Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 19:29:44 +0000
From: Keith <fcbfankeith@virginmedia.com>
Subject: Coming Out at Uni - Part Two

Coming out at Uni - Part 2

Disclaimer: Each part of this story may contain vulgar language and
descriptions of gay sexual activity. If such things are likely to upset
now, or you are underage to read this material in your jurisdiction you
should leave now.

This is a work of fiction, and none of the characters are real people.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I went down to the dining hall just before 8 o'clock the following morning
for breakfast. I would have to get to the main campus a mile away by 10
o'clock for an orientation day with meetings for the whole Engineering
faculty, and then for my specific department, Chemical Engineering.

Deciding I needed plenty of energy, I gathered up toast, cereal as well as
a plate of eggs, bacon and hash browns. As I left the serving area, I could
see Jen sitting over to one side and went over to sit next to her.

"I see someone's hungry, then," she said.

"Yeah, well, you know, they do say it's the most important meal of the day,
so rather than leave it to chance, I thought I'd have something of
everything."

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, Jen eating her cereal, while I
was demolishing my hot food.  As I looked around I couldn't help but notice
the variety of people staying in the hall - some were already dressed to
set off straight from breakfast, with every fashion type known to man
represented, while at the other extreme were guys rolling up in just their
boxers, probably intending to go straight back to bed after eating. I was
actually filling the middle ground, having thrown on a pair of jeans and a
t-shirt to come downstairs, but intending to go back and shower and change
before heading out for the day.

Jen finished her cereal, and headed over to the front of the hall to get
rid of her bowl and get herself a coffee. She came back and sat down again,
and then apologised, "I'm sorry, I should've got you a drink too."

"Don't worry about it," I replied, "I'll grab a cup on our way out."

"So what's the plan for today?" she asked, between blowing gently on her
coffee to cool it down.

"Well, I've got the Engineering Orientation Day today..."

"Cool, so have I!" she interrupted.

"You're an engineering student too?" I asked, with a note of surprise in my
voice, as I spread some butter rather inexpertly on my toast.

"Yeah, it's not just guys. We're not in the 19th Century now, you know. I'm
doing Civil Engineering."

"Hey, no problem here. That's so cool. I have to do a Civil Engineering
module as part of my Chem Eng course."

"Great," she said, "We can go down to the first part together then. If you
ever stop eating, we can go get ready, and I'll meet you at the front
entrance at 9:30?"

"Yeah, that'll be fine. You can head off now, while I finish up here. See
you in a bit."

"Yeah, see you shortly," she said, and headed off towards the girls rooms.

I picked up a coffee and an apple as I left the dining hall, and headed
back up to my room. I quickly undressed and wrapped a towel round me to
head to the showers. I quickly washed and dried myself, and as I was
heading back to my room I saw Jake come out of his room in just his briefs,
still looking half-asleep. "Hey Jake," I said, "If you want breakfast
you're gonna have to get a move on; they stop serving in like 10 minutes."

"I'm not gonna bother," he said, "I'm just gonna take a paracetamol and get
back to bed. My fucking heads pounding after last night."

"OK, see you later then," I replied, heading into my room. I quickly downed
the coffee, which had cooled down during my shower, and cleaned my teeth at
the small sink in the corner of my room. I then grabbed a pair of jeans and
a clean white t-shirt and got dressed. I had a quick look in the mirror,
deciding to go with a messy look to my brown hair, and thought I could
probably make a bit more of an effort as I was going to be meeting a lot of
my fellow-students for the first time, but time was pressing and I decided
to stay as I was. I made my way down in the lift, and saw Jen waiting there
as she had promised.

We set off down the hill, and had gone a couple of hundred yards when she
said, "So, have you thought any more about what happened last night?"

"Yeah, I couldn't get to sleep for ages. You know, I came here thinking
that it would be so easy to start over, and just come straight out of the
closet, if you'll excuse the contradiction there, and just be out there and
happy, but now I'm here it's not so easy after all. I actually wish in a
way Jake wasn't here, and that's really horrible cos he's been like my best
friend forever. I dunno, it's like he's a continuation of my past life,
where I found it really difficult to be who I want to be, and I feel I
can't change with him still around."

"I know how you feel," she said, "Don't forget you're the only person that
knows I'm gay too. We're gonna have to support each other through this."

By now, we had reached the near side of the main campus, and were walking
alongside the athletics track. "I guess we'll have to think about it some
more," I said, "but I think it's gonna be a slow process for me."

"I dunno," she replied, "I'm not about to climb the clock tower and shout
it from the top, but I don't feel the need to deny it. If anyone asks me, I
think I'd be able to admit it."

"Good for you," I commented, "I still don't think I'm ready for that
yet. Anyway we'd better hurry; we've got to be there in about three minutes
flat."

We made it into a large lecture theatre in the Mechanical Engineering
building in the nick of time and managed to find a couple of seats together
near the back. Jen nudged me, "Hey, that's that guy from last night down
there, isn't it?"

I looked where she was pointing, and she was right, Josh was there, below
us near the front and away to our right. He looked just as hot in daytime
as he had last night at the party, and had a confident air about him. I
could see he was chatting to another guy next to him, a bit taller and
stockier. A middle-aged guy appeared at the front of the room and gradually
the noise died down for him to speak.

It turned out to be the professor in charge of the whole engineering
faculty, and he gave us a fairly nondescript welcome speech before handing
over to the next speaker. This was a woman and she started running through
the general admin requirements, and the expectations of how we would
present our coursework, and also meet with our tutors regularly. This was
already getting tedious, and I glanced down again towards Josh, and noticed
that the guy next to him was now whispering something to the girl sat on
his other side. I looked back at Josh, admiring his small frame.

"You're doing it again," Jen whispered, elbowing me at the same time, "You
couldn't be much more obvious if you started drooling."

This is gonna be difficult, I thought to myself. If I keep staring at hot
guys like this I'll be out of the closet before next weekend. Just then,
the woman's voice cut through my daydreaming, and people started standing
up.

"We're having a break," Jen informed me. "We've got to be back in 15
minutes for the final part of the introduction, and then we head to our
individual departments to carry on there."

"Cheers," I said, "Back in a mo." I left to head to the toilets, where I
guessed Josh was also heading when I last saw him. He was nowhere to be
seen, but as I left the toilets to head back, I saw him standing alone by a
vending machine, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of water. Swallowing
nervously, I went over to him.

"Hi, uh, Josh isn't it. Sorry about last night."

"No problem. Look Harry, I heard what you said, and I understand, really I
do. What do you say we start over and meet up later?"

I could barely speak, I was just delighted he'd actually remembered my name
and hadn't given up on me already. "Yeah," I replied eventually, "that'd be
great. What course are you doing?"

"Electrical Engineering," he said, "You're doing Chem Eng I assume?"

"Yeah."

"OK, shall we meet up at the end of the afternoon and have a drink or
something?"

"Yeah, that'd be great". We exchanged mobile numbers as we headed back to
the lecture theatre and we agreed to text each other when our afternoon
sessions were finished.

"So?" prompted Jen when I edged along the row into the seat next to her.

"I spoke to him and we're having a drink later," I informed her.

"Just take it steady," she advised, before quiet fell again as the woman
resumed her instructions from the front. When she finished, I told Jen I'd
see her later that evening and tell her how things went, and we headed off
to our respective departments. Free of distractions I found the tour of the
Chem Eng department interesting, and the rest of the day passed quickly. We
were given our lecture timetable, with a lot of lectures planned four days
each week, along with one day of practical lab work each week also. We were
also given the book list for the year, and finished the afternoon by
meeting our personal tutors. Mine turned out to be a relatively young guy,
Dr Smith, who appeared to be in his early 30s. I was sharing him with four
other students and he told us we would be having tutorial sessions with him
every couple of weeks or so, and gave us his contact details in case we had
any problem or questions between sessions.

I had felt my phone vibrate while we were with Dr Smith, and after leaving
his study, checked it to find that Josh had texted me to meet up in one of
the bars in the Student Union building in the middle of the campus. I
nervously made my way there, noting a student bookshop on the way where I
thought I could probably get most of the books I needed. Reaching the Union
building, I made my way up to the first floor bar that Josh had said he
would be in, and spotted him straight away sitting alone at a small table
near a window.

I could see he already had a drink, and there was no-one at the bar, so I
gave him a quick wave of greeting and went over and bought a lager for
myself. "Hi Harry," he said as I sat down. "I'm glad you've come over."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Cos I like the look of you to be honest. You're cute, and you have this
innocent, naive way that I love."

I could feel myself going red. "J-Josh," I spluttered, leaning towards him
and lowering my voice, "like I said last night, I'm not out, and I don't
think I'm ready to be out. You're one of only two people in the world that
knows, my parents don't know, hell, even my best friend doesn't know."

"Hey, no problem," Josh answered, as I took a big gulp of my lager. "It's
different for everyone. I would like to get to know you though, like I say,
there's just something about you."

"Well, what do you wanna do?"

"For now, let's just talk and drink. We're both gonna be here for three
years; we don't have to get married this evening."

"M-married?"

"Jeez, relax, I'm joking. I'm just saying we can take things slow. Find out
about each other, and see where we go from there. We can't even get married
legally you know. Tell me about yourself."

"Well, I'm from a town about 50 miles from here, only child, mum and dad
are both Christians, which is the main reason I've never done anything
about being gay. I thought coming here I could be myself, but it's not as
easy as that."

"You don't think they'd accept you being gay? Are they anti-gay?"

"They've never really said anything about gay people. I suppose it's never
really come up, we've never really known anyone who's gay, but, like I
said, they both go to church every Sunday, so I can't see them being
thrilled about it. What about you?"

"Well, I am thrilled about it, but I don't think that's what you meant," he
replied, making me laugh.  "I'm from the south-east, youngest of three
brothers, I've known I was gay since I was 13. I told my family when I was
15, and it wasn't a big deal to them to be honest. They were, like, 'Yeah,
and?'".

"You're so lucky, had they already guessed or something?"

"I don't think so, but they're really laid back. As long as my education
doesn't suffer, and I don't get into trouble, they're real easy-going. My
mum did give me the safe-sex spiel though, that was embarrassing."

"That would be the least of my worries about coming out to be honest."

"Yeah, well, like I said, you don't have to rush anything if you don't want
to."

"I really want to move forward and be myself, but I'm afraid as well."

"Hey, one thing at a time. Baby steps. Not much point in coming out unless
you've got a boyfriend.  Have you ever had a boyfriend?"

"No," I said. "I've fancied guys before, but I've never done anything
except in my dreams." I decided this wasn't the time to tell Josh about my
crush of several years on Jake.

"I've had a few," he revealed, "but all fairly casual. I've never had a
boyfriend where I've thought they might be the one."

"What're you saying? I'm the one?"

"God, no," he laughed, "we've only just met. Like I say, I like you, I
really like you, but we need to get to know each other properly and take it
from there. Where are you living?" I told him as he finished his drink, and
he said, "Cool, that's just up the hill from me. Come on let's get going
otherwise we'll miss dinner."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I've just been overwhelmed by how many people responded after my first ever
chapter with encouragement and praise. Again, please email comments to me
at fcbfankeith@virginmedia.com .  This is my first attempt at writing a
story; let me know if you like it so far and if you want me to continue.

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