Chapter 2

Side note: Background? I know you’re old and everything and have probably forgotten what love is like and think I’m nuts. Well, maybe I was at first. I hesitate to use the word horny, as it’s vulgar and you wanted us to be sure and go beyond the vernacular. Mom’s preacher friend says that lust is bad; so I won’t use that either. But remember that Romeo and Juliet play by Shakespeare that we had to read? Yeah? Take this: Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; yeah, it was like that. That’s exactly how I felt. Sort of like that cigar stink I noticed around you when I saw you at the park over Labor Day.

You may not know that I’m a year younger than all the other students in my class, because I skipped second grade. This in the long run has not been helpful because it always made me be the smallest, weakest, and generally all around most immature kid in class. See, I have a reason after all. Who knew? It also dropped my grade level from A-pluses to A-minuses. But what this has to do with this essay is this; Jamison is eighteen. I’m seventeen. That means if you believe this paper is true, he could go to jail. So I’ll put this disclaimer in right now; this is fiction. Fiction

Three days after he sat next to me, Friday night, we were at his house. Nobody else was home. He was showing me his bedroom. He wanted me to see his posters…they’re like antiques that his father kept from back in the day. They glow under black light and so, he turned off the lights and turned on the black light and they glew, or glowed, whatever. And then he took my face in his hands, and I learned how to French kiss. A short time later, I learned what one way to have gay sex is. I didn’t learn how to put a condom on because I didn’t need one, but he did, so he did. As they say on the internet; OMFG. I didn’t know if I was more scared or delighted. Either way, I was so in love with him, so high on Shakespeare’s fumes if you will, that I would have been willing to walk barefoot through a fresh lava field if he’d wanted to, or like Pele, to prove my love for him by making love right there on the edge of Haleakala’s most active vent.

Like you said, details. One of the posters was of this dude Elvis Presley and another was of magic mushrooms, whatever they are (hey, you’re old like that, maybe you know), and there were others that were only big swirls of color. I think one was of a stoned Mickey Mouse. There was a lot of orange and some green and flowers. What was that all about? But I digress.

The next day my gut started to hurt. I didn’t worry about it much; I was too happy and we had a date for Sunday afternoon. I ended up not going and stood him up. I didn’t mean to, but by Sunday morning I was in agony—and flat out terrified that something inside me had been torn or broken. There was no way I was going to tell my parents how something like that might have happened. I spent all day and night Saturday searching the internet and frankly, scaring the crap out of myself, finding things out that I never knew could go wrong…again…OMFG. I was sure I had an aneurysm or colitis or cancer. Maybe a blocked bowel or trichinosis. What if the condom had come…never mind. By daylight I was flat out terrified and was pretty sure that I was going to die, but at least I had come up with a plan. A plan that did not include either my parents or my pediatrician, who is a woman. Actually, our family doctor is Mrs. Mayfair, the principal’s wife. No effing way. Oh, sorry. You know what effing stands for, right? Maybe it was after your time or something. You can ask me later if you want to.

After my parents left for church, I went into Mom’s closet where she hides her mad money and took it all. I think it was around seventy-five dollars. She keeps it in an old high heeled shoe in the very bottom row of her shoe boxes. I already knew about it because six months ago when I tried it on, no wait, it must have been for Halloween, yeah that’s it, and if you want your darn details than yes, yes I could walk in them. All right? Happy now?

Anyhow I pulled out the money and got my jacket and then I walked, well, limped, into town to the local urgent care, the one next to the drugstore. I’d never been there before so I didn’t know anyone, and they didn’t know me. I told the receptionist I was eighteen and was going to pay in cash. She raised one eyebrow and gave me a dozen forms to fill out. I fictionalized all of them, including my name. I think I wrote down I was Mickey Presley or something.