High School: The Not So Bad Years

Being queer in high school in the early 80s was probably unpleasant for most queer guys. Of course most those queer guys weren't openly queer but, teenagers being the beasts they are, it really didn't matter if the targets of rumors, or worse, were definitely queer. Especially if it meant attention was drawn away from rumor mongers' and attackers' own queer secrets.

For the most part being secretly queer in high school really wasn't all that bad for me because I'm one of those guys who has always “passed” for straight. Even though I was one of the few guys in my high school drama class, was known as an artist, and was a vocal hater of high school sports, I never, for most of high school, encountered any queer slurs or was aware of rumors. 

I also wasn't romantically attracted to guys which spared me the queer adolescent anguish of “a love that dares not speak its name.” I definitely liked seeing guys naked, fantasizing about getting it on with guys, and  having actual sex with guys. But I wasn't attracted to guys in the same way I was to girls. When I wrote my countless crappy poems and lyrics about love  the subject in mind was never another guy.

No doubt things would have been different for me if I'd had a different sort of personality or if I'd been cute and/or somewhat "feminine" in appearance. My friend Frank had a small build, feathery blond hair, fine features, and a high voice. If I had Frank's looks and voice I'm sure I'd have been a target.

Frank was a few years younger than me, a freshman when I was a junior. I met him because he was my friend Lydia's friend and we all were in the same art class. Frank had a good sense of humor and was clever. I thought he was cute, but I wasn't sexually attracted to him. 

I didn't think of Frank as effeminate or girly, but I might have been in the minority. One day after school Frank and I were downtown and he needed to pick up some sort of long sleeve undershirt for skiing. We popped into the town's one sports store and a clerk asked how he could help. Frank told him what he needed.

“A women's small?” the clerk asked. Beyond soccer balls and cleats I had no knowledge of specialty sports gear and assumed because of Franks small size and the unisex nature of the shirt that a women's small was an option. 

“Men's small,” Frank replied. 

The clerk headed off into the back of the store and Frank said “That happens to me all the time.”

“What?”

“He though I was a women.”

“Really?” I was genuinely surprised. But then I considered Frank's fine features, feathery hair, gender neutral preppy clothes, and realized he looked like a lot of the sorority girls from the local university. Still, it seemed to me that had more to do with the androgynous look of certain preppy girls, not anything effeminate about Frank.

A few months later after the sports store mix up I learned that other guys had noticed Frank's androgynous aspects. I was spending the night at my soon to be best friend Matthew's and, like most teenaged friends getting to know each other, we stayed up talking until 4 AM.

Knowing me I probably managed to steer our rambling talk towards the subject of sex. A ways into that topic Matthew, a standard classic American male guy, admitted he'd wondered what it'd be like to have sex with another guy, maybe a guy like Frank. 

Matthew's revelation blew my mind (and set in motion a story of its own). I'd had sex with other guy friends but, other than my friend-with-benefits Nate, none of the guys I'd had sex with had ever admitted they were interested in fooling around with another guy, they just went along with it when the moment arose.

For the most part I only fooled around with guys who I was already friends with. A few times I purposely got to know guys who seemed like they might have the same secret interest as myself but those “courtships” never went anywhere. 

Nate, on the other hand, was pretty skilled at getting to know guys and getting it on with them. Nate had a couple other friends-with-benefits besides myself, but most of his hook ups were one offs, many of them with guys he knew from nearby towns through the FFA and other agricultural related clubs and events.

Nate's more-or-less constant on-the-prowl behavior eventually caused him, and me, some problems. It's why I said above that for the most part high school really wasn't all that bad for me. The last bit of high school kind of sucked.