My Life in Pink - Part 6

In the spring, I went out for the swim team. The coach wasn’t exactly the faculty sponsor of the Anti-Homophobia League, but became a lot more tolerant when he saw how fast I could swim. Once having demonstrated myself the fastest freestyler on the team, I became a bit safer, as my teammates began looking out for me too. I set two school records my freshman year.

I got my first girlfriend, though nobody but the two of us knew about it, a few weeks into sophomore year. We were both signed up for Journalism, in which one of our first assignments was to conduct an in-depth interview with another member of the class. Carly and I got assigned to each other, and discovered that we had a lot in common. Her mom was an alcoholic, as my dad had been, and we seemed to get each other’s jokes, which was a rare pleasure for me. I have come in adulthood to realize that what I’ve got is called a dry wit, and in high school, you generally need a much damper one to be thought funny rather than weird. She suggested we go see the latest Jim Carrey movie together. I’d always found him a lot more exhausting than funny, but would have gone to a Bruce Willis smirkfest just to be with her.

She drove. After the movie, at which I laughed aloud a lot more than I would have if I hadn’t been trying to impress her, we found a secluded spot and steamed up her windows. She said she found my androgyny a huge turn-on, and that she knew a lot of other girls did too. She claimed to know a big jock who had a crush on me too, but wouldn’t divulge his identity.

I hadn’t realized her stepdad was a member of the faculty because their surnames were different. She knew he wouldn’t approve of her seeing me, so we had to be very discreet. We saw each other, far from the eyes of others, for around two months, at the end of which she seemed to stop finding androgyny so attractive. She dumped me in favor of a junior who was on both the tennis and debate teams. We’d done everything short of sex without actually doing sex. I discovered that I responded anatomically to a pretty girl’s stimulation just like any other straight guy might. I went through another rough depression. When I tried to talk to my brother Scott about it, he refused to believe I’d had a girlfriend, and was actually irate that I didn’t trust him enough to tell me it had really been a boyfriend.

My geography teacher, the mustachioed, nervous little Mr. Ives, came onto me. He summoned me for a conference having to do with the work I’d failed to do while depressed. While I explained that it had been a broken heart making it impossible for me to concentrate on schoolwork, he locked the doors of the classroom. He didn’t have to pull the blinds because we were on the third floor of the Social Studies building. He told me he wanted to kiss me. I, thinking fast, said that was really kind of him, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea. He put his hand on my leg. He was flushed and slick with sweat. He kept licking his lips. He said if I let him kiss me, I wouldn’t have to make up any of the work I’d not done. Once again I refused; I wasn’t so naïve as to imagine he’d be content with a kiss.

Now he really got red. He called me a spoiled little brat and a faggot, and said if I breathed a word of what had happened to anyone, he’d say I’d offered to trade sexual favors for a good grade in his class. He’d been teaching at my school for 29 years and had never been in the slightest bit of trouble, so which of us did I think everyone would believe? I didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone, but he gave me a C in his class. I had nothing else but A’s on that report card.