It was a lazy spring day that followed a too long winter. It was the kind of day when you enjoy walking and noticing that everything around you is coming alive with brilliant green colors. I was walking up the gravel section of the road that led into my subdivision and to my house when I first saw him coming toward me from the opposite direction. He was a new boy and he was walking with a guy I knew, Alfred.
Alfred was old townie and I was newer townie. We didn’t run in the same circles until that day, even though we lived within a hundred yards of each other all of our lives. I lived in one of the older housing developments that had sprung up as a convenient suburb and he lived on a hill on the edge of that development.
I lived on what was once his family’s farm. One of the streets carried his family’s name. Names were all that was left of the once numerous family farms in that section of the county. It was all housing developments now.
My family came from the city and chose this quiet suburb as the place where they wanted to raise their family. My parent’s interests took them to the city most of the time. I learned I had nothing in common with the sons of farmers that didn’t know the land themselves.
I’d learned in elementary school, I was an outsider. By the time I went to junior high school, we outnumbered old townies two to one. Now as we were heading for the end of our school days, there were no old townies. There were just a lot of people all around. If Alfred once had run with his own, he now walked beside the new kid.
When I was young, I told myself I had nothing in common with Alfred and his buddies. Today there was the fresh scrubbed new boy in faded jeans and a white T-shirt that was tapered to his torso. I’d never seen a boy like him or jeans filled quite like he filled those. It was as though he had walked out of a dream. If I ever wanted to run with Alfred, today was the day.
It was his eyes that I noticed first — not Alfred’s, the new kid’s. I’ve never seen eyes quite like those, and so there seemed to be a pattern developing. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Once we were too close to avoid interaction, there came this silent understanding that we were going to stop and talk. A slow posturing had to take place first. No one was all that anxious to make the first move.
His eyes were so rich a blue that no combination of colors in your crayon box could ever hope to duplicate it. It wasn’t just the color, it was what he made me feel when he held them on me. And he held them on me. It’s as though he was looking through me, into the depths of my soul, and I prayed he could not tell what I was thinking. As he drew closer he stared, causing my eyes to become hopelessly lost in his. I stopped while they were still ten feet away. I found myself standing there waiting for him to walk into my life, and protocol would dictate they now must stop and engage me.
There was this knowing little smile that came to him before we’d ever spoken a single word. I don’t know what he thought he knew but the smile was more a smirk. It curled his sensual lips upward with an expressiveness that spoke volumes, and it said he knew something about me that I didn’t know about myself until I saw him. I thought, somehow this new boy knows what’s on my mind.
It shocked me to be having the thoughts I was having about someone I’d never seen before. I knew there was something seriously wrong with me at that moment, but it didn’t end the stares and the thoughts. If he knew what I was thinking why wasn’t he kicking my ass? Why the smirk?
My heart jumped in some sudden betrayal of my feelings as we all shifted from one foot to another after we got within a few feet of one another. The new kid and I continued to be locked together with our eyes. If they hadn’t stopped, I don’t know what I’d have done. After they came to a halt, I became certain that they could hear my racing heart. What was happening to me?
Alfred started to talk and the new kid stood too close behind him, still wearing that knowing smirk while he took advantage of his height, or Alfred’s lack of it, so he could look over top of Alfred’s head at me.
“Where you headed, Martin?” Alfred said, being the most he’d said to me at one time since we were about nine.
“Home,” I said in a brilliant if brief retort.
“Haven’t seen you around none. Where you been?” Alfred had become a real conversationalist at the end of his schooling.
“School mostly. Not much to do over the winter.”
“Yeah!” Alfred agreed.
“I’m Martin.”
I reached my hand out as an invitation. I was ready to risk the instant rejection I always avoided. I wanted to draw him out from behind Alfred to get a better look at what the new kid had going for him. He was in no hurry and assessed the situation carefully before committing himself to anything definite.
Alfred looked at the hand I extended toward the new kid. Greg seemed to be determining if it was a hand or not and if he should shake it or not, or he was just staying in control of the activity from the backseat. I wasn’t giving up that easy and my hand stayed extended and empty.
“Greg,” he said, taking a half step to avoid shaking hands over Alfred’s shoulder.
His hand was warm and unexpectedly soft. The grip was firm and meant to leave no doubt about his gender. The smile left his face as he took the act of shaking hands seriously. Determining he was all man, though still maybe a half a year from it becoming official. I was surprised that he was in no hurry to leave my hand alone.
By moving out from behind Alfred, we were close enough I felt his warmth. It wasn’t something I noticed about other boys. Alfred gave off no heat that I could detect, but Greg was giving off enough heat for me to notice our closeness.
I halfway expected his macho grip to squeeze me into submission, but the handshake had a gentleness to its firmness. The soft skin of his hand was pleasant to touch and as we broke off the shake, the smile did not return to his face, but his eyes stayed on me.
The brainstorm he created inside of me sent electricity through my body. Our handshake ended several long seconds before our hands went their separate ways. I was afraid he felt the electricity that surged through me when we touched. I was afraid he didn’t. His eyes didn’t miss anything.
Alfred became aware of a nervous tension that accompanied our separation. He was the middleman in an event that none of us could have foreseen. By chance I had met my love and Alfred had become a catalyst. At the time he was only recognizing the fact that neither of us was paying any attention to him.
“You’re new!” I said, failing originality.
“We live on Old Highway. I’m Air Force. We lived on the airbase until we moved up there.”
“You go to our school?”
“Yeah! He’s in some of my classes. That’s how I met him,” Alfred interjected. “He’s got a pool table.”
“Pop’s a colonel — stationed over at the base. I went to school over there until I got transferred over here last month. Not enough girls over there. Plenty of discipline, but I like it the other way around.”
“We’re going up to his house to shoot some pool. He’s good,” Alfred said, not needing to sell me on the fact. “You play, Martin?”
“I don’t think so,” Greg said. "We have some business to finish. You got away without paying up yesterday,” Greg said. “Nothing personal.”
“Isn’t that neat, Martin? His own pool table.”
“Yeah!” I said. “Neat! I’ve got some homework,” I lied, knowing an invitation when I didn’t get it.
He was gone after that.
He walked away as quickly as he walked into my life. He seemed oblivious to what was just started, but I knew my life would never be the same. My stomach followed my heart into turmoil while I watched him march up the road.
It looked like he was walking out of my life as casually as he’d walked into it. The emptiness he left me with was confusing. I guess I’d met a million people before that day and not one of them had much effect on me at all.
As I stood there alone in the middle of the road I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The way his ass filled every bit of fabric in his jeans gave new definition to the front of my own. He more swaggered than walked. This boy had the world by the balls and he knew it. He was way more experienced than I was.
They were talking as I stood immobilized. I wasn’t going to take my eyes off him until he disappeared. When they got a suitable distance away from our meeting place, Greg took a look back over his shoulder at me.
He knew I would still be watching him and I knew he’d turn to check to see if I was still watching him. It left me disgusted with myself for letting him catch me standing there like some goofball, totally captivated by him. His head was cocked slightly to one side, and there was that smirk back on his face. Once he saw what he was looking for, he turned his head away in a flash as though he didn’t care about it at all, and he didn’t look again. He’d seen what he wanted to see.
I couldn’t get his face out of my brain and it made me sick to my stomach. I made up my mind I didn’t like Greg. He was everything I hated about guys. He was arrogant and cocky and hung up on himself. Not only that, I knew he knew exactly what was on my mind.
He was dangerous and I’d avoid him if I could. What he made me feel could get me into more trouble than I was ready to get into. I only knew one gay boy at school, and he was up against it all the time. Everyone picked on him. The boys despised him when they found out he was gay and the teachers despised him for not standing up for himself. I wasn’t going to be put in that position.
That night I woke up seeing Greg’s eyes. He was a gigantic cat, and I was the mouse he wanted to eat. He was waiting for just the right time to pounce on me. I’d never met anyone so self-confident or self-assured, but I lived in a small town, and I couldn’t afford to take the risk of getting close to him. I needed to leave Greg alone.
I didn’t have a clue why I was thinking about a guy I didn’t know. I’d met the guy once and everything I knew about told me he was trouble. We hadn’t exchanged two dozen words, but it wasn’t the words I was worried about. He knew plenty about me. He knew more about me than I wanted to admit to myself. I wasn’t going to get caught playing his game. I was smart enough to know better.
I always wondered why I hadn’t chased after girls the way my friends did. They disappeared from our group one by one, each finding a girlfriend until I was the only one left. Only I never developed an interest in girls.
Maybe I was a late bloomer, or maybe meeting Greg told me everything I needed to know about my feelings. I was a loner and that was safe when you found boys attractive. I might change, but for the first time I knew I wouldn’t.
There was no future in letting anyone know too much about me. Being in a school with hundreds of other kids meant not creating trouble for yourself. I was good at being good, until Greg had me thinking about being bad. Greg made me want to be very bad.
I wanted to finish my senior year and leave the confines of high school behind me. I wanted to move on without anyone having anything unkind to say about me. That meant avoiding Greg if I hoped to carry out my plans.
Greg invaded my brain when I was least able to prevent it. I would wake in the middle of the night with his eyes, lips, and those well packed jeans etched vividly into my dreams. There was always one place where my eyes settled. I could see the details of the bulge that followed the contour of his right leg. Room had been created to facilitate the stages his jeans needed to accommodate during a day.
Why this got my attention more than other things I noticed about him, I wasn’t sure. I took a passive interest in the boys in the showers after gym. I made sure I got a locker close to the boys I found most intriguing. Some guys popped a woody from time to time in the shower, though I’d only witnessed half-a-woody in my classes. Thank heaven I was never one of those who became suspect once they hit wood while cavorting about with other naked red-blooded adolescents.
There was always talk that so-and-so had gotten on a hard. To do it a second time was the kiss-of-death if the first time didn’t do it. You became persona-non-grata even amongst your best friends while at school. No one dared to befriend such a randy lad without fearing that an association with the more randy lads said something about you. What happened once you left the curious eyes of the boys who kept track of such things.
I wasn’t part of any group once all my elementary school friends found more fertile ground. I was friendly and polite but I did not react to seeing other boys naked or on their way to an erection. I knew what I knew and kept it to myself. It wasn’t time to go there yet.
I had a certain interest in my friends, when we were younger. As they matured. I’d never been overly curious — just comparing notes in my own way, when we were of an age when boys like to talk and brag about what they’ve done and what they have.
These activities never led to anything but a need to relieve the tension once I got home after an occasion when the bragging and comparing notes turned into a demonstration of prowess. There had been two of my friends who liked to prove they were ready for action. These were the first to get girlfriends and to disappear from the ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ group in 8th and 9th grade.
For the first time since those adolescent displays gave me something to work with, I woke up to work on the smile of a boy I’d seen once. It was an obsession that came upon me without any effort or willingness on my part. Greg had gotten into my dreams.
Upon first discovery I’d always masturbated in spite of warnings against it. At first it was as often as I could find privacy. Then it was once a day because it needed to be done, no matter what was said in Sex-Ed or amongst the teenagers who claimed to know blind boys with hands filled with warts or hair. I would need to take my chances if I hoped for a few hours of sleep each night. I’d monitored my hands carefully and saw an eye doctor more than most.
According to a number of my junior high friends, I was hardly doing it at all. More than one of them shoed me the results of an all day or all night affair with themselves. The worst pain of all was the pain of needing to leave it alone, so they said with the warning, 'don’t let this happen to your Willie.’
After a couple of years, it became upon wake-up, and before retiring, as needed all other times. Greg’s presence in my brain had altered my timing on this front and I found him interrupting my sleep night after night. I’d wake long before dawn and go at it until I was worn down, using his face until it finally faded, that sneer of his, the bulging in his jeans, those eyes, all used to get me where I needed to go.
For the first time there was a face and a person attached to the fantasy that now powered my fist. The most worrisome thing was that the image of him did not leave me alone when the relief came. For the first time I couldn’t depend on once being enough to cause me to drift on wings of ecstasy and toward a few more hours of sleep with my messy weapon in hand. Greg was having his way with me whenever he cared to visit my brain.
I’d been sure since I was fifteen. That’s to say that no one could prove anything until now. The certainty of it that I tried to deny from time to time ended with Greg. There was no question about my sexuality and my feelings about another boy, once I saw Greg.
I hadn’t done anything my friend weren’t all doing, except they were talking about and thinking of girls while they proved how willing they were. How would they know I was using their lust for a girl to power my desire. I did nothing suspect beyond being present as some boys showed the rest of us how it was done.
While I stole glances of naked guys because it excited me in a mild way, it wasn’t the same as dreaming about getting Greg out of those skintight jeans and next to me naked in my bed, or his — I was easy. The evidence was mounting and I was already feeling guilty. I needed to get past this school year and one summer, and after one more school year, I could follow my dreams, except they all included Greg.
When faced with the truth it’s best to yield or you risk living a lie.