A Life In Situ (1/?)
This is my first post of an original work, not fanfiction.
Title: A Life In Situ (1/?)
Author: Aeon Cole
Rating: FRM
Challenge: 100 Tales // table
Prompt: #46 Past
Word Count: 2135
Summary: Being a teenager is all about fitting in. How do you fit in when you fall between all of the lines that people draw to define society?
Author’s Note: This something that I have had rolling around in my head for a long time. And this is as far as I’ve gotten with it. Though I have taken certain elements from my own life to use in this story, this is a work of fiction. All of the characters are my own. This is a copyrighted work.
Author’s Note 2: in situ - in its natural or original place
Author’s Note 3: Gayle, if you’re out there… feedback please.
So, I’m walking down the main thoroughfare of my hometown and from somewhere behind me I hear my name being called. I turn around and whom do I see in the distance but Billy Siegel, an old friend from high school. This has been happening to me a lot lately.
But, perhaps I should take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Harriet Turner. Yeah, I know. But that’s the name my mother gave me and it’s the one I’ve had to live with. Personally, I prefer Harry. It adds to the mystique that is me.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my life. Maybe that’s just a byproduct of turning forty, I don’t know. But the more I think about old friends, those that are still living anyway, the more often I seem to run into them. Believe me, there are plenty of people from those days that I would love to never see again. Them I see all the time. Isn’t that just the way?
So, I run into Billy Siegel on Main Street today. I haven’t seen him in at least ten years. We chat for a while. I ask him if he’s seeing anybody and he gets just a little depressed. He tells me that he’s just broken up with his boyfriend of three years. Did I mention that Billy’s gay? So he’s just broken up and he’s kind of turned off dating for the time being. He decided to come back home for a while, a place where there is no pressure from life. He’s staying for a couple of weeks.
He asks me what I’m doing and I tell him I’m a teacher. I never left my hometown. Many from our graduating class did. Mostly the losers who couldn’t find anything better to do with their lives stayed. And me, of course. He asks if I’m happy here and I tell him I am. Then he asks if I’m seeing anyone. I pause. I look at him for a moment. Then I tell him, I’m married.
The look I get is priceless. It happens every time I run into someone that I haven’t seen for a long time and I say those words. So, you might be wondering why my being married is so surprising to people. Allow me to explain.
It took me a long time to figure myself out. I was born in 1965 to a normal, middle class family on Long Island. I am the oldest of four. I have three sisters. They all live normal, average lives away from here. When we were kids, they loved to play Barbie dolls. I played touch football. They had pinups of Shaun Cassidy. I had Farrah Fawcett. Starting to get the idea yet?
I got teased a lot as a child. I preferred to hang out with the boys. I liked playing sports, riding my bike, climbing trees. I didn’t mind getting dirty. Basically I was called a tomboy. The girls thought I was weird. The boys weren’t always sure what to make of me. I had a small circle of friends who tolerated my differences.
I spent most of my childhood being mistaken for a boy. I insisted on keeping my hair short and my parents indulged me. And I’m sure the other kids calling me Harry did nothing to dissuade this perception of me. I always dreaded the first day of school each year. The teacher would go through the roll and call out Harriet. Everyone who knew me would giggle. Then I would raise my hand and say that I preferred to be called Harry. Everyone who didn’t know me would giggle.
I still remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Laskey. Bitch. She actually had the gall to tell me, in front of the whole class no less, that Harry was a boy’s name, and that, in case I hadn’t noticed, I was a girl and that there was a difference. She made a point of calling me Harriet for the entire year. Of course, this meant the other kids started calling me Harriet, which pissed me off even more. I got into more fights that year.
Anyway, I’m getting off topic. As I grew older and I started to develop a sexual identity, I began to notice just how different I was from my childhood friends. The boys started to become interested in the girls and the girls became interested in the boys. Some of the boys became interested in other boys and some of the girls became interested in other girls.
But, there was a definite line there. Everyone was one way or the other. I didn’t see that line in myself. I didn’t know there was such a thing as bisexual. You were either straight or gay. After all, how could you be both? And if being straight is normal and being gay is different, what is bisexual?
I could swear that I was living in a world of one. Everyone around me was doing their thing, with their group. I was outside of both groups. I wasn’t gay, but I liked girls. I wasn’t straight, but I liked boys.
Being a teenager is all about fitting in. How do you fit in when you fall between all of the lines that people draw to define society? I knew plenty of gay guys and plenty of lesbians and a ton of straight people. I didn’t know anyone else who was bisexual. Well, that’s not exactly true. I did know other but I didn’t know that at the time. We were all still trying to figure everything out.
My circle of friends gradually changed. As my childhood friends began dating, they began splitting off into their respective groups and pulling away from each other. I met plenty of new people when I started high school. Several communities came together at the high school. Kids from several different middle schools from the surrounding area all went to the same high school. So there were plenty of opportunities to branch out, friend-wise.
The school had a tight knit gay community, very secretive. No one was out. I became aware of this when I had my first dating experience. I met Trudy in one of my freshman classes. We hit it off. One day, while we were having lunch, she confided in me that she was attracted to me. I asked her to go to the movies with me that weekend. Things progressed from there. Well, as much as they can when you’re fourteen.
But she had other friends, who had other friends, and before you know it, I had a crowd to hang with. Just like when I was a kid, I tended to be more comfortable hanging with the guys. I guess, also, that because they were gay guys and essentially off limits, they were safe. There was no pressure. They had no interest in me as anything but a friend.
So, despite what I thought it would be like, my first year of high school wasn’t so bad. I had a crowd of new friends. I had a girlfriend. And I made good grades so my parents agreed to let me work as a camp counselor at a camp up in Lake George for six weeks over the summer. It was kind of far away from home but I was excited, even though it meant leaving my new friends for a good portion of the summer.
I had just turned fifteen, my birthday’s in June. And I spent the first two weeks of summer vacation doing what every teenager did on Long Island in those days; I hung out at the mall or the beach with my friends. The day before I was to leave for camp we all spent the day at the beach. I said good-bye to Trudy, who said she’d be waiting for me until I got back. Part of me actually believed her. It’s funny how much things can change in just six weeks, especially when you’re a teenager.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. When I got to the camp at Lake George in upstate New York, I was surprised at how beautiful it was. Though the camp itself was a bit more rugged than I was expecting. What the hell was I going to do for six weeks with no TV? But I got used to it very quickly and discovered that I actually liked being out in the woods.
There were people there from all over the northeast, both male and female counselors, about thirty ranging in age from fifteen to early twenties. As with every other social situation I’d ever had to deal with, I found that I was more comfortable hanging with the guys. The boys and girls camps were right next to each other and all the counselors hung out together at night. And of course, with that many young people in one spot for so long with basically no supervision, there was a natural tendency to hook up.
I met Justin. He was sixteen. We started out as friends. We had a lot in common and he was fun to be around. It was the end of the third week of camp and one night we decided to go for a walk after all the little ones were in bed for the night. So were just walking along the lakeshore and suddenly he stops and just looks at me. Before I knew it, he was kissing me and much to my surprise, I was kissing him back. And I felt just a little guilty but I discovered that kissing a guy isn’t really any different than kissing a girl. I don’t know why I thought it would be.
When we stop he pulls back and looks at me again and I was so glad the sun had gone down because I just knew I was blushing from head to toe. And somehow it comes out that, back home, I have a girlfriend. He’s surprised, but not turned off. He asks if I’m gay and I don’t know how to answer that. No one’s actually ever asked me before. I said that I didn’t think so because I liked boys too.
It took a moment for all this to sink in for him then he tells me that I’m bisexual. I tell him that I’d never heard that term before and he says that that’s what you are when you’re attracted to both sexes. I let the word roll around in my head for a while. I finally had a name for what I was and the fact that it had a name meant that I couldn’t be the only one. There had to be others like me. Justin said he had a friend back home who was bisexual. Then I knew I wasn’t alone. I kissed him again for telling me that.
I hung out with Justin for the remainder of camp, and then we said good-bye. I never saw him again after that but I’ve never forgotten him either. There were three weeks of summer vacation left by the time I got home and the first thing I did when I got back was to go visit my best friend, Billy Siegel. He was the one who informed me that Trudy had hooked up with Lisa, another of the girls from our group, while I was gone. Suddenly I didn’t feel so guilty about Justin.
He also told me what had been going on with the boys while I was gone. Dax, whose real name was David Alexander, started seeing this older boy from our high school, Russell. Russell was seventeen and had a car. The boys were mobile. Unfortunately, or fortunately as it ultimately turned out, Billy wasn’t able to join in their newfound freedom because he had to work all summer. Like me he came from a working class family and didn’t have the same access to money that some of the others did.
Russell introduced the boys to Fire Island. Fire Island boasted popular gay beaches and a strong gay community. If you were a gay male in the tri-state area, you went to Fire Island for the summer. The boys were introduced to older men, gay bars, and sex.
It was the summer of 1980 and what none of us realized at the time was that there was a something brewing in Fire Island’s gay community that none of us could conceive of. And, that within ten years, out of the twelve boys in our tight knit circle, only three would still be alive. But we were young and invincible, living in the moment. At fifteen you’re going to live forever.
TBC
copyright 2008 Aeon Cole