If you understand anything about rural life, you realize that acceptance is a combination of being from a long-standing family, willing to be a part of that history, and, regardless of your actual likes, being seen as the result of a combination of knowing your place, accepting and being just another "country cousin," fitting in and having little or no ambition to escape it. Being gay means you have a natural aversion to being noticed, standing out, or making waves. To do so pretty much lands you in the lasting category of being a "pervert," and holding claim to "queer" and any number of childish insults and insinuations. My life was no different, being part of the actual fabric of the community since the 1830's, and also belonging to a family which I jokingly said "Came to America following a Hooker, meaning Reverend Thomas Hooker, of England, whose colonial Pilgrim settlers lived in Hartford, Connecticut. My family endured the Hartford Witch trials, had one member convicted in the legal courts as a witch, who was later buried in unhallowed ground, and staked with a piece of wood, which later grew into a tree, a fact only verifying her guil and proving it later when the tree was struck by lightning in the 1970's.
My own branch of the family moved to Indiana, sometime in the 1840's or earlier, after being members in the Revolutionary War, and taking Native wives, just adding to their self-distancing from the norm. Like all my family, I grew up on a farm, with all my early friends being pets and farm animals, as actual people lived more than a mile off. This fact led to my not really having much interest in talking, much to the dismay of my parents, who actually believed I was slow, initially, despite the fact I taught myself to read before Kindergarten, and using full sentences on there rare occasion when I actually had something to say. My feeling like a total idiot was only supported by the fact when our IQ tests were given out, mine was retained, and so, on being called to the office, my Mom was there to take me home for the remainder of the day. On the way home I had to ask the inevitable question if I had done badly on the testing, to which my Mother laughed, said that I had done so well, they did not wish me to brag about it. However, the damage was already done, just another evidence of my feeling different, and outside of the norm! Since that time, so long ago, have had neither desire to discuss nor find much value in my intellect. Chances are, this mistrust of my notably prodigious brain led me to find my friends in school among the less scholarly, as my first actual crush was the boy, Randy, who had more than a few difficulties in schoolwork, but was probably the most athletically gifted boy in my class. We nearly always sat near each other, as our initials were the same, and many teachers placed our seats alphabetically. More often than not, Randy was usually leaning over to me for answers, or to explain things. In Physical Ed, while he was usually picked first for dodgeball, baseball, or other sports, he always made sure I was on his team. This closeness, and the lack of showers in those early classes, brought me in direct notice of another fact about Randy, his musky boy odor was extremely both pleasing, and familiar to me. More than once, I found myself, alone with Randy, not talking, but sitting a bit too close, touching either at the shoulder or knee, and just spending some time touching, talking about stupid stuff, or with Randy winding up unbuttoning my shirt, something I should have found disturbing, due to my shyness, but instead was drawn to and fascinated by.
"You always button your shirt all the way up?" Randy asked, as he undid the top three buttons of my shirt.
"You always have your shirt off." to which he took his off, thumbing his nipple as he dropped the shirt on his lap. we looked at each other and laughed.
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Randy picked up his shirt and threw it at me. "Ya Queer, stop lookin at me!"
" Who's a queer, you undo my shirt all the time!" I picked up his shirt and felt it. could smell his scent on it.
"If I was a queer I'd undo your pants, too, fucker!" he grabbed his shirt out of my lap, and came close to touching me. I did not move away. Randy's hand lingered a moment, and he rested it on my leg, touching my skin at the bottom of my shorts. At that moment, the bell rang, and we went back in to class, Randy snickered at my obvious hard-on.
In summer, the norm was to be outside, climbing trees, riding bikes or my favorite, when I was not reading, hiking in the woods. By the time I was fifteen, I had found a secret hideaway, maybe three miles from my home, which was totally isolated in the woods, it had a wide, fast-moving stream maybe ten feet wide and four feet deep, with a huge crescent sandbar on a bend, shaded by the trees, but also half exposed to the sun in a deep ravine, wider than a football field. At the far end of the sandbar, an old rusty fence separated the stream, which grew smaller into a creek, with a field that contained the remains of a barn, that opened onto the edge of the creek, and had the stone foundation of an old, burned-down farm house, at the end of which was a fireplace with a spring-fed cooling area near the stairs leading into the stone foundation. I took some time to dismantle the end of the dilapidated barn, and put up a makeshift timber frame roof over the old foundation, took me most of the summer to get it cozy and private, roofed it with tin from a shed, and had a substantially weatherproof shelter with windows, a fireplace, a small refrigerated area fed by a cool flow of water into what used to be a basement spring house. The whole thing resembled a short Hobbit-style house, with half of the building below ground, and a windowed end which could be raised up to allow entry, or closed to let in light in winter.
Spent most of the entire summer there after building it, never even realized that my disappearances were seldom noticed for up to 1-3 days at a time. From time to time, I created furniture at home, stealing designs from books or making them up, and even spent a few days there in winter, after saving up some firewood in warm weather. Closed it up, as best I could, for the winter, and in spring returned to find it mostly intact, needing just a few repairs.
After school started up, the transition from Grade School to Middle School went well, aside from PE, where required showers and the locker room, which placed you in an entirely new world of nudity and sneaked glances at other boys. Once again, I was usually placed near Randy, and we got to see each other naked three days a week. and this made things a bit more comfortable, except for the day I was standing near my locker, and overheard guys laughing and remaking on Randy's "boner" sporting itself in the showers. I skipped the shower that day, due to feeling that the same might happen to me. I had begun to drive to school, and saw Randy out waiting on the sidewalk, shirtless, after school, so I offered him a ride home and carefully avoided the discussion of the incident.
" I forgot my towel today, was Randy's only remark about it. " he sat in the car, still shirtless looking down.
" You want me to shower next to you?" I seen you hard before." I stammered out
" When?' Randy looked at me sideways.
"On your bike, boner boy, you had no fucking underwear on when we were talking." I laughed.
"Seen you hard more than you seen me." Randy put the shirt between us.
Not sure exactly what made me do it, but i picked up the shirt and put it up to my face, took a deep breath.
"Perve!" we both laughed, and Randy reached over and undid all my shirt buttons, and pinched my nipple.