Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 11:53:41 -0400 From: berthusa@netscape.net Subject: Rediscovering Friendship Prolog (MM) This story will probably be pretty slow to develop. It's a mixture of reality and what was fantasy on my part. It'll eventually include sex between consenting adult males. If that's offensive, or if it is not legal for you to read it, please don't. Rediscovering Friendship The first time I met Kris was in kindergarten. My twin brother and I attended the neighborhood school a couple of blocks away. For some reason, the school didn't want me and my brother in the same classroom, and since the school offered two classes in each grade, we didn't see each other except at lunch. For those of you who aren't twins, it's a relationship that's kind of hard to explain. It's like I had an automatic best friend from before birth. I knew what he was thinking at any given moment, and I'm pretty sure he could, too. There were even times when we'd finish each others' sentences. So when school started and we were separated, there was a big "gap" for me. That might be the reason I wanted so much to be close to someone. Kris was in my class, and we sat next to each other. It's easy for kids to make friends, and it was really easy for me to get close to Kris. About midway through the second grade, the school district announced that they were closing our neighborhood school, and as part of an ongoing effort to comply with Supreme Court decisions, we would be bussed a few miles away. Being young and somewhat sheltered in a rather large metropolitan area, I found it quite scary to think about. I'd miss my friends, and have to go to school in a part of town I'd never been to. After talking with my parents, they agreed to send us to a Catholic school, even though there were two of us, and they weren't particularly wealthy. Kris couldn't go to the Catholic school. At the end of second grade, I said goodbye to my best friend. I thought it would be the last time we'd see each other. After plodding along through the Catholic school through the end of 8th grade, my parents told us they couldn't afford to send us to either of the two Catholic high schools in our area. I felt it was less scary to be going back to public schools after so long. The downside was I'd probably see a lot less of the friends I'd made over the last six years. The upside was when I walked into homeroom. We had assigned seats, and right next to me was Kris. Getting into the swing of public school again took a little time. Instead of taking time out to start each day with a prayer, it was pretty clear that there was no room for religion in the public school. I felt like an outsider in other ways, too. Most of the kids in high school had been together for a while. Everything was new to me. I started to talk to Kris again. At first, I wasn't even sure if he'd remember who I was. He did. In high school, Kris could be described as a James Dean clone. A bit of a rebel, always wore Levi's and a dark tee shirt, and usually had a perpetual sneer on his face. Something was happening to me; I started to spend long moments just looking at my childhood friend who'd now grown up rather nicely. Kris stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and was lean and, to other people, seemingly mean. He had sandy blond/brown hair which he kept rather short, bucking the current trend of long hair. He was kind of isolated from other people, and after I'd gotten to know him again, I couldn't figure out why. He was a great guy to be around. While some kids would seek out younger or "weaker" people to prey upon, Kris treated everyone with respect, even while seeming somewhat aloof. I admired him. He was one of the cool people, but he wouldn't lord it over anyone. We shared the same homeroom from the eighth grade up to our senior year. We'd rekindled our friendship and were pretty close friends again when everything shattered. The winter of our senior year, Kris had a heart attack. More to come.