known to have multiple liaisons with men. Most of his time was spent fighting in the Crusades or leading battles over land in what is now France. He was the archetype of the medieval warrior king—noble and fierce—and he was known as the Lionheart because of his legendary courage.”
Take that, Ted, I was thinking. But as usual, he made a bad joke out of it. “Maybe he spent all that time fighting in battles ’cause he liked hanging out with the guys!”
Ted Tanner. Boy genius. More like AOB. Or, for anyone who doesn’t know IM lingo, Abuse Of Bandwidth. But I’m not supposed to be using that in here. In my incarceration. Another demerit, then.
After that I sometimes heard kids talk about Will and speculate, but no one—not even Ted—had the guts to say anything to him directly about it, and all of a sudden lots of girls were interested in him. Then the talk of him being gay dropped, ’cause he started spending time with these girls. So I figured he hadn’t really noticed me the way I’d hoped. But I also decided he was a terrific guy; he’d drawn the fire that day in class and had carved Ted up with one proverbial hand tied behind him.
Then one day in early November, right before a big exam in World History, I was on my way out of study hall when suddenly Will was walking next to me.
“Big test coming up. You ready for it?”
It seemed like more than a casual question, so I looked at his face. There was definitely something more there. I said, “Not sure. You?”
“Might help to study with someone. Might help both of us.” He waited.
“I suppose it might. Got something in mind?”
He came over to my house after dinner that night, and we went up to my room after I’d introduced him to my parents. They were all for studying, and they had no reason to think Will and I were all for anything other than studying.
We did study, actually. A little. Eventually. I’d never really made out with a girl before. Will, it seemed, had probably made out with lots of people. That night, for the first time, I made out with a boy. And unlike my old friend Jim, Will liked my hand on him.
And man, I wanted my hand on him. But I wasn’t gonna do anything right away, even if I’d had a real clue what to do. For one thing, I thought Will was a pretty special guy, and if he wasn’t gay, then I didn’t want to blow things the way I had with Jim. So I just walked into the room and started toward my desk. He came in behind me. And he shut the door.
I heard the click and turned, and he was just standing there with his hand still on the knob, looking at me, his head tilted a little like he was asking a question he already knew the answer to. I set down the notebook I’d just picked up, and I guess that was enough of a sign for him. He stepped right over to me, stopping when there was about an inch between us, and put his hands on my shoulders.
My arms went around him so fast, and so without any thought, that it was like some puppet master had yanked on them. It was everything I could do not to wrap my legs around him as well. There was this invisible cord pulling us together. Pulling on our mouths. Pulling on our hearts. Pulling on our…well, let’s just say we had matching lumps in our pants.
His hands came up to my face, his tongue went into my mouth, and when he started rubbing his lumpy pants crotch against mine, my knees went out from under me. He followed me to the floor, laughing softly, and then he was in my mouth again.
In romantic scenes you see, like in the movies, they often show the lovers taking each others’ clothes off, like that’s supposed to be making things more fun. But—hell, I didn’t want fun. And neither did Will. We took the short route and each unfastened our own jeans as quickly as we could. I don’t know if it comes from being a teenager, or being gay, or being a gay teenager, but I didn’t have time for a sexual tease. I just wanted sex. And, in particular, sex with Will.
Somehow he managed to reach for the box of tissues on my desk, and we needed them almost immediately. I came in his hand, and he came in mine.
I wish I could describe, better than I can, how I felt after that. All I can say is, there was some voice in the back of my head trying to tell me how evil I was, how much I was hurting my immortal soul and Will’s. It was trying to sneak in there with Bible verses about homosexuals not being able to enter the Kingdom of God. Or about how the law was made because of immoral people, like homosexuals and others who behave in ways contrary to nature. Or verses that put men lying with men in the same category as having sex with animals, or committing adultery, or sacrificing your children. But I could barely hear that voice, try as it might to break through, because of the one that was screaming, “Yes! Oh God oh God oh God. Yes!”
I think if the verses had been right, and some bolt of lightning had come down at that moment and killed both of us, the hell we’d have been sent to wouldn’t have been worse than living a life in which what we had just felt was wrong.
We lay there breathless for a few minutes, and my eyes were still closed when I felt Will sit up. At first I was sad; I didn’t want this to be over. When I opened my eyes he was only half sitting, leaning on an elbow, smiling at me.
He said, “You were a virgin, weren’t you?”
I could have lied, I suppose. I mean, on the one hand, that term can imply virtue, and strictly speaking it means that a girl is still intact, if you know what I mean. On the other, when you’re called a virgin, it can make you feel ignorant and maybe even undesirable; and girl or not, nobody had just been inside me. But there was nothing of any of that in Will’s voice. Just affection. So I grinned and nodded. And he kissed me. Softly this time. So, so sweet. And then more intensely. And then…Oh thanks be to God, it wasn’t over.
I could probably have stayed there for hours with him, just lying on the floor, taking turns massaging each other into ecstasies. But that night we limited ourselves to two ecstasies each.
Afterward, sitting up and leaning against the bed, and holding hands, I asked, “When did you first notice me?”
He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and grinned. “You kept staring at me in church one day last summer.”
I’m sure I blushed. “How did you know? You were closer to the front.”
“I knew.” The tone of his voice made it seem like it was something that was meant to be. Like fate.
Whether he intended that or not, I didn’t question him. I changed the subject to something related. “I loved it that day you put Ted Tanner in his place.”
“Ted? What did I do to Ted?”
“He laughed when you said Richard the Lionheart was gay. And you—”
“Ah, yes. Ted. WAI.” He turned his head and looked at me.
I knew this was a kind of test: did I know IM lingo as well as he did? I knew enough to respond to that. I said, “Yeah. What An Idiot. That’s for sure. PONA.” This was my test. Did he know this one? It means Person Of No Account.
Will laughed. “No account at all.”
Yes! This was going to be an amazing year. “How come you know so much about history?”
“It’s always been really interesting to me. I like seeing how little people have changed. You can go back one year, fifty, seven hundred—and people have the same reasons why they do things. It’s true the ways they go about getting what they want can change, and maybe society at one point in history makes us believe something is important that another society doesn’t even believe in, but people are predictable. It’s what’s underneath that’s interesting. The why. What drives us.”
He sat up a little. “You know what I’d really love to do? After college? Maybe after grad school, too. I want to write. I’m going to write historical fiction, about us. About guys like us, anyway. One book might be what it was like for Richard to be gay in twelfth-century England. Another could be about a gay man’s life in ancient Egypt. Or during the French Revolution. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
His