Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:39:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Virtual Insanity <virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com>
Subject: Summer of Change

Okay, this is not a story with a whole lot of sex.  Some will come in here
and there, but it is not the central theme.  It's a story about love
between men and self-acceptance, kinda like all of my stories are.

If you're under 18 or 21 or whatever, be aware that in some odd corner of
the universe, you could possbly be breaking the law.

If you like anything of mine, please e-mail me at
virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com and I will be very grateful to you and a lot
more likely to write faster updates. If you don't like what I right, keep
it to yourself. :-)

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				 Part One

Mrs. Deneghy wouldn't leave me alone.  I almost wanted to grab the lady and
slam my fist down her throat.  I didn't deal all that well with letting
people get close to me and no way was I trying to be a teacher's pet.

Still, every time I turned my head, she was there.

She wanted me to take some job over the summer, hauling stuff and doing
handiwork around this antique shop she knew of.  I figured that she wanted
me to do it because of the fact that I was six foot three and built like a
truck.  If I had to find a guy to haul stuff around, it would be me.

It all started when she caught me in the freshmen gym with this fag named
Skit Tyler.  I had this problem with Skit and it was getting out of hand. I
had to do something about it.  I had been at West Central High School for
three years with hardly any problems.  I was at the end of my junior year
and about to be a senior.  I had paid some high prices and took some hard
punches to get to where I was.

I had talked to the football coach after the end of the season earlier that
year and he was looking to select me as captain of the team for the next
school year.  I was excited as hell about that.  Being captain of the team
would make everything awesome for me during senior year.  I mean, all the
guys were going to look up to me.  I wouldn't have to work to be popular at
all.  I was going to have it made and that was what I was looking forward
to.  But this Skit guy was trying to mess all of that up.

He came in as a freshman that year.  One day in the cafeteria, he just
started staring at me.  I thought I was just imagining it because I had
noticed him a couple of times before.  I had seen him walking around school
with this blonde girl that was a cheerleader for the freshman football
team.  I didn't know if he was her boyfriend or not, but he was always with
her.  I had also seen him go into the locker room a few times because the
freshmen gym class was right after the junior's class.  I can't tell you
why I noticed the guy.  There was just something about him that made me
uncomfortable.  Then, he started gawking at me in the halls and in the
cafeteria and some of the guys were starting to notice.

You can't just go around the school letting fags stare at you without some
of the guys starting to give you heat or even starting to question you
about it.  So, I figured that before senior year started I had to do
something about this guy.

I waited outside of his gym class near the last month of the school year
and when he came out of the locker room, I grabbed him by the arm and
shoved him into the freshmen gym and up against a wall.

He looked like he was going to shit bricks or something.  I could look like
a bad ass when I wanted to.

"Why the fuck are you staring at me all the time?" I asked him, real mad.
I wanted him to know I was serious.  He stared at me up close.  He had
these blue eyes.  I never saw anything like them before.  I mean, I saw
him, but I never got close enough to see what color his eyes were or
anything like that.  I had to blink a couple of times to keep the mad dog
look on my face.

"W-what?" he started stammering and his teeth were chattering together in
his mouth.  He was so scared.

"Did I fucking stutter?" I asked him and pushed him against the wall a
little harder for good measure.  He shook his head and looked like he was
about to start crying at any moment.

"I'm s-sorry," he mumbled quietly, shaking.  "I tried to stop.  I-it didn't
work.  I'm trying."  He got this look on his face, real soft and intense
like I was a Picasso original or something .  His blue eyes swept over my
face.  There was this gentle look to it, I almost felt like a hand was
moving over my face every place his eyes touched.  I started shaking.

"Trying isn't going to cut it," I yelled, disconcerted, slamming him
against the wall and making him bang his head hard.  He winced and closed
his eyes.  I felt relieved.  As long as he kept his eyes closed, I was in
control of the situation.

"People are starting to notice," I told him, quietly, watching the pain
etch across his face.  "The guys are starting to ask me why."

Tears leaked out of the sides of his eyes and after a moment he opened them
and looked at me again.  I almost stopped breathing.  The anguish was
almost like a physical blow; my hands loosened their hold a little bit.

"You're beautiful," he said softly.  "If I can't touch, can't I at least
look and dream?"  I felt all of the anger and feeling catch somewhere in my
chest.  The guy was nuts.  He was telling the captain of the football team,
the most popular guy in school that he was a fucking fag.  But I could
almost feel his hope, this physical yearning.  He was hoping that I'd
respond to what he said; that I'd tell him I wanted him, too. Like I said,
he was nuts.

"I'd prefer it if girls dreamt about me," I told him, cutting his fantasies
out flat.  He blinked a couple of times and kind of drooped.

"As a matter of fact," I told him, garnering every ounce of
self-preservation that was in me and staring him straight in his blue eyes,
pulling him closer, "if I catch you staring at me one more fucking time,
I'll beat the shit out of you."  I slammed him back hard against the wall
again, knocking the wind out of him and then let him go.  He hung there for
a minute, blinking and gasping for a breath.  Then, the little guy picked
himself up and walked out of the gym, leaving me behind.  He took a hit
better than some of the best ball players.

I was standing there, running my hands through my hair, trying to stop
shaking.  I was reliving the soft looks, the piercing blue eyes.  I was
telling myself I was a fucking fool if I let that little queer get to me.
He had no reason to hope that I would like him and what the hell did it
matter that he liked me?  My heart was racing in my chest because of my
exhilaration at shoving the guy around, not because I had held him close to
me or heard him say that he wanted me.

There was this sick feeling in my stomach like I was going to puke all over
the place if I didn't pull myself together, but I had never even thought
that he would admit that he wanted me out loud.  I had been sure that he
would deny it.  Wasn't that what fags did?  They didn't stand up with
wounded dignity the way this guy did.  They cowered and did anything they
could to avoid getting the crap beat out of them.

You're beautiful.

Then, Mrs. Deneghy came up behind me and turned me around.  She had this
soft look on her face like I was an egg that she might break if she touched
me funny or something.

"Eric, is everything okay?" she asked me quietly and I nodded. "You know
that you can talk to me if anything is bothering you, don't you?"

Who did the woman think she was?  Just because I had aced her Creative
Writing class didn't mean that she was my buddy or anything.  I
straightened up, shrugged and left the gym.  Ever since that day, though,
she'd been on my back about one thing or another.

First, she needed my help after school on Mondays to do sets for the drama
club's spring play.  I did that for her since I didn't have anything else
going on Mondays.  The football season was over so I didn't have practice.
I always ran a couple of miles to keep my stamina up, but I had never even
thought about joining any other sports teams.  Nothing could compare to the
intensity of playing football.

The drama club had already finished their week of performances and as far
as I was concerned I had done more than enough for Deneghy, but there she
was, standing next to my locker after the final bell.  I trudged up to her
and reached for my lock.

"Hey," I said and she put on this bright smile.

"Eric," she gushed, she had this thing about being peppy or something.  "I
talked to you in class the other day about working at Anderson Antiques,
don't you remember?"

I nodded.  She wasn't going to let me get a word in anyway.

"Well, I spoke with the owners about what a bright and gifted young man you
are and they told me that they really will need someone to help them out on
weekday mornings and afternoons, about four or five hours out of the day,"
she sped on.  "The job wouldn't be too strenuous, they do have a furniture
company who handles most of the heavy things like dressers and bed frames,
but they need someone young and strong for help with storage and little
things around the shop.  They're willing to pay fifty dollars a day."

That got my attention.  Fifty bucks a day?  Did she have any idea what I
could do with fifty bucks a day over the summer?

"How many days a week?" I asked quickly, doing the math.

"Around four days a week, maybe five or six during the heavier weeks," she
said.  "They get lots of people in during the city festival and Heritage
week.  They are right downtown in the thick of it all.  So, what do you
think?"

"Beats flipping burgers," I said agreeably and her smile widened.

"I knew that you'd be perfect for the job," she reached into her attache
and fumbled around.  "You have to see a man named Morgan Anderson.  He's
the owner and about fifty-six or so with a real distinguished look, graying
on the temples and all that.  He'll be expecting you on Monday before noon.
Here's the address and phone numbers.  My e-mail address is there as well.
Let me know how it goes, won't you?"  She practically shoved the paper into
my hands and flounced off, humming or mumbling.  She was an awkward woman,
but I kind of liked her in an odd way.

"Hey, shit face, you coming or what?" a familiar voice yelled and I shoved
my backpack in my locker and slammed it shut.  It was the last week of
school, there was no use in lugging my books home for no reason.  I hurried
after my best friend Mike Thompson.  A bunch of us guys were going to hit
the football field in the back of the school and toss around a ball.

I met Mike when I first started at West Central High.  He was from out of
town, so he needed to make some friends fast and I guess I stood out to
him.  The thing I liked the most about Mike was that he wasn't like all the
other guys.  I didn't have to tell him how good a girl's tits looked or how
much I wanted to bang a cute girl to be normal.  A lot of the time, we just
hung around watching movies or talking about what we were going to do with
our lives and he never teased me about getting A's on my report card the
way the other guys did.

Mike was kind of funny because he wanted to be a vet and a lot of the guys
thought that was kind of faggish.  So, he never talked about it a lot while
we were at school, but whenever we hung out at his house, there would be
veterinarian books everywhere and stuff on animal care.  The guy had three
dogs and two birds.  I don't know how his mother put up with him.

Sometimes, I didn't feel like such a freak around him because he was
different. I could never really figure out a lot of the crazy stuff that
went on in my head but with Mike I felt almost normal. He could also play a
hell of a game of football.

I caught up with him out in the parking lot and slapped him hard on the
back.  I stole the ball from him and ran out to throw him a pass as we
headed up to the field where most of the guys were already mulling around.

"Guess what?" he called out with this huge grin on his face.

"What?" I asked, grinning back.

"I got a summer job," he said.

"Yeah, me too," I said, putting all my strength into throwing the ball to
him.  "Where's yours?"  He caught it neatly and tossed it back.

"At the vet clinic downtown," he said with a broad smile.  I caught the
ball and held it, stopping in my tracks and grinning widely at him.

"You're lying," I said, but his happiness was too big for that.  He bounced
up and down exuberantly.

"Hell no," he said, coming to stand next to me.  "I talked with the vet
there and he's willing to take me on a trial basis, minimum wage and I
would just be doing patient input and billing and maybe every once in a
while I could administer a shot or something like that.  But this guy is on
the board at one of the local veterinary medicine schools and he would be
an awesome contact, especially since I'm graduating next year and
everything."

"That's cool as hell," I told him, happy for him.  He just grinned.

"So, what kind of job you get?" he asked.

"Doing odd jobs at this antique shop downtown, fifty bucks a day," I told
him.  "Maybe our jobs will be by each other and we can go get lunch and
crap like that."  I felt real grownup telling him that.  He just nodded
like it was a given.

We ran up the hill to the football field and joined the other guys.  When
we were with them, there was a difference in the way we talked.  It just
didn't sit well to show a bunch of jocks that you were sensitive about
anything but the game and Mike and I were planning to be at the top of the
football program senior year.

So, I grabbed a sophomore who was going to be a pretty decent player on the
team next year and put him in a headlock.  The way he cringed and got red
in the face let the other guys know that I was the man in charge there.
They all laughed and joked around but I could see behind the laughter that
a lot of them were afraid of me. You never could get too close to someone
you were afraid of.  That was the way that I liked it.

I almost turned around and went back home when I saw the place Mrs. Deneghy
hooked me up with.  It was a mansion.  In my mind's eye, I had pictured a
dinky, grandmother's basement kind of place with lots of old junk all over
the place.  This place wasn't even remotely like that.

They had some really good lawn service because it wasn't even summer yet
and the grass was a vibrant green and neatly trimmed.  The trees were
evenly lined and there were no overhanging branches.  I pulled into the
parking lot on the side of the building and the iron gates that surrounded
it read Anderson Antiques, LLC in a fancy script.

I was glad that my mother had gone off on a tangent that morning and forced
me to wear khakis, a dress shirt and tie.  I had picked out a pair of old
jeans and a t-shirt, but she'd insisted that I change.  She'd even gone
through the trouble of re-ironing my shirt when I couldn't get all the
wrinkles out myself.

I got out of the car, pocketed the keys and headed up to the front door, my
palms starting to sweat a little.  Deneghy hadn't said whether or not the
job was guaranteed, but from the way she talked about it, it seemed like I
was in but as I looked at the place, I had my doubts.

The sign on the front door read the store hours and even though I felt like
knocking, I twisted the door handle and just walked in.

The inside of the place was even worse than the outside.  The first thing I
saw was a grand staircase, the kind you see in Cinderella stories.  The
floor was made out of marble or something in a dark, mahogany color and it
fanned out across the room, up the stairs and around the corners in an
elaborate way.  I was still staring when a girl came out and looked at me.

She was tall and wore her red hair up in a tangled ponytail and she was
covered in tiny bits of some kind of cream-colored fabric.  She smiled at
me.

"Hi," she said cheerfully.  "Morgan and Paul went down to the farmer's
market to pick up a few things.  You must be Eric, right?"

I nodded and she held out her hand.

"I'm Misti," she said brightly.  "I re-upholster a lot of the furniture
around here and stuff like that.  I go to college at the art school, you
know, Kendall, on the other side of Division street?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding.

"You can come back to my workroom until they get back," she said and I
followed her through a maze of halls to a large back room with a sky light
overhead.  There were rolls of fabric and furniture in various states of
completion all over the place.

"Sometimes, I take paint off of pieces and touch up the staining on
others," she said, gesturing around a little wildly.  "It's crazy back
here, but this is where I get things done. Paul told me that you're in high
school?"  She looked at me doubtfully and I just smiled and nodded.  I
didn't really know who to be in front of her yet.  I didn't want to come
off as a dumb jock and I was pretty closed about everything else.

"You look like a sophomore in college at least," she put her hands on her
hips and scrutinized my bulk thoughtfully.  "God, teenagers are getting
bigger and bigger every year."

"You don't look like much more than a teen yourself?" I said and she
blushed this blotchy shade of red that actually made her look pretty nice.

"I'm thirty," she said, smiling.  "But thanks for the compliment."  She
dumped some fabric off of a chair and patted it with one slim hand.

"Sit down," she said and she went back to work on a cream-colored sofa.  I
sat down and watched as she measured and cut in silence.

"How long have you been working here?" I ventured.

"Seven years off and on," she said over her shoulder.  "Morgan and Paul are
good to me."  She pinned a piece of the fabric on the arm of the sofa and
stared at it for a long while, then she removed it, marked it with chalk
and started cutting again.

"You'll love it here," she said, between a pin that she'd stuck between her
lips.  "They're a lot of fun and Paul is the best cook I've ever met.
They're always coming up with something new.  Right now, they are writing a
memoir and they're all wrapped up in that.  Never a dull moment."

I nodded and looked around me at all of the things she was working on.  I
wondered how she knew where to start, the place was a disaster.

A few moments later, a tall guy with graying dark hair burst into the room.
His eyes went directly to Misti so he didn't notice me.  This must have
been the distinguished fifty-six year old Deneghy told me about.  He looked
closer to forty and I could tell that he worked out.  Distinguished wasn't
exactly the word I would have used for him, though.  He was good-looking in
a completely classical way with a strong chin and broad, noble nose and he
had intense gray eyes that were like steel at the moment.

"Misti have you been listening out for the front door?" he questioned
abruptly and she looked up at him, never missing a beat with her scissors.

"Yes, Morgan, he's right here," she said and gestured over at me.

I was treated to the full force of Morgan Anderson's intense attention.  I
blinked at him a couple of times.

"Hi," I said awkwardly.  He seemed to be assessing me.

"Hello," he said and tried to smile.  He seemed to be made of stone.

Behind him, a man carrying a basket full of fruit and vegetables came in.
He was tall and thin and wore a pair of khakis and a polo shirt.  He was
completely bald, but he had eyes that twinkled when he smiled at me.

"He's here," the man exclaimed and stared at me.  "Vicki told us all about
you, Eric.  We're real glad to have you on board.  I'm Paul."

"Hi, Paul," I said and smiled.

Paul looked at Morgan who was standing there in the same position he'd been
in since he'd said hi to me several moments before.  Paul nudged him.

"Did you introduce yourself, Morgan," Paul asked and Morgan gave a gruff
reply under his breath.  Paul breezed ahead brightly.  "This is Morgan.  We
are co-owners of Anderson Antiques."

The stony Morgan leaned over and took the basket from Paul and when he did
this, he leaned in and kissed Paul on the lips.  It wasn't a remotely
friendly kind, but the kind people in love share, no tongues, but a long,
solid peck...and Paul was kissing him back, I could tell.  My stomach
dropped to my ankles.

They looked into each other's eyes and shared a look, an intimate glance.
I stared in shock and when Morgan's eyes swept back in my direction, they
were hard.  I could immediately tell that he was trying to prove a point to
me.

As a matter of fact, it seemed like everybody was trying to prove a point
to me.  She must have seen everything that had gone on between that kid
Skit and me...and now, she was trying to prove a point by having me work
with gay people over the summer.  How the fuck was I gonna get out of it?

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To be continued.......................virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com

I am Virtual Insanity and my other Nifty stories are:
Wade and Christian - high school 2004
The Prick - high school 2004
Mannie the Marine - military 2004