Twilight : Eclipse

"If I'd known, I would have dressed better."

This is part two of the multi-part series regarding The Things I Have Learned From The Boys I Have Kissed. This is about Sean. He's actually the first boy I ever kissed. Years ago, I spent the summer, or a rather lengthy portion thereof, in St. Louis at my father's apartment. I think it was because he bribed my mom, or because she got sick of me sitting around the apartment. Realistically, she just wanted more time with her DOTM without the kidlings around. Why I was there doesn't matter. What matters is that I went and that while I was down there, I met Sean.

I couldn't have been 12 years old. In fact, I was probably in 5th or 6th grade at the very most. I know we had to lie about my age to the owners of the apartment complex so that I could have a key to the pool. That is where I met Sean. He was a couple of years older than me, I remember that much, auburn hair, and skin paler than mine. I wasn't such a fatty back then and actually enjoyed spending time at the pool, playing games of splashysplash and wrestling with the other boys poolside. It was the summer of love as far as my life is concerned, and it was an adventure through-and-through.

Sean and I became quick friends, everybody else in the complex was either several years older or younger than us. He had a pet turtle, and the two of us were infinitely well-tuned to each other. We would spend the mornings playing games at the pool, or throwing the baseball back and forth. In the afternoons, we'd figure out the four-digit parental lock on our parents' cable boxes so that we could watch porn. We usually broke my dad's first. He wasn't so intelligent when it comes down to it. A lot of the time, it was quick and effortless for me to figure it out.

It was late one afternoon, we'd spent the day at the pool, and were eating apples with his pet turtle under a tree. He asked me if I'd ever kissed anybody, and sheepishly, I told him no. We theorized on how our first kisses would go, who they'd be with, how they'd feel. It was a nice bonding moment between the two of us and it would be days, almost two weeks before I asked to kiss him. We spent the next several weeks touching, playing and kissing. It was a heavenly distraction from my father's idiocy. None of these people were the wiser by any stretch of the imagination. Looking back on these days, I knew then that I was gay.

i never saw Sean again. I came back to Omaha, and my life continued on with the knowledge in the back of my mind that I was gay and that I had kissed a boy. Who knows if Sean ended up the same. I'd like to think that our friendship was as formative for him as it was for me, but realistically, I'll never know.