. It felt like I was channeling Jason or Dante there.
There was an odd moment in Biology class that same day. I noticed that Perry, sitting alone at a work station several tables away, appeared to be having trouble with a project he was working on. We were all preparing slides of various plants for viewing under a microscope, and something wasn’t cooperating with what Perry was trying to do. I was considering going over to see if I could help, when Perry glanced toward Aislinn, stood up, and started walking in her direction. When he noticed that I was working next to Aislinn and had glanced toward him, he stopped dead, pivoted indecisively for a moment, and then walked to the front of the room to speak with Mr. Hartley.
It just didn’t make sense to me. I was just another kid in class. I was friendly. I had already shown him that I was willing to help him when he needed it. But it appeared that somehow I was poison to him. It was frustrating.
He just needed help. I wanted to help! I wasn’t paying attention, but a little voice in my head was starting to wonder if maybe I didn’t need some help.
Dante continued to be a source of amusement in Phys Ed, when he wasn’t listening to my daily concerns about Perry. I’m sure the constant stream of comments was frustrating to him at times. I was frustrating myself. I even wondered, briefly, whether I should just forget about him.
When Dante got tired of talking to me about Perry, he started talking to his penis. While it was an old routine by now, the material was constantly fresh. But even fresh material has its critics.
As we exited the shower, I was still sharing my speculation about Perry. Dante started talking to himself.
“Jesus! Will you just stop that, you freak!” One of the seniors at a nearby locker snapped at Dante. “We don’t want that homo stuff in here.” He jerked his thumb toward Tim, coming out of the shower behind us. “The young kids don’t need to see that kind of shit, so just put your little friend away.”
Tim laughed. But it sounded like a nervous laugh to me.
Dante resumed his conversation.
“He’s right, you know? It’s not very big.” They were the first words Tim had spoken to us since he became our shadow.
“Now, now. Don’t pay any attention to him.” Dante wasn’t flustered by the interruption and continued his conversation. “He’s just a silly freshman who wouldn’t recognize how special you are if you bit him in the ass. But I know you’re special. You’re a schlong among dongs.”
Normally I don’t get involved in Dante’s private conversations. But I couldn’t resist a curious look. “A schlong among dongs? What does that even mean?”
“It means he’s special. He stands out above the rest.” And Dante started stroking himself.
I recognized a hard cue to exit when I saw one, stuffed my feet into my shoes, and headed toward the door. Behind me, as I left the locker room, I heard a sudden loud shriek, then the sound of righteous outrage.
I didn’t turn back. Dante was my friend, but I really couldn’t afford to be associated with him right then. Dante could take care of himself. Mr. Wyman was nearby if things really got out of hand. But I wasn’t going back and risking making myself an accessory to masturbation in the locker room.