Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:53:26 -0500
From: phantomscorpio77@gmail.com
Subject: In the Shadow of Our Lives: Spirit of the Underdog 1

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In the Shadows of Our Lives -- Prologue - Spirit of the Underdog I


We're told that we all remember times in our lives when we feel painfully
awkward.  For some of us it is on rare occasion, for others it seems to be
a way of life.  Self discovery and the events that precipitate it certainly
add to this feeling.  That's how through a chain of events starting back in
the fall of 1997 I fell in love with a sweetheart by the name of Jon
Farrows.  My name is Daniel Rice, and this is my story.

Grade 9 in a huge school of well over 2000 students was such a big change
for me, coming from Grade 8 in a feeder school of less than 200 students.
I was never a loner, but never popular at school before.  Up until high
school everyone in my class had all known each other for years and
popularity didn't matter.  All of a sudden thrust into a new environment
where image and popularity meant everything I was lost.

When I got my schedule on orientation day I was so upset it.  Only 2 of my
classes paired up with any of the 16 classmates I graduated Grade 8 with.
I knew 2 girls in my math class had and my gym class had one guy from
junior high.

Even though it was a new starting point, it was so unfair!  I was so alone
all of a sudden from the comfort I knew with my small group of classmates
that I had grown up with.  I walked around the school in a daze, in my own
personal pity-party.  I felt so numb that it took me weeks to remember
where friends lockers were, and by the time I did they all seemed to have
made new friends.  I felt left behind.

Like we all manage to, I got used to the change and slowly started to make
new friends too.  When I finally got my head wrapped around things I fell
in with a couple of great guys.  Throughout my time at Parkwood High School
Tim Matthews and Neil Anderson became my choice partners in crime.  By the
end of the first semester I wasn't the scared little kid that came from a
small school anymore.  Instead I was just a normal kid in every way with
normal friends.  Except that I wasn't quite as normal as the other boys.

By this point in my life I have learned about sexuality obviously, but at
the time I never fully put it together that the boner I got over guys like
Matthew Lawerence, or that I drooled over Nick Carter meant that I was gay!
Ain't ignorance and denial great?  It still is hard to write that 3 letter
word about myself.  Now that I am nearing the end of grade 11 I am coming
to terms with it, but only Jon knows for sure.  Houston and my family are
so anti-gay I didn't think I could ever come out there.

In the first few weeks of high school, between the caf, the front lawn and
the tables outside I couldn't find anyone to eat lunch with until the lunch
class was usually almost over.  Like I said, I was in a daze.  So instead I
gave up.  I convinced myself that if I went to the mall that was a block
away from school and ate at the food court there I could forget my
loneliness.  I also convinced myself that everyone else in my grade would
think I was cool because I didn't care and actually went to the mall for
lunch.  I can't really explain other than it made sense to me...you know?
So at first I went over to the food court at the mall for lunch every day.
After a couple weeks it was getting too expensive to buy food there so I
started buying a can of pop and a chocolate bar or a bag of chips.  Soon I
was just all together brown-bagging it on my way to the mall and walking
around once there, losing myself in the mall instead.  There were others I
saw from school that did the same thing but I was way to chicken to
actually approach any of them and maybe make friends.

I wish I could say that it was a momentous day in history like the first
steps on the moon, or that it was the most beautiful day ever on earth but
I'd be lying.  It was really a dull, typical run of the mill day when I met
Jon.  I was in a music store buying a CD for my Mom that she gave me money
to get for her.  Jon was behind the counter.  He didn't actually work
there, not yet anyway.  One of his older sisters worked there and he hung
out with her at lunch to get out of school.  She was busy trying find a
good music channel when I came up to the counter so she forced Jon to ring
through my CD.  He was almost throwing a controlled tantrum that he had to
ring through my sale for her.  I would later learn that he didn't want to
ring me through partly because he was still painfully shy back then, and
mostly because he liked me.

His first words to me were, "Hey, you like Madonna?  That's kinda gay.  My
name's Jon."

I guess that was supposed to be his way of making friends with me.  Feeling
awkward because it challenged my masculinity I offered, "It's for my mom."

Of course that made me feel like even more of a pussy as the words left my
mouth.  I wished I was some big buff guy with armpit hair and facial hair
or at least looked I was older than like 10 so that he wouldn't have had
the nerve to say that to me in the first place.  But instead I looked like
a 10 year old back then.  Even now I still look too young to be in high
school, and am still totally behind most guys in the development stage.

I paid for the CD and Jon tried to count out the change but he was nervous
and kept screwing up.  Finally starting to hand the change to me, he
managed to ask, "Hey, I've seen you in Parkwood haven't I?"

Always the conversationalist, I said, "Yeah."

He got a little forward for me, "So ya wanna walk back there with me?
Lunch is almost over and all?"

He seemed really sure of himself and totally confident to me and it scared
me off.  So of course I made up a story, "I would, but I've got some
friends waiting for me.  I better get going."

After he finally gave me the change I didn't bother to check it or get the
receipt, I just fled back to school.

A few weeks later I passed him in the hall and he said `hi' to me.  I
wanted to be his friend so bad, but was too chicken-shit to even say hi
back to him.  From time to time we kept running into each other and we'd
make eye contact and nod at each other or smile.  Then it became more
common.  Somehow it seemed that he always got to the right spots at the
right time!  So I tried to keep the same routine and would sometimes rush
as I wanted keep our little appointments.  As I became friends with Neil
and Tim who I had all my classes with, they probably thought I was a freak
that I did this, but I never told them why.  I think after the first month
of school Jon and I spent all the rest of grade 9 playing this game.

It was into the tenth grade that I started being friends again with Michael
Edwards from my grade school.  We re-connected in football try-outs that
fall and started making time for each other.  More to the point, I made
time for Michael because he and Jon had become friends the year before.  Up
to this point, Jon was best friends with a guy named Phil Edwards that
lived next door to him, and Michael was Phil's cousin.  When Phil's family
moved some time in the spring of grade 9, Michael and Jon became de-facto
best friends.  So once we had our new routines set up in grade 10 Jon and
resumed our game of seeking each other out in the halls.

To say that it never occurred to me that I liked Jon would be a lie.  But
really, I mostly thought I liked girls and couldn't quite figure out what
the fuck I did this for.  It bothered me enough that I tried to not think
about it.  Of course, the more I tried to not think about it the more I did
think about it.  The mysteries of the mind, huh?  Yeah, it was becoming
apparent to me by the end of the first semester of grade 10 that I am in
fact gay.  Sort of like crystal clear really, and it had become my deepest,
darkest secret.  While I lusted for Jon in private I was so painfully
meticulous to make sure no one ever knew.

Much to my happiness, when the second semester of grade 10 rolled around I
had gym class with Jon.  Loosely knowing each other through Michael, we
became partners in most sports and always during warm-ups.  Little by
little we got comfortable with each other, as we were both playing the feel
each other out game.  I wish one of us had the nerve to come right out and
have asked the other the question, but we were both very careful to not
expose ourselves.  I mean, not like you need to be told because we've all
been there, but the chance of being known as a fag was still fear #1 in my
life at the time.  Jon too, although I still didn't know it yet.  And Jon
and I were individually so careful of not being found out.

So it all started real slow.  I think Jon was the one to first
`accidentally' brush his hand against my crotch while playing a little one
on one basketball one day.  I say I think, because I have so many fantasies
like that that I honestly can't say for sure whether I had done it first to
him or just wished I had.  No matter, little by little we began to explore
each other very cautiously.  It would be things like a pat on the butt for
a good play, shot, or whatever that really was way too close to outright
copping a feel, or a very cautious `accidental' hug that was supposed to be
a tackle when horse-playing.  Of course those hugs sometimes involved a
curious hand in the other's crotch...like oh, oops, didn't mean to touch
you there, sorry...you know?

In the change room I tried my hardest to never steal a look at him, and
sometimes caught him trying to look at me when he thought I wasn't looking.
I really started to think that he might like guys too because of all of
this, but also thought that I might have wanted it to be that way so badly
that I was seeing things that just weren't there.

Then Michael's 15th birthday came around and we had a sleepover at his
house for it.  Jon, myself and Michael's cousin Phil.  When it came time to
go to bed, I said I was going to the bathroom first to change into my
pajama pants.  It struck me as odd, but Jon said "Cool, I'll go change with
Daniel so that Michael and Phil can change by themselves.  And we can get
ready for bed then."

I didn't argue, but was totally nervous.  I don't think aside from the pool
when I had a towel wrapped around me anyhow, that I had ever been fully
naked in front of another guy my age before.  Not even for football.  I
wanted to get naked and do I don't even know what with Jon.  But at the
same time I was all of a sudden so afraid of him seeing me naked.  When we
were in the bathroom Jon striped quickly to his black Hanes boxer briefs
and then started stalling.  For some reason, down to his gitch Jon all of a
sudden became modest.  I was staring at him I guess a little too obviously
while avoiding changing.  Cowering out, I hoped that he would just change
and leave, so I brushed my teeth first.

Jon was blushing when I looked over at him again, and he finally said, "Hey
man, um I kinda don't like changing in front of other guys if that's cool
and all.  Kay?"

Thinking to myself `then why the hell did you come in here with me', I
said, "Sure".

So we faced away from each other both with relief, but both with regret
that we got this far and chickened out.  As we were changing Phil used a
pin in the doorknob and opened the locked door to say "Hurry up homo's."
Phil, to the disappointment of his jab, found that we were both in varying
degrees of nakedness, but facing away from each other.  So he's the one
that got the view of Jon's goods instead of me.  Yeah, I was jealous.

Jon and I then went to Michael's room and got our sleeping bags ready while
Michael and Phil brushed their teeth.  Before Michael and Phil came back
Jon seemed like he wanted to say something.  He was still a tad red in the
face since we were in the bathroom together.  Michael and Phil came back
and we all horsed around for a bit and then settled to watch Letterman.  We
were laughing at the Top Ten when Michael's dad checked in on us and told
us not to make too much noise because he had a meeting the next morning and
needed to sleep.  Michael took this way seriously and turned the T.V. off.
He kept getting mad when we tried to talk.  It killed the guy's night mood,
and we just shut up and soon fell asleep.

There wasn't a lot of room on either side of the bed, so I was on one side,
Jon at the foot of it and Phil on the other side.  Sometime in the middle
of the night I suddenly woke up.  Jon's hands were on my sleeping bag, and
I was pretty sure his fingers had been caressing my foot and his other had
been on my leg.  When he knew he woke me he totally froze.  The room was
too dark to make out his face but I knew it had to be him.

Jon sounded so afraid as he very quietly pleaded with me, "I'm not gay.
Like, really I'm not.  Kay?  Sorry, I'm so sorry.  Just don't tell anyone?
Kay?  Please, please don't tell anyone, I'm sorry.  Kay?"

Like what do you do?  I have a million thoughts as to how I could have done
things different; seductively pull him into a kiss, steady his hand back on
my leg, even tell him I'm gay too.  Anything!  But instead I just pretended
to not hear him.  I rolled over and covered my eyes with my arm, pretending
to fall back asleep while obsessing in my mind how cute I thought his way
of saying `O.K.' was.

[to be continued]