Bobby Luvs Julie

Bobby’s face tinged red with shame as he stole a furtive glance at her crossing the cafeteria. 

Julie Swanson. 

All the girls were crazy about her, as evidenced by the constant gaggle of them that followed her everywhere hoping for a look, a smile, a word, a touch. In all the seventh grade, she was the prettiest, smartest, sweetest, coolest – well, there just weren’t enough superlatives to describe the wonderfulness of her.

He knew he shouldn’t be looking at her the way he was, or thinking those thoughts, or feeling those feelings but, since he’d turned twelve a few months ago, things had started to change with him.

First, were the few sparse in his underarms and around his dingle. Those he’d been expecting, even anticipating. But other things: the thoughts, feelings, and yearnings he was subject to whenever he saw Julie were confusing and frightening in their downright wrongness.

What would his fathers think if they knew?

For that matter, what about Julie’s mothers?

And what of the other boys?

If they knew his deepest, darkest secret, they would be merciless in their teasing. The way children often were, calling him “Breeder” and “Queer”‘and shunning him for his strangeness.

It was this fear of exposure that made him stuff all the secret thoughts, feelings, and yearnings deep down inside himself. Even so, he knew they were there knew he was weird.

Bobby dropped his half-eaten tray at the dish station and made his way into the hall to English class. He could see the boys walking in pairs, holding hands and the girls, two by two, arm in arm. All of them speaking softly to each other, stealing secret kisses when they thought no one was looking.

Bobby knew he should be one among them but the thought of being with another boy just left him cold.

In Health class, they’d learned the morals of normal sexual behavior: what was expected of them.

The teacher stood at the front of the class and expounded, “In order to know what’s normal, all you have to do is look around you. It is shown in public displays of affection. Who’s with who, and not afraid to show it.”

Bobby absorbed that. Maybe the worst was over.

“But there are some poor, misguided individuals, certainly not more than one in a thousand, who are saddled with sexual perversion. Among those are: the Necrophiliac, who can only find gratification with the use of a dead body.”

“Ew,” Bobby and the other kids replied.

“Then there’s the Pedophile, who preys on innocent children, like yourselves.”

“Oh!” the children’s worried reply.

“And, of course, let us not forget the most heinous of these: the Heterosexual, who can only find gratification with someone of the opposite sex,” voiced with just the right amount of pity.

Bobby couldn’t help scrunching down in his seat, afraid the blush in his cheeks would give him away.

The teacher smiled, benevolently. “If you are experiencing any of these, don’t worry. There is help for you.” 

Bobby sat up a little bit, relaxing.

“Talk to the school nurse about this and we can find you a program of conversion therapy. And no one need know. We just want to help you make healthy choices. So, don’t be afraid to speak up.”

Bobby sat up straight and almost raised his hand. But, no, he could never admit this in public. He’d never live it down.

When he told his fathers about what he’d learned in class that day, they decided, in lieu of “The Talk”, they’d had Bobby watch a YouTube video of a preacher decrying Heterosexuality.

The preacher put some good old fire and brimstone in it, as he waved his arms about.

“Now, friends. I hope that none of you have been sucked into the debate over Nature vs Nurture, as it applies to Heterosexuality.”

‘Oh, God,” Bobby fretted. ‘Do my father’s know?’

“Hear me, now,” The preacher went on. “There is no ‘Nature’ to be considered, as God would never saddle anyone with that cross to bear. Only SATAN could twist a person around to partake of the forbidden fruit.”

The preacher wiped his face with a handkerchief, having really worked up a lather.

“There is only ‘Nurture’. Practiced by proponents of perversion, with the help of SATAN, and the liberal left media.”

Bobby looked up and smiled at his fathers.

They smiled back.

It was all good, as far as they were concerned.

But that was only because they didn’t know that Bobby snuck around, late at night, or when his fathers weren’t home, and did partake of the liberal left media.

In gym class that day, Bobby heard part of a conversation.

“It was so gross,” one of the other boys said. “They were kissing and everything.”

“Heterosexuals?” another boy asked.

“Yes. It was so grody.”

“And this was on TV?” another boy chimed in.

“Yes,” the originator told them. “On channel 11. My fathers told me that. congress had passed a law stating that this kind of soft-core porn could be shown after 11 PM.”

Bobby was shocked and titillated.

‘Channel 11, after 11 PM,’ Bobby repeated to himself, so he’d remember.

Bobby could hardly wait to see what the boy had called ‘soft core porn’.

That night, he waited for his fathers’ snoring to ensure they were asleep before he crept downstairs to the living room, and then turned on the TV, put the sound on mute, and switched to channel11.

And the show was in the throes of a Heterosexual love scene.

Bobby was shocked, at first, then was enticed. He couldn’t believe he was seeing the subject matter of most of his dreams, right there, on television, in his home.

“Oh, my God, Bobby!” his fathers exclaimed when they saw what he was watching.

Bobby leapt up and snapped the TV off. Then looked at his fathers, ashamed.

“I was just trying to find a movie. This was the first channel I checked.”

“So you decided to watch it?” one of his fathers asked.

“I… but… no, I was too shocked by what I was seeing, to do anything.”

“Well, you get to your room, right now,” his other father commanded. “And there’ll be no more TV for you for two weeks.”

“But…”

“No. No. No. This just isn’t proper for a young man. Go!”

Bobby ran to his room and was glad his fathers hadn’t seen that he was sporting wood, or, gratefully, didn’t mention it.

He was fortunate to have a computer and the internet in his room. He put on his headphones and listened to a song banned for its gender-mixing sexual suggestiveness, “I Kissed A Boy” by a female singer was one of Bobby’s favorites. He’d downloaded the MP3 before it was scoured from cyberspace.

And, after surfing for a while, found a video online called “The Case For Heterosexuality”, produced by a group of normals, together with some brave Heterosexuals.

The spokesperson seemed to be speaking directly to Bobby when he said, “We’re here to dispel the rhetoric of hate being preached in many a modern-day church. Heterosexuality is not a psychological disease, but an inborn trait. The media could not possibly be to blame, as the instances of Heterosexual couplings in television and film are astronomically outnumbered by examples of moral behavior that surround children everyday: society at large, their own same sex parents and, most influential, their friends.”

Bobby was rapt.

“Also, since Heterosexual couples are forbidden from marrying and adopting children, there was no way a child could suffer total immersion in the ‘culture’.”

Bobby totally agreed. Sad as it was, but true.

The man onscreen was replaced by two, side by side, catscans of the human brain from a highly controversial study.

“As you can see, the Heterosexual brain, on the right, differs significantly from those of their normal counterparts, on the left. Thereby adding heavily to the arguments against ‘Nurture’ in the decades old argument of Nature versus Nurture.”

Remembering all of this, Bobby hurried past the happy couples that deepened his feelings of weirdness and ducked into the classroom early. Not only did this offer a reprieve from that gnawing feeling, but it also afforded him another glance at Julie when she entered the room. As he waited, he considered his predicament.

During his “sexual awakening”, Bobby often wondered about the How and Why of what he was becoming. He, frankly, didn’t believe the whole “Nurture” argument as it would apply to him, as he had definitely not made any conscious decision to buck the Status Quo. From what he could remember, it was just something that simply happened.

In fact, he remembered the exact moment. He had been on the playground, his back against a large Oak tree, reading a comic book. The other children ran about in play, laughing and squealing, but he didn’t feel the draw. 

He was puzzling a conundrum. With the appearance of those first few body hairs, he knew he should have been feeling certain attractions. But even though there were plenty (of what others referred to as) pretty boys, he wasn’t aroused by any of them. Maybe he was just a slow starter. He had pretty much resolved himself to that conclusion when he saw her step out onto the playground.

Sure, Bobby had seen Julie plenty of times before. They had come up through school together but, this time, she appeared to shimmer in the sunlight. Her lustrous brown hair tossed lazily in the warm breeze, as if drifting in a tide. Her eyes were laughing emeralds and the small pink smile on her lips spoke of boundless joy. Suddenly, she was truly dazzling. Bobby couldn’t look away, even though he was afraid the others might see. His pecker stiffened, embarrassingly, and he covered it with the comic book. At last, she disappeared into a group of squealing girls, releasing him from this trance. His heartbeat and breathing slowed, and in its wake came the sickening realization of what he was.

As the other kids trickled into the classroom, Bobby was pulled from his reverie. He considered his last thought. This was his truth, no matter how much he wished to deny it. He would have to accept and live with it, no matter the hardships to come.

The teasing he could deal with, for it would fade as he grew older. Seldom, in the adult world, was there more than a disapproving glance, or a derogatory slur whispered behind a hand. What Bobby worried about was the Heterophobes. Those people with hate and violence in their hearts.

Bobby remembered watching the news with his fathers one night. They were galvanized by the lead story. “We open tonight’s news with a cautionary tale,” the newscaster warned. A picture of a normal, average looking man appeared over the newscaster’s right shoulder. “Earlier today, the body of Albert Falcon was found in a frozen, windswept field in North Dakota. He had been tied to a fencepost, beaten and tortured, then left for dead.”

The newscaster grew more solemn. “It is said the body was frozen solid, and the man had been tortured and mutilated so severely that the coroner’s report was sealed to spare his family the horror of it.”

He went back to his previous newsworthy tone. “Residents of the area say that, two evenings earlier, Mr. Falcon had propositioned a woman in a local bar, and a few of the men present had some words with him. Witnesses say he left the bar, but no one had seen him for days until his body was discovered by a local rancher.” The newscaster got a grave look on his face. “This should be a lesson to all Heterosexuals to keep their perversions to themselves.” Then he smiled a big TV smile. “Next, Bill Johnson with sports.”

Bobby had been terrified. He certainly didn’t want to die that way. Maybe society will have changed by the time he “came out”.

His eyes were drawn to the doorway as Julie entered the classroom. Even though he knew it was improper, he couldn’t look away. Her eyes found his, held for a moment, then looked away. A slight, secret smile brushed her lips, and a hint of blush rose in her cheeks. Bobby was startled for a second. Had that really just happened?

He considered what he knew about her. In all the time they’d gone to school together, he had never seen her “go steady” with any of the girls that constantly flocked around her. Had never seen her with another girl’s name printed, hopefully, on one of her notebooks. Had never seen her stare longingly at any if the girls in their class. But she had looked at him. If only for a moment. Then she flashed that sweet, half embarrassed smile.

Her cheeks colored much as he imagined his probably did when he looked at her. Whether from shame, or the heat he felt in his own belly, he didn’t know. But what if she was like him, one of the outcast few? 

From that, his mind lifted into pure fantasy. Bobby imagined her pulling him aside and saying, “I have feelings for you I can’t understand, but I can’t deny, either”, and he would smile and say, “Me, too.”

Then the two of them doing a walk-through of a cozy one bedroom apartment. She turns from the window, beaming, “It’s perfect”, and him telling the leasing agent, “We’ll take it.” 

Him telling Julie, “We could never marry, but plenty of opposite sex couples stay together ’til death do they part.” She nods, totally on board.

But the question of children brought him back to reality. They would be prohibited, even penalized, for having any. The children of Heterosexual couplings were considered abominations, mutants even. They were shunned like half-breeds had been in the past. Mother Nature had shown that her haphazard mixing of DNA was problematic, at best and, while Heterosexual mothers weren’t required to abort the fetus, they were strongly encouraged to by society.

Bobby didn’t care. They would have each other and that would be enough. He smiled at the thought. He was who he was, and nothing could be done about it. That acknowledgement pushed away the shame and disgust that had been his constant companions.

As the teacher began their lesson, Bobby hunched over his notebook and wrapped an arm around it to obscure the page. He drew a heart no bigger than a pea. Then, inside that, in letters so infinitesimal as to be effectively unreadable, he wrote:

Bobby
Luvs
Julie