It wasn't even Labor Day, and we had already been back in school for a solid week. My classes didn't seem like they were going to be super hard, and I was pretty excited about an art course I was taking. It was in photography. "Mr. Goodson, would you see me after class, please?" the professor said the first day. "Shit, what did you do?" Justin asked. I had really encouraged him to take that class with me. I loved taking pictures and working with them almost as much as I liked having sex, and I was hoping I could turn my brother and best friend on to photography, too. "I didn't do anything. He probably knows my daddy or some shit like that," I said. I went up to him after class. "Sir, I'm Kyle Goodson. You wanted to see me?" I said. "Ah, yes. Kyle. I'm Harry Potter," he said, sticking out his hand to shake mine. "For real?" I said. "Yes! For real. It's actually 'Henry,' but I've gone by 'Harry' all my life. Now those wretched books and movies have come out, and I've taken a huge amount of ribbing for my name," he said. If that man didn't play for my team, nobody else in that college did, either. "Kyle, I wanted to talk to you because I understand you're quite a photographer," he said. "Yes, sir. I don't know if I'm quite a photographer, but I love it. And I take a lot of pictures, too," I said. "Well, the word around here is that you're a professional," he said. "No, sir. I worked at a hotel all summer," I said. "Have you ever made any money off your pictures?" he asked. "Well, yeah, from the gallery. And the book, too, I guess," I said. "But I don't do, like, weddings and stuff like that." "The gallery and the book? Where is this gallery?" he asked. He was trembling a little bit, and I thought the man was fixing to be sick on me. "Don't worry. It's not here. It's in New York City," I said. "You're in a gallery in New York City? Oh, my God! I knew about the book, and I even have a copy of it. But I didn't know about the gallery. You're every teacher's worst nightmare, Kyle," he said. I was totally befuddled. I hadn't always paid the best attention in class, but it had been many years since I had been sent to the office for misbehaving. In fact, I got all the way through middle school and high school without a single discipline referral, and I was proud of that. I was always very respectful of my teachers, too. I was raised to be a good kid, and I resented the fact that he thought I was his worst nightmare. Besides, I figured if he dreamed about me at all, it was going to be a wet dream, not a nightmare. "Kyle, I can see by the look on your face that I've offended you, and that was the last thing I intended to do. I'm sorry," he said. "How come I'm every teacher's worst nightmare? I'm always respectful. I don't argue. I do what I'm told," I said. "Kyle, that was a terrible choice of words, and I didn't mean it that way. I take that back, and I wish I had never said it. What I meant was, your accomplishments in photography already so far outstrip mine that I'm afraid you won't learn anything in this course," he said. "Have you ever studied photography? I mean as an art form?" "No, sir. I worked with a local photographer to learn darkroom, but that's all," I said. "I know you have. He's a very close friend of mine, and he's the one who alerted me to you. He's thrilled about your book, by the way. Thanks for acknowledging him," he said. I had said "thank you" to a bunch of people in the front part of the book, him included. I was glad I had done that, now. "He deserves more than that," I said. "I agree, but back to my point. I'll be able to teach you some basic principles of composition, and I might be able to help you out with PhotoShop, if you need it. But I really don't think I'm on your level, son," he said. "I think you should drop the course." "Are you telling me I'm not going to pass it?" I asked. I didn't know what the hell he was really getting at. "Oh, absolutely not. I'm ready to give you an A right now, but I want you to know going in that you probably won't learn much," he said. "I want to stay in. I'll learn more than you think I will. Plus, my best friend is in here with me, and I want to encourage him to take pictures, too," I said. "Is he one of the boys in the book?" he asked. "Do you remember a picture of a naked boy with a watermelon seed stuck to his penis? That's him," I said. "That's Justin Davis, and he's in this class." "Oh, my," he said, and he sat down like he was weak or something. "Justin's in the book a bunch of times," I said. "I know," he said. "Mr. Potter, I need to go, okay?" I said. "I'm sorry, Kyle. I didn't think about the fact that you probably have another class. You're certainly welcome to stay in the course, and so is Justin. I'll see you Thursday," he said. "Yes, sir. Bye, and thank you," I said. I didn't have another class, but I had to piss so bad it was about to start leaking down my leg. Now wouldn't that have been a fine sight?! I found the nearest men's room, and I had my dick out as I was charging in. There was another guy in there standing at a urinal, but he didn't even look at me. I didn't care one bit. God, that was sweet relief. * * * Later that week the new people moved in next door. You only usually have two next-door neighbors, and I thought getting new ones was pretty exciting. I had seen them when the big truck drove up on Wednesday, and I had scoped them out from a distance. It was two boys and two men. I didn't know if there were ladies who would come later, or not. One of the things we always do in the South--although they probably do it everywhere else, too--is take food to people in some kind of turmoil. When somebody in a family dies, you load 'em up. Meat. Vegetables. Rice. Potatoes. Salad. That kind of stuff. When somebody new moves in, though, you go lighter. Nobody in our house said squat about getting them up something, so I did it Friday night. I had sort of mixed feelings about that, too. I mean, that was the night of the football jamboree, and that was something I loved every year when I was in high school. I knew a bunch of the alumni from my class were going to be there, but I didn't want to look like the kind who can't get enough of high school, even after they graduated. If one of my brothers was playing, I would have been there with bells on. But the fact was, they weren't. And I really did feel like we needed to be hospitable to our new neighbors. So, I decided to stay home and make coffeecakes. I actually had a good time making those things, too. I got Justin to come in the kitchen with me, and he and I drank beer while we worked. We didn't usually do that, but we were both college boys. I felt like we deserved a couple of beers. I mean, we were at home, not driving or anything, Friday night, and we knew Kevin and Rick didn't care. I guess legally we were drunk, but just barely. It was fun. The next day we took the cakes to the new neighbors and visited with them awhile. It turned out they were all gay. Go figure that! Somebody even said something about that. Gay or not, they were really nice guys, and I knew they were going to be our friends. "Jerry wants us to go to Mass tomorrow night, instead of tonight," Kevin said, as we were finishing up lunch. "Vince is going to be here, and he and Jerry are going to concelebrate." I wasn't real sure what that meant, but it was fine with me. I liked Vince a lot, and I loved Jerry to death. "Who wants to go skiing this afternoon?" I asked. Justin, Brian, and Tim said they wanted to, but Kevin and Rick had other things to do. "Let's ask Wade and Reid if they want to ski," Tim said. I had gotten their phone number while we were over there, so I called them. Wade answered. "Hey, it's Kyle," I said, after he had said hello. "Hi, Kyle. That coffee bread was really good, man. What's going on?" he said. "Thanks. We're going water skiing this afternoon. Do you and Reid want to go?" I asked. "Sure, but let me see if we can," he said. I could hear mumbled conversation. Reid's voice was pretty plain, and he definitely wanted to go. The two dads were mulling it over, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. "Yeah, we can go," Wade said. "Cool. Come on over," I said. "Okay. Give us a minute to put on bathing suits, and we'll be right there," Wade said. "Okay, but don't drag ass," I said. "We won't. Later," he said. They were at our backdoor in ten minutes, suited up. They were both wearing trunks that looked a lot like board shorts but weren't. I wondered if they surfed. We went down and got on the boat. Trixie and Krewe were right there with us like they wanted to go. "Stay, Trixie," Brian said, and she sat down on the dock. "Come on, Krewe," and she jumped on the boat. "You've got this ass backwards, Brian. Krewe needs to stay and Trixie can come with us. This dog is going to jump in the water every time somebody goes down," I said. "Kyle, I can't train her not to do that unless she goes out with us," Brian said. "That's how I trained Trixie. It's their instinct to go after things that go down, Kyle. The only way I can train Krewe not to do that is to have her out skiing with us," Brian said. "They go after things that go down?" Justin asked. "Yeah," Brian said. "Go down on what?" Justin asked. I thought that was pretty funny, and I started laughing. Reid and Wade looked at each other, like "Can we laugh at this? Is he making a pun or what?" When Brian started laughing, they did, too. "Not that," Brian said. "Oh, so we're both safe from the dogs," Justin said. "I am," Brian said. "I'm their master, you know," he said. "I know. That kind of creeps me out sometimes, too," Justin said. "I think this gives a whole new meaning to a boy dogging you, Justin," I said. They all laughed. We skied our asses off that afternoon. There wasn't any teaching those boys. They were both expert skiers, and all they did was slalom, like us. By the end of the afternoon, they were doing tricks on the ski, just like we did. Krewe got a lot of good instruction that day, too. I'm glad I let Brian bring her. Oh, she went in the first two or three times somebody went down, but by the end of the day she wasn't doing it anymore. I didn't know if that would stick, but I hoped it did. Getting a fifty pound dog out of the water wasn't easy. Brian was amazing with those dogs, that's for sure. We didn't get home till six o'clock, and Jimmy and Dave were on the patio with Kevin and Rick when we got there. They were having drinks, and I saw a party developing. "Do you guys want a drink?" I asked Wade and Reid. "Liquor, I mean. Or something else." "I'd love a drink," Wade said, and Reid seconded him. "What do you like? Bourbon and coke?" I asked. "Yeah. That's excellent," Reid said. Justin made the drinks, and I suddenly realized we were going to need food. Hell, it was six o'clock, and everybody was needing to eat. What was I going to serve? Hot dogs? I didn't think so. I raced into the kitchen to see what I could thaw real quick. There, on the counter, was a package from the really good deli in town. I ripped it open, and there were twenty prime filets. Really big ones, too. I opened the oven, and there was a whole sheet of twice-baked potatoes in there. I smiled. In the 'frige was a huge bowl of salad, and in the bottom oven was an asparagus casserole just waiting to be heated. There was a carrot cake and a lemon meringue pie on the counter. It looked like somebody had finally planned a party around this place, besides me. I had noticed they had some hors d'ouevres trays out already, so I went back out to socialize. Jeff, Tyler, Chuck, and Tony came in right about then, and we all hugged our brothers and introduced them to the new neighbors. I figured that Wade and Reid, as a new couple, were pretty much blown away, but they'd just have to get used to it. The newcomers got drinks--all beers, I think--but before long Tyler said, "Let's swim!" I loved Tyler to death because he was Jeff's partner, and I knew Jeff loved him. Plus, he was just a great, likeable guy. But that dude was a jock. Make no mistake about that. He loved sports better than anything. Well, maybe not anything, but you know what I'm saying. He was always ready to play some kind of sport, and he was good at it. When he said that, he started stripping off. He was naked in a minute, and the rest of his guys got naked, too. "Come on, let's go," I said, and I shimmied out of my Speedo and fluffed up my wee-wee a little bit. Everybody did that. Justin, Tim, and Brian stripped down, too. Denny and Murray, who had both spent the day with their intellectual friends, got naked, also. "Do we have to get naked?" Wade asked. "Only if you want to," I said. "Suits optional in this pool." Wade and Reid looked at each other and grinned. They had their trunks off in an instant, and I could tell they loved the feeling of being naked outdoors. I checked them out, of course, before they jumped in, but you know what? If you've seen one, you've pretty much seem 'em all. They were totally average in size. I did notice they didn't bother to trim up their pubic hair, but that was okay, too. They were just basically good, nice boys, and I was glad they were going to be our friends. "See that? They're cut. Both of them," Justin said. "I know. I'm glad we didn't bet on it, 'cause I would have lost," I said. "Kyle, you've got to re-think your view of the world, man," Justin said. He was grinning. "I know. I've got to re-think cut versus uncut, straight versus gay. All that stuff," I said. "Just don't re-think being you 'cause you're the best the way you are," he said. "Thank you for saying that. That means a whole lot to me, especially coming from you," I said. "If you're fixing to cry, forget it. I ain't making you no ice cream," he said. "Can I have a hug, at least?" I said. "Yeah, come here. Here's your hug." We had fun with the new neighbors. There were sixteen of us, and we got up a game of pool volleyball. It was pretty much old against young, with eight on a side. I insisted that Denny be on Rick's team, and I took Murray. I never waited until last to choose them, though, and neither did Rick. That business of saving the worst for last is bullshit, and it only hurts a guy's feelings for him not to be picked sooner than last. Even in school, at PE, I would do that if I was captain. I took some minor grief for it a few times from assholes who thought winning a game of shirts against skins in PE was the same thing as winning a medal at the Olympics, but it never bothered me. Wade and Reid were pretty good. I could tell that wasn't their first game of volleyball. They were both on my team, and one time Reid got really pissed off because Murray missed a hit. The first time it happened, he just made some stupid remark about him having elastic wrists or something like that. The second time, though, he screamed at Murray. I could tell he hurt Murray's feelings, too. I was next to Reid on the last row. I wasn't going to let him talk to Murray like that. I talked low so nobody could hear what I said, especially Murray. "Hey, buddy. Lighten up on him, okay? He can't help it," I said. "But he should have had that one, and the one before it, too. They're hitting it to him because they know he can't handle it," Reid said. "Yeah, and you or I would have gotten it. Maybe. Look, the boy's queer, he's an orphan, and he's sissified. Please don't make it any worse for him. We don't play like that here," I said. He pinched his nose with the thumb and index finger on his left hand, like maybe he was thinking or processing what I had said. "Okay," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I won't do it anymore." "Good. You'll have a lot more fun, and so will Murray. Now let's play," I said. To show him I didn't have any hard feelings, I jumped on him. We were treading water, and I dunked him. "Asshole," he said when he came up, but he was grinning. I grinned back. After we ate, we shifted into the clubhouse for pool and the other stuff we had in there. "Damn, this is nice," Wade said. We showed them around the kitchen, the weight room, the locker room, and, of course, the main room. "We call this the clubhouse, and you guys are welcome to come over any time to use it," Kevin said. "We entertain a good bit, and this place is perfect for that." "I can imagine," Jimmy said. "This must be like paradise for the boys." "It is," Rick said. "We've got five ten-top round tables, fifty chairs, and all the tableware you would need to feed fifty people a really nice dinner. We do that quite a bit." I noticed Reid talking to Murray, and then they shook hands. I figured Reid was apologizing, and I knew that boy must have character, if that's what he was doing. Kevin was eyeing the two of them, too, and he smiled when they shook. "Did you get onto Reid in the pool?" Kevin asked me in private. "I told him that's not the way we do it here. I think ole Reid must be a really good kid," I said. "Well, I'm glad you didn't embarrass Reid by fussing at him in front of everybody, but I was getting pretty damn pissed off at the way he was acting," Kevin said. "And his dad was embarrassed, too." "It looks to me like they made up," I said. "Yeah."
Things had not been good at home since just before the holidays. My step-dad came home from work on December 23rd with a pink slip in his hand, and that really put a damper on Christmas. He was an engineer for a major aircraft manufacturer, and the threat of a layoff had been looming large on the horizon ever since the September 11th terrorist attacks. People just weren't flying as much as they used to, and the aircraft industry took a major hit. What everybody had feared had finally happened, though, and my step-dad was out of work. I was expecting a new car for my seventeenth birthday in January, but that didn't look real promising after the layoff. The car I drove was a fifteen-year-old hand-me-down, and it was being held together by duct tape and baling wire. Randy, my step-dad, and I had spent countless hours working on it to keep that thing running, but it needed a new transmission in the worst way. In fact, I didn't get the new car for my birthday. That was okay, and I understood. The family was having a tough time financially, and my mother's teaching job brought in enough money for us to live on, but that was all. No extras, like a new car for the kid. Then, in early February, the transmission on my car finally gave it up, and I was back on my bike. I mean, they let me use my mom's car for outings with my friends and all, but I was back on the damn school bus every day that I couldn't ride my bike to school because of the weather. How humiliating! My step-dad kept getting his hopes raised that his company would call him back, but it never happened. He got a job at a computer repair shop, but he didn't make anywhere close to what he made as a senior project engineer with a huge company. I never did know why they didn't demote him and let some of the more junior engineers go, but they didn't. They laid off his entire department. I guess his skills were highly specialized, and they just didn't need him anymore. Things got to be pretty depressed around the house. My step-father was a fine man, and I really loved him, but not having a professional-level job really hit him hard. He would go for long periods without talking, and I'd hear him and my mom both crying late at night after everybody had gone to bed. Mom had to be "up" for her students, and all, but that was more or less just an act. She was just as depressed as Randy was. "How's it going, Reid?" my real dad asked me on the phone one day. "It's bad," I said. "Randy and Mom are both real depressed all the time, and it's starting to really get to me." "How's Jamison holding up?" he asked. Jamison was my younger half-sister. She was twelve years old, and I heard her crying in her room now and then, too. "I don't know. She's pretty sad, too," I said. "Are things really tight financially?" he asked. "I can send more child support, if they need me to." "Dad, I've thought about this a lot, and I really don't think it's about money all that much. Sure, things are tight, but they're not going to lose the house or anything. I think it's really about Randy feeling flattened by a force he can't control. He's even said that. He told me he feels like his balls have been cut off," I said. "Ouch," Dad said. I laughed a little. "I know. That would definitely hurt, wouldn't it?" I said. "Yeah, it would, but that's not what I meant. You and I have talked a bunch of times about the fact that Randy is a very decent guy, and I just hate it that he feels that way psychologically," he said. "For him to say that means he feels some fundamental change has occurred in his life, a change that cuts to the core of who he is." "I know," I said. My dad was gay, and I had known that for years, but that didn't make him any less my dad or any less the greatest guy I knew. I had had a sense that I was different from other guys for a long, long time, but when I started changing sexually and thinking about sex all the time when I was around twelve or thirteen, one day it suddenly occurred to me that I was gay, just like my dad. My initial reaction was panic. I didn't want to be gay. I wanted to be straight, like Randy, and I wanted to grow up and get married and have a family. I stewed about that a long time, but I never told anybody what I was thinking. I spent a month every summer with my dad and his partner, Dave, in Florida. My dad was a lawyer and Dave did taxes, or something like that. Dave had a son, too, and he would usually be there the same time I was. His name was Wade, and he and I hit it off so well, you wouldn't believe it. Wade was smart, good looking, athletic, kind, fun-loving. Everything. Wade and I both had computers, and we would swap emails and chat on Instant Messenger when we weren't together. I was aching to tell Wade that I thought I was gay, but I knew he wasn't. He would write to me and chat to me about the girls he dated. He never told me he had sex with his girlfriends, and I never asked. I assumed he had, though. The summer before Randy lost his job, I came out to my dad. I just flat out told him: "Dad, I'm gay." "A chip off the old block, huh?" he said. "You're not upset or disappointed or anything?" I asked. "Why would I be, Reid? It's just one more bit of evidence that homosexuality is genetic, the way I see it. Besides, why would it matter to me? I'm very happy as a gay man, and I know you will be, too, son. Have you told your mother?" he asked. "No. I'm not ready to do that yet," I said. "She's going to be fine with it," he said. "But you have to find your own place and your own time to come out to her." "I know," I said. I went to see Dad and Dave during Spring Break after the layoff. Wade's Spring Break came at a different time than mine did, so he wasn't there. It was just Dad and Dave and me. We talked a lot about what was going on at home for me, and, gradually, over the course of the week I was there, we hit on a plan for me to move in with them. I sort of hated the idea of missing my senior year at home, but it was getting harder and harder for me to take the darkness and the depression all the time. It was starting to make me depressed, and it didn't seem to be getting any better. "Let's call your mom and see what she thinks about your moving down here to live with us," Dad said one day. "Okay," I said. By that point, I really didn't think she'd care. I mean, I knew she and Randy loved me, but they were so wrapped up in their personal problems that I would be just one less thing they had to deal with. And I was right. Mom even said she had already thought about calling to see if I could stay, and that's what I did. I didn't even go home after Spring Break. They packed up my stuff (although they missed quite a few CD's and other things) and sent it down to me. My mother had no idea--at least from me--that I was gay, and I was going to get to live with the two happiest people I had ever been around. Dad and Dave were living in town--east of the bridge, as they said--but they were building a house on a magnificent lot on a lagoon on the beach proper. I enrolled in Crawford High School and finished out my junior year, but the next year we would be in the new house and I would be going to Beachside High School. * * * About a week after I was there, Wade's mother called. Dave spoke to Wade all the time, but he didn't usually speak to Wade's mom. "What did she want?" Dad asked Dave as soon as he got off the phone. "You're not going to believe this. She wanted to know if I'd 'take' Wade." He did his fingers in little quotation marks in the air when he said the word "take." "What?" "Yeah. Apparently her company wants her to relocate to England, and she's going to be traveling all over the damn place from there. She thinks he needs more stability than she can give him, so now it's time for him to live with his father," Dave said. "I hope you said 'yes,'" Dad said. "Of course I said 'yes,'" Dave said. "All right!" I said, enthusiastically. "He'll be here just as soon as school is out," Dave said. "It looks like our boys are going to be with us full time from now on." "That's wonderful," Dad said. "Oh, in other news, Wade came out to her as a 'homosexualist.' Her word. Honest to God," Dave said. "'Homosexualist?'" Dad asked. "Don't ask me where she got it. Maybe she just can't bring herself to say 'homosexual,' or 'gay,' or even 'queer.' Wade's not like you and me, Babe. He's a homosexualist, according to his mother," Dave said. Dad and Dave laughed a little bit. When Dave said Wade had come out, I got hard instantly. I was juicing out pre-cum in about three heartbeats, and I was grinning my fool ass off. They noticed. The grin, anyway. "You like Wade, don't you?" Dave asked. "Yeah, I like Wade. Of course, I like Wade. Wade's a great guy," I said. They smiled at each other, and I figured they were thinking, "Yeah, he likes Wade because he's in love with him." And if they thought that, they wouldn't be wrong. But did Wade feel that way about me? God, I hope he did. Well, it turned out he did. We lived in a three-bedroom house on a nice street in a section of town known as The Cove. Dad and Dave shared a bedroom, of course, but Wade and I each had our own room. The first night Wade was there, Dad and Dave had to go to a party for some people they knew who were getting married. It was a Saturday, and Wade and I stayed home to watch movies, or whatever. "Wade, there's something about me I want to tell you," I said. "Is it that you're gay?" he asked. "Yeah. How'd you know that?" I asked. "I guess it just takes one to know one," he said. "There's more, though," I said. "I hope you're going to say what I want you to say," he said. "I hope so, too," I said. Then there was a long pause. "What were you going to tell me?" Wade asked. "Don't get mad, okay?" I said. "Okay," he said. "Wade, I love you," I said. "Really?" he asked. I couldn't say "really" in return. I was way too emotional to say anything. I just nodded. "That's what I was hoping for because I'm in love with you, too. I have been for a long time. God, I've wanted to tell you that for three years. I love you, Reid. You're all I think about. That's why I stay hard all the time. I love you!" That's when we kissed for the first time. It was sort of tentative at first, but pretty soon we got the tongues involved. You know how that is. We kissed and touched each other above the waist through our clothes. I got the bright idea to take his tee shirt off, and then he took mine off, too. We were still kissing, still touching each other. He moved his mouth down to one of my nipples, and he worked it with his tongue and teeth. It was gentle, but--Oh, my God!--it was so intense. I had my fingers on his nipples, too, making them hard, making them feel good. Without warning, I came in my shorts. It was that intense. Seconds later, he did the same thing. In a few moments, we pulled apart. We were breathing like racehorses. "I came," Wade said. "Did you?" "Yeah," I gasped out. "That was my first time," Wade said. "Your first time coming?" I asked. I thought he was a little old for that to be his first time. "No. Not my first time coming. My first time coming with another person," he said. "Oh. Me, too," I said. "So, I guess we aren't virgins anymore," he said. "I guess not. Would you like to sleep in my room tonight?" I asked. "Yes. Definitely," he said. "Tonight, and every night from now on." It was only about nine o'clock, but we went to bed then, anyway. There was a lot I wanted to do with Wade, and he wanted it as badly as I did. That was so cool. We got a good start that night, but we left room for future growth.
I got my feelings hurt by that Reid guy when we were playing volleyball. Kyle and Rick were the captains that night. They usually were, unless the captains were Kevin and Justin. But either way, it didn't matter. Kyle chose me third. I knew I wasn't any good at sports, but I hated worse than anything to be chosen last for a team. They never did that to me or Denny, and I loved them for that as much as for anything. Reid was a really nice guy, and I could tell that. But he got carried away during that game, and he cussed me out. He said I had elastic wrists and that I played like a retarded girl. I knew I did, but that really hurt in front of all those guys. He didn't have to say that. That really hurt my feelings. I saw Kyle talking to him, though. He left me alone after that talk, and later, he apologized to me for saying what he had said. That cheered me up quite a bit. Plus, I slugged down a couple of swallows of Kyle's drink, when he set it down, and Justin's, too, when he and I were outside smoking. "That little fucker Reid's got a lot to learn, ain't he?" Jus said. "He hurt my feelings a little bit," I said. "He hurt 'em a lot, and Kyle and I need to grind his nut sack into the dust with the heels of our boots," Justin said. I laughed. I knew he was carrying on, just like he always did. "Laugh if you want to, but stand back when his balls pop. Don't get any in your eye," he said. I laughed harder. "Can I show you something?" he asked. "Sure. What?" I said. "The way you hold your cigarette. That drives me crazy, man. Look. Hold it like this." I was holding it with the tips of my fingers, and he wanted me to hold it half-way down my fingers. And he wanted me to crook my fingers a little bit, too. "The way I showed you is the way a man holds a cigarette. The way you hold it is the way a woman does. That's something you can fix, man," Jus said. I instantly knew he was right. "I'll do better," I said. "Well, it's a little thing, you know, but people notice that kind of thing. Of course, you don't really smoke enough to get real practice. That's about the third one I've seen you smoke," he said. "You don't smoke much, either," I said. "I know. I used to smoke a pack a day, but now a pack a week is about my speed. Ever since I came here I've been smoking less and less. I don't know what it is. Kyle hasn't had a cigarette in weeks. At least not that I've seen. I don't know why," he said. "Back to Reid. You're not really going to hurt him, are you?" I said. "Naw. Reid's a good guy, I think. He just got a little carried away tonight. Did he say he was sorry?" he asked. "Yeah, he did. I'm cool with Reid. But Jus, I'm getting picked on at school," I said. "What do you mean, 'getting picked on?'" he asked. "Being called names. Having my books knocked out from under my arms. Being shoved up against lockers. That sort of thing. He always does it when nobody else is around, too," I said. "I think that's a pretty tolerant school," Justin said. "Who is this guy?" "His name is Marshall Davis, and he's new at Beachside this year. He's a sophomore like me," I said. "Marshall Davis? That's my cousin," he said. "Really?" He grinned. "No, he ain't my cousin. I ain't got no fucking cousins. I ain't got nobody but the boys in this house. Have you talked to Tim and Brian about it?" "No. You're the first one I've mentioned it to, but it's getting really old, you know?" I said. "Tomorrow morning we're going to have Sunday Family Time, and I want you to bring it up. If you don't, I will. We're going to nip this in the bud, Bubba. This little boy needs some instruction, and I'd bet money he's fixing to get it," Jus said. "Justin, thank you so much," I said. "You're welcome. Now let's get your smoking down right. Light up another one. You don't have to inhale. This is rehearsal for the way a guy smokes. Okay, now light up," Justin said. That guy was so intense about the way I held a cigarette that it was funny. But he wanted me to look like a guy when I smoked. He was right when he said I didn't smoke enough for it to matter, but the fact that he cared at all mattered a great deal to me. That was so typical of the guys in that house. They cared about the details of my life, and I thought that meant they cared about me. I knew Kevin and Rick cared, but one by one, detail by detail, the boys were showing me they cared as well. It was little things. Brian gave me his notes from AP European History, and those helped a great deal. Tim bought me an electric shaver after I massacred my face with the blade razor Kyle had bought me. Rick took Denny and me to a huge bookstore in Destin and gave us each fifty dollars to buy books. Kevin took me shopping for clothes. They were all wonderful to me. "Denny, I think I've died and gone to heaven," I said. "You mean this house?" he asked. "Yeah," I said. "These guys are unbelievable," Denny said. "I know what you mean." |