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 had turned twelve a few months ago, things had started to change with him.

First, were the few sparse hairs 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 had learned the morales of normal sexual behavior; what was expected of them. One day they even learned about perversion.

The teacher stood at the front of the class and pontificated, “First, there is the Necrophiliac, who can only find gratification with the use of a dead body.”

“Ew”, the kids replied.

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

“Oh”, was 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.” He said this last part like even he couldn’t believe it.

The kids’ resounding “Ew” was the loudest of them all and it now rang in his ears.

It was no comfort to him that they had explained these were all rare occurrences (certainly no more than one in a thousand). They still occurred.

The arguments about “Nature” vs “Nurture” had raged since the first heterosexuals “came out” over fifty years ago. So far, no consensus had been reached.

On one side was the religious Right that claimed heterosexuality was not just a perversion but an affront to the almighty, brought on by consumption of the “liberal left media” that was full of the portrayal of “Forbidden Fruit”.

They railed against the inclusion of heterosexual couples in television and film, and, most recently, tried to ban a female pop star’s hit, “I Kissed a Boy”, for its gender mixing sexual suggestiveness.

There was even one southern minister and his congregation who protested at the funerals of soldiers that had been brave enough to declare themselves openly heterosexual during the recent “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era of the military.

Almost all of the other ministers believed that heterosexuality was a choice and could be reversed by conversion therapy. They were all, firmly, in the “Nurture” camp. On the other side were the heterosexuals themselves, along with a steadily growing contingent of supportive Normals that had emerged during Bobby’s lifetime. They believed that heterosexuality was an inborn trait, not some birth defect.

They reasoned that the media could not possibly be to blame, as the instances of heterosexual couplings in television and film were astronomically outnumbered by examples of moral behavior that surrounded children every day: society at large, their own same sex parents, and (most influential) their friends.

Also, since heterosexual couples were forbidden from marrying and adopting children, there was no way any child could suffer total immersion in the “culture”.

The group also pointed to a highly controversial study that showed heterosexual brain scans differed significantly from those of their ‘normal’ counterparts. Those people were all, firmly, in the “Nature” camp.

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. Besides, his fathers were both too prim and proper to ever let him watch the shows and movies the Right railed about, as it “Just wasn’t proper for a young man.” 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 that day.

He was puzzling a conundrum. With the appearance of those first few body hairs, he knew he should have been feeling certain attractions. His fathers and he had had “the talk”, 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 that day.

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 were 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 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.” 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. He had never seen her with another girl’s name printed, hopefully, on one of her notebooks. He had never seen her stare longingly at any of 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 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 by the Pro-Choicers. Even the Right-to-Lifers had a hard time arguing against the purity of the human stock.

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