Meandering

This is a story idea I've been playing around with for a little while.

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There is not a more confusing time in a young boy’s life than his teen years. Or so Naldo would have you believe. Now, he wasn’t the most awkward teenager ever; he had a good personality and was able to have flowing conversations with others. He just didn’t like that he had to. He was perfectly content with being quiet all day, ignoring everyone around him. He couldn’t do that, though because then people would think he was weird, and as much as he would hate to admit it, he needed help with things from time to time. And no one wants to help the weird kid. You have to give to get. But he was still kind of awkward.

When the time came for a new seating chart, he would try to talk to his new tablemate , but she would be barely responsive, or it would go well for the first two minutes then lead to a long silence as the laughter died down and then they were forced to pretend to be really interested in last night’s homework. Then he would hate every minute of his life that he had to sit next to her.

On Tuesday morning, Naldo went into his Anatomy class to see a new seating chart projected onto the screen. “Great,” he muttered. He had just gotten into a comfortable rhythm with his last table mate. She would turn to the next table and talk rapidly to her best friend before the final bell while flipping her hair back, slapping Naldo in the face and irritating his eyes. When the final bell rang, they would quietly listen to lecture and then he would let her copy his assignments. That was their rhythm and he was okay with that. But now he had to start all over and he was not in the mood. He tried to decipher the chart even though it seemed physically impossible for that to be a visual representation of the same room. He eventually gave up and just looked around the room for his new partner. It was a boy this time. Harrison Daley.

Naldo kind of knew Harrison from around the school. He was nice, and had a lot of friends. His friends were mostly girls, so everyone thought he was a player. Naldo just thought it meant Harrison had some “left-leaning tendencies”. He didn’t know Harrison beyond that, and after closer inspection of him as he walked to his new table, he could tell that he wanted to. He changed his gait to more of a saunter and sat at his assigned seat. “Hello,” Joe said as Naldo sat. Naldo had his “gaydar” going at full operating potential. He had his suspicions about Harrison, but he had to be sure. (None of this made Naldo gay. He was just very interested in the sexuality of other boys his age.) He noticed that Harrison didn’t look up to greet him, so he figured that it was okay that he didn’t respond. He just sat next to him, calculating. Harrison was trying to finish the homework from last night. Had he been up all night watching a Sex and The City marathon, or had he just not felt like homework after a long night of banging his girlfriend? Did Sex and The City even still come on? How long would it really take for him to do some chick? Those were the thoughts that were going through Naldo’s head as he watched Harrison Daley and the final bell rang.

That is how it was for the next couple of days. They’d greet each other, Harrison would try to scramble to get the homework done, and Naldo would watch him, until the lecture started.

Finally, one Wednesday, Naldo asked, “Hot date last night?” Harrison gave Naldo a look that asked him to repeat himself. Naldo just pointed to the almost finished page.

“Oh,” Harrison looked at his homework and then chuckled. “No. I wish. I just wanted to eat, sleep, and watch t.v. when I got home,” Harrison explained. The Sex and the City theme started playing in Naldo’s head. Then the gears started to turn.

“Sex and the City marathon?” he wondered.

“Does that still come on?”

“I’m not sure,” Naldo answered truthfully. He decided that he was going about this whole thing in the wrong way. It doesn’t make you gay to watch Sex and the City. He’d seen his dad putting in discs from his mom’s collector’s edition DVD box set.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” Joe wondered which made Naldo remember that he was in the middle of a conversation. See? Awkward.

“Nothing. Just that I watch way too much t.v.” He was really starting to blur the lines.

“I have that same problem,” Harrison confessed. “My guilty pleasure is RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Naldo’s mouth fell open as Joe turned to finish his homework and the bell rang.