I hope this chapter will ease some fears and tie up some burning questions.
This chapter is a doozy! There's a lot of ground to cover so it's an extra-long addition this time. Longest one yet, by far. I hope you enjoy it!
There are still more chapters on the way...and a possibility of a side line extension once this main series comes to a close. Fingers crossed!
*****
Thus, the Serpent was Driven from the Garden
By D. A. Mackey
As a nerd, when you enter a place as complex and hierarchical as the American High School, you naturally take your spot towards the bottom of that hierarchy. The strata become readily apparent on day one, though the criteria of each level may still remain mysterious. By the end of your first week, you unconsciously assume all of the rules and regulations associated with whichever level you found yourself a part of, willingly or not. That may seem cruel at face value, but it was the way of the world I had lived in for the past three and a half years. It was social Darwinism at its most basic level: survival of the fittest. This was simply crucial to your survival in a place where the tiniest mistake could have drastic and far reaching consequences for the wrong type of person. It was also why it was imperative that you know if you WERE the wrong type of person in the first place before you did or said anything.
I hadn't spent much time mourning my lack of social standing or decrying the things that I had missed out on. I didn't lay awake at night and wallow in self-pity or wonder why things were the way they were. I saw the things portrayed on the popular T.V. shows and movies: the parties, games, and friends, and all the drama, laughter, and heartache that came with them. But I didn't pine for them. What would be the point? I was where I was. There was no conceivable way that one single person could change the structure of an entire institution that had operated this way for decades.
And then Daniel happened.
I had started climbing the ladder I had never even considered before. In truth, I didn't climb it; I was pushed up it rung by metaphorical rung. In a blink, I was forced to adjust my view on nearly everything that surrounded me. No longer was my world simply me, my mind, my books, and my futile fantasies about one day showing them all. Things had become intricate beyond my wildest imaginings from the moment Daniel and I had begun our pilgrimage of exploration in the frozen wasteland of Boston on the night of my 18th birthday.
One of those views I found myself suddenly concerned with was the prospect of Prom, now less than a week away. I'd always considered Proms and Formals and Debutante Balls as an outdated, outmoded, and semi-misogynistic spectacle. However, one cannot deny the rite of passage element that the late spring dance possesses.
From my new vantage point and somewhat to my horror, I found myself actually wanting to attend, curious to see what all the fuss was about. I worried that I might miss something if I stayed home like I'd always assumed I would from the day I was placed in the bottom tier of the social order. That I was even entertaining the idea of Prom was off-putting enough for me. Add to that the rising emotions Daniel elicited in me and the possibility of Ian revealing our relationship to the rest of the school,...my teenaged brain was rapidly approaching full capacity.
Thus, I found myself cleaning up the Varsity locker rooms after baseball practice on a late Spring afternoon, my normally ordered and logical mind in a dizzying whirl of contradictions in logic. I could barely concentrate on the equipment as I stored it on the proper shelves, (or what I hoped were the proper shelves.) For once, I paid absolutely no attention to the naked teammates showering just a few feet away. It's truly stunning what your brain can gloss over when your mind is otherwise occupied. Even a bevy of abdominal muscles, pecs, and flopping cocks in all shapes and sizes. The jovial back-and-forth of my teammates barely registered to my ears.
"Should I take Amanda or Katy, do you think?" Gordon slurred, still sounding stoned as usual. I had flashing images of his natural voice being the cause of many troubles with the police in his upcoming college days.
"You asked them both?" Daniel's sultry baritone voice asked. Even in my stupor, his voice always sounded clear as bell.
"I asked Katy; and THEN Amanda asked ME."
"Either way, you're gonna get laid. So just flip a coin, dude. They're both hot," Tall Paul offered his two cents on the matter.
I shook my head in disbelief.
Boys, am I right?
"Take 'em both and have a threesome," Ian joked.
The growls and grunts and teases of approval and mock surprise echoed from the tiled walls. I tried to concentrate on my menial tasks and headed to the exit to grab the final equipment bag, passing the showers on the way.
"David," Ian called to me, stopping me in my tracks Was he going to reveal everything right now? Naked in the showers in front of everyone? My mind began to postulate theories and strategies, various angles of avoidance and denial.
"Why don't you take one of these chicks off Gordon's hands, huh?" he continued, "I mean, with what you got hanging between your legs, either one of them would jump at the offer, gay or not."
The team burst into laughter, Daniel included, though when he looked at me standing in the doorway I could sense his tension, his protective nature ready to spring forward at the smallest indication of my distress. I smiled back at him, silently thanking him for always being my back up plan. Just in case. I readied my response as the words "hung," "huge," "crazy," "insane," and "lucky," bounced around me.
"Aww, but Ian, I was still holding out hope that you would ask me?" I said with mock sadness as I grabbed my crotch through my jeans, pushing it towards him.
That got the response I'd hoped: everyone turned from me and began to hassle and harass Ian instead.
"Oooo, he got you, dude."
I walked on and thanked my lucky stars that wit and intelligence still had power, even in this higher social strata. It was always a game of one-ups-manship. That was a game I could usually play to my advantage, if the medium was brains and not brawn.
It seemed that I could feel Daniel's eyes on my back as I walked past the showers. I imagined his gaze resting on the muscles of my back and ass as it moved silently beneath my jeans. I felt my cock start to grow, pushing down my leg. I played out the fantasy in my mind, a smile unconsciously creeping across my face.
To my surprise, my interactions and budding friendship with the Baseball team soon started to bleed into my daily routine at school as well. I hadn't stood alone against my favorite reading tree in the Annex for weeks. Instead, I was often included in the conversations of the "popular crowd."
True, I still stood on the outer edge of that crowd and only interjected or offered my own voice when asked. But I was there none the less. When I walked to my classes, I found that the other students all stepped aside to let me pass. Their stares and gazes no longer held the edge of contempt or distrust that I had grown so accustomed to. Now, they seemed to possess a bit of something I couldn't quite classify. Respect? I decided it served little purpose to think about it too much and just continued to go about my normal routine, with some slight adjustments.
I still avoided these social interactions whenever they incorporated Amy and her crew of minions. Though I had somehow broken the barrier between Jock and Nerd, that tenuous relationship did not go so far as to grant access to the Jock/Popular Girl world.
"Could you read over this history paper for me?" Ian asked as we sat on one of the benches in the cafeteria during Senior lunch, only two days before Prom. "I know you're, like, a genius or some shit. I really need to do well on this one so I don't have to take summer school."
"Sure," I offered. He was in "regular" U.S. History, so how hard could it be right? "Let me see it."
Ian handed it over and I immediately noted the larger than normal font and extra wide margins. I raised my eyebrows at him.
"What?! It has to be four pages! It's four pages," he offered, picking up on my implicit judgement.
"14 point font, inch-and-a-half margins, and extra wide headers is cheating," I said frankly. "But, let me see what I can do. I'll get this back to you after practice, okay?" I slid his paper into the backpack stashed between my feet just as Daniel and Tall Paul took seats across from us.
"Awesome," Ian said with a smile before tearing into a sandwich that could have easily fed three grown men with the amount of Roast Beef it just barely held in place between too small slices of wheat bread. The sheer amount of food it took to keep up a body like Ian's still flabbergasted me. He never seemed to stop stuffing his face with some form of sustenance. I felt for his parents and their pantry, but Ian drove a Mercedes, so I was less concerned for their wallets.
When I looked up, I saw Dr. Plarston carrying her lunch tray across the room, headed towards the faculty table in the corner near a large, sunny window. She caught my eye and we looked at each other across the crowded lunch room for a moment. Without warning, I felt myself wracked with something that felt suspiciously like guilt.
Her eyes were so...sad. Where she had always looked at me with pride and protective motherliness before, now she seemed almost disappointed and somewhat confused. As if she couldn't quite understand what I was doing where she found me. I was an exotic bird that had flown the coop and taken up residence in the Silverback Gorilla enclosure.
My teachers had always been like surrogate parents for me when I was away from home. They had been my sole friends for years now, my advisors and protectors, my biggest fans and ardent supporters. It killed me to think that I was somehow letting them down.
But why should who I decided to socialize with concern them? True, this crowd of athletes I found myself associated with was far from the norm, especially for me. But I wasn't in distress. I wasn't being mocked or derided. I wasn't being ignored anymore. I was finally being SEEN. Why couldn't she understand that?
I wondered if she felt that I was betraying my true nature. I had wrestled with much the same thing as I lay awake most nights, staring at my ceiling and trying to organize my distracted mind. But I wasn't. I was simply discovering a part of my nature that I hadn't known was there before. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone and isolated. No one does, no matter what bravado and bluster they may muster to the contrary. Not if they are being honest with themselves.
I was growing into a person who enjoyed human interaction, who was comfortable enough with himself to be included in the rest of the world. The quiet nerd who loved to read fantasy novels and poetry was still there. He wasn't gone. He was just finally becoming...happy. That part of me would never disappear. It couldn't. It was, and always will be, integral to who I was and am. But I had come to find that it didn't need to be mutually exclusive from this other, newer piece of me.
"Earth to David? Come in, David?"
I heard Daniel's voice as if from a great distance.
"Hmm?" I mumbled, shaking Dr. Plarston's apparent disappointment from my mind and returning my attention to the man who now sat before me. As usual, it took a few moments for the gentle revelation of Daniel's beauty to fade enough for me to regain my powers of thought and speech.
