Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 07:14:00 EDT
From: BertMcK@aol.com
Subject: Dancing on the Tundra, Chapter 2 of 24

DANCING ON THE TUNDRA
by Bert McKenzie
Copyright 2010

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to any real
person alive or dead is coincidental and unintentional.

CHAPTER II

     "Would you like to share that with the rest of the class?"
the imperious voice asked.

     Terry felt his face beginning to burn.  He glanced up from
the note and saw the beady little eyes staring at him from behind
the small, wire rimmed lenses.  "What?" he asked, startled by the
confrontation.

     "The note you just received," Sister Mary Leon said as she
slowly rose from her desk in front of the dirty, green chalk
board and started down the aisle toward him.

     Terry quickly crumpled the piece of paper in his hand
wishing the wooden floor boards would open up and swallow his
desk.  He glanced around quickly, trying to think of a way to get
rid of the note before the nun reached him, but he suddenly
seemed isolated, cut off from everyone.  There was no chance he
could pass it on to someone else, or even destroy it while her
eyes focused on him.  For a desperate moment he thought he might
be able to pop it in his mouth and swallow it, but even then he
knew it was too late.  The nun was standing over him, her hand
extended.  He had no choice but to give it to her.  He wished he
could perform some slight of hand and substitute the note with
some other piece of paper from his notebook, but he was too
clumsy.

     "Hand it to me," the nun said coldly, "and we'll share it
with the rest of the class."

     Terry could hear Paula's thoughts as plainly as if he were a
mind reader.  Her brown eyes were burning into him.  "Please
don't let her see it!" they silently screamed.  "Please don't
give her my note!"

     The nun's pudgy, pink little hand reached out for it.  Terry
fought an internal struggle between handing his teacher the note
and tearing it up into a thousand pieces.  The internal battle
only seemed to cause an outward paralysis.  Sister Mary Leon
reached down and firmly pulled the piece of paper from his
clenched fingers.  She turned and walked back to the front of the
room, her beads rattling ominously with each step.  Terry took a
moment to give a guilt ridden look of apology to Paula.  She only
glared at him in anger.  It wasn't his fault.  After all, she
wrote the note.  He only got caught with it.

     Sister Mary Leon turned to face the class as she uncrumpled
the piece of paper.  She always read the notes she confiscated
out loud.  Her idea was to embarrass the note passers enough that
they would never do it again.  At the moment Terry was prepared
to take an oath never to do anything wrong again for the rest of
his life if she would just not read the note.  He quickly said a
silent prayer to God asking him to work a miracle and strike the
woman blind, only temporarily.

     "I have a date with him on Saturday," the nun's strident
voice began.  Terry and Paula both sank lower in their seats as
everyone else in the room perked up.  "You see him every day in
gym class.  Just how big is it?"  The nun looked up in amazement
as the rest of the room seemed to turn to stone.  Not a sound
could be heard except the pounding of his pulse in Terry's ears.
"Just how big is what, Miss Brown?" the nun asked, unable to
comprehend the question.  Unfortunately every student in the
classroom understood immediately.  With Sister Mary Leon's
question the room erupted into loud, raucous laughter.

     With the amazing swiftness of divine inspiration the nun
suddenly understood and turned several bright shades from pink to
crimson.  She stormed down the aisle, grabbing Terry by the arm
and yanking him from his desk.  She then grabbed Paula and with
the two guilty parties in tow, headed out of the room, down the
stairs and across the hall to the office.  She couldn't even
speak, she was so angry.  She just shoved the crumpled paper into
the principal's face.  Father Joseph read the scrap of paper then
stared at the two offenders.

     "It's all very innocent," Paula explained.

     "Well?" the priest asked expectantly, his bushy, white
eyebrows crawling up the creases of his brow.

     "I have a date with Jim Ragsdale.  You know he's the star
kicker of the football team.  I heard that because of his kicking
the ball, one of his feet is bigger than the other.  So I wrote a
note to Terry and . . ."

     Terry stood with his mouth hanging open, listening to the
bald faced lie Paula was telling.  He almost laughed and gave her
away.  The priest looked again at the note in his hand.  "You
were curious about his foot?"

     "Of course," Paula answered innocently.  "What else would I
ask about?"  She then turned to look back at her English teacher.
Sister Mary Leon again turned pink and seemed to sputter, making
a noise not unlike the sound of the old radiators on the third
floor in the dead of winter.  Paula saw her advantage and pressed
the issue.  "Why, Sister, what ever did you think?"

     The nun slowly recovered her composure.  "I want these two
in detention for passing notes in class."  She then turned and
marched out of the main office.  Father Joseph wiggled his finger
to indicate that the two trouble makers should follow him into
his private office.

                            *   *   *

     Terry hated gym class more than anything else in high
school.  To begin with he was embarrassed about having to take
his clothes off in front of the other boys.  Not being
athletically inclined he felt self-conscious.  He knew he was too
thin, or too weak looking, and even when the others ignored him,
he was sure they were staring and laughing.  But usually the
others did not ignore him.  They teased him and picked on him
unmercifully.  Consequently Terry always tried to change as
quickly as possible and hurry upstairs to the gym.

     Of course the class itself was no great protection.
Although the boys seemed to ignore him once class started, the
gym teacher, Coach McPherson made this hour a living hell.  The
man reminded Terry of a marine drill sergeant.  He was short and
thick bodied with a round, bull dog face set on an almost non-
existent neck.  His head, which seemed to sit directly on his
shoulders was covered with grey stubble instead of hair.  He kept
it shaved to a burr which rose no more than half an inch over his
scalp.  He always wore a perpetual scowl.  Terry only saw him
smile when he was yelling at someone for some minor infraction of
his many strict rules.  There were never any major infractions.
No one would dare.  The man very obviously enjoyed the power he
held over the young boys.  In addition to sophomore boys P.E.,
McPherson also taught a class in world history to seniors,
although rumor had it that the class was little more than a
glorified study hall.  Terry often wondered if the man actually
had a teaching certificate or if the administration only gave him
these classes as a concession to his sadism to bribe him into
coaching the football team.

     Class always started with ten to twenty minutes of
calisthenics.  Terry managed to keep up with the others during
this segment, however the coach seemed to always be watching him
in particular for some tiny discrepancy in the way he performed a
push-up or squat-thrust.  If his body sagged toward the floor on
push-ups or he didn't left his legs high enough on leg-lifts, the
coach blew a shrill blast on his ever present whistle and ordered
Terry to run laps around the gym as punishment.  Terry really
didn't mind doing the laps.  In fact he much preferred running to
doing the exhausting exercises.  But soon the class would be
broken into teams.  They played basketball or volleyball indoors.
On nice days in the spring and fall they went outside for
baseball or football.  The intervening years had made no
difference.  Terry was still awful at the games and was
consequently teased and ridiculed, sometimes even by Coach
McPherson himself.

     On this one gloomy day in October Coach McPherson seemed
even angrier than normal.  Terry thought he earned the coach's
wrath by being late to class.  Father Joseph kept him past the
bell, lecturing on classroom deportment, then gave him a hall
pass and tardy slip to get him into gym.  But the slip made no
difference to the scowling athletic dictator.  He glanced at the
paper, grunted and told Terry to move his ass.  At least the boy
was able to change to his gym uniform in privacy without his
classmates poking him in the ribs and jeering.  Of course he had
to run laps for being late, then McPherson made him do push-ups
in the corner while the others divided up for basketball.  The
class began to play games while Terry continued to struggle
through the exercises.  Occasionally the coach would come over
and glare, then change the exercise from push-ups to jumping
jacks or to deep knee bends, but he kept the boy working hard
while the others played.

     At last the whistle blew sending everyone to the showers.
But McPherson made Terry run three more circuits of the gym
before letting him go downstairs to the locker room.  Fortunately
gym was the last period of the day so it didn't matter if Terry
was late.  After all, he had to meet Paula in detention after
school anyway.  Some of the guys were already starting to come up
the stairs from the locker rooms as Terry finished his final lap
and headed down.  He stepped to his locker and quickly stripped,
then grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist.  As he
walked down the damp, concrete hall to the shower room three guys
suddenly stepped out in front of him.  They had just finished
showering and were very wet and very naked.

     "Hey, it's Tutti Fruity," Mike Myers called as he saw Terry
approaching.  "Did you guys hear about what happened in Mary
Leon's English class?"  Bart Smith and Jim Ragsdale laughed in
reply.

     "So Tutti, does your girl friend want to know how big my
foot is?" Ragsdale asked with a smirk.  He balanced on one leg
and stuck his right foot up in the air  "Here it is.  You want to
measure it?"

     "I don't think it's your foot he's interested in," Smith
chortled as he nudged his naked friend, causing Ragsdale to lose
his balance and fall against Myers.

     "Oh!" the middle boy said in mock surprise.  "Maybe you been
looking for this?"  He reached down and grabbed his penis,
shaking it at Terry.  "You want to measure this, Tutti?  You got
a ruler or would you rather use your mouth?"  All three boys
laughed gleefully as Terry blushed a bright red.  He tried to
slip past them to the shower room, but Mike Myers blocked the
way.

     "I got to go to detention.  Would you let me by, please?"
Terry said.  He was acutely aware of the three boys coming closer
to him, circling him with their nakedness.

     "You got detention, Tutti?  What for?" Myers asked as he
pressed in.  Terry could smell the scent of soap and sweat.  He
looked down, trying to avoid Myers' face, but instead found
himself staring at the boy's crotch.  Terry realized it was
covered with curly black hair, much more than the body hair on
any of his classmates.  But then Myers was considerably older.
"Hey, Rags, now he's sizing up my dick, and look, I think he's
getting a boner."

     Terry couldn't understand why, but his body was suddenly
starting to become aroused.  He blushed even more and tried to
get away, but Jim Ragsdale suddenly reached down and yanked away
his towel.  "Look at the way he's sticking out from just sizing
us up," the boy teased.

     "Go ahead and get a closer look," Smith said as he pushed
Terry down to his knees in front of them.  "Check out what real
men have, Tutti."

     "What the hell's going on here?" a voice barked.  Coach
McPherson had just stepped into the hall.

     "Nothing, Coach," Ragsdale and Smith both said in chorus.

     "Tutti was trying to get hold of my balls, Coach," Mike
Myers said as he stepped back.  "Look at him.  He's got a boner."

     The man didn't say anything while the three boys quickly
dashed to their lockers.  Terry tried to quietly rise and slip
inconspicuously into the shower.  His unwanted erection was
rapidly shrinking from his embarrassment.  But just before he
reached the shower a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and spun him
around.  Coach McPherson was standing so close Terry could smell
the stale cigarette odor on his breath.  "If you ever get that
thing hard in my presence again I'll break it off," the man
growled.  "Now go get your ass in that shower, you damned
pervert.  I better not ever catch you trying that kind of shit
around here again.  I'll get you expelled so fast it'll make your
head spin."  The man then turned and stalked off.


                            *   *   *

     "Okay, so he can be a jerk," Paula admitted as they sat in
Mrs. Frank's classroom.  This was where detention was being held
this week.  Mrs. Frank was the foreign language teacher, teaching
Spanish and French.  She was a jovial, rolly-polly woman with
broad features and silver hair whose real name was Frankenfield.
But all of her students and eventually the whole school shortened
it to the nickname.  It was a considerably nicer nickname than
most of the teachers had, but then Mrs. Frank seemed to be
considerably nicer herself.  Normally detention was an after
school study hall that permitted no talking presided over by
various teachers throughout the year.  However, Mrs. Frank had
forgotten that she had scheduled a French Club meeting in the
cafeteria, so she asked the prisoners to behave, leaving them on
their honor.  She promised to return before their time was up,
lest anyone try to sneak away early.

     "And you really have a date with that jerk?" Terry whispered
back to his friend.

     Paula felt the need to defend herself, something she rarely
had to do with Terry.  "I like him.  I think he's cute.  And
besides, he asked me out which is more than any other boy has
done."

     "I ask you out all the time," Terry argued.

     "It's not the same," the girl replied.  "This is a real
date."

     "Is that why you wanted to know how big he was?" Terry
lashed out.  "Are you planning to do it with him?"

     "Why?  You jealous?" she retorted.

     "Of him?"

     "No, of me."

     It took him a moment to catch her implication.  Terry turned
away from her and tried to look at the book that sat open on his
desk, but the page seemed to be swimming under water.  It wasn't
until a salty drop fell onto the paper that he realized his eyes
had filled with tears.  To stop the crying Terry thought of snow
and ice.  For some odd reason this always helped calm him in the
past.  The boy then grabbed his books and stood up, leaving the
room.  He could hear Paula whispering loudly to his retreating
back.  "Where do you think you're going?"

     Terry ran down the hall to his locker, quickly dialed the
combination and threw his books in.  He slammed the metal door
shut with a tinny bang then quickly started down the stairs to
the side door.  By now the parking lot was fairly empty with only
a few cars left belonging to the others who had detention or the
ones involved in extra curricular activities like French club.
As Terry crossed the concrete lot he suddenly felt someone
watching him.  At first he thought it was his guilty conscience
for skipping out on detention, but then he glanced up and saw the
observer.  It was Jim Ragsdale, sitting behind the wheel of a
beat up pickup truck staring at him as he walked across the empty
lot.  Terry put his head down and kept walking, quickening his
pace.  He was just about to cross the street on the far side when
the rusty, primer colored truck pulled in front of him.

     "You want a ride, Tutti?" Jim called out the open window.

     "No thanks," Terry said and waited for him to drive on.

     "I want to talk to you," the boy said from behind the wheel.
"Get in."

     "I've got to get home."

     "I'll take you home.  Get in."

     Terry wanted to turn and run but he knew that would only
increase his reputation of being a coward.  He gulped nervously,
opened the door and climbed into the cab.  He shut the door and
sat against it on the edge of the seat so he could jump out if
necessary.

     Jim started up the truck which had died while he sat waiting
on Terry.   They pulled down the street and headed north.  "Look,
I'm sorry about this afternoon . . . in the locker room.  We were
just . . . you know . . . it was just a joke."

     "It's okay," Terry answered, feeling strange.  None of the
'popular' guys ever noticed him unless it was to make him the
butt of their jokes.  Now one of the in-crowd was giving him a
ride home and apologizing for teasing him as well.

     "I heard what Coach said to you.  I guess it was kind of our
fault.  For what it's worth I think Myers went too far."

     "Yeah," Terry said.  It wasn't so much of an agreement as it
was an acknowledgment that he had heard what was said.

     "I seen McPherson when he gets down on somebody.  If he
really thinks you're queer he'll come down hard."  Jim gave Terry
a quick, sympathetic glance as he turned the corner onto Elm.

     "It's okay," the boy replied as he began to relax a little.

     The two rode along quietly until Jim pulled up in front of
Terry's house.  "Can I ask you something?" he said as Terry
opened the door.  "Did Paula really ask you how big I was?"

     Terry turned back to stare at the boy behind the wheel.  At
first he thought Ragsdale was about to make him the victim of
some more vicious humor.  But the boy's face seemed openly
curious and perhaps a little bit hopeful.  There was no trace of
the cruel humor in his soft brown eyes.

     "She said you have a date for Saturday," Terry replied
evasively.  Although he was beginning to trust this boy he still
didn't want to admit what Paula had asked.  But since he didn't
deny it Jim took that as admission.

     "So what did you tell her . . . I mean about how big I am?"
Ragsdale asked with a smile.

     "I didn't," Terry said, slamming the truck door shut and
turning to go up the steps to his house.

                            *   *   *

     Sunday morning after church the phone rang.  It was Paula
calling for Terry.  "Meet me," was all she said, then hung up.
He knew instantly what she meant.  She wanted to meet him out in
their secret spot behind the bushes against the garage.  They
still used the same hiding place they had for years.  Only now
the secret meetings were much rarer.  The area seemed to have
shrunken as well.  What had once been a spacious clubhouse was
now only a tiny spot which barely contained the two of them.
They had to huddle extremely close together just to fit.

     Ten minutes later Terry walked behind the houses back to the
garage, then after a glance around to make sure no one saw him,
he slipped behind the bushes.  Paula was already there, perched
on the old concrete block.  "Well?" Terry asked.

     "I wanted to tell you about my date," she said.  She pushed
her long black tresses out of her face.  Terry thought her new
hair style made her look a bit like Morticia Addams from the TV
show.

     "I don't want to hear about it," he lied.  Actually he was
dying of curiosity, but he would rather expire than let on.  And
he was still a little miffed about her treatment of him in school
last week.

     "We went to a movie and then got a soda and then he brought
me home," she said.  "You know, it was really kind of boring."

     "Didn't you find out how big he was?" Terry said, striking
out in anger.

     Paula thought of several retorts, but tried to find the one
that might hurt the most.  "Not this time," she said with a
smile.  "Maybe next weekend.  I think he's going to ask me to go
steady."

     "I've got homework to do," Terry lied.  "See you later."  He
quickly turned and ran back to the house and up to his room.
Once inside he shut the door, put a new Beatles album on the
record player and laid down on the bed.  He couldn't understand
the ache he was feeling inside.  He tried to analyze his
emotions, to know what was going on--but everything seemed so
confused.

     Maybe it was because he loved Paula, he thought.  They had
grown up together, lived next door to each other, been best
friends since kindergarten.  He figured they would eventually get
married, so he knew he must love her.  After all, there wasn't
any other girl he even liked.  So maybe he was jealous because
she was dating Jim Ragsdale.  But when he thought of Jim Ragsdale
he felt like crying.  He told himself he was stupid.  He knew
that a real man wouldn't lie in bed and cry because of . . . well
he didn't know what.  Terry grabbed a kleenex from beside the bed
and wiped his eyes.  Then he tried to compose himself and think
about why he was crying.

     This time he thought about Jim.  The guy was actually nice
to him last week, giving him a ride home.  He pictured the soft
brown eyes, the perfectly shaped nose, the curly brown hair.  Jim
was really very handsome.  Terry knew that Jim could get just
about any girl he wanted with his looks; why did he pick Paula.
She was okay, but she was no beauty.  Her face was too long and
the way her jaw jutted out made her appear a bit masculine.  On
top of all of that she didn't seem to have any bosoms.  All the
guys talked about bosoms so he knew her lack of them must be a
real disadvantage to her.

     Terry again thought about Jim.  But this time the image that
popped into his head was the naked boy in the locker room.  He
thought about the broad bare shoulders, the muscular chest capped
with tiny nipples, the flat stomach with the navel that was an
'outty' rather than an 'inny.'  And he again played the scene
before his mind's eye that had occurred in the locker room.  He
watched Jim grab the sizable phallus, waving it toward him and
asking him to measure it with his mouth.  Terry suddenly realized
that again he had an erection.  He thought something was wrong
with him.  It seemed like his penis was always getting hard, and
sometimes at the most inopportune moments, like that day in the
locker room.

     Terry knew why.  He knew he got hard so much because he
played with it.  For the past couple of years he had played with
himself, but only recently in the past few months had his body
actually responded.  The first time it did, it terrified him.  He
had never felt so good and then so guilty in his life.  And he
had messed in his underpants.  He had to wash them out in the
bathroom sink so his mom wouldn't notice the unusual stains.
Since that eventful night, Terry had done the same thing to
himself several times a week.  He didn't want to; he knew it was
a sin.  He had even heard rumors of masturbation causing
blindness, insanity and all measure of other problems.  But he
couldn't help himself.

     He slowly pulled his zipper down and reached inside to open
the fly in his underwear.  Then, Terry began again to think of
Jim Ragsdale.  The more he pictured the boy naked, the faster he
moved his hand over his swollen erection.  He could feel his body
approaching the climax.

     "Here!  What are you doing!?" a strident voice shrieked.
Terry's mom had opened the door to ask him to turn down his
stereo, and in the process caught him in the act.  He jumped up
from the bed, trying to hide his rapidly wilting manhood while
his mother continued to scream for his father.