Disclaimer: I own all characters thus they are copyrighted to me. This story is not to be copied or posted elsewhere without permission from the author. This is a pseudo-true story with some embellishments, about homosexual teens and love. If you are underage or find such material offensive stop reading now. There is nothing sexually explicit in this chapter but there may and probably will be in subsequent chapters. Any feedback, comments, and complaints are requested and welcome at stuperfyed@yahoo.com. I will respond to all e-mails.

The Man of My Dreams

I couldn't remember the first time I saw Lucky Laroux. And although I wasn't much of a talker, when I did first bump into him, he did have the courtesy to apologize first while I mumbled something indiscernible before asking for directions. Of course, all this is according to Lucky as he would later inform me, and while I trust him with my life, I never could trust anything he said to be the absolute and undisputable truth. It was with a bemused smirk that I first remember seeing Lucky as he sat in a chair with a clipboard in a group circle in a small, humid room in the building I had apparently asked him for directions to a block and a half away. I only looked at Lucky like he was a piece of meat for about a week. And after an awkward ambush kiss that tasted of turkey and potato chips that he only half-returned, I could never again look at him as anything other than a brother.

I do remember the first time I ever saw Nick Revere. It wasn't because I was smitten with him as everyone else seemed to be in our small Catholic high school of St. Clare Catholic High School in Corazon, CA. It wasn't his apparent godly beauty that everyone was raving about that caught my attention. In fact I didn't even recognize him from the rumors I had been hearing all week during freshman orientation about the great Nick Revere. I remember the odd look I must have given him while hiding my puzzlement at his mop of obviously dyed black hair that hung down to his shoulders in a bob that just seemed off against his hazel-green eyes, barely-tanned skin, and obviously fine-tuned sense of style. Unbeknownst to me, his hair was temporarily trussed into this monstrosity for the two weeks he held the lead role of Grease at the local community theater. Two weeks into classes, I tried to conceal a blush caused by the very cute guy who walked in late to my English class and sat at the back with his obviously fine-tuned sense of style, barely-tanned skin, hazel eyes and fresh-cut medium-brown, medium-length hair. So this was the Adonis everyone was talking about with the fat wallet and the mansion in Cherry Hills. I was in love, but only as much as everyone else who never knew Nick Revere personally and only as much as one is in love with a celebrity. Still, here was our school's royalty and something to spend time drooling over while memorizing stats like his birthday, favorite food, and allergies, just like every other girl on campus. I was only ever in trouble when he started being nice to me.

If I had known that by the time I graduated high school these two would be the people to have the greatest impact on my life, I would have paid better attention the first time I saw them.

---

Growing up in Tremont, CA, a suburb of San Jose only forty minutes away from San Francisco, meant that I was always surrounded different cultures and ideals all of which preached tolerance for the sake of preserving multicultural peace in our diverse little mecca of ethnicity. It was because of this tolerance that I never had a major problem identifying myself as gay, despite the fact that I attended catholic schools my entire life due to my mother's insistence that I needed religion and morality as part of my education. And while the Catholic environment in Tremont was not condemning of homosexuality, it just did not recognize it as a lifestyle option. So it wasn't until I was twelve and had discovered Internet porn that I learned what to call my feelings of attraction to other boys. And even then I convinced myself that it was a phase and that I would kiss boys for now, I believed until I was fifteen that I would grow out of it and someday want to marry a girl. When I first told myself that I was gay, it wasn't a major excruciating struggle for me to reach that conclusion. I experienced only a shiver of euphoria and rebelliousness and fear and sorrow and joy all at once before it subsided into mild acceptance. As a freshman at a conservative private school in the wealthy Republican town of Corazon, I was mostly concerned about my bodily safety and that was what pushed me to not talk to anyone as much as I could help it and so I passed as little more than a shadow through my first two years of high school.

The first person I ever came out to was a freshman when I was a sophomore. Her name was Parker Devereux and she was from the same little podunk town of Tremont like me and made the thirty-minute commute every day to school. Parker wore layers of clothes, unlike all the fashion-forward girls at our school with their mini-skirts and too-tight tees. Parker wore graphic shirts on top of graphic shirts and a favorite pair of cargo pants. She looked New York-urban-artsy-hipster, which did not fit with our perfect little prep school.

I was killing time in the library reading a how-to book on palm reading when Parker first interrupted me. "Hey, what are you doing?"

She asked because I was the only student in there actually reading a book. She must have assumed I had nothing better to do as she proceeded to sit down and complain for thirty minutes how she couldn't chat on the library computers with her gay friends from Tennessee and New Hampshire because the computers had some sort of anti-chat program installed and how she couldn't check their blogs because the school had blocked personal sites as well. Then she asked about my love life.

I had done very well for a year and a half to avoid my love life and I wasn't about to admit to myself, much less some nutjob with a queer menagerie that the concept of hot boy-on-boy action got me off. So I made up a story about having a crush on a girl named Kim from my neighborhood who I knew from middle school. Parker gave me a look I couldn't read and "uh-huh"ed me then proceeded to tell me how her gay friend Ray from Nevada tried having sex with a woman and couldn't get hard until she put him in her mouth. For the next two days she followed me around campus regaling me with similar stories about her out-of-state gay friends and their sexual exploits and for the next two days I anguished over how I would do some damage control, because if the people who mattered saw me hanging around this freak, they would definitely notice and my non-reputation would be shot.

Despite my best efforts to be unavailable, Parker was relentless at tracking me down and talking my ear off. So finally, beaten and worn and flooded with information about the wonderful world of being gay, I actually sat down and confronted myself about my sexuality. When that didn't work, I nervously came out to Parker one day after school when we were waiting for our rides. Of course I first secured the area, making sure there were no spies, but I still couldn't shake the possibility that Parker herself was actually a plant placed by the football team in an effort to lure me out of my shell so they could pounce out of the shadows to pulverize and crucify me. I couldn't allow myself to think like that! I just had to come out and get it over with before I let my paranoia take over and I ended up assaulting Parker in a preemptive strike/. "I'M GAY!" would probably go over better with her than "GIVE IT UP NATASHA, I KNOW YOU'RE A SPY SENT BY THE EVIL COMMIE FOOTBALL TEAM!!" She was in the middle of a story when I sprung into action.

"So Bobby was really skeptical because how many gay orgies are there in Idaho anyway and he had to bring—"

"ParkerI'mgay" I blurted before flinching and averting my eyes as I waited for the judging to begin. It was a full moment and I didn't feel the fires of hell lapping at my skin so I chanced a glance at Parker.

No hatred and loathing, but Parker did look extremely annoyed that I had interrupted her, "Uh-huh, that's nice. So anyway, that's how Bobby met his current boyfriend." I was shocked. I had just come out to her. Didn't she care? Didn't this change everything about our relationship? Didn't this mean that she had to look at me differently? She didn't have to see me as a guy, with my only goal to get into her pants. She could tell me all the girl secrets that I have thus far been excluded from because of my penis. She should give me instantaneous fashion sense and impeccable hygiene. She could impart to me wisdom about how to get a guy, if she so chose. "I give them two weeks."

At the very least she could have caused a scene in a negative way waving a torch or pitchfork while screaming "HOMO! FAGGOT! PAGAN! DEMOCRAT!" She just brushed me off, when I gave her the privilege of being the first person I came out to! I came out to her before I came out of myself. The least she could have done was cared. I was about to grouse about how the least decent thing she could have done was to look vaguely surprised but all she did was jump up and cheerily say, "My carpool is here. I gotta go." I grunted an acknowledgment and started to get up when, for the first time since I met her, Parker showed me that she really was my friend, "Hey Josh, I know that was hard to do and I think it's really cool you told me. I'll call you later and we can talk more."

And for the first time since I discovered porn, that night I didn't secretly jerk off while doing some one-handed surfing. Instead, Parker called me like she had promised and we talked for three hours about why I thought I was gay, how I was the first gay guy she ever knew in person, how we grew up in the same small town, about how I would probably be better off not coming out at St. Clare's. And for the first time I realized how much easier and harder my life just became. For the first time in years, I had a friend I could talk to, and I was hiding from myself no longer, but God help me if I didn't stay hidden from everyone else. I asked her why she wasn't surprised when I came out to her and she fed me some crap about how nothing about sex really surprises her anymore, swearing that she couldn't tell I was gay. I even told her about my mad crush on Nick Revere, about how one day the week before, he was playing with the sun's reflection off his watch in the back of English and how he shined it in my eyes catching my attention, and how he only grinned cheesily when I craned back to look at him. Parker thought he was gay.

"He's so gay." She insisted, "And you should make a move."

I don't know who she thought I was to go around and just hit on the hottest guy in our school or who she was to even assume that he would be gay, "Parker, I don't think he's gay, he's like the most elite popular jock slash drama geek slash scholar there. And even if he were gay he wouldn't want someone like me. He probably doesn't even know I'm alive." I tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible in school and so I was quiet and average, hiding behind my nondescript clothes and glasses and good grades joining only the speech and debate team and establishing my status as a run-of-the-mill nerd. And really who pays attention to them in high school?

"Well of course he's gay!" Parker insisted, "You said it yourself, he's the most known guy out there. So why doesn't he have a girlfriend?" Her argument was compelling and I so wanted to believe her but I still had my doubts.

I thought about it. I really didn't know anything about him. So it must have been possible, right? But still that wouldn't convince me to go and talk to him. I had a better idea, "Okay lady, he's so gay? Why don't you go coerce him out of the closet like you did to me?"

"I tried, but there's no way to get near him. There's like this barrier of skank hos following him wherever he goes, and do you think they'd allow me to get near their territory?" We let the topic drop and continued bonding until her mom yelled at her to get off the phone and get some homework done, but in the coming weeks we became inseparable.

We spent so much time together that my other friends started to suspect something was up. "Dude," Danny cornered me one day at lunch pulling me aside from everyone else, "What's up with you and that one girl you're around all the time? I mean if you're dating her it's cool and all. We won't judge you for dating a freshman." I didn't really bother with any explanation. Since I didn't latch onto any particular group at the beginning of my high school career, I was adopted into a motley crew of misplaced people with way too much individuality for anyone else. In other words, we were at the bottom of the social ladder and usually hung out in the school parking lot since we could never reach a consensus about what to do after school.

So there I was finishing up my sophomore year gay but closeted, with a best friend who knew every gay guy in America except those within a five hundred mile radius and an outsider clique that thought I was hooking up with a freshman and my only crush was a guy who may or may not be gay and may or may not be able to distinguish me from every other face in our school. Nick Revere after all had to be aiming his watch pretty specifically that day in order to catch my eye. Then again he may have just been being a dick alleviating boredom. I was getting into a rut, and I felt had to do something drastic to change it.

So one balmy night in June, while I was typically tying up the phone line with Parker, I decided to come out to someone else. The one person in my family who I could relate to was my second cousin Amy who was a year younger than me and had come to live with us one summer when her mom was going through some difficulties. She had a pretty hard and abusive childhood, which she would only reveal to me in snapshot moments over the years and it was because of this life experience and her opening up to me that I felt a strong connection and that she would understand. And so I first discovered the joys of three-way calling, and with Parker on the line for silent moral support, I dialed Amy's number.

"Hello," she whispered, not really being allowed on her phone at 11pm.

"Amy, it's Josh," I was nervous about this, but I had come out before to a positive reaction, and my evidence to that was standing by on the line should I need her. "I have to tell you something about myself and I hope it doesn't change how close we are or how you feel about me."

"What is it?" Amy could hear the seriousness and distraction in my voice.

"UmÉ wellÉ I think I'm gay." I put it out there and waited, and for a few moments there was silence.

Amy shrieking, "Oh my God you're gay!" quickly broke that stillness. My breath caught in my throat. This time I wasn't expecting the worst case scenario but it just plopped down into my lap. Amy wasn't done screaming, however. "That so great, Josh! Oh I can't believe you're gay, I have a gay cousin, this is wonderful! Oh you have to tell me all about it. Do you have a boyfriend? How do you know you're gay? Have you been with a boy yet? Are you still a virgin? Oh my God did you use a condom? This is so awesome! You're like a sister to me now! You're basically a girl and we can go shopping and I can give you beauty tips and you can do my hair and I can hook you up with boys even though you're the first gay guy I've ever known!"

I wasn't sure whether or not to be happy about being called a girl, but I wasn't given the chance to protest as when Amy took a break from screaming, Parker started filling in. "O my God I'm so happy you're happy for Josh! Oh hi, by the way I'm Parker, Josh's friend and I'm just here for moral support and I was totally about to yell your head off because at first it sounded like you were mad at Josh for being gay but anyway this is great and he doesn't have a boyfriend yet but he's totally crushing on this guy Nick Revere who goes to our school."

When Parker took a breath, Amy was back to her screaming, "Oh my God I can't believe I wasn't the first person you told, Josh, how could you? You are in so much trouble, but that comes later because I'm so happy for you! And is this Nick Revere as in the Nick Revere who got the lead role in your school musical freshman year and still found time to take home first place in all his track events at state? Oh you two would be the cutest couple have you asked him out yet?"

"No!" Parker loudly responded for me, "And I keep telling him he should!"

"Well let's do it right now!" Amy cried, "It's your lucky night and we should call him right now and find out if he's gay!"

After about half an hour of catching up and convincing, I finally picked up the school directory, which was for some reason handed out to everyone at school and listed everyone's name, address, and phone number, and I shakily looked up Nick Revere's number. He had both a home number and a personal line, so without knowing what I was going to say, I blocked my number in case of caller ID and dialed his fast and hard. Rushing into things seemed to work for me, so I decided to stick with that tactic. But when the ringing stopped, the "hello" that greeted me didn't belong to Nick Revere but to his older brother Aaron who graduated the year before and I recognized having shared a choir class with him. He was a really nice easy-going guy who always had a smile on his face and had nothing bad to say about anyone. I did the only logical thing when faced with that daunting situation. I hung up.

Knowing I faced certain doom if I didn't I immediately redialed Parker and then Amy to get them back on the 3-way call. "What happened?" Amy demanded to know. And so I explained away my anxiety attack. The girls wouldn't let it drop though. They demanded I try again, except this time we scripted what I was going to say and ran through several rehearsal scenarios so I would be prepared for any situation. So I dialed the number again and when Aaron answered I got as far as a responsive "hello" before my voice caught in my throat and I hung up the phone.

So once again I called both the girls back and this time they were going to do all the talking since they didn't trust me to not cock it up. I gave Amy the number and she dialed having no problem putting on a sexy voice when a very irate Aaron answered the phone.

"What?" He didn't seem his usual happy self for some reason.

"Sorry, my phone sucks, is Nick available?" Amy was way too good at this.

Aaron seemed unmoved by what I would come to call Amy's phone sex voice. "Who is this?" he barked.

"This is Angel," she cooed without missing a beat. I don't know why she used a fake name, it's not like he knew who she was after all.

I heard Aaron grumbling something and some footsteps before I heard the voice of an angel.

"Hello?" Even though I had only heard Nick Revere speak a couple times I could recognize his smooth caramel voice anywhere. It's a good thing I wasn't talking because at the moment I was melting into the carpet. Suddenly I had a thought that snapped me back to reality. I knew who Nick Revere was and so did Parker, we had our place in the social order of things and were like peasants compared to him. However Amy didn't know that. To her this was just some guy. She didn't understand who he was and how respected he should be. And what was she going to say to him anyway, "Hey Nick, I was just calling to see if you're gay because I have this guy who's mad crushing on you." We didn't plan this part out

My thoughts were once more interrupted by Amy, "Hey Nick, I was just calling to see if you're gay because I have this guy who's mad crushing on you." Great. Just perfect. That doesn't make me sound like some weird pathetic stalker at all.

For his part, Nick Revere was taken aback , "Um, I'm not gay."

And this was the moment that Parker chose to get defensive for me again, "Well that's too damn bad, since he's really, really hot!"

"Who is this?" Nick Revere seemed genuinely confused. And once again this was my cue to hang up.

I called Parker and Amy back to say goodnight and then jumped into bed. The status quo remained intact and all I had done that night was come out to another person and piss off the guy of my dreams and what would have been my future brother-in-law. To be honest, I didn't even piss them off, at best I severely annoyed them, and for that matter, it wasn't even me doing any of it. I really was pathetic. So then and there as I was falling asleep, I resolved to change myself, get over Nick Revere, and move on. So of course that was the night I first dreamed of Nick Revere.

To be continued