Dorm Life
By Glenn Saunders
Published by Southernwood Press
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Southernwood Press
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords or other seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of our authors.
Warning: This book contains explicit descriptions of adult situations and is not suitable for readers under the age of 18. All sexually active characters in this book are eighteen years old or older.
Table Of Contents
Chapter One
This was supposed to be the year that I would move into an apartment close to campus and escape the restrictions of the athletic dorm. This option was reserved for juniors and seniors who were in good academic standing. Two other juniors on the university's soccer team and I were going to get a three bedroom apartment in an older building practically across the street from the student union building.
In April during our sophomore year, the day before we were going to sign the lease for the following school year, the coach called me into his office.
"John," he said with a serious look on his face, "I want to ask a big favor, but before you answer I want you to know that you can refuse. I mean that, too."
"What's up, Coach?" I asked.
"Did you meet Carter, that guy from upstate, when he was here on a campus visit last month?"
"No," I answered, "But I know who he is. Everybody is pretty psyched he's coming here."
"Yeah, we're lucky to get another mid-fielder of his quality. He may be good enough to play some games even in his first year," coach said, staring out his window as he spoke.
I figured that the coach was going to ask me to help out the new kid, show him some moves and make sure he felt part of the team when he arrived in time for August practice. That would be no problem. On the other hand, I didn't think the coach would really consider that to be such a big favor; it was sort of standard practice.
"He's a small town guy, like you," the coach continued. "His parents really wanted him to go to a smaller school in a town a little closer in size to what he's already used to."
"Yeah," I said, just because the coach seemed to be waiting for me to say something.
"Well I promised his parents that we'd keep an eye on him this year, help keep him focused on his studies and stuff," he said, edging closer to his point.
"The tutors stay on top of freshmen, Coach. You don't have to worry about that," I said, remembering how the athletic department's academic police rode me throughout my first year here, even though I got nothing but A's. I found them more distracting than they were necessary for me, but a lot of the jocks do need discipline when it comes to studying and finishing assignments on time.
"Yeah, well Carter' parents are really more worried about other stuff like the influence of the big city and all. They're very religious," he clarified.
I wondered now just what the coach had in mind for me. I did not want to spend my junior year babysitting some freshman nerd who just happened to be able to kick a ball.
"The thing is," coach went on, "you're about the most sensible guy we have. You have your priorities straight, and I can always count on you to make good decision on and off the field."
"What about Lee?" I offered trying to deflect the burden that I sensed was about to befall me. Lee was an even better student than I, plus he had almost no social life.
"Yeah, Lee is mature, but you're a lot more sensitive than he is."
The coach's choice of the word, "sensitive" really grabbed my attention. Whenever the coach made a reference to me being gay, he referred to me as sensitive. I guess it was his way of showing acceptance of my sexual orientation, but I have to admit that it is a fairly accurate description of who I am. My mother always says that I had "a high level of empathy."
"Is Carter gay, too?" I asked.
The coach seemed taken aback by my abruptness, as he always is whenever I use my self-assigned label.
"Oh, no," coach said hastily. "I mean, I don't really know. That's not something we talk about when we have a recruit visit. It's just that this kid has led a very sheltered life, and I know that you will know how to relate to someone like that."
Although I was a small town guy myself, in no way was I sheltered. However, I understood what the coach meant.
"Alright, what can I do for him?" I said, deciding it was time to get to the point.
"I'd like for you to be his roommate for his freshman year," he said.
"Roommate?" I was floored by that request; I hadn't seen it coming. "I'm moving into an apartment next year," I said. "I didn't think freshman athletes could live off campus."
"You're right," coach said, confirming my fear. "I would like you to stay in the dorm for another year to let Carter live with you."
The coach must have read the expression on my face, because he quickly added, "Remember you can say 'no.' I'll just have to find some other solution, then."
"Can I take a night to think about it?" I asked.
"Of course, you can call me tomorrow morning with your decision. Whatever you decide won't change our relationship in any way. Remember that."
I walked outside wishing that we had already signed the lease. That would give me a good excuse. Unfortunately, we had not officially committed, which meant that I truly was obligated to give the coach's request serious thought that night.
You probably need a little background about how an athletic dorm works, at least at my school. All the normal dorms (the staff actually tries to get students to call them "residence halls," but I don't know anybody who does) have pretty much no restrictions except for alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.
The athletes' dorm, on the other hand, is like something from the nineteenth century. Everybody has to be checked in by midnight. There is no visitation allowed by anybody who doesn't live there, except on a few special occasions like parents' weekend and such. If you want to meet another student, you have to do it in the lobby. Every meal must be eaten in the dining hall, although we get better food than the other dining rooms on campus, so that part is not too bad, and on weekends we're allowed to invite a friend over for a meal. Well, you get the idea.
You probably are beginning to get a sense about why I wanted to escape to an apartment. My twenty-first birthday would come about midway through the year. I don't drink, but the gay bars do have a certain mystical allure for me. I wanted the opportunity to go out, maybe meet an interesting (and not too drunk) guy and have the option of bringing him back to my own room.
I am one of those rare examples of someone who came out during high school, although it was not exactly a planned event. I hadn't sent out invitations to my coming out party or anything.
Actually, I did come out to my parents on purpose. That turned out to have been a very wise decision, as things developed. They took the news reasonably well, I guess. I mean, my mom cried when I told her and said that she hoped I wouldn't be hated by anyone. Dad talked to me about how some guys go through a phase at my age, but I convinced him that I was not just going through some sort of experimental interest in other guys. Otherwise, they were very supportive.
They did ask me if I had ever had sex with a guy. At that time, I was able to honestly say that I hadn't, although I don't know how I would have answered them if I had not been a virgin. I guess at that moment what I had seen as bad luck, my continued virginity at the ripe age of eighteen, turned out to be good luck. I didn't have to choose between a lie and the truth and have to face the inevitable questions about how safe I had or had not been.
Just a couple months later my sexual experience status changed. Of course, at the time, I couldn't have been happier.
Here at college most of my guy friends are other soccer players, but in high school I had lots of friends who were part of a variety of groups. Among my many buddies was a guy who was a linebacker for the football team, Axel. He was a big guy with legs like tree trunks and bulging biceps. He looked like it would take him about an hour to run the hundred meter dash, but he was really extremely quick, belying his almost muscle bound appearance. That combination of strength and speed made him a perfect linebacker. There were rumors that there were college scouts at every game just to watch him, even though he was just a junior like me.
I have to admit that there were a few guys in my high school that I would concentrate on frequently when I would go to bed each night for what I called my "private time." Axel wasn't one of these though. I hadn't really thought much about what kinds of guys turned me on, but I later realized that I just didn't go in for anyone who was heavily muscled or very large. In retrospect I realized that at that point in my life my fantasy bed mates were all a little on the small side of the spectrum.
Anyway, one Saturday night in early December of my senior year in high school, Axel invited me and two other guys over for a night of games. I thought he meant video games, but it turned out that he wanted to play the more old fashioned sorts of games.
I'm going to leave their names out of this, but the other two guys were a senior on the swimming team and the president of the senior class.
After a game of Monopoly that lasted for over three hours (boring hours, if you ask me), we were just sitting around talking, with the conversation jumping all over the place. Finally Axel suggested that we play cards.
While I'm not really a big card player, I figured that a few hands of any card game had to be better than another game of Monopoly. Plus, there was a game of Risk sitting on one of Axel's shelves, and that would have been even worse than having to think about landing on Board Walk or the Reading Railroad.
"Let's play five card draw," offered Axel.
"I don't really have any money along," I said.
"That's okay, we can float you," said the swimmer.
"I'd rather not gamble away my money," I said, probably sounding like a defeatist.
"Let's just play strip, then," said Axel eagerly.
"That's not for me," the swimmer spoke up quickly.
"Come on," said the president. "We're all guys here."
That seemed to settle it. I guess everyone just deferred to the leadership of the senior class president. Axel dealt.
The game progressed slowly, but I was holding my own. I had lost only my shoes and socks, while Axel was at the same stage. The swimmer still had his pants and, I presumed, underwear. Admittedly, I enjoyed stealing occasional glances at him, lingering as long as I dared taking in his trim but developed torso. I planned to put that memory of his sleek body to good use once I got home and in the privacy of my own bed.
The class president, though, was a different matter. He wasn't getting any of the cards that he hoped for any time that he asked for additional cards, which was practically every hand. He was down to nothing but his white briefs. He was clearly going to be the first to be out of the game, watching with everything showing as the rest of us played on.
When he first pulled off his trouser while standing, it was pretty clear to me that, while his penis was tucked downward, it was straining at the slightly pee stained fabric. He could not afford another loss.
His metaphoric execution was delayed for one more hand, as the cute swimmer lost. The swimmer stood, imitating a strip tease as he removed his jeans. We all jokingly cheered him on, although I was only pretending to be teasing. In fact, I enjoyed the show very much.
I was pleased to note that the swimmer didn't shave his legs like so many in his sport do. I made a mental note of his sexy legs covered in dark hair for my personal use later.
The class president's brief run of luck ended on the next hand. When the hands were revealed, he stood. I got ready for a show of what I anticipated to be the first hard penis that I had ever seen, other than my own of course. Instead, he turned his back on us.
"I've got to get home," announced the nearly naked guy.
"Not until you pay your debt, buddy," Axel said.
"No, that's as far as I go in this game," the class president insisted.
"That's not fair," Axel insisted. "You agreed to the game just like the rest of us. You can't chicken out just because you lost first."
But the loser didn't even respond, he just started to put his clothes on, instead. What disappointed me far more, however, was that the swimmer followed the president's lead.
"I need to get home, too," said my masturbation material as he pulled on his on pants over those great legs.
"You're not going to quit on me are you?" Axel asked after the others had left.
"No way," I said, although I was inspired more by my recent winning hands than by anything resembling genuine courage.
I hoped that now that the swimmer had gone, I would lose my own boner that could serve as an embarrassment in my boxers if I actually had to remove my trousers. As I've said, I didn't really think of Axel as a sex object so for me the game became much less arousing after the swimmer left.
I won the next two hands. After losing the second of those, I noticed a little hesitation on Axel's part before he began to pull down his pants. I could see indecision in his eyes. Eventually he did drop them to the floor and wriggle his feet out.
As soon as I saw Axel standing there, I knew the reason for his hesitation. His boxers were stretched out in front by what seemed to be a considerably respectable hard cock. Since it was only the two of us, I didn't really see any reason to hide my stare. He stood for a while allowing me to take it all in.
Axel dealt the next hand as I realized that my own penis was returning to life. I glanced downward into my lap and saw that the bulge was prominent even through my jeans.
After the next hand, we were tied again. Since Axel had gone first I was not as shy as I would have been discarding my pants. I allowed Axel to stare at my bulge for several seconds before taking my seat again.
The next hand would determine a winner. I hoped that would be me. Even though I had hoped for a chance to maybe see the swimmer naked, I found that my desire to see a hard cock that belonged to anyone else was great enough that I was now beginning to view Axel in a slightly more sexual way. It's not that I wanted to do anything sexual with him; I just wanted to see his evidently large cock.
I won! Axel didn't hesitate this time. In fact, he turned sideways so that my first view of his penis would emphasize its length. I was impressed, although at that time I had nobody else to compare him with.
"Wow," I said aloud without thinking first.
"You like?" he asked slyly.
"No, it's just that it looks bigger than I thought it would."
"Yeah, my girlfriend seems to like it," he claimed proudly, although I'm not sure that he was telling the whole truth on that. His girlfriend was known to be pretty straight-laced, almost prudish.
"Well, I guess I better go," I announced, now more anxious than ever to get a little privacy to empty my growing load.
"No way, man," Axel asserted. "We play on until everyone is naked. That's only fair."
"But you don't have anything more to lose," I pointed out the obvious flaw in his sportsmanship themed argument.
"If I lose, I'll give you a two minute shoulder massage," he promised.
"Okay," I agreed. After all, if I had lost I knew that I would have felt cheated or vulnerable or something.
I won again. When Axel rose to take a position behind my chair, I watched openly. I had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to reach out to grab the object of my attention as he passed me.
I watched the clock across the room, wishing that I could slow its inevitable movement as his fingers and palms manipulated the muscles of my shoulders. He either had practice at this or he simply knew what to do instinctively.
I sighed audibly and leaned my head back. When I felt my hair come into contact with his protruding cock, I quickly moved it forward again.
I wasn't aware of Axel moving toward me until his penis made contact with my neck. This was clearly purposeful, but I gave no sign that I had noticed. I sensed a quiver move through my body, as it registered on me that I was technically touching another cock.
As the clock registered the end of the two minutes, neither of us acknowledged the time. Instead, Axel began to swivel his hips slightly in a way that made his cock actually brush back and forth along the back of my neck.
Axel slowly slid his hands off of my shoulders and down to my now heaving chest. He kept the same massage rhythm as his hands moved farther and farther down, reaching my abdomen and then exploring the top edges of my pubic hair.
By now we were a full four minutes into the supposed two minute massage. Axel correctly interpreted my lack of objections as permission to go further.
His hands, still working as a team, slipped under the waist band of my stretched boxers. He grasped my rod with his right hand, still massaging in much the same way. He moved his left hand further down, cupping my balls as he began a much softer massage of my testes. I sighed again.
Axel drove his cock against my neck as he leaned forward. He released my genitals, and then he began to tug at my boxers. I raised my butt off the chair to assist him in his mission. He pushed them down until they were simply resting on my feet. I easily kicked them away.
He came around to the side of the chair, dropped to his knees with a thump and leaned forward, taking all of my cock into his mouth in one absolutely heavenly move. I had wondered what this would feel like. I had imagined sheer pleasure. My expectations had not done justice to the amazing sensations that I actually felt.
Only later did I wonder how Axel could be so skilled. He behaved as if he were a hungry bear just awakening from hibernation. I became so lost in what I felt that I actually forgot that his magnificent cock was within reach to my right.
I found that I had trouble focusing on exactly what Axel was doing. I wanted to remember the techniques that he employed, but only the effects of his efforts registered with me in any way. I felt the wetness and warmth of his mouth. I felt the softness, too, but that was balanced by some sort of firmness that I later realized must have been his tongue.
"I'm going to cum if you don't stop," I exclaimed much more loudly than necessary.
He didn't stop, which is what I had hoped, of course. Indeed, whatever he had been doing seemed to double. I felt myself crashing over the top of my orgasm like an ocean wave encountering a boulder on the shore.
I felt my cum rocketing into his mouth, but I did not bother to think what Axel might be feeling or tasting. I concentrated only on my own indescribably intense pleasure. I felt nothing at all for Axel, but I loved my own body for what it was able to do for me. In short, I was completely selfish.
Only after I had completely finished did I again think of the guy who had given me this fantastic gift. It was the feel of his throat constricting as he greedily swallowed the cum that had been inside me just moments before that reminded me of his existence.
"You'll probably need to rest before you do me," Axel said as he stood.
The whole idea of reciprocation hadn't even crossed my mind. Ten or fifteen minutes before the idea might have appealed to me, but at the moment I had absolutely no interest in blowing my friend.
"Help me get this place cleaned up, then we'll go another round," he stated as if the progression of the night was a given that I had somehow previously agreed to.
As we put away snacks, rinsed and placed soda cans into the recycling bin and brushed crumbs from the table onto the carpeting below, we talked about the guys who had left. We didn't talk about them in terms of the card game or anything, mostly just things that we liked about them or things that made them funny and good to be around. I certainly didn't bring up how hot I thought the swimmer was or that I had been hoping to get a look at the class president's cock. The conversation didn't even get close to the subject of sex even though we both remained nude.
When our work was done, Axel looked at me and asked, "So where you want to do this? On a chair, the sofa or upstairs on my bed?"
I chose the bedroom, because I figured that would give me some extra time to think through this whole thing. I wasn't sure that I could do it.
Neither of us was erect by this time, so it seemed especially strange to me that we were climbing the stairs to have a comfortable place for me to give a blow job to my buddy. When we reached Axel's room, he sprawled his large frame on his bedspread, while I took a seat nervously on the edge.
As soon as I sat, Axel started gently playing with my cock and balls, alternating between the two. I noticed that his cock was coming back to life quickly.
"You know, you have a really nice cock," he said.
"Thanks," I replied. "Yours is so big."
"Yeah, I know, but yours is way better looking."
I felt a different kind of fondness for this guy. It was obvious that he was trying to help me relax and recharge. I knew that I couldn't escape what was facing me. Guys play by certain rules. Although I had never applied those rules to sex before, I knew that the same regulations that govern all male to male activities must be enforced equally with regard to sex.
I began to rub Axel's chest, a little too big for my standards, but very masculine. As his cock became stiffer, I noticed that my interest in it also grew. My own cock began to inflate a bit as well, although it didn't reach the same rigidity that it had been earlier.
I grabbed his rod with my hand, and began to stroke it slowly, lightly at first and then with greater pressure. Even though I had just cum a short while before, his cock felt wonderful in my hand. I found myself to be thrilled to be grasping another's cock.
"Lick my balls," he whispered, although nobody was around to overhear.
I positioned myself between his legs and lightly licked the sizeable orbs. I detected something of a musky scent, but it seemed to arouse me more than distract me.
"A little lower," he said.
I moved to the bottom of his scrotum and continued my licking.
"Lower," he repeated.
I had already been as far down as his ball sac extended. However, I followed his instructions and began to lick an area directly below the scrotum. Axel raised his hips off the bed to give me better access.
Axel let out a growling moan that startled me so much that I actually stopped licking for a while. I then realized that his sound was one of pleasure, so I returned to what I had previously been doing.
I probably concentrated on that one little area for two or three minutes. After a while, he began to roll back and forth on the bed, each time moaning a little longer if not any louder.
"Now," he said. "Please."
I changed position, opened my mouth widely and impaled myself on the top half of his cock.
"Watch the teeth," he called out urgently.
I must have unknowingly scraped him, so I opened my mouth even farther.
"Oh, god," he exclaimed.
I tried to remember what he had done to me earlier, but I couldn't recall any specifics. I began to think about what I had read online. I sucked and tried to twirl my tongue simultaneously, but that is not an easy combination. After a short while, I got into a sort of a pattern.
"Now," Axel yelled.
He pressed the back of my head further down onto his rod. I successfully fought off an urge to gag, and then I felt the first of his cum hit the very back of my mouth. I didn't taste anything. I realized that his cock was growing even more in my mouth, so I managed to pull off just a little, still covering about two thirds of his big dick. The next shot landed on the back of my tongue, and I tasted his cum this time. It was very salty and more bitter than I expected, so I swallowed it quickly.
He kept firing volley after volley. Obviously either the events of the evening had him very aroused, or he hadn't cum in about two months!
"Thanks, dude," he said conversationally, signaling the end of my first sexual experience.
Now more than three years later, I sat alone in my dorm room trying to either study or at least consider what my coach had asked me to do. Instead, I remembered that first time in the same detail that I remembered it ten days afterwards, when my life came apart.
I wasn't even aware that my hand was inside my athletic shorts playing with my dick until the phone rang, startling me back to the present.
It was the coach calling to increase the limited allure of his offer. He told me that he had the approval of the athletic department to exempt me from the curfew and the dining requirements, if I decided to undertake the favor of babysitting the new member of our team next year.
I needed to think through the ramifications before the next morning. I didn't want to ask the coach to delay his deadline or my would-be roommates to delay their lease signing.
I decided to give it serious thought right after I took advantage of my solitude by jacking off before my roommate came back from class.
By the time I went to bed that night, I still hadn't made a decision about my coach's request. When I awoke the next morning, it was much clearer to me.
Chapter Two
While my adjustment to college life in a large city had gone smoothly, I had met other guys from farms or small towns who had not handled it as well. They seemed to go in one of two directions.
Some of the guys, the smaller group, seemed to be afraid of everything; the sound of the traffic bothered them when they tried to sleep or study; anybody who looked the slightest bit "street wise" scared them.
The other group consisted of those for who this change was a liberating experience - at times quite a bit too liberating. Many of them forgot their main reason for being here and became lost in all of the social options that this environment provided. A lot of those weren't around for sophomore year.
The freshman girls seemed to handle it better. Maybe that was because girls are better at looking after each other than guys are.
I decided that I needed to accept the coach's challenge and room with this soon to be new member of our team. It was important to the soccer team's future that this guy succeed in school. To be truly honest, though, I figured it was my duty to help another small town guy mature in the way that only overcoming new challenges can allow.
I knew all about small town guys overcoming challenges, although my obstacles had not come during college but rather a year and a half before. To be more precise, my biggest challenges of my life so far had come exactly ten days after I had lost my virginity (if it can be called that) with Axel.
On that day, a Tuesday if it matters, I arrived at school and went straight to my locker, a perfectly normal event. I didn't really think much of it at the time but I later realized that as I walked down the corridor saying hello to practically everyone I passed, most of them just nodded their greeting. I even passed Axel, and he didn't say or do anything to recognize my presence. He was talking to another guy, so I just figured at the time that he was distracted. No big deal.
If I had paid any attention at the time to the greetings I received, or more accurately didn't receive, it would have been clear to me when I reached my locker more or less in the middle of the school's main hallway. My locker door was decorated with huge letters running vertically from top to bottom spelling out "FAGGOT."
That wasn't a word that was heard a lot around my school. Sure, students would playfully say, "That's gay" or "You're such a queer," but this word was clearly meant to be anything buy playful. In fact, I don't think that I have ever heard anyone actually say the word out loud. That attitude, that depth of disrespect just didn't seem to exist at my high school.
Upon seeing it, before I did anything else, before I opened the door, before I even wondered about who might have written it, I instinctively licked my thumb and began to rub vigorously. I didn't even partially smear the lettering on the door's surface.
I thought of running to the bathroom to wet a paper towel, but it was too close to first period. I don't really know why I thought that water would succeed where my spit had failed.
As soon as I got to my first period class, Mr. Alexander called me to his desk.
He whispered so that only I could hear, "You can go find the cleaning people to get rid of the graffiti, if you want. You won't miss anything important in here."
I had actually thought about Mr. Alexander a few times during my solo, private times before going to sleep. Now I just stood in front of him with a red face and nothing to say. I walked out of the room silently after he handed me a pass.
By the time I got back to my locker, a very nice woman who was part of the cleaning crew was spraying my locker with fresh paint.
She looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, John. This wasn't here a couple hours ago. The paint will dry in about half an hour."
"Thanks," I said weakly as I headed for the school exit.
As I walked home, I began to wonder who had written the message and why. I thought of two explanations. Either Mom or Dad had told someone and it had gotten back to one of my school mates, or, the more likely scenario, Axel had told what I had assumed was our secret. I guess that there was one more alternative that I definitely didn't want to think of. That was that Axel had written it.
I figured that I had to explain everything to my parents once they were home from work. As I suspected, they hadn't told anyone about me coming out to them. They also told me that I had to go back to school the next day and pretend that nothing had happened. They assured me that everything would blow over. I know they were more upset than they had let on to me, though, because I could hear them talking in whispers after they went to bed.
Not surprisingly, I barely slept that night. The more that I worried about how my life had changed, the more convinced I had become that it would get even worse. I knew that my social life had come to a crashing halt and that none of my friends would want to be seen talking to me, especially the guys. I wondered if I would be tossed off the soccer team.
I never got into a deep sleep the whole night, yet I was somehow startled awake by my alarm. Later I couldn't even remember showering or getting dressed. I must have been following my regular morning routine without even thinking about it.
When I walked into the kitchen to try to eat something for breakfast even though the thought of food was completely unappealing, my mom was on the phone with her back to me.
"Yes, he'll be there this morning. Okay, good bye," I heard her say quietly.
"What was that?" I asked startling her.
"Your coach," she said as she went about her usual routine.
"What did he want?"
"He just wanted to make sure that you're going to school, today," she replied matter-of-factly, as a morning greeting from my coach was a normal event.
I was sure that meant that he would call me into his office to let me know that I was no longer on the team. I just hoped that he would keep it quiet for a while. After all, the season was over and spring practices were still five months away.
I pulled into the school's student parking lot earlier than I normally do. I wanted to avoid the crowded halls by already being in my first period class room when most of the students start arriving.
I locked my car, something I never do at school and wondered what might be written on the windshield by the end of the day. The possibility of more vandalism had been one of the things that I kept thinking about during my restless night.
I walked around the corner of the building on my way to the entrance and suddenly found myself facing what appeared to be a mob.
"Here's John," someone shouted.
Everyone in the group turned to face me grinning. "Welcome back," someone said. "Good to see you," said another. They were little more than a blur to me. At first, I didn't even see them as a group of individuals.
As everything started to become clearer to me, after I realized that I wasn't going to be pummelled by an angry posse, I noticed that my entire soccer team was there. Eventually, as I started to look at the girls who were mixed into the group, I knew that the whole girls' soccer team was present, too, along with probably six or ten other friends of mine or friends of friends.
They each shook my hand or hugged me as I was sort of shuttled through the crowd. They treated me as some sort of hero returning from some great accomplishment. I was confused by the apparently spontaneous outpouring.
Then, in the background I saw my coach standing with a big smile on his face. When he saw that I had noticed him, he simply nodded his head in my direction. I understood that my welcoming party was not a coincidental event at all, but a carefully executed demonstration of solidarity. That probably goes a long way in explaining why I find it difficult to refuse a favor to any coach.
In the days between me being outed and winter break, sometimes everything seemed as it had been before. But there were other times when I felt as if I had become part of a surreal movie that somebody else had written.
Most of my friends never mentioned what had been written on my locker. Most didn't ask or talk about my sexual orientation so recently made public in such a hateful and upsetting way, even if my dismay was fairly short-lived.
Over that period of time, three notes were anonymously shoved through the vents of my locker. I read each and pushed them into my pocket until I could safely dispose of them as soon as I got home. I never mentioned any of them to anyone else.
One of those read, "You're going to hell for your sins." It had a rather poorly drawn crucifix below the words.
"Suck my cock, faggot," said another. I probably don't need to tell you about the art work that accompanied that one.
The third one was very different, and considerably longer. I won't tell you everything that the correspondent had written. It was a mini autobiography that closed, "I wish I had your courage," and was signed, "a secret admirer." I almost decided to hang on to that one, but I eventually tossed it into the trash, too.
I notice the unintended irony of his use of the word, "courage." I had done nothing courageous at all. I had simply been victimized and effectively gone into hiding for a day.
One friend asked me what gay guys do together. I explained that he needed to find someone who was more of an expert than I am. Another buddy asked me when I knew that I was gay. I tried to answer that in a little more detail, but I'm not sure that he understood. For me it was more of a gradual realization, so I really couldn't pick a specific time or age when it was suddenly clear.
Several female friends asked me if I had a boyfriend. I felt as if I was disappointing them when I told them that I didn't. One girl offered to fix me up with her cousin, who was a year older. She even showed me his picture. My only objection to her plan was that her cousin lived more than a thousand miles away. It just seemed like a long way to go for a date!