Looking Back: Part Three

During that summer I had two constant companions, one was the ever present fear of someone finding out my secret and the other was the boy that lived down the road. Although it wasn't 1942, I guess you could say, it was my "Summer of '42" the things I learned from that boy! We were friends, we shared a secret, but we grew older and things changed. He went away to school, married, and started a family. Over the years, our friendship remained, occasionally seeing one another when he came back home, but never repeating or talking about our Summer of 42, it was our secret, it remained our secret, until his death.

At home I was the model teenager, at school I was the model teenager, but I was a teenager with a secret, one that I kept to myself. I wish I could say there were many more boys after him, but I can't. Things happened along the way of growing up but never again with another man until my sixteenth year. Being sixteen, being older, came with more freedom, no curfew on the weekends applied other than for Sunday mornings.

No matter how late you stayed out on Saturday night, come Sunday morning everyone had to be ready for Sunday church as a family unit. This was a rule, a ritual that was not to be broken, could not be broken, would not be broken, DO YOU UNDERSTAND! Every Sunday morning come rain or shine we marched into church as a family sitting on the same pew year after year. Sitting across the aisle Sunday after Sunday was this man that always caught my eye. It wasn't like he was some stranger or something, I had known him my entire life and actually looked forward to going to church just to see him. Sometimes during the service my eyes would drift away from the man spewing out words of fire and brimstone and wander over to this man sitting across the church, sometimes his eyes caught my eyes, something that always made me wonder about. Until.