Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 19:30:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alex Mawhorter <alexmawhorter584295@yahoo.com>
Subject: A Love Story - Part 1

This story is fictional, and all places, names or establishments mentioned
are used in fictitious context.  Please do not copy this work.

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	It was hot.  The simmering morning heat from the Georgia sunshine
threw itself upon whatever unlucky soul left the protective shades of the
numerous trees and buildings.

	Great Falls was a tired, southern town (at least when I first knew
it).  The proud homes built generations before, now stood sleepily against
a sullen backdrop of oak trees and the various gardens which lined the back
of homes on the main thoroughfares.  The many shouts and murmurs of
families and children could be heard by anyone, if they so chose to listen
closely enough.

	The maddening buzz of my alarm clock eventually drove me out of my
realm of slumber with a violent start.  I gently, though in frustration,
silenced the clock.  Coming to grips with this seemingly alien concept of
"waking up", I clumsily dropped my feet upon the rough carpeting in my
bedroom.  Only now did I realize my chest soaked with sweat.  Beads of the
stuff cascading down my chest, collecting on my stomach and the upper parts
of my crotch (I always slept nude, except during the occasions of friends
or relatives staying for the night).

	I dumbly, as if drunk off of sleep, began my shuffle to the
kitchen.  I was the only person in the house in the mornings.  I've
observed in the short span of my 15 years of life, my mother become
fatigued and frail before she even turned 40 years old.  I childishly
resented her for being a single parent, yet, pitied her simultaneously.
Confusing, isn't it?  At least, I believe so.

	Following ten minutes of spacing out and sipping nuke warm coffee,
I suddenly decided to skip breakfast.  Laziness can beat hunger, sometimes.
I didn't feel like cooking eggs, that's mother's work I always thought.

	Now awake, I briskly waltzed into my bedroom, and grabbed my
cigarettes for a nicotine fill before school (cigarettes, a guilty
pleasure).  I walked out on the patio, ash tray and cigarettes in hand.  I
sat down on a lawn chair, lit a cigarette, and then I heard something.
Like a low grunt of pain, or perhaps exhaustion.  I looked over into the
Johnson's yard, and I saw a very peculiar man.

	He was handsome, and perhaps not much older than me.  He was about
my height of 5'9.  The shirtless stranger had slender legs, a nice butt,
broad shoulders and short, curly black hair.  Mind you, I was facing his
backside from where I was sitting.  As he turned around, I averted my gaze
as to remain an anonymous "heterosexual".  When I felt I had been looking
away for a reasonable amount of time, I caught a glimpse of his front side.
He had a young face, slender, handsome.  His arms hung at his side with
ease, rippled with muscles from long amounts of manual labor.  He had a bit
of abs, with a tattoo of thorns just below his belly button.  However, his
eyes were easily the most attractive of all his features.  Like pools of
bright green hazel, their gaze could calm even the most savage of emotions.
	He had a shovel in hand, and his hands were stained brown with
dirt.  He was landscaper, or more romantically, a gardener.  He shot me a
look, and resumed his work in silence.  And that was my first encounter, of
what was to be, my most cherished lover.

	I sat smiling, in the lawn chair, my mind was somewhere else.  To
be blunt, in the stranger's pants.  He would not leave my mind, and I would
not let him.  I sat, dreaming about him.  Time fell asleep in the morning
sunshine.

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Comments are much appreciated:  alexmawhorter@yahoo.com