This is a work of fiction. All characters are 18+.
***
I am quite sure that I don't remember the past entirely accurately. There is much that I have forgotten, and there is much that I have unknowingly revised. Most of all, I know that my memory of what I was feeling at the time has faded. And I'm glad for that - it was difficult growing up in a very religious household, and I can only imagine what my life would be like now if I could recall the feelings of just not being considered a good person then, now, with the same intensity as I had experienced them in my teen years.
There is one feeling that I had in the summer of 1981 that I wish I could feel with the same intensity as I did then. I hope these words do justice to the moment.
***
I grew up in a semi-rural conservative town outside Richmond, Virginia. My father had a government job and was a deacon at the church, and my mother worked various retail jobs. While there wasn't a lot of money for things beyond the necessities, my sister Kate and I were fortunate enough to be able to use any money that we earned with own own jobs for whatever we wanted.
Of the two of us, Kate was the saver, and I was the spender. I did save up enough money to purchase a beat up yellow Ford Fairmont wagon. Kate however, pinched her pennies and put everything she earned towards a college fund. It was initially modest, but once she graduated high school and started working full time, it quickly grew. As for myself, I had no illusions of going to college that senior year of high school - I wanted my freedom now, and the "Chicken Wagon" as my friends called it (on account of the color), was my escape from the constant shame-inducing judgment from my parents, and especially from my father.
There were two ways in our modest ranch house to invoke the wrath of my father. The first was to question anything about his version of Christianity. Both my sister and I had earned welt marks on our butts when we were younger for even the most minor suggestion that there were any inconsistencies in Christianity. This was, in fact, the easiest for us to deal with. It just was a matter of keeping our mouths shut, except for "Yes Sir" and "No Sir", attending Sunday services and then Sunday school, and saying grace at every meal. The second way was to have any thought of sexual pleasure at all. If sex every occurred, the only way that it was not a sin was that it was between a married man and woman with the express intent of making a baby. This was not so easy to deal with for me. My body betrayed me.
This logic was pushed to the extreme. Neither of us were allowed to date. Kissing was forbidden, because it would lead to sex. Masturbation was forbidden as well, and crazily enough, wet dreams were considered evil. I remember the abject terror I had the first time I had a wet dream, and if there's a grace my mother ever bestowed upon me it was her telling me not to tell my father after she encountered by cum-stained underwear in the laundry. While I suspect she saved me from many beatings, I think she saved me from my father thinking that I was completely evil, and past any hope of salvation.
Kate toed the line when it came to showing interest in boys. She would spend her free time hanging out with her best friend Dani. They had been inseparable since 7th grade. Dani lived down in the street in a house similar to ours, with 3 brothers and 3 sisters. Although I had seen their bedrooms, I tried to imagine what Kate's 10x10 room would look like with two bunk beds, and wondered where they all would put their clothes. At the time it escaped me that Dani and her sisters didn't have a lot to store.
I'm sure one of the ways that Dani dealt with the crowded conditions at home was to spend a lot of time at our house. When they were in school together, most days Dani would just walk from the bus right to our house, and she and Kate would escape to Kate's bedroom with their book bags in tow, and not emerge until Mom got home. And myself, I would usually dump my books on the kitchen table, chug down a glass of water, and then go for a walk in the woods behind our house.
According to my father, the woods went on for ten miles before there would be any other signs of civilization. I had never walked through them far enough to reach another road. Usually, I would walk the twenty minutes necessary to reach the "Point of Evil". It was a large boulder - as tall as me, and twice as wide. It was a sheer face on the side closest to the house, and then it sloped gently on the opposite side. One could easily walk up that side. My best friend Roy named the rock the "Point of Evil" because he knew that about twenty yards east of the rock was a rotting hollow log, and inside that log, wrapped tightly in a dark green trash bag, was a copy of Penthouse magazine. And he would joke that if my father ever found out, that I would be declared evil incarnate and banished from the family (and earth if it was in my father's power).
At least a couple of times a week I would walk out to the rock, grab the well worn magazine, and then lean back against the rock and look at the pictures, read the stories, and enjoy the feelings I had, and when I was ready, masturbate until I came. I can't really remember the specifics of what I saw in that magazine, with the exception of a photospread of two young women together. I can remember that later in life, when I saw other photos of women together like this, that the mood wasn't anywhere alike. In the first set, it looked like the women were in love. In other sets it often looked like a circus act being performed for my viewing pleasure.
It was late summer of 1981 when I walked into the backyard after orgasming intensely. It was maybe 70 feet from the edge of the woods to the back door that led right into the kitchen, and I just burst through, already thinking about whether I might actually burn in hell for what I had just done. Those intrusive thoughts immediately came to a screeching halt. Leaning back against the sink was Dani, her shirt and bra on the floor, and her arms were around Kate, and they were kissing. Kate had her back to me, and two seconds later Dani caught a glimpse of me.
In as hyper-sensitive as both Kate and I were (living in fear will do that do you), Dani was always a calming influence. Nothing could rattle her, not even the passive aggressive insults occasionally made by my father. She knew her family wasn't perfect. She knew she wasn't perfect. And she had found a way to let life's challenges flow off her like water off a duck's back. And she wasn't afraid to zing you if that is what it took.
"Maybe you ought to clear your throat or something?", she said, looking right at me.
I was still dumbfounded and before I could do as she asked Kate turned halfway around, and no longer was the barrier between my eyes and Dani's breasts.
"It's OK baby, It's just Tommy," she said, as she pulled Kate back gently to her, again blocking the laser line from my eyes to Dani's first-time-in-my-life-ever-seen-live-breasts. My head snapped back up to Dani's face and the back of Kate's head.
"I should go," I said, and I quickly exited the kitchen, went to my room and closed the door.
At that time, at least in my mind, girls were not gay. Girls could be bi. Girls could lesbians. Only boys were gay. And my parents had beat it into me (at least figuratively), that homosexuality was an abomination. I don't know whether it was because of what I had seen in that magazine, or whether it was because I was male, that in my head I associated the slur "homo" with men, and that it was gross and disgusting, and that homosexuality between women was somehow different. I wonder if I had seen a photo spread of two men having a loving sexual relationship when I was younger, like I had in that magazine, whether my perceptions would have been different sooner.
Regardless of my own position on the matter, I knew that Kate's life was about to unwind. Our father would find out about Dani, and he would kick her out of the house, and take all her college savings. He would also work to ostracize both Dani and her from the community, and me. And it would be beyond Mom's ability to talk any kind of sense into him.
I remember this incredible impending sense of doom as I laid down on my bed that afternoon, and I tried to shut it out by re-reading one of my favorite sci-fi books. It wasn't really working as well as I liked, and I was a couple of chapters in when there was a knock at the door.
"What do you want?", I asked.
"Can I come in?" To my surprise, it was Dani.
