I handed in the French essay that had been taking up so much of my time on Wednesday. I did the usual stuff with all the friends, talked to Dave, talked to Ethan, told Meghan that we needed to have a serious talk about the two of us, and that we were going to have it Friday after the movie. She looked kind of pissed, the way girls look when they're not calling the shots. And school, the rest of it, was still just school.

Some days, in spite of being surrounded by everybody you know, you still feel isolated, and like you're living in a bubble. Wednesday was like that for some reason. All the stuff that was churning around in my head about Meghan, and how I felt about her; and Davey, and how I felt about him; and now Ethan, and the weird things I was thinking about him for gosh sakes. I kept wondering if I was the only guy in my high school who was feeling stuff like this. Common sense told me I wasn't. Common sense told me that in a student mix of more than four hundred teenaged boys there had to be about thirty gay guys, and maybe twice as many guys who are on the fence, wondering if they're going as crazy as I felt I was going. "Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I bisexual? Why do I think I need to put a label on myself?"

The firestorm with the parents seemed to be less intense. It's not like I fuck up on purpose, just to piss them off. I mean I don't get up in the mornings and look in the bathroom mirror and think, "Yeah, Jeremy, today you're going to be a total and complete fuck up. Today you will do everything you possibly can to wreck everyone's good opinions of you, and today you will intentionally destroy all the good will you've managed to store up with everyone, and today you will not open your mouth and say anything that pleases anyone, but everything you say will be wrong."

The 'rents did have one beef with me that I couldn't argue with, and that is my ability to procrastinate over jobs I don't like. So to sort of make up I scrapped and painted the garage doors when I got home, which was one of those jobs Dad was on me about. When he got home from the office he was like, "Well, what have we here? Job well done young man" and he smiled. So I earned points with that one. I wanted to use the boat again for one of the weekends after Easter, and I knew that by then the shit about Palm Sunday would be old news, and if I didn't fuck up too much in between times, and got a few more brownie point jobs done, there was a good chance my plans would become reality. I wanted to get Davey out on the water again, and sleep aboard, and maybe go for a mini-cruise alone with him. If you've ever sailed or power boated, you'll understand. Out on the water, out of touch with the land, it's different; it's like being in a different world sometimes. I wanted David to have that with me.

Thursday was a landmark day for me. The essays were handed back in French, and I got an "A." Not just that, but the teacher wrote "Highly original thinking and well constructed" across the front cover. So that brought my French grade up from a C to a B, which was also one of Dad's major peeves lately. Suddenly French was making more sense to me anyway, and I found myself thinking in French while I was speaking it instead of mentally translating English thoughts into verbal French.

Then when I got home that afternoon, I earned more brownie points by tilling up Mom's garden for her without being reminded again. I felt so great about the French grade, I got sort of energized, and actually straightened up my room. I didn't dust the place, or vacuum, I mean y'gotta set limits or they'll expect that stuff all the time from you, but I did at least get all the stuff off the floor and put away, and all the books and CD's back on the shelves, and generally made the place neater than it was. It was cool, because I found two shirts under the bed that I thought I had left in the locker room or someplace. I also found nearly twenty Dollars in different pants pockets and on the floor.

When I was clearing the dirty laundry away, and carting it to the laundry room, I got a couple of whiffs of cum on my tee shirts that Davey and I had used to wipe ourselves up. The trouser mouse started to swell up, and I had to think fast before Mom caught sight of me with my shorts sticking out!

By the end of the night I had a relatively clean room, clean clothes, all the homework done, I had IM'ed with Katie about the summer again, and IM'ed with a few other friends, and was standing in good with Mom. I had talked to David on the phone, and told him about reek the cum rags made, and he laughed, and said one time his mom had asked him about some interesting stains in some of his underpants, and his dad had been all like, "Lillian, don't ask boys about things like that!" We laughed about that one. David and I made some plans to maybe go out for the weekend of the twentieth. I asked him what he thought about asking Hank and Ethan out with us, and there was this long silence, and I mean longer than usual from him.

"Jer, just you and me, okay? he said.

"Sure man, whatever you want!" I said. I told him about the talk Ethan and I had about the boat, and he still wanted to keep the sleep aboard weekend just the two of us. It took everything I had not to come right out and ask him why, but for once I let my mind control my mouth and I shut up. What was gonna happen would happen, and I decided not to push anymore. I thought I had lost him once and I felt so bad about that, I didn't want to risk it again. What would happen would happen. He would set the pace.

But that night, for the first time, Davey was the only person in my mind when Rosy Palm and her five sisters played on the greasy pole.


On to Chapter Ten

Back to Chapter Eight

Chapter Index

An Albemarle Tale is Copyright © 2007 by The Whitewater Kid
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All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted are fictional with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.

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