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- 06/07/2012
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2012 - Summer - Choices Entry
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2012 - Summer - Choices Entry
Billy Bayou - 1. Chapter 1
Billy Bayou
by Bugeye
In the summer of 1962 we got new neighbors. The house next to ours was only a couple of years old. The couple who originally bought it needed to move because of a job change. They had no children and were always at their jobs, both being professionals. I had no idea about the new family or who they were. I was in my bedroom the day the new family moved in. I had not been all that curious. I was glad it was summer, school was over.
My bedroom was upstairs and at the end of the house with one dormer facing the front and one dormer facing the rear of the house. Each dormer had a window seat. The last window was in the end wall and it was the only window like it I had ever seen in a house. It was an oversized, half circle that took up a third of the wall space. It was framed by built in bookcases and it too had a long window seat. All three windows had wooden shutters that folded back against the walls. In front of this splendid, architectural feature… to me it was a wonder window… I had placed an old work table, that I had begged my grandmother for. It was just sitting in one of the barns at the farm and I really liked it. Why would a boy like a table so much… who knows, but I did. Grandmother told me her great grandfather had built the old plank table and I could only have it if I promised to keep it always and saw to it that it had a good home. She even gave me four chairs to go with it. My mother wanted to buy me a new bedroom set from Ethan Allen, but she let me do as I pleased with my room once she realized I was serious about doing it myself two years previously. Maybe she liked the table too. Maybe she liked that I showed an interest in something for a change, I was kind of messed up back then.
Before… well just before things seemed to change so much for me… I would hear the occasional comment from my parents about what I would be when I grew up. My parents would say doctor, my grandmother would say architect. I would say something silly like I wanted to draw. I don’t think any of us knew what would happen in my future now or wanted to speculate on the subject. I think it worried my family this uncertainty.
Grandmother also surprised me with one other piece of furniture for my room, a bed. The one I slept in when I stayed at the farm in the past. The attic bed, an old brass bed that looked a lot like a pipe organ gone bad, all the brass twisting and turning and curling around each other. I think my mother was shocked for the second time and my sisters where pea green with envy. The mattress was custom made to fit the “bed and a half” size that no longer was commercially available.
I don’t know what my room was originally designed for, maybe an office or study, but it wasn’t just a square room with windows. Our house was built in the 1920’s as a country home and every room was unique in some way. Not really fancy just thought out carefully, designed to have character or some kind of “feel” to it, my room included. The dormers with window seats, the half circle window, the plank and dowel hard wood floors, the built in bookcases and the pediment entrance to the room… where all uncommon features of the room.
My table was covered in my favorite things now. Books I liked. A caste iron dog. A blue rock. Stuff like that. Some art supplies and a few drawings. A really old radio. The table top changed with time like seasons. A reflection of me and my current world.
I could hear the commotion next door of the truck trying to back down the neighbors drive. I didn’t much want to get up from my chair, but all the racket got the best of me and I went to look out my window. And about died on the spot. Not really, but what I saw was the shock of my early life. Yes, it was that dramatic. For me. Standing there in the middle of the driveway next door was Billy Bayou.
It was him. Not a mistake. It didn’t matter that he was older, didn’t matter that he was bigger, didn’t matter that I had not seen him in two years. I knew him instantly and was swept away with joy and then complete terror.
Joy. Billy. The memory of the first time seeing him, of his smile. Of Billy choosing to include me in his life when others chose not to. He was more than my consolation, he was a reason to be happy despite everything. And then he was gone from my life like everything else I had taken for granted. Friends, fun, acceptance, approval, respect, good will. In the past two years I had made one friend, Barbara, and still I was not sure it was the same. We had each other's back. We stood up for each other. We created a safe haven for ourselves. But it was different. Still a good thing just different.
Terror. I sank to the floor, my back sliding down the side of the built-in book case. I wanted to stare out the window at Billy but I put my face in my hands instead. I wanted to get up and run down the stairs and out the back door and around the terrace and over the fences and thru the trees and stand before him. I wanted to see if he would be as shocked as me. I wanted to see if he remembered me, recognized me. Wanted so much. But I was stopped by sudden shame like I have never felt before. Billy didn’t know. He didn’t know what happened to me the last two years. He didn’t know I had to repeat the seventh grade. I would have to talk about it. Add another chapter to my story. Wasn’t the first chapter Billy knew about bad enough. And now chapter two. Another failure. Another reason to be excluded. Ridiculed. Explain why we would not be in the same grade. Why I was only starting high school this year as a sub freshman, eighth grade. Billy would be a ninth grader, a freshman. And he would see me as the others saw me. He wouldn’t like me. He wouldn’t want anyone to know he knew me. He would be mad that I lived next to him. Oh shit.
None of the past matter I thought. I had put it behind me and accepted everything and I was moving forward. Standing up to it. And now I find it’s come back and I am completely going to …
I sat on the floor for a while, at least until my mom came into my room smiling. “Davy, you are not going to believe who our new neighbors are.”
My mom didn’t miss a beat, she simply switched direction and pulled out a chair at my table. “You really did a great job with your room Davy, your sisters made a mess of their’s. It’s you in a way, anyone who saw this room would recognize how exceptional you are.” Mom had said this to me a hundred times before. “You have the whole summer to get to know Billy again. Don’t you think he will only see the boy he remembers and will want to know you again. It’s your choice to make and only you can give Billy a chance to choose. “
Mom just sat there with me then. Telling me what we were having for lunch and that I should think about getting a haircut this coming week. Did I need help keeping the grass cut. That made me smile, we had so much grass.
So the inevitable decision came and no doubt it was as my mother surmised.
“Thanks Mom. I am going to go say hi.” I didn’t run though like I imagined earlier and I didn’t cut thru the yard in a mad dash. Funny how my mother could point me like an arrow and get me to hit the bulls eye, even when I was positive I wasn’t going to like it. I kind of moped down the stairs and pouted out the front door and contemplated being invisible walking down our driveway. I thought about the last time I saw Billy the whole way over to his new house. The last day of sixth grade. We were in the same class of course, I had been with the same kids all thru school. The last day of school was reserved for the School Picnic at Grant Park where the Zoo was. My mother was there of course too. Parents were encouraged to attend. I spent the afternoon sitting in a park swing. I ate my hotdog and potato chips and cookies with my mother at a table my ourselves. Walked around the Zoo with my mother and then just waited to go home. And then Billy came up behind my swing and gave it a big push and then just as suddenly he jumped in next to me with a thud. “The look on your face.” I had waited all day hoping and wondering when Billy would notice me. Would he say hello today, or more on my mind… would he say goodbye to me. Cause everyone knew I was moving away that summer.
The moving van blocked my approach to the house and I had to detour around and found Billy still at the end of the driveway sorting thru some boxes. I just stopped there watching Billy. I don’t know for how long but I know I was kind of just staring. And I was kind of lost in doing just that. Because he seemed to realize someone was there and he turned and looked at me, kind of puzzled, and then he smiled. A slow, small smile that grew, as he looked back at me, into a full face grin and then I was shocked by his loud whoop and found myself in a spin as Billy grabbed me in a hug lifting me into the air.
And I hugged Billy back. I had been shy of hugging for a long time. I think I hurt my parents when I started resisting being hugged or even being touched. It was part of me trying to protect myself I guess. Part of me being weird. Part of me falling short. Me falling apart. But I hugged Billy with all my young strength. Only to suddenly push him away and run for the woods.
I wasn’t thinking but I had to get away. And Billy took chase after me and caught me by the arm as I reached the horse barn that my father now used as his workshop. The force of the sudden stop and body impact had us on the ground.
Both of us were red from the run and yet Billy got out. “What is wrong with you? Why are you running away from me? It’s just like before. Before you moved away. This time you are going to tell me why.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It started a few months ago.”
“Huh?”
“I have been so scared. About it.” And here suddenly I was telling Billy every thing that was on my mind. What I wouldn’t tell anyone else. Complete trust in the one person I had not seen in two years. “I was in the bathroom after taking a shower and I was drying off with a towel and it just happened so fast… my ah… my penis swelled up. It swelled really big and stood straight up. I didn’t know what to do, I was so afraid. Something was really wrong with me and I was going to find my mother for help and then I couldn’t do that because I didn’t want anyone to see. And I had to do something but then just as suddenly the swelling went away. And I didn’t tell anyone. But it still happens to me all the time. It just happened again. And I thought you would see. And it is just so awful and weird. And I wanted you to like me this time so much.” I got up and tried to run again. Only to be stopped again by Billy’s hug.
“Davy I didn’t see anything, but I did feel your boner poking my leg. Don’t you know what a boner is?” This said with laughter and that smiling smirk of his.
Over the years I have told a few people I didn’t know what an erection was when I first experienced one. They all laughed. I had not laughed. The experience doesn’t chill me anymore like it did when I was more innocent or unknowing. I had great parents. A good home. They held me together at a time I was falling apart. I have wondered why they never brought up the subject of sex with me. Was it the times we lived in then. My parents own upbringing coming to light. Or was it the only indication that my parents where concerned about what my sexuality was. Concerned enough to put it out of mind and off the discussion table. Concerned because the name calling had been true.
Billy’s father was a doctor, and Billy had been told the facts or at least the initial important ones and he shared his knowledge with me. And when Billy’s father gave him a book about the facts a teenager should know, we read it together. Including the small chapter on homosexuality and it’s undesirable consequences.
I didn’t see it then, but I can see it now. At thirteen I was alienated from society. I had little trust in authority, people who could control my life without my input. I had no faith in a faith that called other people abominations. I was a child of my generation, the 1960’s.
The days are my past. So many. I don’t count them any more. But I find myself remembering. I find I have changed and I haven’t. Some things are the same and I appreciate that and some things I understand better and some things I will hold on to until the end.
Every time I have said goodbye to Billy in my life I have gotten a little harder maybe. Determined to not do this again maybe. But I could hear Billy now whistling in my kitchen. He spent the night and today was my birthday. We were going to take the boat out on the lake later. Were we in love… again. Have we ever not been in love. We were family in a strange way. Lovers in a way. Sometime strangers and always friends and simply lovers… and time and changes and choices never added up enough to break the hold he had on me and apparently he couldn’t break it either. We both have tried in the course of fifty years.
June 7, 2012
Billy Bayou, is the third short story in a series begun with A Valentine in November and Barbara Fleurnois.
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2012 - Summer - Choices Entry
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2012 - Summer - Choices Entry
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