Shit shit shit were my thoughts as I stood there. Why me? Why now. This was the anxiety that kept running through my brain in the locker room. Andrew stood to my right. He was tall and skinny. He put off gym another year as much as I wanted to. He had these big eyes and his body was rather white. He was my friend though. We always talked with each other. Usually we discussed how we hated gym.
To my far right there was someone I was secretly attempting not to keep my eye on. I really tried my best not to look as we all started undressing for swimming. I had my eyes in front of me staring into the locker. I was going crossed eyed as I started undressing. I kept my eyes forward as I dressed so I wouldn’t be tempted by the devil to look at Bryan who was probably now butt naked on my right. Nearly tripping as I bent over to pull up my swim trunks my eyes slip only to the left to see Andrew and his philosophy hanging out. Embarrassed and disturbed I wish I had looked to the other way to see Zeus philosophy!
However now completely dressed we were on our way to the showers. Andrew had not noticed I saw him naked. Not like it would have really mattered I guess. A boy seeing a boy naked is nothing. Or at least that is how it should be. And as I walked to the showers confident that I would no longer have to worry about sinning by looking at the attractive guys around me there was Michael, a tall basketball player completely naked in the shower. I felt delighted but embarrassed that I looked at his behind and continued into the showers.
After I had taken a cold shower as I stood there trying to avoid the worse, an erection in the boys locker room, we all gathered around the blue door that lead to the chlorine pool. I could smell the chlorine through the door and dreaded the hell we might pay beyond the gate when our gym teacher showed up. I looked down at my stomach as we waited and noticed that it was a bit different than those around me. The other ones had these gorges on them like in the statues I stared at in the English books. I wished I had been in English in this moment instead of realizing I had no six pack like the other boys around me had.
We had been let in to the pool and all my anxiety went away once we started warming up. I could drown out most the noise in my head by swimming. I could focus on floating, breathing, and pulling with my arms even though I sucked miserably at it. At least I didn’t have to be around the guys naked again. Luckily nothing embarrassing had happened to me yet. I swore I would have been victimized by now for being a faggot. Not jokingly either I figured for sure I would have been caught checking out another guy. so upon this I felt confident until the next test occurred.
It was time for our diving test. We had been preparing this hour for diving and it was Bryans turn to dive. He had this large sports playing body. He was well built and I figured he had to play football. Even though he was about as tall as myself or maybe and inch or two taller I had been looking down with my eyes. I didn’t really want to be caught looking at his perfect blonde hair or his wonderful eyes. So I accidentally saw his bulge before he jumped off the board. I was embarrassing that I had seen it but I definitely thought about later that day. And then it was my turn.
I jumped in and the water surrounded me. I nearly pulled off a belly flop. See I am not going to be a professional diver so I didn’t really put any effort into the task like Bryan had done early. He puts effort into everything he does. I felt inadequate to him at this moment because I had known that I would hear how badly I was a diving when the water left my ears, my eyes, and stopped protecting my temporary dignity. Sure enough I came out of the pool and the Physical education teacher mumbled something about how my dive needed improvement.
Ignoring him and nearly blowing him off I said, “Ugh Huh,”
I was more concerned about controlling my eyes when I went back into the shower rooms where I knew everyone would be naked getting the chlorine off their bodies with soap. When I felt like I needed to fit in I took my shorts off and acted as if I were straight. Again I took a cold shower to avoid embarrassment. As the water shriveled my philosophy to a useless idea Garret, a cute boy of Mexican decent with black curly hair and brown eyes came running across the shower room naked making some crazy attention grabbing noise. I found out I was immediately attracted to him but luckily the shower was doing its job.
Back at the lockers I was lucky to walk by Bryans behind. Now I had a pretty good image of what he looked like fully nude. Which even though I felt morally wrong it gave me a bit of a boost to know what he looked like. Maybe it was a fulfillment of my fantasy I believed was biblically wrong. I couldn’t stop thinking about not getting caught. Control your eyes. Don’t give your gay identity away. Don’t be attracted to males. These rules kept going through my head when Eric a bulky guy said to Andrew, “Hey faggot did you just look at my cock?”
Andrew responded shyly back nervously laughing, “Umm no.”
Eric said trying to intimidate Andrew out of the closet, “Dude its freaky when you do that. Are you a fagot?”
Andrew getting dressed said again, “No.”
Someone else from the locker room shouted, “Yah that fag has checked me out as well.”
Andrew seeing where this was going rolled his eyes as if he had heard this before and left the locker room.
Me I couldn’t possibly stick up for him. Part of me wanted to shout I was gay and had been guilty to pull the attention off from my friend Andrew. I didn’t care if he was gay. Obviously. But me, I couldn’t be gay. This type of thing couldn’t happen to me and I couldn’t be caught in any way sticking up for another faggot for fear that I would be labeled gay and immoral. I couldn’t possibly be gay and therefore had to make obvious attempts at suppressing my philosophy.
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