All too soon lunch was finished and it was time to head off to the next class. At least we got to head out of the cafeteria together. Bill whispered discreetly at me as we left, “Can I come over to your house tomorrow after school?”
“Of course. Absolutely. Yes!” I said, a tad too enthusiastically.
He chuckled, seeming to enjoy my enthusiastic response.
Somehow I got through the remainder of my day. My afternoons were usually easier for me than my mornings, partly because we had calculus, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course I had the added benefit of having Bill just a few rows over, although I really had to work exceptionally hard to keep from staring at him. All I needed was for some Neanderthal to see me staring at their number one jock and there would be hell to pay. No. Couldn’t risk even looking his way. Had to keep exceptionally focused on the teacher and my notebook.
The rest of the afternoon was endured, and then I caught the bus home. Homework never took me much time so I had the bulk of my evening free to watch TV, to read, or do something productive—I usually fought down such urges. Since my parents went to bed relatively early I had the house to myself for the bulk of the evening. I wanted to text Bill but hadn’t thought to get his cell phone number. I also didn’t have his e-mail address so I couldn’t even send him a message. Actually, texts and especially e-mails could be seen by someone else. Better yet, I needed to find some messaging website where we could set up a private chat. I made a mental note to talk with him about this when he was over the next evening.
And speaking of the next afternoon, getting through the eighteen hours between then and the next evening seemed to take absolutely forever. I don’t know if it was because I was super horny and couldn’t wait for the chance to get off in the company of my very own sex object, or if time did indeed slow to a crawl. Either way, it seemed like it took an inordinately long time to get to the point when school got out that afternoon.
Bill hadn’t sat with me at lunch again that day, which I hated but knew was probably for the best. I knew that every joy came with some cost, and in high school those costs could be real killers. We were too close to getting free from this place to risk exposure at this point. No. As much as it pained me, and it did pain me, I knew it was best to keep my head down. And hope that my little head stayed down as well—whenever he popped up I knew that my bigger head had trouble keeping me on a safe, even course.
We had grabbed thirty seconds in the hallway in midafternoon to confer. Bill was still planning to come over to my house if I was still interested. Still interested? Was the man having psychotic delusions or something? Of course I was still interested. But in true surly high school fashion I tried to downplay my enthusiasm, giving him just an ultra-short smile that told him my true feelings.
I took the bus home from school. Bill left separately—were we being too obsessive? Too careful? Who knew? We absolutely didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves. There were always people watching everyone do everything, it seemed. People observed changes in behavior. We didn’t want to give anybody any reason to question anything, so we did the “travel by different cars and wear disguises” routine. Well, no disguises actually, other than surly teenagers, but that wasn’t so much a disguise as a well-worn costume.
Fortunately, my mom was out for a regular weekly church meeting and my dad wasn’t home yet, so Bill and I beat a hasty retreat to my bedroom and pounced on each other. Before anyone got home, we quickly dressed and moved out to the living room to make some pretense of studying calculus.
Bill stayed for dinner, and we got a few more minutes in my room before he had to leave. We used the time to try to lick each other’s tonsils, and I think we did a pretty respectable job, all in all. When it was time for him to go, I hated having to say good-bye. I stood in the basement doorway as his car drove down the driveway and out of sight.
Damn! I had forgotten to ask him about his cell phone number and e-mail address. Ugghh! I really had to make a list for the next time, since having some way to keep in touch with him between our rendezvous would help a great deal.
Chapter 9
AND so we fell into a bit of a pattern. Bill had basketball or track practice three nights a week after school, so we couldn’t get together every night, but on the two nights when he wasn’t obligated to something already, he came over to my house. On Tuesdays my mom was usually out, but she was always there on Thursdays so it was more difficult for us to have any intense personal time with her always popping up to ask a question about whether Bill liked a particular food or wanted his steak rare, medium, or well done. I wanted to scream at her after one particularly poorly timed interruption.
I finally remembered to ask Bill for his cell phone number and e-mail address and was shocked to hear that he didn’t have either. Was that even allowed? Was a teenager in America allowed to be seen in public without a smartphone—or even a dumb phone? And even my grandmother had an e-mail address. What was with that? When I pushed him on the issue, Bill told me they didn’t have a computer at home, that his dad wouldn’t allow any of his hard-earned money to be wasted on something he didn’t understand. His dad sounded like a real winner.
I had both a desktop computer and a laptop computer. Actually, I had two laptops since I had gotten a new MacBook Air for Christmas the previous December. And there was nothing at all wrong with my previous laptop. It was bigger and weighed more but otherwise it worked fine. I started to wonder if I should give it, or loan it, to Bill so that he could have Internet access and be able to e-mail me and keep in touch when we weren’t able to be together physically. But I didn’t know how he could get Internet access from way back in the hills where he lived. If his dad wouldn’t even allow a computer in the house, he certainly didn’t sound like he would be eager to pay for Internet access. I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t buy it for him. Not to mention the entire issue of how to get it past Bill’s dad without him seeing and questioning.
After mulling—no, stewing—over the problem for one night I had an idea, albeit not a perfect one, but an idea nonetheless. Like every other teenager in America—aside from Bill, that is—I had a cell phone. Actually, so did my dad and so did my mom, although she didn’t carry hers and didn’t ever use it. To the best of my knowledge, hers still sat in its original box in the closet. Dad had only gotten three phones with three lines because he got a package deal that he thought was a good deal. It probably wasn’t, but at the moment, I didn’t care because it gave me an option I didn’t have previously.
That night after my parents went to bed, I went to the closet in question and found what I was after. As I had expected, I found the box, still in the bag from the store in fact, with the phone completely untouched. Taking it to my room I opened the box. The phone was identical to the one both my dad and I carried and used. I just didn’t have that many people I needed, or wanted, to call, so I used mine more for games and Internet access from school.
A few hours on the charger and the third phone was powered up and good to start doing all kinds of phone stuff. I tested it out to be sure I had the correct number for the phone. I hoped that the ringing didn’t wake up my parents, even though I caught it very quickly and silenced it almost immediately.
Even though by that point it was getting late and I needed to get to bed, I poked around the Internet a little bit to find a good, innocuous place to set up basically a couple of dummy e-mail addresses. I chose absolutely generic, nondescript addresses, something with seemingly random characters and letters at whatever domain name I found first. I set up a simple password for each and wrote a simple text file with the basic information on how to access the account. I also programmed my cell number and home number into the phone but also gave them utterly nondescript identifications, something like Nv1967a, which to the best of my knowledge had no relevance to anything real. It wasn’t part of anybody’s address. It wasn’t part of anybody’s birthday. It wasn’t anyone’s name. If the phone fell into enemy hands,
I wanted to be sure that both Bill’s and my identity would be safe.
It was such a pain having to hide everything about who and what you were just to survive and having to go through such total subterfuge just to be able to send a friend an e-mail or a text message or to be able to call them. Not for the first time, I dearly wished that the world, even for a day, could flip so that being gay was the normal thing and being straight was seen as “wrong.” I’d like to see how all of those supposedly tough guys reacted if they had to hide a core part of their very beings, a core part of their identities, from all the world and live a fictitious life just so no one else could ever guess who they really were. I’d like to see them try to live that life and survive, let alone be happy. If I had a magic button that would allow that switch to happen, I think I’d push it in a heartbeat just to let the bullies get a taste of their own medicine for even twenty-four hours. I’d like to see them be the minority, for them to be the scared ones, for them to be forced to live a lie. That night I fell asleep with that thought, feeling both pleased and down about the idea.
The next morning, I planned to pass the phone to Bill and tell him what I was doing and why. When the time came to leave the house, I hesitated, not knowing how in the world I should make the pass, so to speak. How could I hand something to him without the world noticing and asking questions?
At the last minute, just before leaving for school, I took the phone out of its original packaging and carried it in my backpack without the original box. A simple iPhone was a lot easier to pass to somebody without attracting too much attention if it was just the phone and not the phone in its original box, even though it was an artsy, tasty box that someone had spent a fortune to design. I’d give him the box later. I had to get the phone in his hands first and then quickly tell him how I thought it would all work.
Fortuitously, I happened to pass Bill in the hallway early in the day. I took a chance and said, “I need to talk to you sometime today.” I didn’t elaborate. At lunchtime we could eat in the cafeteria or go outside anywhere on the grounds of the school. If you were willing to push it, you could even walk just off the school grounds to the local McDonald’s, but only people with money did that. I didn’t fall into their camp.
Bill and I agreed to meet at lunchtime and go outside. Our cold weather had warmed up a fair amount, and the snow we had gotten was now mostly gone. If the snow was still on the ground we’d have been severely limited in our options. Leaving the building by separate doors and taking separate routes to a remote part of the “campus,” I arrived first and waited for Bill. He arrived looking all around like I had to make sure that no one saw us together doing anything questionable.
“What’s up?” he asked.
I quickly pulled the phone out of my pocket and shoved it toward him. I answered his questioning look with a quick explanation of what I had in mind. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or pissed. Remind me never to play poker with the man. What the hell was he thinking?
He looked down for a moment. His hand was touching and feeling the smoothness of the telephone I had given him. When he looked up, he didn’t have to say a word—there was a tear in his eye. I had all I could do not to just reach out and throw my arms around him. I cursed the world for making a circumstance where I couldn’t offer even a friendly gesture without causing massive chaos and upset. I so wanted to simply reach across the space between us and simply wipe the tear from his eye. But the rules of our society prohibited that.
“It might appear to be generous, but it’s actually quite selfish. I’m loaning you this phone because I want more of you than I can have at the moment.” Looking around quickly to make sure that we were still alone, I said, “I want to be able to sleep with you every night. I want to be able to lick you on that spot on your neck that makes you arch your back each time. I want to practice making your eyes roll back in your head. And I want to just lie in bed in the dark next to you. I want to lie with my head on your chest and simply listen to your heartbeat. We can’t do those things right now, so I’m trying to find something we can use as a temporary substitute until we find a way to do the other things. So, I’m doing this because I’m selfish.”
Bill gave me a tiny hint of a smile. “You’re very special to me. Please know that.”
“Ditto,” I said.
“Ditto? Ditto?” he joked. “How romantic is that?”
“You want romance, press 3 now.”
We shared a laugh. By the time I gave him a crash course in how the phone worked and how to text or e-mail or call, we were both freezing our cojones off and needed to get inside. It might have warmed up enough to melt the snow, but it was nowhere near summertime warm temperatures.
Chapter 10
THAT weekend my dad somehow talked my mom into going out—yes, after dark!—for dinner for their wedding anniversary. Once a year he pushed her out of her envelope of safety to go out and have food someone else prepared and brought to them, and maybe even to dance. The instant I heard of their plans I immediately texted Bill and asked him if he could come over for some quality time: MSTR UNTS GOING DNNR SAT. COME EAT W/ME? I kept it generic. What I really wanted to say was: “Dude! Come over and we’ll hump like rabbits until we can’t see straight.” Sigh. Oh, to live in a world where I could do what others did without giving it a second thought.
While my classmates were making plans to go out on dates with one another, that was a luxury we were not afforded. We couldn’t go to dances. We couldn’t go to basketball games together. We couldn’t hold hands in public. Hell, we couldn’t even risk being seen exchanging two sentences together in public! It made me so damned mad I wanted to hit somebody. I wanted to hit them and hit them and hit them over and over and over again so that they felt like I felt—so frustrated.
But I digress. Bill came over in late afternoon on Saturday, arriving before my parents left for their evening. My mother seemed more comfortable with me having someone there to keep me company while they were out. She left food which we sort of inhaled the minute they left. Approximately four-point-two-five minutes after they left we were naked and in bed trying to lick each other’s belly buttons from the inside.
“I don’t ever want to leave this bed,” he whispered to me.
“Deal,” I whispered back to him.
We fell asleep sometime before my parents got home. I don’t really know what time they came home, but I know that I slept better than I had ever slept before. I was wrapped around the man of my dreams who was asleep by my side. And he was naked—and hot! What man wouldn’t sleep the sleep of champions?
Chapter 11
ALL too quickly our short time together was over and Bill had to leave to go home. He never talked much about home, and whenever I asked questions his answers were minimal. I didn’t think much about it at the time since I was distracted by his presence. Who wouldn’t be? He was one of the hottest things on two feet.
Monday came again, faster than seemed possible, and it was back to the weekday grind. I didn’t spot Bill in the morning, and when I saw him in calculus he looked—well, something looked wrong. He kept his head down and seemed withdrawn, wrapped up in himself, almost like he was trying to curl up into a fetal position while sitting at a desk in class. Something was definitely wrong. He wasn’t looking up. He wasn’t paying attention. Something was very wrong. It took just about every ounce of focus and concentration I had to not simply get up and walk across the room to find out what had happened. Usually I was on guard to keep myself from staring at him for fear that someone might see. Today, though, I forgot and kept staring.
After what felt like a lifetime, class finished and people started to leave, some quickly and others more slowly. Bill started to close his notebook. I had noticed that he hadn’t written anything in that notebook anytime during class. Nothing. Usually he wrote nearly constantly, trying to get everything to be able to go over it later. Today, nothing.
He stood when about half the class had left. Caution be damn
ed, I walked right up toward him. And he ignored me. He walked away, or rather he tried to. I wanted to see his face. Why wouldn’t he look at me? What the hell was going on? When he tried to slip around me without looking at me, I grabbed his arm. He shook my hand loose without looking and left the classroom.
If he thought that was going to stop me, he was sadly mistaken. In the hallway I moved in front of him and stopped directly in his path. “What the hell, dude?” I said, choosing my wording very carefully to use words I’d heard others use.
He quickly looked up at me for a split second—and I gasped. “Jesus! Bill! What happened to you?”
“Nothing. Get out of my way and leave me alone.”
“Bullshit! What happened?”
“Mind your own goddamned business!” he said more at me than to me.
I was shocked. His beautiful face was a mess. His right eye was black and blue and swollen. His upper lip was split and had clearly been bleeding.
“Who did this to you?” I said in my most threatening, demanding voice. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” I shouted.
But I was getting nowhere with him. He was shut down and was retreating more inside himself with each second. He pushed past me and shoved me aside. I stood there with a dumbfounded look on my face. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to comfort him, I wanted to know who the hell had beat the crap out of him. Where had any of this come from? Why hadn’t I seen any evidence of what he was enduring before this? Was I totally blind to anything beyond the end of my dick?
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (The Most Popular Guy in the School) Page 7
