Have We Gone Too Far?

My first lesson of year eleven is PE, which I normally love, but changing in front of a whole room of guys who you know are staring at you can be pretty uncomfortable, especially seeing as I don’t want anyone to ask about all the scars and bruises I’ve developed over the holidays. Most of guys in here will come to their own conclusions’ and luckily, none of them are likely to work out what’s actually going on. By that I mean, I'm Zacky freaking Mondale, I'm always in fights, but the part that they that don’t know is that they tend to be with my parents.

“Are you alright, man?” Kyle asked me when he realized I was just staring at my clothes instead of changing into them.

“They’re all watching me,” I grunted lowly so that no one knew it was getting to me.

“Embrace it!” Kyle barked as he took off his PE shirt again and started flexing his muscles.

God, I hate it so much when he does this. It’s so tempting to just melt gazing into his gorgeous blue eyes as I tightly wrap myself around his overly buff, incredible body. He obviously wouldn’t do that sort of posing around me if he knew the truth; he probably wouldn’t even talk to me if he ever found out about how he could make me feel around him. It’s not like a crush and I don’t love him or anything like that, but he’s the only guy I’ve ever gotten close to, even if we were just experimenting and he only saw it as a stupid game.

I'm slowly coming to terms with my sexuality. I'm gay. There I said it, but I’ll never be able to say that out loud. I've never properly crushed on a guy, but I realized that I preferred them when I started to constantly find myself checking them out or eyeing them up and down and being amazed by what I see. That sort of thing is what I've never done to a girl or wanted to do quite honestly, I’ve tried but when I look at them I just see them as them, not as something I could ever really want to call mine.

“Stop being so bloody paranoid,” Kyle hissed at me, knocking me out off my thoughts long enough to realize that I still wasn't changed. “What’s wrong with you? You’re never like this.”

“Nothing’s wrong, I just don’t want a room full of perverted gays watching me change,” I grunted. I'm surely not the only one with this problem.

As you can tell, I’ll do anything to make sure no one finds out about me being gay, that’s why I sometimes resort to picking on the odd guy who’s comfortable with being gay to make myself feel better. It’s sick and mean, I know, but I don’t feel like I have much choice.

“Get changed,” he huffed.

“Not with them watching.”

“No one’s even looking!” He shouted. And of course after his little outburst, everyone was watching.

“Thanks, man,” I hissed as I walked out, carrying my PE bag over my shoulder.

I walked into the boys toilets that were outside of our changing rooms and sat down in one of the cubicles for a moment.

“Pull it together,” I whispered to myself as I stood up and started to change.

I kept looking around the small cubicle, making sure no one was peeping over and watching me. I knew I was alone in there but I felt so worked up that I had to check anyway, just to be sure.

As I removed my clothes I looked at myself. It turned out I didn’t look as bad as I’d expected. The bruises were barely noticeable! I let out a deep sigh of relief and started laughing at myself. You seriously couldn’t see any signs to suggest how severe the last beating I took actually was. It was amazing; I had no idea bruises could heal so fast.

Once I realized I was just being paranoid earlier and didn’t actually have anything to worry about, I flung my kit on and walked back into the changing rooms, where Mr. Baker had already started telling everyone what he had in store for us today.

Mr. Baker is and always will be my favorite teacher. The main reason is because he’s the only teacher here who likes me, but there are other reasons. For one, I'm sure he has a soft spot for me, he once caught me smoking behind the bike sheds at the back of the yard, and although he had a right go at me, he said he’d keep it between us as long as it doesn’t happen again. But, I learnt a while ago that teachers don’t mean ‘don’t do it again’ they mean ‘you can do it as much as you like as long as you don’t get caught’ well, at least that’s what I think.

“It’s nice of you to finally join us, Mr. Mondale. Would you like to tell us where you’ve been?”

“No, Sir,” I smiled. I love it when they ask you a question instead of just telling you to do something, and I love the look on their faces when you do what they wanted and answer them.

“Wait outside!” he hissed at me. They’re always a lot more direct after I act like that with them. They try to big themselves up again without looking or sounding like complete idiots, which they tend to do anyway.

Mr. Baker came out to me as soon as he’d told the rest of the class what we were doing, he then sent them to go and get everything set up on the field.

“What’s up with you, Zack?” He asked in the friendly voice that he usually uses when it’s just me and him.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, ashamed that I couldn’t give my number one teacher a good enough answer.

“Has something happened at home?”

Yes, a hell of a lot has happened at home actually.

“No,” I whispered. “Everything’s great, Sir.”

Another reason I like Mr. Baker is because he doesn’t do the whole shouting thing with me, unless he has to. He likes to think that there’s a reason behind everything I do and since he’s my form teacher and has been kind of worried about me since he caught me smoking, he’s always extremely determined to get to the bottom of whatever it is that’s bothering me.

“What made you want to change in the toilets?” He asked.

I wasn't too sure how he knew that, seeing as he wasn't in the room when I left, but then again, some of the jealous creeps in this year have it in for me and were probably talking about me loud enough for Sir to hear. I hate it when that happens, I end up in trouble whenever a rumor goes round about me, whether it’s true or not. I can’t really blame them though, I'm the guy all of the girls want, so no one else tends to get a look in, it’s too bad that I’d rather be in their shoes, not having random squealing girls begging to be with me.

“Well?” he asked.

“Oh...” I started feeling really uncomfortable then, but I had to tell him something. So I decided to spill something that was partly true. “I just felt... weird.” He gave me an odd look and I knew he’d rather I elaborate. “I felt like everyone was staring at me and it made me want to throw up.” He nodded at me like he understood.

“Zack,” he sighed. “You can’t just walk out like that. Imagine if this was a lesson other than PE, if someone was looking at you would you just get up and walk out?”

Walking out of a maths lesson isn't exactly the same as getting changed in a different room to everyone else, but I did get what he was saying.

“PE’s a lesson like all of the others, and you can’t just leave whenever you feel like it. Next time, if you feel so awkward that you can’t change, tell me and I’ll let you use my office.”

This guy’s amazing, he understands me, but I don’t like the idea of getting special treatment and I doubt anyone else will if they found out about it.

“Sir, it really dosen’t matter. If you want me to change in here, I will, so, can we just leave it at that?”

He stared at me for a moment, looking pretty shocked that I didn’t take him up on his offer.

“Alright then,” he said. “It’s football today so I'm expecting some mean tackles and some cracking goals from you. Don’t let me down.”

I nodded my head at him and ran out to the pitch, where everything was already set up. When I found Kyle he was drooling over some girl playing netball in the courts across the field.

“What did Big Beard Baker have to say?” He asked as he moved his eyes from the blond.

“Not much,” I mumbled, as we both started to do some warm ups.

***

After the first half I was already shattered, which is very unlike me. I have better stamina than any of these guys here, so why the hell am I so worn out? And why is everyone else nagging for a shorter break so we can get a longer match going.

I looked down and saw that my arms and legs were bright red, so I imagined that my face would look like a sweating tomato. I hated how obvious it was that I was tired, some of the guys had barely worked up a sweat and I’m here dripping in it. It’s not even like I'm playing a good game either. I haven’t made one good stinking tackle and whenever I get the ball, this same little guy, Sam, comes after me and nearly takes my legs off. I'm lucky to still be walking after just the first half.

“Mondale, come over here!” Mr. Baker shouted.

I regretted promising him a good game, but how was I suppose to know I was going to get so exhausted so quickly.

“What are you doing out there?” he roared.

When I said he doesn’t shout at me, I meant he didn’t shout over things that aren’t sports related. He’s really passionate about making the games perfect and right now I'm ruining the perfect game for him.

“My grandma could play better than you!” He shouted, this time right in my face, with his razor sharp beard brushing against my skin.

I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty embarrassed right now. All of the guys are laughing at me and whispering stupid crap because they think it makes them big and cool, but it doesn’t, it just exposes them as the jealous little kids they actually are. But it’s not just the guys, it’s the girls. They’re not laughing at me; they look more like they’re sorry for me, which is never a good thing. I seriously don’t want one of them trying to make me feel better, not after last time. I shivered at the quick flashback.

I overheard someone who was talking about me. He was saying something about Mr Flawless not being as amazing as he thinks he is. I bet he thought that was a really clever thing to say, but he doesn’t know one stinking thing about me, so he has no right to say a single word about me.

“Pull yourself together, Mondale!” he shouted.

“I can’t,” I whispered, stupidly if I might add.

“Fine, you can run ten laps around the field instead.”

I couldn’t take in what he just said. Ten laps for being a little off my game. Where’s that come from? I let out a groan but started to make my way around, not wanting to risk further embarrassment. As I set off there were quite a few ‘ways’ and cheers, and to that I responded with a middle finger salute. Luckily Mr. Baker didn’t see it, but if he did it wouldn’t have bothered me that much.

By the time the bell rang, I’d lost count of how many laps I had done but I knew it wasn't ten yet. I decided to go in anyway, it’s not as if he was watching and counting how much I’d done all lesson, he was too busy cheering on the rest of our pathetic class.

I knew I needed a shower, but with it being break now I was a little concerned about whether someone might walk in.

“Suck it up,” I said quietly to myself. “Grow some balls and get in the God dam shower.”

I took a deep breath and followed my own advice. I stripped down so that I was completely naked and stepped into one of the freezing showers that school provided. It wasn't exactly an enjoyable wash seeing as it was with icy water and I kept fearing over what would happen if someone came in, but at least I was clean now and didn’t smell as bad as I did earlier.

You may be wondering why I'm acting so shy about my body lately, and let me tell you, I didn’t use to be like this at all, well, not until the problems started at home. Since then I'm always panicking in case someone sees the marks and wants to know what’s going on. It’s not just the marks though; let’s just say things have happened to me in the past that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t look as good as I do, and that’s not me being arrogant, it’s me being honest. So I try to hide myself more, I didn’t like it last time and I don’t want to risk it happening again.

As I started to dry myself I heard a noise. Someone was in here. My heart started racing at the simple thought that someone was watching me, so I stopped what I was doing and wrapped myself neatly in my towel. Why would someone be watching me? Don't they have better things to do?