Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 20:58:42 -0700
From: David Cross <dcross1@home.com>
Subject: shane-and-robin

The usual disclaimers apply - ie. no reading this if you're not of age to
read it, and no peeking at this if you can't stand gay people (which would
bring to mind the question of what the hell you're doing reading this
anyway).

All questions etc can be directed to dcross1@home.com

Those of you who know of my story "Cameron", which is a largely
fictionalized account of a relationship in high school (the entire
relationship is entirely fictional, and the initiating trigger for
discovering each other was gay, while partly true, never led us into coming
out to each other since myself being clueless to hell that day went home
without attaching importance to the true significance of what occurred),
will know that I wrote it from a first-person perspective. This is my
attempt at writing a story from a third-person perspective. This story is
set in a small town on the East coast of Vancouver Island, called Campbell
River. I actually did live in this town for a couple of years, so it's not
like I'm making it up completely. Since it's going to be about two people
who never actually existed (well, ok, that's not entirely true - I'm
modelling them on some cuties I knew back then, but that's appearance only
;) ), I get to use some real names and places for once. ;)

I now take you backwards in time across eight years....

----

September 9, 1992

7:00 AM

Shane Wilson woke up to the ring of his alarm clock and mumbled vague
curses about school days and the indignity of being forced to wake up at
such an ungodly hour. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stood
up facing the full-length mirror he had tucked away in the corner, near the
closet. Sigh. First week of school...

"Status check: Same as yesterday. No new zits to report, Captain. Still 6
feet tall even, 17 years old, in grade 11, hair as blond as the cornfields
in Saskatchewan, eyes as blue as the summer sky, and a build girls would
die to get their hands on."

Girls, indeed. Not for the first time, Shane mused on the cruel irony of
growing up gay in the redneck backwater town of Campbell River, BC - the
pickup truck count per capita was only exceeded by the even smaller towns
further north, and more often than not the prime use of these trucks was
for holding impromptu beer blasts. He'd realized he was "different" when he
was about 14, and at first tried to deny it to himself, and prayed to God
each night to make him normal like the others. When after six months of
this it became clear that God had left the controls and nobody else seemed
to be at the helm, Shane went to the school library during lunch, and
hardly daring to look anybody in the eye, surreptitiously located a book
that described homosexuality in general terms. This was an absolute
revelation for him at that age, and he quickly became a professional cynic,
though not daring to show that side of him to his father, who would surely
have had an absolute fit at the thought that his own son questioned God's
existence, never mind that his son was gay.

His father was the general manager of the local pulp mill, a well-known
contributor to the local Baptist Church, and was often known to make
speeches there, usually filled with warnings of the dangers of moral
licentiousness, including homosexuality. His mother was not known to differ
substantially from these views, but she did have a separate job of her own,
which was at a real-estate office in town. The boom which would be fuelled
by the government's Inner Island Highway project had yet to come, but
already the retirees and families wanting to escape Vancouver, Victoria and
Nanaimo were flocking to this place, the so-called "Fishing Capital of the
World".

Maybe it would have been easier if Shane had had a brother or sister to
talk to, but he was an only child, stuck in his father's theocracy. So he
was an unusual quantity, having a tendency to keep to himself, for a guy
who looked like a basketball player, but in fact tended to jog for exercise
and use the school's weight machines to keep in shape. Also, every summer
since he was 15 he worked in a construction company a friend of his dad's
owned. He hated the small-minded pettiness that went along with being a
jock. Hell, his entire school with the exception of a few people was
entirely preoccupied with mundane issues such as who was going out with
whom, who was having what party the upcoming weekend, who got trashed at
the last weekend's party and what did they do and how much beer could
someone chug. AGH! It pissed him off sometimes.

While these thoughts ran though Shane's head, he'd gone on autopilot and
was just about finished the entire shower/shave/etc ritual. "Did I really
zone out for 15 minutes?! I must be getting bad." Mental note: Stay
grounded to the planet Earth. He then proceeded to get dressed - nothing
fancy, just a good pair of blue jeans, a white tank top, and a white
long-sleeved shirt.

7:30 AM

Shane got into his 1985 Ford LTD Crown Victoria, and started the
engine. While he waited for the car to warm up, he paused to remember how
he'd gotten the car. He'd paid $6,000 for it a year ago, and it was in
decent shape - navy blue exterior, greyish interior. He'd gotten that
particular car because, well, he didn't have much of a selection and it was
the first decent-looking car he'd seen on sale that he was within reach of
buying. He'd convinced his parents to kick in half the cost, and he kicked
in the other half, and agreed to pay for his own car insurance, et
cetera. He'd definitely worked his buns off for this car, having spent
almost all the money he'd saved up the previous summer, but enough was left
over that he didn't have to ask for gas money from his parents unless he
was driving to Victoria or Nanaimo. One day, he wanted to get to Vancouver
with the car and rumble in the big city!

Shane chuckled to himself at that momentary descent into immaturity, and
put the car into reverse. He backed out of the driveway, and wheeled the
car left across both lanes of the one-lane-each-direction road, which was
York road in Oyster River, a "suburb" of Campbell River, which wasn't a
city - it was a municipality. He then put the car in drive and drove the
roughly 25-minute drive to Southgate Secondary, a grade 8 to 12 school in
Willow Point, a closer "suburb" to Campbell River proper.

Again, Shane's brain went on auto-pilot as he drove the same route he had
so many times before; hang left on Hilchey, by the 7-11, up to Alder, hang
another left, and swing into the school's student parking lot. He stepped
out of the car, having grabbed his backpack, locked the door and walked
along the outside basketball court, up the concrete stairs past the
industrial education annex (all the woodworking/metalworking/power
mechanics classes were taught there), up another set of stairs to turn left
into the section of the school more-or-less reserved for the grade 8's. The
grade 8 classes were set on a different timetable than the rest of the
grades were in, so in order to avoid confusion the principal, Barry
Henshall, who was as big as life and was perpetually happy, had rigged the
teaching assignments so that the grade 8 kids got their own locker
assignments in that section of the school and had all their classes there
as well, barring a couple of Social Studies 11 and Law 12 classes taught in
two rooms down at the south end of this section. Across the way was a
computer lab and the 'special-needs' student room.

Up the stairway into the entry area, vending machines along one wall, a
concession along the other. Further on down the hallway, there was his
locker: 176. It was in the east-west portion of the "L" that made up the
main section of Southgate, near the principal's office. Next to his locker
was 177, and two down, 178. Those lockers were held by two students, David
Conway (in Grade 12) and David Heath (in Grade 11). The first David was
fairly shy, wore glasses, and kept to himself much of the time. The other
David was about the same height as Shane, and overall was pretty
average. When the two Davids happened to reach their lockers at the same
time, though, the two of them would be discussing something that was of
significance to the two of them. Today, the two of them were just dying
laughing over some corny story that this teacher, Mr. Akelaitis, told every
year. Something about a stolen candy bar. Yesterday he'd heard the two of
them discuss some esoteric principle of quantum mechanics with undisguised
enthusiasm, at lunch time, no less. What the hell was "wave-particle
duality" anyway?

Shane sighed and reflected that while those two Davids might be OK, and in
fact was in the Physics 11 class that those two were in (he'd asked David
C. once why he was in a grade 11 physics class, and the reply was that he'd
stupidly taken the advice of the guidance counselor when he'd transferred
in the previous year and left it off his timetable), he just wanted to
graduate and get the hell out of Campbell River; then he could decide if he
really liked quantum mechanics and all that other stuff.

Consulting the timetable, it was Biology first thing, then English,
Physics, Metalworking and Math. Fair enough; Shane knew that while the two
guys who had the lockers next to him might love science, he was only taking
the sciences to make sure he had the necessary requirements to get into a
university, somewhere. Anywhere away from that damned town and his
right-wing father. This wasn't just political conservatism; this was out
and out social conservatism, a variety only the Reform party could love.

Shane sat in Mr. Carlson's Biology class and listened without being overly
interested. The lesson for the day was some basic principles of
classification based on asking yes/no questions about the species under
examination. Dichotomous keying, it was called. Yay. What Shane really
wanted was to be able to just TELL someone what was so different about him!
Everything else paled in light of that simple fact: he was gay. He didn't
like women _that_ way, though he played along well enough, but when it came
down to the wire, a kiss and a hug was all he was ever going to do with a
girl. Now what _did_ catch his interest was that shy-seeming guy in the far
right-hand corner, near the door. Dressed to kill in a white sweater, black
shirt collar poking out from underneath, and brown slacks with shiny black
shoes. What was his name? Robin Peterson. He had curly brown hair, with a
slightly crooked grin, soft brown eyes. He was about 5 feet 10 inches tall,
and some might have called him not their type, but to Shane, this Robin guy
was beautiful. He'd seen Robin around before, but had never had the courage
to talk to him. Shane sighed and put the lustful thoughts away and
concentrated on the remainder of his Biology class.

As it turned out, for the classes that year the only ones Robin was in were
Biology and English, for which the teacher was Mrs. Johnstad. For 6 periods
out of 8, Shane was going to have to be satisfied with mental images of
that mysterious guy. He seemed oddly sensitive, but at the same time
aloof... enigmas such as this were irresistible.

Plod, plod, plod. Back to the car, sink into the seat with a sigh,
and.. Huh? It couldn't be! Robin was waving to him from his own car, an
ordinary-looking Chevy Citation. Shaking loose from his momentary
paralysis, Shane went over to see what the problem was.

Shane said, "Hey, what's up?"

Robin glared at his car and said, "Would you believe? My battery went dead!
I think I forgot to turn the lights off this morning."

"That sucks. Here, let me drive my car over and we'll boost yours."

Shane rushed back to his Ford, started the engine, and parked his car with
the engine facing Robin's car, left the engine running and popped the
hood. He got out, and yelled over the noise of the engine, "Do you have
jumper cables, Robin?"

Robin seemed startled, and flinched before he yelled, "No, I don't think
so!"

"Great," Shane grumbled. He popped the trunk and fished out his own jumper
cables. As he walked back to where Robin was standing, he said, "Ok, pop
the hood. Do you know how these go on?"

Robin said, "I think so."

"Ok, but so you DO know, it's negative to negative, positive to
positive. And don't cross them over unless you want to ruin something in
the car."

"Gotcha. Um, maybe you could help me get these cables onto my battery
terminals?"

Well, that was a question Shane couldn't refuse. He clamped one positive
alligator clip to the rubber of the cord going to the negative clip; this
would prevent the two at that end from accidentally coming into contact and
short-circuiting the battery. He reached for the two cables at the other
end of the rubber wires, and handed the red, positive, clip to Robin and
said, "Here, put this on that positive terminal there."

Robin seemed to have some trouble squeezing the handles so the alligator
clip would be wide enough to get it down onto the terminal, and Shane,
without thinking, reached out and grasped the handles, not realizing until
too late he was going to touch Robin's hand doing it. When he grasped the
handles, his hand was partially over Robin's. The shock of touching the
hand of the guy he'd admired from afar nearly wrecked his concentration
completely, but he managed to help get the clip on without screwing
anything up. He decided not to say anything to Robin, and got the negative
clip on by himself. He then clamped the appropriate clips onto his
battery's terminals.

Robin's car was up and running 15 seconds later, and Shane quickly took the
jumper cable clips off each car's battery and stowed the mass of rubber and
metal back in his trunk. He walked to the front of his car and slammed the
hood down, then looked over at Robin and said, "So, that wasn't too hard,
eh?"

Robin, strangely enough, seemed somewhat distracted and said vaguely,
"Yeah, it was cool. Hey, I gotta get going if I'm gonna get supper
tonight. Catch you tomorrow, OK?"

"Yeah, that's all right. Seeya!"

Shane mused about the incongruity of events on the way home; something
didn't fit, but he couldn't put his finger on it...

----

That ends part 1. This is a story in a different vein than "Cameron" as I
mentioned before. And to those who are worried, no, I haven't given up on
"Cameron" yet. But it's a complex story, and spinning out a fantasy is
harder at times than at other times. So this should hold ya :)