Tommy shared my gloom. We decided to make the most of what little time there was left for us to spend our after-school hours together. Even though there were still weeks left before the summer vacation began, my mood turned sour and went downhill from there. It would never be possible to have the same friendship once we spent a year apart. We were going to grow apart.

Once more my Florida summer helped to put distance between me and the difficulty that had returned to my life. I was able to keep my mind off of what was coming as my days were filled with activities, other kids, and a way of life that was far more relaxed than where I came from.

Seeing Avery and Joe was nice. We talked about waterskiing all the way to New Orleans and back as a way to raise money for charity. One of us would have to be up on the skis at all times. It was maybe 200 miles by water and at 30 mph, it would take one day. We never did it but we were 14 and the bigger the idea the better. We spent the summer exploring the islands in the bay and pretending we were pirates from past local history.

Nothing could hold back time, and Florida time went way faster than Maryland time. Avery was there to wish me well and send me on my way back home.

My voice was changing and I was growing bigger and stronger. Hair was growing in places where hair had never grown before. I had begun to shave irregularly but the fuzzy made for pimples and shaving helped. Life was changing.

Benjamin Stoddard was impressive. It was built on one of my roaming trails in the forest next to the stream I once waded in. I never saw a brick put in place or visited the school under construction, because I spent all available time with Tommy. It had grown up there without my ever knowing it was being built. I did not associate with anyone I knew from my neighborhood, so word came to me through the teachers I'd leave behind.

I was back to being angry most of the time. I decided to renounce my body and athletics were off the table. I'd focus my entire effort into getting straight A's. My life would be about my books and writing. I'd take gym as required but I wouldn't make any effort to expand upon what Mr. Q taught me.

Of course this would be a lofty goal to reach considering the C's and D's that marked my report card in 7th grade. I'd been on the Honor Roll the last two quarters of 8th grade and I wanted to do my best to maintaining the streak as a way to occupy my mind. I knew what the Honor Roll was now and that was my goal.

I continued to write and my hand writing was improving, because I wrote more often. The first story I handed in for credit in 9th grade English got a B.

"You are a good story teller but you can't spell and you don't know a sentence from a clause. Your hand writing needs improving," the teacher explained.

It was the pattern that discouraged me throughout the rest of my years in school. 'You tell a good story but no one will ever be able to read them. Your spelling is terrible.'

I could memorize our spelling lists and get a perfect score, but remembering them for writing didn't equate. Many times my brain froze up on easy words that I knew but was unable to recall as I wrote. Gone were the days of being celebrated by my class for getting them out of an hour of studying. My English teacher never asked me to read anything.

I still got an A in CORE, but the teacher didn't like me. I became known as The Brain from the kids who had been with me in Mr. Warnock's class. I remember how that class had started and how pathetic I was with everyone laughing at me. I'd been the clown most of my school career, deflecting the stupidity label with antics that mystified teachers and students alike. What a difference a year can make.

While I renounced my body, I couldn't lose the rage. It was worse than ever and not as far from the surface. One day in the hall one of the school bullies, six foot forever and two hundred pounds, began pushing a kid I happened to like. Louis was small and no contest for the bully. I was no contest for the bully. I dropped my books and launched my body into the bullies at precisely the proper angle and at full speed.

I knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding twenty feet down the hall. This was never thought out. I just went off, hating to see anyone pushed. In a typical rage I'd have gone after him, landed on top of him, and I'd black out, only regaining my senses when we were pulled apart.

This turned out to be the final time I went out of control and It was somewhat muted, but I felt the rage boiling inside me and had he done anything different, I can't say what I'd have done.

After pushing him from behind, I ran to where he came to rest. Standing over him, I pushed my finger into his face, "You touch him again I'll kill you."

He cried foul, asking his buddy to intercede on his behalf. His buddy replied, "You started it."

The Brain had erupted in the hall, going back to my roots. All the old hoods I'd associated with were back in my corner, forgiving me my display of intelligence. They knew The Brain deal had to be some kind of mistake, because I'd always been dumb as a post.

The object of my rage became peaceful around me. He acted as if we'd never clashed at all. It worked for me. We weren't going to break out in spontaneous smiles, but I was never intentionally looking for trouble.

Louis, who was in several of my classes, looked at me out of the corner of his eye from then on. I may have been defending his honor, but he wasn't coming near me. Such is the cost of going off like you might be crazy.

School was school and I'd never enjoyed going to school again and I spent a lot of time not going. My parents were different people and while we talked no more than we ever did, it was easier. Thinking of what I'd lost and was no longer a part of didn't cross my mind much. This was another world and it was the one I was in. Wishing and dreaming had never gotten me far.

My first report card showed some results with 5 A's and a B. My Honor Roll run continued and my brain worked without my mentors being there to motivate me or orchestrate ways to challenge me.

It wasn't easy to force myself to study so much but the idea of straight A's became an obsession that seemed within reach, since the B came in Geography. With the previous year's exposure to current events, I could name all the countries, their capitols, major exports, and locate them on a blank map of the world, the one in my bedroom over my bed in fact. I knew the world upside down and backwards and sooner or later she had to give me the A.

Again the CORE teacher complained about my poor mechanics in English and yet continued giving me A's. She was the geography teacher and even though I could teach the class, she continued giving me B's, which was a source of frustration. Why was she giving me the A in CORE and not in Geography?

While retrieving a notebook to write in from the cabinet downstairs, I ran across a typing book my mother used a few years before to advance in her job. I opened the closet in the living room where I found the Underwood Typewriter she'd used. It was just keys and a carriage and you could see all the gears and mechanics of the thing, but it typed fine, except the 'e' was cockeyed and always appeared a little off kilter. It seemed fitting.

My new objective was to overcome my poor penmanship with typed copies of everything I handed in. By the end of the second quarter all my papers were typed neatly. It made my papers easier to read without doing a thing for my spelling.

"Who typed this?" my CORE teacher inquired.

"I did," I said proudly, seeing the doubt in her face.

"Where did you learn to type?" she asked, still not convinced.

"I taught myself out of my mother's typing text book. You said my handwriting needed work. I thought you'd appreciate receiving them typed."

"You taught yourself to type because I criticized your handwriting?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, as she looked at me, looked at the paper, and shook her head.

"You still don't know a clause from a sentence. What you need is a dictionary."

Mr. Warnock would have been announcing my typing skills on the loud speaker system at school. What a feat for me to teach myself to type. Mr. Q might have forced all the boys to learn to type. Mrs. Mazda simply shook her head looking at me like she wasn't sure I wasn't from outer space.

It was toughen up time at Stoddard. I could stand on my head and spit wooden nickels and I'd get called down for littering if anyone noticed at all. It was worse than I calculated it might be. Going from stardom to a zero was a long fall, after always being a zero before.

I didn't teach myself to type for her. I did it for me and she wasn't able to shake my feeling of pride at having done it. I suppose I was a bit obnoxious and no one likes a smart ass. I did things because I decided it was what I wanted to do. I bet she couldn't type.

No matter what I did, each report card was a mirror image of the last, 5 A's and 1 B.

I studied the geography textbook for any information that might have slipped by me to enhance my knowledge of the world. I neatly typed all my papers and even practiced writing better for in-class assignments. My grades on the pop quizzes in geography were almost all 90 or 95 on the 20 question quizzes in the final quarter of school. This time she couldn't possibly justify a B in Geography. I was confident I'd finally get straight A's.

And she didn't; I got the same 5A's and B to end the year, but she gave me an A in Geography and a B in CORE, then she averaged out my CORE grade to a B and my Geography grade to an A for the year.

I was madder than a hornet. She knew how hard I'd worked for straight A's and she toyed with me in the end, denying me the only thing I'd set out to do that school year. School was a fraud and I wasn't going to play again. It didn't matter how hard you worked. The teacher held all the cards and I would never invest that kind of energy into achieving anything else in school.

I had to be there and I would be, most of the time but all bets were off. I'd started the school year angry and I ended the 9th grade even angrier, and my report card wasn't the worst of it. The betrayals continued both in school and out.

How could life be so good and go so completely bad so fast?

My parents announced we were buying a house. My input wasn't sought but I lobbied for the one a couple of miles from the high school that was a few hundred yards from the junior high where I'd learned about succeeding.

My parents picked out a house in another school district, which meant I wouldn't be returning to the high school near my old junior high. This put me in a tailspin that had me doing something I wouldn't normally do.

One day after leaving the house, with my father driving me to Stoddard, where they agreed to let me finish the school year, I made my pitch.

"I've worked all year keeping my grades up," I said, floating out the bait to be considered.

"Yes, and your mother and I are proud of you," Dad said.

"I wanted to get my grades up so I could run track at the high school. The high school I'll be going to doesn't have a track team," I argued, not knowing for sure, but it was the best I could do.

My father didn't respond. This was predictable and I knew better than to push the issue. Like any good fisherman, you cast out your bait and you wait. He heard me and he knew what I wanted. This would not be something he'd answer without consulting my mother first. Rules were everything at my house.

Stoddard represented nothing to me. It was a building where I went to school. There was no attachment or connection once I walked out the door. I never returned there. In fact I probably figured that it was built in order to deny me access to the people I depended upon. I had no illusions about what life was. I had no great hope my request would be seriously considered.

While I'd brought a lot more skills with me to 9th grade, it didn't account for much. No one encouraged me, except Mr. Rush, my gym teacher, who advised me to find a gymnastic program to get involved with. This being my year off from athletics, I thanked him and never looked into it. He was an okay guy but I'd made a vow to avoid using my body to make me feel better.

My attempt at getting straight A's was met with resistance by a teacher who viewed me with suspicion. How could I be so smart and yet be so stupid. Spelling and the mechanics involved in writing well were absent my brain. She found it difficult to say anything nice without adding her critical caveat. No, I wasn't as smart as she, but I was in the 9th grade, she was teaching it. Encouraging students should be part of the curriculum. Maybe a few tips about spelling would have been nice.

9th grade was done and when I went off to Florida I had no idea where I would go to school the following year. I'd put my bid in to return to Suitland for senior high school, but I was supposed to go to Surratesville. Nothing had been said since I'd made my pitch to my father and I wasn't going to ruin my trip to Florida by worrying about returning to the people who meant so much to me.

Florida was a trip. My Aunt and Uncle had moved there, bringing a 35-foot fishing boat through the Panama Canal and up to Fort Walton Beach, where I would caulk its decks each morning before the heat of the day. One week we went to Houston to bring back two brand new diesel engines to replace the worn out pair that got it to Florida.

I got to SCUBA dive off the side of the boat, checking the hull for barnacles and scrapping some. With the girls from across the street from my grandparents and my two female cousins swimming close by on some days, I'd leave my post under the boat and swim up under one of them and grab them from below. It worked great the first few times but the surprise attacks weren't a surprise after a while. I was 15 and having a good time.

Joe had a new T-bird for his birthday and I got to go with him a few times, but he was far too busy to do a lot of boating and water skiing. Avery and I hung around when I wasn't working. It was easy to see he was maturing, growing, and sharper than ever. I think I had an attraction to him that summer. I'd had an attraction to a boy at Stoddard and he preoccupied me for a time.

I knew what attraction led to but I had no desire to go there. That would require way more trust than I was capable of finding. Life was far too fluid for me to become attached to another boy in some kind of sexual bonding that I might not be able to control. No, I admired Avery and that was fine. I didn't need any more than that from him.

With Avery's parents going north before summer's end they offered to drop me off at my house. It would be the last time Avery and I were to see each other but we didn't know it then. We shook hands and my summer friends were no more. Life was in flux again.

I was a little early getting back home this year and spent some time writing and getting better acquainted with my new neighborhood. When we moved in there was only one other house with people in it on our block, but slowly they were being filled and new houses were being built on the next block and the block after that. There were entire new wildernesses to explore.

One morning while sitting at the breakfast table reading the Wheaties box, my father shocked me to attention. It came like a bolt from the blue.

"I talked to your mother about what you asked me before you went to your grandparents. She agrees that you should be able to run track if you want. We've talked to Aunt Regina and she'll let us use her address so you can go to Suitland, but I'll have to leave you off at six each morning and I won't be able to pick you up until six in the evening. It'll be a long day for you."

"Yes," I said, almost spilling my cereal.

"You sure this is what you want?"

"Yes, sir," I said elated.

It was everything I wanted and more. I'd be dropped at Aunt Regina's at six each morning and I'd walk the two blocks to Tommy's house in time to walk him to school. After school I'd get to stay at Tommy's until six every evening. It had everything.

My parents weren't people who skirted rules for any reason and the rules said I should go to the school nearest my house. Instead I'd go to a school eight miles away and I didn't care a bit what rules had to be broken to do it.

I called Tommy that morning and told him what was going to happen. We'd both been in a funk about my departure and then the idea that we'd no longer be attending the same school, but he was as happy as I was about this turn of events. He was still my friend and we picked up right where we'd left off.

The first day I got to try out my new schedule, I raced down the hill to Tommy's to meet him, and we were immediately on our way to the junior high school. Our first stop was Mr. Warnock's room; he was just setting his briefcase down when we arrived.

"Ah, Charles, you survived your exile from us? It wasn't so bad, now was it?"

"Yes, it was. I missed being here," I said, coming as close to saying I missed you as I could.

He heard what I said and he looked at me carefully.

"Did you keep your grades up, Charles?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, and Thomas how are you this fine day."

"I'm fine," Tommy said, always seeming like he was.

Reconnecting with Mr. Warnock made my life easier. I wasn't in his class anymore but knowing he was there for me helped. We'd meet outside of school by accident a few times and it was always cordial and one afternoon in my senior year of school we met at the open house at Andrews AFB and spent some time exploring the exhibits together. I never lost the feeling that this man had rescued me from a life that might have been far less agreeable had I not passed through his class.

My second stop was at the gym and I stopped in the doorway of Mr. Q's office. As soon as he saw me he stood, beaming, and he came to shake my hand.

"Charles, how nice to see you. How are you?"

"Fine, now," I said, recognizing the man who set my new life in motion three years before.

The same was true of Mr. Q, whenever we met; it was instant cause for being friendly, warm, delighted. He genuinely cared about me and from time to time during my years on the high school track team, I'd see him standing down on the junior high school side of the fence, watching me run or practice. By the time I could break away, he would be gone, but it still made me smile.

I had achieved what I set out to do, and I was happy to be back near my friends. I didn't care where I went to school, but I needed to be near the people who proved they were my friends.

Tommy and I spent more time together than ever. We roamed, talked, and enjoyed all the things we'd enjoyed before. I was another brother again, except when Gary got tired of my face, but mostly I was another guy to play softball or football with. It was good to come home and see nothing had changed after a year.

High School was no big deal. Mostly I fell back on what I'd learned in 8th and 9th grade. There were no mentors in senior high and my stories received the same treatment as in 9th grade. Only Mr. Warnock appreciated the genius of an illiterate kid's thinking he could write when he could hardly read and still couldn't spell.

I've often wondered what could have happened had I been encouraged in 9th grade. I could have taken Journalism in high school and I'd probably have learned enough to make me want to go to college and study literature and creative writing. Instead I avoided studying as much as possible. I was never going to be able to learn the mechanics of English at this late date, and spelling was the bane of my existence. What I needed was a machine that could check my spelling, but who had ever heard of such a thing?

My life was about my friendship with Tommy and the occasional visit to the junior high school. On bad days I'd go see Mr. Warnock, and at times I sat in on one of his classes late in the day. It was my safe haven.

Mr. Q was a bit more problematic. I'd made him a promise and as much as I respected him I wasn't sure I would go out for track. I knew he had forced the promise out of me, using his adult authority to get what he wanted, but what I didn't know was why this was important to him.

What if I didn't go out for track? Would he think less of me, smile less, act less happy to see me? There was another consideration besides not wanting to give up my time with Tommy. My parents went against their usual way of doing things to make sure I had the opportunity to go out for track. What would be the response when I didn't go out for track?

I didn't dare lie to them about anything that significant and yet, my desire to honor my promise to Mr. Q was the fly in the ointment. Why had I promised him? Why hadn't I told my parents I'd get better grades at Suitland? It was my grades that had them agreeing to send me to Suitland in the first place, but I didn't care about grades any longer.

Life is never easy. Mr. Q never mentioned the promise again. He expected me to do as I said I'd do. I could do what I wanted but the fallout might blow up my life.

For this reason I wouldn't make up my mind what to do until the call came for, "anyone interested in joining the track team, report to the gym after final period today."


Send Rick an email at quillswritersrealm@yahoo.com

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"Gay Boy Running" Copyright © 1 April 2010 OLYMPIA50. All rights reserved.
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