November 2000

"So I was like, ‘yeah, of course I want to go,'" my best friend since elementary school, Daphne, said as we walked down the hallway towards our English class. "I mean, who the fuck wouldn't want to go to Miami for Spring Break?"

"Lucky bitch," I mumbled. "I wish my parents could take me somewhere for Spring Break..."

Daphne looked at me with sorrow in her eyes, since my parents had just recently announced that they were getting divorced. Already it was getting ugly with their fighting over the marital property, money, and who my eight year-old sister Molly and I would live with. "Oh... Justin-"

"It's okay," I said to her.

A moment later, Chris Hobbs shoved me into the wall, causing me to drop the book I had been carrying, yelling out "faggot" as he walked ahead of me.

Neither of us noticed that one of our teachers, Mr. Kinney, had witnessed Hobbs's display of douche bagginess.

"Mr. Hobbs!" Mr. Kinney yelled out after seeing the asshole shove me.

Hobbs lifted his chin as he met eyes with Mr. Kinney. "What?"

"Are you going to apologize to Mr. Taylor for bumping into him?" he asked Hobbs, meeting my eyes for a brief moment.

"I wasn't planning on it," Hobbs replied in a smart-ass tone.

Mr. Kinney raised an eyebrow at him as if daring Hobbs to defy him.

Hobbs chuckled dryly before turning to me. "Sorry," he said, obviously not meaning it in the least.

"Alright, get to class, Mr. Hobbs," Mr. Kinney said, pointing to the open doorway of his classroom. "We're discussing European Renaissance Literature today."

"Ooh, I can't wait," Hobbs mocked as he walked toward the room.

Mr. Kinney, whose first name was Brian, was without a doubt the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my seventeen years on Earth. I placed his age around thirty. He was tall, over six feet, and had an athletic, but not too muscular, build. He had amazing chestnut-brown hair, incredible hazel eyes, a masculine square jaw, and a strong chin. The hair always looked as if he had just rolled out of bed, but I imagined that it took him several minutes in front of the mirror with at least one styling product to accomplish that every morning and he was always clean-shaven. I often noticed that he would smirk in amusement when a student would say something dumb, although he would try to hide it by rolling in his lips the next moment so he wouldn't offend the student, making him look even sexier if that were possible.

His usual school wardrobe consisted of a long-sleeved, collared dress shirt, a tie, and a pair of slacks, perfectly pressed. Each piece would vary in color and he would mix and match, making it seem like he had a very large selection of clothing at home. He would often wear a suit jacket that matched the slacks when walking through common areas of the school, but would always take it off in his classroom. A white cowry shell bracelet would sometimes peak out from under his right sleeve and he had a small greenish tattoo on the inside of his right middle finger. I took a good look at the tattoo one day and saw that it said RESIST. What he was trying to resist was a mystery that sometimes kept me up at night pondering the possibilities.

I first had Brian, er, Mr. Kinney as a teacher in English Composition during my sophomore year at St. James Academy in Pittsburgh. Although that was the first time I had him as a teacher, I had noticed him during my freshman year around the campus and was immediately attracted to him. That was around the same time that I realized I was gay.  

I never really had much interest in writing in the past, but Mr. Kinney made me fall in love with it while taking his composition class. That was the same year he had organized a book club, which I immediately joined just to be around him more. I had managed to recruit several other students to join to impress him, mostly girls who would stare at Mr. Kinney all dreamy-eyed like I did, and he appointed me president of the club after the other members soundly approved. Mr. Kinney loved classic novels and would always choose books for us to read that I would end up loving, too, such asPride and Prejudice, Moby-Dick, and Journey to the End of the Night.

I took an elective poetry class when I was a junior, which Mr. Kinney taught. I was unfortunately put in Mr. Horner's American Literature class that same year and I hated it. It wasn't that I hated the subject; I hated Mr. Horner, whose teaching method was totally archaic. I got a D during the first grading period and it was the only class where I didn't get an A. I let that fact slip to Mr. Kinney the day after receiving our report cards. Knowing that I was a better student than that, he pulled some strings with my counselor to move me to the American Literature class that he taught during another class period. It required me to move around my entire class schedule, but it was totally worth it since I earned all A's in his American Lit class for the rest of the year. Plus, that gave me two different classes with him as my teacher, so that was awesome.

It was safe to assume that Mr. Kinney was not married, since there was no ring on his finger. He did, however, seem to be taken with Miss Peterson, one of the art teachers at the school. They were both assigned to cafeteria duty during my lunch period and they would spend most of that time talking to each other. They would make a lot of eye contact and Miss Peterson seemed to enjoy touching Mr. Kinney on his arm while talking to him.

I hated her with a passion. The school required us to take at least one art class in order to earn our diplomas and I took the only class I knew Miss Peterson did not teach during the previous year - photography.

I had Mr. Kinney as a teacher for two classes again for my senior year, English Literature and Creative Writing, the latter of the two being an elective. He took over as the director of the drama club at the beginning of the school year and I, of course, joined. We had just finished up with auditions for the year's Christmas play the previous week, which was going to be two performances of Joe Landry's It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, and Mr. Kinney had chosen me to be the stage manager.

Mr. Kinney walked over to me and bent down to pick up the book I had dropped, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, which we were currently reading for Book Club.

"So, are you enjoying this one so far?" Mr. Kinney asked as he handed it to me.

"Yes, it's wonderful," I replied, looking deep into his eyes.

Christ, he was so unbelievably gorgeous...

He sighed before saying, "I talked to Dr. Perkins this morning and he said no."

I frowned in disappointment. Dr. Perkins was the head dean of the school and always had to approve which books we could read in Book Club. Mr. Kinney had recently requested permission for us to read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The book was quite controversial when it was first published in the late eighteen-hundreds, as it contains "homoerotic overtones".

"Can't say I'm surprised," I said to Mr. Kinney.

"Well, that doesn't mean you can't read it for yourself," he said. "We could discuss it privately some time, if you'd like."

My mouth dropped open a bit and I felt some drool trickle out of the side of my mouth. "Uh... yeah," I stammered. "That... that would be great."

He smiled at me right before the bell rang. "Shall we get to class, Mr. Taylor?"

Daphne, who had been standing next to me the whole time, chimed in: "Uh, is it okay if I come to class, too, Mr. Kinney?"

Mr. Kinney looked at Daphne in surprise, as if she had just magically appeared. "Yes, of course, Miss Chanders. I beg your pardon."

Daphne smiled at Mr. Kinney before the two of us walked into the classroom, Mr. Kinney following and closing the door.

She and I took our seats next to each other in the front row while our fellow students quieted down. Mr. Kinney began taking attendance. I never understood why, but he would always call out everyone's names from his roster, although he knew all of us by face by that point.

Immediately after Mr. Kinney called out my last name, Hobbs, who was seated in the back of the room, yelled out "queer" before I could say "here."

Mr. Kinney looked up from his roster. "Mr. Hobbs, if I hear you say one more derogatory word toward one of your classmates, I will send you to Dr. Perkins's office."

There was a collective "ooh" throughout the room.

"But if I get another office referral, I'll get suspended," Hobbs said, sounding a bit scared. "Coach will throw me off the basketball team if I get suspended."

"Then I suggest you keep your mouth shut, Mr. Hobbs," Mr. Kinney replied.

This created another "ooh", which Mr. Kinney put a stop to by telling everyone to hush. He grinned at me before finishing up with attendance.

Mr. Kinney always seemed to find a way to make me to love him more.

It wasn't as if the animosity Hobbs had toward me was unearned, but I wasn't the only guilty one between us. During Spring Break of our junior year, Daphne had been dating the equipment manager for the football team and had gotten us invited to a party that one of the football players was throwing while his parents were vacationing in Europe. Someone brought a keg and although I normally didn't care for beer, it was all the alcohol they had. I had downed about four plastic cups of what I was told was Miller Lite and made my way to an upstairs bathroom to pee.

The door had been closed but unlocked and I opened it to find Hobbs lying on the tile floor, drunk off his ass. He told me to go ahead and take care of business and he grabbed me by my ankle when I tried to leave the room. He asked me to stay there with him, which surprised me since Hobbs had never said two words to me in the past. He didn't seem to even know my name, but I knew his since he was a popular school athlete. With that year's quarterback graduating at the end of the school year, Hobbs had already been selected to be the next season's quarterback. He was also a shoe-in to take over as the basketball team's captain our senior year, which he subsequently did.

I sat on the floor next to him and he laid his head in my lap. I ran my fingers through his dirty-blonde hair.

"Mmm... that feels good," he purred.

I smiled and continued to play with his hair. I had known Hobbs since junior high and had developed a bit of a crush on him over the last couple of years, so I was enjoying myself.

He sat up a bit later and looked into my eyes. Without saying a word, he started kissing me. I could taste a hint of vomit in his mouth, but I didn't care. I had never kissed a boy before or done anything beyond kissing with a few girls, which had only been out of curiosity. Hobbs put his hand up my shirt and played with my left nipple and I quickly undid his jeans. His massive cock was hard as a rock and I pulled it out of his boxers and began to stroke it.

Hobbs soon grabbed the back of my head and pushed it down to his crotch. I took as much of his cock into my mouth as I could and sucked it. He lasted all of fifteen seconds before shooting into my mouth. His cum tasted awful and I spit it into the toilet. He didn't even notice, since he had his eyes closed as he recovered from his orgasm, whimpering with every exhale.

I tucked him back into his boxers and managed to zip up his jeans before some girl began banging on the bathroom door. She yelled for us to get the fuck out and I somehow managed to pick Hobbs, who probably had a good thirty pounds on me, up off the floor and dragged him into the hallway. Hobbs then pushed me away and headed back downstairs, nearly falling down several times as he held onto the banister for dear life.

A couple days later, I took Molly to a park near our house while our mother was out running errands. I was on the swings with Molly, me just sitting there idly while Molly swung back and forth, when someone came up behind me and pushed me forward into the sand below. I turned over to see who the hell had done that and found Hobbs standing over me, the sun shining brightly behind his head.

"Hey, faggot," he yelled at me. "I see you're taking some time out of your busy butt-fucking schedule to take your baby sister to the park."

I looked up at him with what was surely a look of pure terror on my face. By that point, Molly was standing beside me and crying, begging Hobbs to not hurt me.

He bent forward and growled in my face, "If you ever tell anyone what happened the other night, I swear on my dead grandmother's grave, I'll fucking kill you."

I quickly nodded before he walked off and I was thankful I hadn't pissed my pants.

I became Hobbs's favorite object of ridicule after getting back to school once break was over and it continued to the present day. Fairly certain that he intended to follow up on his threat, I never said a word to anyone, not even Daphne, about why I had suddenly become Hobbs's enemy. Several teachers and other classmates had noticed this, but all I would say was that Hobbs didn't like me for some reason and that it wasn't a big deal.

I listened intently as Mr. Kinney read the poem "On Monsieur's Departure" by Queen Elizabeth I* aloud from our textbook when a spitball landed on my desk. I turned around and saw Hobbs glare at me, a plastic straw in his hand. I turned back toward the front of the class and felt another spitball hit me on the back of my head.

Fucking immature jerk...

Daphne saw it that time and scoffed in disgust. She turned around to look back at Hobbs for a moment before interrupting the reading of the poem.

"Some gentler passion slide into my mind," Mr. Kinney recited, "for I am soft and made of melting snow-"

"Mr. Kinney!" Daphne yelled out.

"Shut up, Daph!" I said through gritted teeth.

"Is there a problem, Miss Chanders?" Mr. Kinney asked.

"No, there's no problem," I answered for her. "Please, continue, Mr. Kinney."

His eyes shifted between me and Daphne for a few moments before he picked up where he left off.