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- 06/21/2013
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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.
Bad Stereotypes - 31. Saturday 1st June 2013 (Earlier)
I had grown sick of my life.
My ex-best-friend Zachary Sarver made good on his promise to tell everyone and anyone hoe would listen that I’d come on him and that I was ‘unstable.’ He took David, Miles and coach with him, and when training started again after the New Year I was cut from the team. I was pissed rather than upset, and I decided that running without Zach would probably be easier. He was no longer haunting my dreams or my loins, but I could do without his vicious snipes. The over-excited bouncy kids from gymnastics managed to snag me for my PE lessons, so I spent the rest of the term sitting on a bench at the side of the gym, refusing to dash about and pull interesting poses dressed in spandex and lycra.
I lost friends left, right and centre. Guys with who I shared music suddenly off and hanging in other places, too busy to hang and go to gig. People I had considered decent who dropped homophobic language into conversations all the time, just so that I would know my place, and I felt short in a way I never had before.
Between New Years and my birthday I spent a lot of time on the phone with Dale. My godfather talked me out of quitting school, talked me out of fights, backed me down from the stupid shit I said and thought. I knew that the reason Zach hated me now was my fault, but that didn’t make not having anyone any easier. I stuck to my friends online, and I started running on a much more normal schedule.
I spent my eighteenth birthday in the gay part of the city, stayed in a bar and chatted to guys I knew, flirted a little bit and took the last train home alone. I was proud of myself.
But the last day of term started like every other had for weeks, fighting with my parents. I still hadn’t applied for university, or for any kind of training, and I didn’t yet have a job lined up for the summer. My mother was worried that I was going to just laze around the house and go out clubbing all the time now that I was eighteen. But that morning on the last day of term when all I had to do was go in, sit in a weird congratulatory assembly and get my entire book list signed off to say that I’d returned everything to the school, everything went to shit. I came downstairs to find completed applications lying next to my plate for three different arts and fashion programs and a local dance and theatre academy. I dropped my glass.
“Bay!” My mother turned at the sink and glared at me, “Oh, look what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done?” I stepped over the broken glass and water, grabbing the papers, “What the hell have you done?”
“You need direction sweetie,” Mum was already sweeping up the broken glass, bustling about like the dutiful housewife, “You just need to sign them and I’ll send them off. You’ll get in I’m sure.”
“What?” My voice was hard edged, and I dropped the pile of applications on the kitchen counter. There were a thousand things I could say to her; I couldn’t draw, I didn’t understand fashion, I didn’t want to stay home, I had no interest in theatre. All of these things I could of said. “Jesus mum! And if I hadn’t come out you’d be signing my up for an apprenticeship with a mechanic’s right?”
“I just thought you might want to meet more people like you darling.”
“People like me?” I echoed, “You think I’ll find people like me at places like that? Do you not know me at all?”
“Well you’re different now.” She started gathering up the forms, tutting.
“Different? Different how?”
“Well you know…” Mum trailed off into silence as she got another glass and poured orange juice from the fridge.
“I know what mum?” I growled, “I know what? I’m different now because I’m gay?” I knocked away the juice she was thrusting at me, “I’m not a different person!”
“Well that nice friend of yours Alex…”
“Aw fuck…”
“Bayer! Do not swear at your mother.” Dad came in behind me with a growl I recognised from every time I’d ever screwed up. I grabbed the applications.
“Do you know about this?” I wheeled on my father, anger sparking at the too-calm look in his eyes.
“Of course I did, I picked them up. You need direction boy, you’re not lazing around here doing your make up and spending all our money on fake tan for the next few years.”
I was staggered, physically. Apparently my parents had decided that all their information on gay culture could be gleaned from dodgy Channel Four reality television shows.
“I’m leaving.”
“Bay!”
“I’m not going to go and do any of that shit!” I thrust the forms at my Dad, “And I’m not staying here!”
“You can’t leave!” Mum was already crying, begging and sniffling.
“D has been saying for months that I can go and stay with him. I’m taking the train south. Today. Now.”
“You may not leave this house young man.” My father pulled himself up to his full height, and there was an authority in his voice that made the child inside me shake in fear of being slapped. I was sick of feeling like a child.
“Stop me.” I snarled. I pushed past him, and walked upstairs to pack my things. Some clothes, mp3 player, laptop, my favourite running shoes. I took my wallet and my phone and the form I needed for school and I walked out of the house of my parents without a backwards glance.
I went to school and walked around the halls where I had first seen Alex, kissed in the shadows under the stairs which led up to history. The place I had first clapped Zach of the shoulder, the physics room where I had nearly told him everything. I handed over my workbooks and I got the teachers to sign the form. I sat in the assembly and clapped in the right places, saw the new running team go up to collect the award for the most external sporting competitions won in a single year, knowing that most of those wins had been mine, and felt generally numb. I called Dale on the way out of school to let him know that I was coming and he told me to ring my parents and at least apologise for all the shouting. I didn’t want to, but I knew he was right.
It was not a great call. Mum wanted me to come home, dad wanted me to go to art school and I told them that I was going to Dale’s for the summer and that I’d call them when I got there. I waited for the train and closed out my social network accounts, deleted all my contacts and my photos and shut down my gaming accounts. I didn’t much feel like talking to anyone at all.
And then there was just me and a handful of other people waiting as the train squealed into the platform to take me away to the city by the sea and a long hot summer where I could start over and hopefully not screw up my life so much.
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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.
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