Changing Tyler-Chapter Nineteen

I’d run to my locker after our English class, wanting to dump some books in there before encounter Dylan in the cafeteria for lunch. We’d spent a hardly any hours in the gym his dad had set up for him in the basement, and I’d gone overboard on the weights, aggravating the injuries I had from when I was struck by the car the week before, and my back from when I’d fell trying to outrun Doug. I didn’t feel like carting around an extra twenty-five pounds worth of physics, calculus, and English textbooks all afternoon.

I’d opened the locker and was digging into my backpack for the unneeded books, when I heard my name called. Looking up, I saw two boyz staring down at me. They were both large enough to be on the football team, all shoulders and biceps and very little in the way of necks.

They weren’t smiling.

As a matter of fact, I got the distinct impression that they were upset about smth. Their eyes were tiny chips of cold ice, staring at me as if I was a big, unsightly bug about to be swatted by a couple of very large, very hard fists.

“Is it true, Waters?” one of ’em asked me. His hair had been buzzed so close to his skull that I could watch a birthmark on his scalp just above his left ear. I knew that his name was Peter Green, and that this guy had the reputation of being a ball-breaker. From the look on his face, that guy wasn’t in a very pleased place at the moment.

“Is what true?”  I asked, looking from one scowling face to the other.

His friend, some other big guy by the name of Tony Petrino, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pete and didn’t look any friendlier than he did. I was trapped betwixt ’em and the wall of lockers behind me.

“You know what.”

A hysterical giggle bubbled up. 20 Questions, someone? Let me see…is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? bigger than a breadbox? How about Charades? One word, one syllable, rhymes with “hay,” right?

“Are u gay?” Tony growled. It wasn’t as much a question as a statement, and the way that guy spat the word out left no doubt that that guy rated homosexuals on the same scale as the muddy stuff this chab might scrape off the bottom of his shoe. “You hang out with that Billy kid, right? We all know he’s queer.”

“What’s it to you?” I managed to say, even as I weighed my options. I could try to run. I could yell out for aid. I could hyperventilate, pass out and hope I didn’t split my skull open on the metal lockers on my way down to the ground.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed like very viable options. In order to run, I’d have to receive around the twin mountains of flesh that blocked my path. If I yelled, there was a worthwhile chance that I’d attract a crowd. I admit that might have added a certain amount of entertainment value to the incident – but chances were good that I wouldn’t be the one being entertained. That left fainting, but I was already hurting. I didn’t indeed crave to add a concussion to my list of injuries.

One thing was for sure – if they wanted a fight, I was going to go out swinging. Dylan wasn’t the merely one who was tired of hiding. As I stood with the cold metal of the lockers pressing against my back, anything that had happened over the past two weeks came roaring back in a wave of anger, and the 2 powerful crew cuts in front of me wore the faces of everyone who’d ever wronged me. They became Doug, they became Billy, Robbie, and a host of other, nameless people who’d hurt me over the years.

My teeth ground jointly painfully, the muscles in my jaw jumping. I could watch people starting to gather behind Tony and Peter. They reminded me of dogs growing nervous just in advance of a big storm hit. Edgy and uncomfortable, unsure of whether to bark or stay quiet, they shuffled from one foot to the other, exchanging apprehensive glances that were tinged with passion.

If they were looking for a show, they were in luck. I was about to give them one.

My hands balled into constricted fists and slammed into the lockers behind me, the noise echoing in the hallway, making several of the people in the crowd yelp in surprise. “Enough!” I screamed, my whole body bristling. “Yes! I’m gay! Did I say it loud enough for u? Should I take out an ad in the school paper? Maybe you’d rather have the word tattooed on my forehead! I’m also nearsighted, broke my right arm learning to ride a bike when I was six, and I had my tonsils taken out when I was four! Is there everything else you desire to know about me?”

They the one and the other topped me by at least six inches, but I was on my tiptoes screaming in their faces. I get to have looked like my springs had popped – they indeed took a half-step back away from me.

“Leave him alone, Tony!”

It was a girl’s voice, from somewhere in the crowd.

“Yeah! Back off, Pete! He’s not bothering anybody!”

A chap this time. I thought it might have been Frank Hughes of the imagined near-serial killer status from English IV, but I couldn’t be sure.

Suddenly the whole crowd was yelling, heaping insults and warnings alike on the broad shoulders of the 2 football players. To say I was surprised would be putting it mildly – I’d thought that the crowd was there to watch me receive my a-hole kicked. I’d at no time once thought that they might support me.

Just goes to show that you at no time really know what people are going to do until they’re put to the test.

Then a warm body sidled up to me. “You 2 have a problem?” Dylan asked, standing tall beside me. My spine straightened even greater amount than it already was, until I felt as big as Pete and Tony, even if it was merely in my mind.

Neither one spoke. There were a couple of minutes of intensive posturing, like a couple of gorillas feeling the need to display their strength, but then it was over. Tony and Pete grunted smth underneath their breaths, probably half-formed sentences studded with obscenities, and shouldered their way throughout the crowd and away.

All in all, coming out at school had gone much, much better than I’d ever thought it would. It hadn’t happened in quite the way I’d imagined it, but the outcome was more good than I’d have ever hoped.

I was out, and I was still all in one piece. It was almost a miracle.

“Are u okay?” Dylan asked me. His gorgeous blue-green eyes were focused on me, ignoring the crowd that was watching us intently. The other kids were figuring it out now. I saw the pieces of the puzzle coming jointly in their eyes when I cast a quick, sideways glance at ’em. Not solely was I out – so was Dylan, and so were we, as a couple.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“What happened?”

“I type of got cornered. Cat’s out of the bag, Dylan.”

“So I gathered. I heard u yelling at them from downstairs. Remind me never to void urine you off. ready to go to lunch?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The crowd began to break up into smaller fragments, heads close together, whispering among themselves. greater amount than one or two cast looks back at us from over their shoulders. Word would be all over the school in advance of lunch was over.

“Are u sure you’re okay?” Dylan asked again as I finished what I’d originally set out to do and placed my unneeded textbooks into my locker, pushing the metal door closed and snapping the combination lock.

“Yeah, I’m admirable. It was a little hairy for a while, though. I actually thought they were going tear me into little pieces and stuff me into my locker.”

“They’re a pair of prizewinning jerk-offs.”

“Yeah, but they’re big, tough, prizewinning jerk-offs.”

“It looked to me like they were scared of you. you were charming impressive.”

“Me? Nah. I’m all bark and no bite, like Mr. Fisher’s Great Dane – the one out of a tooth in its head. I might have gummed ’em glamorous good, though.”

Dylan laughed, and for a minute I forgot that we weren’t alone. It was just him and me, and I really, truly wanted to kiss him. Luckily, I remembered myself just in time. Losing my phat with Pete and Tony had been one thing – public displays of affection were another. I wasn’t ready for that – not by a lengthy discharged.

Dylan, evidently, didn’t feel the same way.

“Ready for lunch?” I asked instead, after clearing my mouth. “I’m starving.”

“Yup. Me, too,” Dylan said, smiling.

As we walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, past the last of the curious onlookers, Dylan put his arm around my shoulders.

For the second time that day, I was floored when I heard a smattering of applause from the crowd of kids behind us. Even greater amount amazing, I didn’t hear a single shout of “faggots!” or “homos!” or any of the other million derogatory taunts I’d imagined would have been hurled at us had we come out at school.

Maybe there was hope for humanity yet.

Dylan and I didn’t sit alone at lunch that day, or any of the days that followed. Suddenly, we appeared to be surrounded by people all the time, as if the most of the senior class had assigned themselves the position of our personal bodyguards. Tony and Pete didn’t bother me anew – as a matter of fact, they kept their distance, rarely coming within 20 feet of me and not looking in my direction if they did. I wondered if word had gotten back to their trainer about what had happened. Nobody wanted a homosexual bashing on their record this close to graduation.

Word did filter up to the school administration, and I was presented with a pink hall pass in homeroom one day. I had been given an appointment with Ms. Starkey, the school shrink.

I spent the whole morning sweating over it, rehearsing what I would say, imagining her trying to analyze me, trying to get inside my head. By the time one o’clock and my appointment rolled around, I’d worked myself up into a righteous state. There was nothing wrong with me! Being homosexual wasn’t a mental illness! How dare they send me to a shrink?

Again, I’d spent a lot of time and energy worrying over nothing. All she’d asked me was whether I knew about HIV prevention, safe sex, and if I was out to my mama. this babe talked to me for a little during the time that on homophobia, and how to handle uncomfortable situations previous to they got out of control (read: the incident with Tony and Pete had reached her ears), gave me a handful of pamphlets, and the phone number for a GLBT teen group that met once a week at the YMCA in Chester.

I passed Dylan on my way out of the office, and realized that he’d been given an appointment, likewise. “Don’t sweat it,” I mouthed to him as I passed by, adding a reassuring smile.

That was basically the end of it. We were out, free to be proud, accepted by almost all of our peers and ignored by the rest. Things were definitely looking up.