The thing I always wanted, and to a large degree still want, was to
be cool. I wanted to be able to just look cool, act cool and hand
back and let the ladies flock to me and my mysterious bad-boyishness.
My brain, my traitorous brain, would never allow me to do that and I
would always loose interest in being cool and start goofing, and
clowning. Sometimes I would catch myself and try and dial it back but
usually it would just spiral out of control and soon I would be in
trouble of one sort or another. I have written about the lame
attempts at having a dance at our middle school but in junior high
more people danced and it was at night and there was a real - realish,
DJ. What drove most of the dancing, actually all of the dancing in
Junior High dances were the girls and the levels of testosterone in
the boy's bloodstream that were finally sufficient to overcome early
teenage social timidity and would at least get them on the floor for
the slow dances. We lived in a rural area and gender roles were
fairly well respected in the community and most families except mine.
When I saw the girls all out dancing to the fast dances my coolness
decayed with the half-life of one of those exotic quantum particles
and I was out and goofy dancing without realizing that boys didn't do
that. Luckily, there were a bunch of hillbillies with plenty of
testosterone sitting on the stage steps and along the wall there to
point out my faux pas. They indicated to me that in their
opinion only girls were allowed to dance to fast dances and that my
participation was indicative of my homosexual tendencies. One kid, a
star of the football team and overall tough guy, remarked quite
loudly that I should quit dancing around like some kind of fagot. He
sounded threatening in his tone but he was able to clear that up in
his follow up remark when he promised to kick my queer ass if I
didn't stop dancing with the girls. That terrified me. I really don't
like being punched, kicked or actually physically abused in anyway.
However, I did really, really like girls and it seamed like the best
way for me to maybe make out with some, one, most or all of the girls
here at the dance was to keep dancing and pretend like I didn't hear
my nemesis. He saw that I was not stopping and pretending like I
couldn't hear him so he picked up the volume and intensity of his
requests for me to discontinue my gay dancing. It was becoming
increasingly improbable that I could not have heard him so my plan to
ignore him was becoming less realistic and I needed a new tack. I
choose to pretend I had some pressing business unrelated to the
threats of homo-cide from the redneck real manliness committee
chairman. I asked a girl a year older then me that I had been
interested in for a couple of months if she wanted to go for a walk
outside for a bit and she said sure so we headed out through the
doors manned by teachers so I would not be followed and beat. We got
out under the homo-patrol's radar and went around the south of the
building to the same place where the girl got shot and participated
in that most homo-erotic of behaviors, of kissing someone of the
opposite sex. I guess it turned out all that gay boogieing worked
directly to plan. A fact I pointed out to the psycho when he asked me
where I went during the dance when he had scheduled me for a punitive
thrashing. Knowing that I left to make-out with a girl somehow
deflated his rage entirely and he never bothered me at dances again.
