Lunch was a revelation.
The food was the same cafeteria crap you could find at any school in Connecticut. No barbequed possum, fricasseed squirrel, or anything like that. The lunch lady and the cashier both had full sets of teeth.
As I left the serving line and entered the dining hall, I heard about a dozen voices call, “Ross!” Jason and what looked to be eighteen of his closest friends were all waving at me from a nearby table. Several of them appeared to be staring intently below my waist as I walked over.
“We saved you a place,” Jason announced, indicating his lap. “I just didn’t expect you to be all ready to go!” He pointed discreetly at my waist.
That seemed a little . . . forward.
“Maybe you’re just auditioning for a spot on Castaway. But if that’s advertising, I’m impressed!”
I followed his eyes down and . . . my father’s belt! The end must have worked loose from the belt loops on my pants during the morning and was now hanging limply almost eight inches below the hem of my polo shirt.
I’m sure my face turned a few shades of red that hadn’t even been invented yet.
“Oh, man! My father’s belt, guys. Seriously! Things have been so fu—” I noticed that several of the people sitting at the table were girls. “Uh, darned screwed up during the move, and I can’t find half of my clothes.”
“And I was hoping,” Jason leered. Several of his friends looked amused. Most paid his remark no heed.
I found a seat and squeezed in next to Jason. He offered quick introductions to the four girls and the dozen guys seated around the table. I figured I’d get another introduction, if necessary.
Trevor was there, rubbing shoulders with a couple of other guys. The four girls were seated in pairs. The hints that Jason had provided were starting to fit together in my mind. Teams eat together, especially when their sport is in season.
Conversation resumed. A bunch of smaller kids were emerging from the serving line. Apparently freshmen and sophomores took lunch at the same time.
“My god!” one of the girls—maybe Jasmine?—snarked. “I can’t believe we looked like that last year! And have you seen the size of some of those freshman boys?” She looked at me, flushed, and trailed off.
Why the blush, I wondered.
“I know!” her partner—she was definitely Tracey—took up the thread. “It’s incredible! I was walking into the school this morning with a group of them. The janitor must have waxed the floor too much because I slipped and fell down.” She shook her head. “When I recovered from the shock, I thought I might be Snow White! It was surreal! There was no Prince Charming in the group, but I was surrounded by a handful of freshman dwarves all looking down at me with some concern. It was like they had never seen a girl lying on her back before!”
“I can’t imagine that they have. But if they had known you . . . ” the other girl snickered.
“What are you saying, bitch?” Tracey demanded. The other girl smirked knowingly.
I glanced around the rest of the table. No one reacted to the exchange. Apparently this was normal lunchtime conversation here.
While we were eating, a guy at a nearby table kept looking our way. It almost felt like he was looking at me. Surreptitiously, I checked my belt.
When he finished eating, he brought his tray up to the dish line and left it there. Instead of going back to his own table, he headed our way.
“How are you guys doing?” His gaze took in the whole table, but it seemed to spend an awful lot of time on me.
“Brian!” Several voices greeted him. “How was your summer?”
“Great!” He grinned. “I had to make it a good one. My last summer as a free man. My father made it clear that he expects me to have a job next summer.” His conversation continued with the whole table, but his eyes kept cutting in my direction.
Finally, Jason took the initiative. “Brian, this is Ross. Ross Donnelly. His father is managing PPO now. He just moved here about a week ago.”
Brian looked at me directly and smiled. “Glad you’re here, Ross.” He extended his fist in greeting. “Maybe your father would hire me to work at PPO next summer. I’m cheap!”
I smiled back. He seemed a nice guy. And he was pretty easy to look at. When he looked directly at me, it felt like his eyes were forging a visceral connection.
Jason took the initiative again. “Maybe you could say something to your dad, Ross. Brian is all right—for a jock . . . ”
Brian’s expression feigned deep hurt. Jason grimaced. “Come on, Brian. You know that I’m not serious. But he does play baseball, you know . . . ”
For half a second I know my eyes flared with surprise. “Those hats?!”
“Yup,” Jason grinned. “Brian is a real shithead.” Everyone groaned. But even Brian appeared to appreciate the joke.
After a moment’s thought, Jason apparently felt the need to add more. “Actually, he’s a pretty good baseball player. He’ll start for our team this year and he’s only a sophomore. So he has to eat lunch with the guys he showers with. Otherwise he’d eat with us.” There was a not-so-subtle message there.
Brian’s response was even more direct. “I could shower with you, Jason. Or maybe with Ross . . . ” He glanced back toward me and I could see the flush creeping up his neck.
As we were leaving the lunch room and walking to our Biology class, Jason continued his observations about Brian. “He actually does play for the team. But he also plays for the soccer team and the baseball team. And while this place really is fairly evolved, jocks are still jocks.” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “So Brian doesn’t like to advertise and risk stirring them up. Showers after practice; showers after working out in the weight room; showers after games; heterosexual, testosterone-fueled, repressed homoeroticism and all that nonsense. You can’t do that sort of stuff if there’s a homo in the locker room. Jocks really have a lot of issues.”
Jason nodded firmly as he concluded his philosophical musing about athletes. “If it’s fun, I do it! Worrying about all the things that society expects of you, and what people will say, will only turn you into a bitter old man . . . with blue balls. That’s your first lesson and Biology class hasn’t even started!” He laughed a bit maniacally.
Biology was a different experience from the smartly-run, professional science classes I had experienced in Darien. The teacher, Mr. Hartley, was an old hippy who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out somewhere back in the ‘80s. Then, when the money ran out, he had moved up here to Vermont to eat granola, smoke weed and occasionally teach science to a class that he was mostly motivating to drop out.
Jason and I shared a lab table while Mr. Hartley droned on. That hot girl, Aislinn, sat at the table beside us. Mr. Hartley didn’t appear to be motivating her either. She spent most of the class staring at me. Maybe I had really pissed off her boyfriend.
But her gaze didn’t seem unfriendly. Actually, it appeared to be focused mostly below my waist. She would occasionally catch my eye and then glance down. My confusion must have been obvious. Sometimes she would catch my eye and glance down at her desktop. She was spelling something out there with her finger, but all I could decipher were an X, a Y, and a Z. It felt like Lassie was trying to tell me something. It was making me very uncomfortable.
Finally, when Mr. Hartley was distracted in another part of the classroom, she leaned toward me and glanced down again.
“Your . . . thing . . . ” she glanced down again very pointedly and whispered, “is hanging out.”
I was confused. Then I realized what she was talking about. In a panic, I looked down. And there it was again. A pale, tan appendage, a bit more than an inch wide and almost eight inches long. I had been betrayed, once again, by my wandering . . . belt.
Hurriedly, I reached for it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the alarmed expression on Aislinn’s face. I jerked my hands away from the belt and started to pull the hem of my shirt up so she could see what was really hanging down, but realized that gesture might also be misinterpreted. In my peripheral vision I could see Jason beside me, collapsed over our table in hysterics.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do. “It’s my belt,” I stage whispered. Very slowly, I revealed the waist of my pants. “You really thought that was my... my... uh, dick?” I tried to convey my surprise that anyone would think that.
“Well, it’s the right color,” she defended herself. “Yours is that color, right? And it’s the right shape.”
“It’s flat!”
She had been staring for half the period. How could she mistake my father’s belt for my . . . personal . . . um, personal?
“I thought maybe you had one of those blow-up kind of, uh, things,” she insisted. Her expression brightened, “Like my boyfriend does.”
And that was a startling revelation. “Jake Packwood’s dick looks like my belt?!” I really was amazed.
“Oh, no,” She giggled a bit self-consciously. “Before the pressure in it gets that low, he always has me blow it back up for him.”
Next to me, I could hear the sound of Jason’s head banging on our desk.
After that experience, I was barely even aware of anything that happened in my English and Spanish classes.
When I got to my homeroom, the teacher had a note waiting for me. Dad was busy at work. If I didn’t want to walk home, apparently I would be required to, oh no! Ride the bus!
Waiting for the bus. How grade school! I was aware that Rachel was waiting somewhere nearby. We were careful to avoid making eye contact with each other.
I knew that Rachel would be in full-on bitch mode. When the bus arrived, I waited to board last. I wanted to know where Rachel was sitting to make sure I didn’t end up anywhere near her. I just knew that if someone said the wrong thing to her, children were going to die!
Dinner was tense. Between the limited choices at the small grocers nearby, and the lack of a second family vehicle, Mom was struggling to prepare meals for us that were up to her usual standards . . . and our expectations. But the bland meatloaf that graced our plates that evening was nowhere near as unappealing as the turd that Rachel dropped right in the middle of our dinner table.
“I heard that Ross made a big hit with the GSA crowd at school today,” she announced.
“There’s a GSA at the high school?” Mom looked up with a delighted expression on her face. “Ross, that’s great news!”
“Although maybe it’s only because he flashed their whole table at lunch,” Rachel concluded with, wait for it, a sneer.
Nobody moved for a few seconds. Not even to put a fork full of meatloaf in a mouth or back on a plate.
“Ross?” My father’s tone demanded an immediate explanation.
“It was a misunderstanding.” I defended myself. “That damn belt . . . ” Dad shot me a warning glance, “That belt was too long. It hung down and someone at the table said that’s what it looked like. But nobody thought I showed them my . . . um . . . my . . . ” I trailed off. “Well, except for one girl in Biology.”
“Honey! You’re having second thoughts?” My mother sounded rather excited.
“No, Mom. No!” I was getting frustrated. “I’m not having second thoughts. I haven’t even had many first thoughts. And I didn’t show anyone my . . . stuff. I didn’t intend to show anyone anything; not even that belt!”
Rachel was sitting across from me with a pleased sneer on her face.
“Oh, well of course,” Mom said. “But you made friends. The entire GSA! How many are there at Ball Mountain?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Lots?” I really wasn’t sure. I really didn’t even know if there was a formal GSA. “There were, like, more than fifteen people at our lunch table, and my lunch was just for freshmen and sophomores. Besides, there weren’t any freshman in the group yet.”
“Well, that’s very exciting,” Mom insisted. “We knew you’d make lots of friends in no time. People really like you!”
I wasn’t sure that was right, but I accepted that Mom was troweling on the praise to bury any guilt she and Dad were feeling over dragging us to the middle of nowhere. I went back to examining my meatloaf and said a silent prayer that Rachel was done for the evening.
My second day at school was a bit less chaotic. I spent the previous night digging through moving boxes and finally found my belts and hoodies and about half of my other clothes that had been ‘lost’ before. I had also resolved to eat a bit more and start an exercise program to gain back any weight I had lost. Besides, it seemed like a good idea to start getting ready for soccer season next year.
Mom drove Dad to work in the morning, then took Rachel, Cara and I to school. I think she planned to drive down to Brattleboro during the day to pick up groceries and other supplies. She and Dad had already decided that we needed to arrange to bring the Beamer up to East Grange as soon as possible. Having the second car was more than a luxury this far from civilization. Besides, I think they had started to reflect on liability issues if Rachel had to spend too many more days on that bus.
Jason found me outside of school. He was chatting with one of the other guys from our lunch table; Dan Morrison, although he preferred to be called Dante. I also recalled that I had seen him in a couple of my classes. We shared a bit of idle chatter while the two of them ogled guys entering the school. I think they called it a talent scout. Something about checking to see how the incoming freshmen had developed since they had been in middle school with them two years ago.
It was only the second day of the school year, but already attending classes felt like a dull routine. I guess I might have enjoyed that side of school three or four years ago, but I was evolved beyond that now. There are only so many times you can hear the same, tired lessons before you just have to change the channel.
We dressed out for our fourth period Phys Ed class. I realized this was one of the classes I shared with Dante.
The ‘coach’ was a muscle-bound and uninspired hack called Mr. Wyman. Instead of organizing some sort of game, or teaching us rules and skills for games we would be playing later in the year, he just assigned a variety of calisthenics and a mile run to find out, he claimed, ‘how soft we had let ourselves get over the summer’. Then he went into his office; I think to watch reruns of “The Red Green Show” for pro tips.
Lunch was amusing, with Dante sharing stories about all the so-called ‘talent’ he had seen in the locker room after Phys Ed class. Most of us enjoyed his patter, both for the humorous way he related his observations, as well as for some insights into the possible dating pool. Oddly, both Tracey and Jocelyn?—Jade?—Jasmine?—appeared to be particularly entranced by his descriptions of the guys who were in our class. The other pair of girls appeared to be completely bored with Dante’s chatter.
On our way to Biology class, I asked Jason about Tracey and Jennifer. They really seemed too interested in the assets of the boys Dante was talking about at lunch, and not enough interested in each other, to validate my original assumption about their role at the table.
“Two three-letter words,” he winked. “And they rhyme.”
I wanted to clear up any misperceptions about the previous day with Aislinn. She kept glancing over at me during Biology class. Her smile was friendly, so I guess she didn’t think anything bad about me until Jason leaned across me to tell her, “The real thing is actually bigger than the belt you saw yesterday. It’s hard to believe about such a little guy. But I know. I’ve seen it!”
It was funny. But I felt bad as I watched the confusion of emotions race across her face. I tried to tell her with my eyes that I was sorry about Jason’s sense of humor. I hoped she understood.
I discovered that my English teacher was a fairly young guy whose name was Mr. Fisher, but he kept telling us to call him Pax. Paxton Fisher, I guess. I would have had a better idea if I had been paying any attention in his class the previous day. But my experience in Biology had driven just about everything else from my mind until I got home from school.
“Ross Donnelly!” Mr. Fisher cornered me briefly after class to ask if I would be joining the school soccer team. Apparently he was the coach.
I couldn’t figure out why he thought I might be playing. I really hadn’t told anyone about my soccer in Darien; just a few words to Jason when we first met, and maybe something to Brian at lunch the previous day. But Pax seemed quite eager that I play for his team.
He was observant. He noticed my confusion. “Rohan Dogherty and I played together in college, Ross. We still keep in touch. When he found out you were leaving Darien, and that you would be moving up here, he gave me a call to tell me I had a chance to have one of the best young players in southern New England play for me.” He seemed even more pleased about the news than I was.
“I love soccer, Mr. Fisher—” he glanced at me sharply “—uh, Pax. But I wasn’t here for training camp. If I join the team now it could really mess things up for the other players. They won’t like that. And they won’t like me for ruining their plans for the season.”
“You let me worry about that, Ross,” he said. “The coach decides what’s best for the team. And my guys want to win. They’ll be happy to have you mess up their plans if you’re even half the player that Roh says you are. Besides—” he gave me a conspiratorial look “—I already know that Brian Gilchrist would love to have you on the team.”
I digested that bit of information. I realized that I would probably like being on the team with Brian, too.
“Do you have a JV team, too, coach?” I asked.
He looked at me like it was a pretty silly question and nodded.
“How would it be if I came out for the team, but started with the JV squad? I don’t want to take anyone’s spot. But could I back up a lot of positions and give the guys a chance to see me play? Maybe they wouldn’t mind me moving up into a starting role, or even to the varsity, after they see that I’ve earned it.” I wasn’t sure, but it felt like this would be a better way to start out than to jump right in like I was owed something.
Mr. Fisher thought for a moment, then smiled. “I think that’s a pretty mature idea, Ross. It’s the way a leader might think. But I’ll tell you right now that I expect you to be starting for the varsity long before this season is half over.”
He reached back without looking and grabbed a packet of papers that had been sitting on top of his desk. “These are the permission forms you need to play. This is our schedule. There’s some additional information about the program on this sheet. And this is paperwork for a physical exam.”
He thought for a moment. “I know your family just moved to town. If you don’t have a doctor here yet, or can’t get in to see him soon, I can have Dr. Walter meet us here tomorrow. He’s our team doctor.
“Just have your parents provide their insurance information on that form and he can conduct an exam. I want you to start practicing with us after school tomorrow,” he concluded as if that settled the matter. I suspected I’d be playing soccer whether I wanted to or not. Fortunately, I really wanted to play.
“One more thing before you go, Ross,” Pax called after me. “When we played together in college, Roh was a striker. I was a mid-fielder like you.”
He smiled. I smiled. I thought that I was really going to like playing for Pax.
Dinner wasn’t much more enjoyable than it had been the previous night. Mom had been in Brattleboro, grocery shopping. And Rachel wasn’t on a post-bus-ride-rage binge. But even though the meal was up to Mom’s usual standards, and Rachel was mostly seething quietly while she finished her chicken piccata, moods around the table were unsettled. We were still becoming familiar with our new home, nothing really felt comfortable yet, and we were all wondering if maybe the exchange of Darien for East Grange might turn out to be a bad bargain.
Mom and Dad tried to keep the conversation going. He asked a few questions about the paperwork I had brought home for soccer. She asked if I had met any boys that I liked yet.
That question made me uncomfortable. I still wasn’t entirely sure what I did like, or what it would look like when I found it. Besides, nobody was asking Rachel if she had met any boys that she liked. Although to be fair, Rachel rarely liked anybody.
Rachel spent most of the meal on her phone, texting back and forth with friends in Darien. Mom and Dad tactfully ignored the breach of etiquette.
I’ve heard it said that good parents pick their battles. Mom and Dad probably realized that it wasn’t a hill they were willing to die on, perhaps literally.
It felt good to be playing soccer again. After school, Dr. Walter conducted a perfunctory physical exam. He signed off on the paperwork, I hurried to the locker room to dress out, and I was on the field about thirty minutes after the team started practice. The school day hadn’t been anything exciting, but it only took me about fifteen minutes running drills with the team to feel like I finally belonged somewhere.
There were a couple of familiar faces on the team. Nobody appeared to object to me being there. Brian spent as much time as Pax and the other coaches would allow doing drills with any group that included me. I guess he was trying to help me fit in.
I pretty much sleepwalked through most of the school days. I liked my History class, and English with Pax was interesting enough. But the only daily highlights other than that and soccer practices were lunch with Jason and his crew and Phys Ed class.
Having a chance to move around and be active in the middle of the day really appealed to me. Taking lunch right after Phys Ed gave me a chance to come down from the high of physical activity and to blow off some emotional steam in the rather free-wheeling lunch room environment.
Conversation around the lunch table was always engaging. Sometimes it was downright entertaining. It didn’t hurt that Dante shared Phys Ed with me right before lunch every day. He was uninhibited and fun both in the gym and around the lunch table. He often brought stories from gym that livened up our dining conversation even more than usual. Sometimes he livened up our lunch a bit too much.
Phys Ed class on Friday of my first week was actually a modified sort of soccer game. The rules had been adapted to accommodate the size of the class and the limits of a fifty minute school period. I had a great time. But it may have been too much fun.
I noticed players on the other team giving me some dirty looks when they realized that their skills just weren’t on the same level with mine. ‘Coach’ Wyman was actually a bit more clued in than I had assumed, and he asked me to help him officiate the game as soon as he recognized the difference in skill level. That didn’t mollify everyone. I got a few bumps on the walk back to the locker room and a few shoves once we were in the shower.
When I returned to my locker, I found Dante toweling off in the space next to mine. For some reason he was paying an awful lot of attention to his balls, and it looked like his dick may have chubbed up a bit.
“It’s okay, big guy. As soon as we get home I’ll give you all the attention you deserve,” he murmured loud enough to be heard several lockers away.
He must have noticed me watching . . . as well as the curious expression on my face.
“I just loooove my dick,” he snickered.
Several of the guys nearby were giving us both dirty looks.
Dante joined me for the walk to lunch. I suspected that he recognized that I hadn’t made any new friends during class and he didn’t want me to be lonely . . . or something.
We filled our lunch trays with what appeared to be food and joined our table. Dante seemed to enjoy telling the rest of the crew how dominant he thought I had been during our Phys Ed soccer game. His voice had a way of carrying.
A couple of the other guys from our class stomped by with their lunch trays. When one of them got behind Dante he muttered, “Maricon.”
Dante didn’t even bat an eye, “It’s pronounced Morrison, love,” he corrected. “That shouldn’t be hard for anyone who has spent as many extra years in school as you have!”
The two thugs immediately turned around and came back toward us with intent in their eyes. Chairs were pushed back hurriedly as everyone stood at our table. One of the thugs was eyeing Dante, but the other was eyeing me! I hadn’t said anything!
I noticed Brian running over toward us from his table with the rest of the soccer team. He looked concerned.
Becky jumped up from her chair beside Linda, shoved me back into my seat and took up a defensive stance between me and the looming threat. I felt my testicles contracting to the size of peas. But I was still grateful.
Fortunately, the lunch room was staffed well and adults intervened before anything beyond a few insults and some remarkably bad breath could be hurled.
Lunch was almost never dull. And if Dante was involved, sometimes it could even get too exciting.