QColumn: A Gay In The Life: Dick The Halls

Dick the Halls
By Steve Prince
“Welcome to Oklahoma City and Happy Holidays.”
The steward’s voice crackled over the speaker of the plane intercom. I looked out the window and watched the tall prairie grass kneel to the gusting wind. Ah Oklahoma—the wind really does go sweeping down the Plains.
The last time I visited Oklahoma to see my family I ended up having a wonderful tryst with Tom. However, I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. Usually I visit my Mom in Oklahoma City, however this time I would be staying my whole vacation in the town I grew up in—Oak Grove. A town that housed four-thousand people. A town that had no mall, no coffee shops, and—let’s be honest—no fun. I expected to be bored the entire time.
As my Mom and I drove an hour-and-a-half to Oak Grove, we chatted and I took in the scenery of the state. I will say that Oklahoma is a beautiful state, at least the part I’m from. Locals call it “Hill Country.” As we drove down the interstate, rolling hills dotted with brown trees scrolled past my car window. A part of me did feel sad that I probably would never live in the state again. I would like to live closer to my family, but another part of me prefers not to be lynched. OK… Oklahoma isn’t that bad, but homophobia intermingles with the state culture as easily as the gusting wind gushes between buildings.
Hours later, exhausted, I crawled into the bed in my father’s spare bedroom. It was great to see my family, but the ongoing meetings wore me out. Don’t get me wrong. I loved that my family all wanted to know what I was up to; however, I felt like a broken record being played over and over. And the responses from my family members weren’t that diverse either: Are you ever going to come home?; Are you out of school yet?; Oh, Los Angeles seems so exciting, I’m so proud for you!… and so on.
I turned off the lamp on the bedside table, and the blinking light of my blackberry caught my eye.
It was a text from Kelly.
What are you up to? Are you in LA for Xmas?

Oh Kelly. I would text him tomorrow. I knew I was avoiding the issue, but I didn’t know what to do. I felt I was in over my head with Kelly and I didn’t want to pursue anything without talking to Troy. I mean Troy did say he liked Kelly. However, the last time I was with Kelly I felt like he and I were hitting it off a little too well. And I love the way his cheeks would naturally blush when he would laugh. NO! I told myself. You can’t think about that right now. I began to think about school to drive Kelly from my mind.
I set my phone down, pulled the covers up to my chin, and rolled over. Dammit. The closet light shone threw a crack in the door. I am one of those people that have to sleep in complete darkness. Annoyed, I tossed back the covers, got up and walked to the closet. I opened the door to click the chain of the light. In the right corner, buried in all the clutter, sat a large stack of newspapers. I leaned forward and I noticed my face was on the cover of a yellowed copy of the Oak Grove Gazette. God, I looked young. The picture had to be ten years old, back in my high school days. I turned on the bedroom light and pulled the stack of papers onto the bed and began thumbing through them.
Memories are funny things. Some of them stick with you, engrained in your mind. Others seem to surface like a fish jumping out of a pond; once the memory pops into your mind it seems so alive and present in your life, but then it plops back into the watery mind and you can’t remember exactly where it came from. As I flipped through the articles, memories jumped from my mind and I began to remember how daunting high school was for me as a gay kid. Not that high school was bad for me. Actually, I felt I’d been fairly popular, but throughout high school, I always felt I suppressed a part of myself, which of course was my being gay. Hiding my “differentness” caused a lot of shame and anxiety in my day-to-day life; hiding being gay was one of my extracurricular activities. I sang in choir, acted in the drama club, performed as the high school mascot, presided over the honor society, and would tell myself everyday that my same-sex feelings would go away.
Still, the newspapers were like treasure troves. Because Oak Grove is so small, anything and everything’s put into the paper. Front page news often was a local high school kid’s steer winning the blue ribbon at the county fair. During Christmas, children’s letters from Santa took up three pages. And during the school year, they devoted pages and pages to the Oak Grove High School sports team, complete with action pictures and players’ mug shots. I actually found myself reading the articles about other people more than my own; I knew my stories and wanted to remember theirs.
I looked at an article on page four. The headline read, CHUCK GARNER NAMED OAK GROVE’S FOOTBALL PLAYER OF THE WEEK. Under the title, they placed Chuck Garner’s picture within the text of the column. Chuck’s seventeen-year-old smile beamed at me. His brown hair, parted in the middle, straight and smooth. In fact, even in the black and white picture you could see its shine. Chuck Garner was a star football player and, if memory serves me correct, was voted Most Popular our senior year of high school. He was the guy all the girls wanted to sleep with—and some of the boys.
Ironically enough, Chuck Garner contributed to my own coming out process. We were both in eighth grade. In our school, eighth graders have Eighth Grade Graduation. It used to involve an actual graduation ceremony, much like a high school graduation, but that has really gone to the wayside. In rural areas in Oklahoma it wasn’t uncommon for kids to only go to school until the eighth grade. Only in the last three generations has passing the eighth grade not been considered such a huge achievement. But even though our school didn’t have a graduation anymore, they did have an all night lock-in for the eighth graders. If you don’t know what a LOCK-IN is, well, you’re missing out— we loved them in middle school. It’s basically when the school locks the front doors and we all have a slumber party until 7am the next morning. There are always activities, free pizza, and tons and tons of drama. The thirteen-year-old girl inside of me loved them like no other and I had spent two days picking out what outfits I was going to wear. Yes, outfits. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the same thing all night.
Also at lock-ins were tons of sports for all the guys. Basketball in the gym was usually the most popular sport for this lock-in and most of us found ourselves in the gym one way or another. The guys played basketball while the girls (and me) sat on the bleachers gossiping. Everything was fine until Chuck Garner’s voice echoed through the gymnasium.
“Ok, fellas,” he called confidently over the crowd. “New game. Shirts and Skins. My team is skins.”
You might wanna get some lube for this next part…
Before the echo of Chuck’s voice had died out, half of the boys on the gym floor began to take of their shirts. I along with Shelly Parker, Lori Keller, Kelli Durnham, RaeAnn Throneberry, April Britt, and Jymme Dawn Stewart glared at Chuck Garner. The seven of us stared transfixed. Chuck closed his eyes as his fingers clutched around his shirt collar. With brut force he pulled hard, so hard. The bottom of his t-shirt began to flutter up like an angel ascending into some heaven I would never be a part of, but wanted so badly. A heaven where men sucked one another off like fat kids sucked lollipops in a Candyland. As the Chuck’s flat stomach came into view, Lori Keller gasped, while Jymme Dawn Steward popped a Frito in her mouth and began crunching loudly.
As Chuck’s shirt cam off, he open his eyes, smiled, and tossed his head letting his beautiful chestnut mane dance upon his head. His broad pecs glistened in the humid gym. I think I even saw a trickle of sweat roll down the middle of his chest, intermingling with the ridges of his abs. Shelly Parker sucked even hard on her apple sucker. As he called to his teammates, my loins tightened. To this day, I don’t remember what he said, but I’ll never forget watching his abs tense as he called to them. A small treasure trail of hair meandered its way from Chuck’s belly button down to his pubic bone. His shorts were low and his cum gutters framed the top of his pubic hair that poked out from the top of his shorts.
Oh my God. I want to have sex with him. I want to kiss him and I want to feel all over his body. I want to hold his hard cock in my hand and in my mouth.
These thoughts shot threw my brain before I could stop it. I bit my lip and moved my jacket between my thighs to hide my erection. I always knew I had been different but for the first time I realized that being different actually was my attraction to men. In that moment, a part of me knew I was gay and I was scared shitless.
As I flipped through the papers, Chuck Garner’s picture was just one of many that sparked memories in my mind. These moments seemed to affect my friendships at the time. I never competed in team sports because I was afraid of being in a locker room with other guys. I begin to form ideas that I was incapable of forming strong relationships with other guys. I remember feeling that I didn’t make friends with boys that well, especially boys in my class. Unable to talk to them, I always felt that I wasn’t macho enough. Even though I lived in the country, I was not a country boy. We owned no farm animals and I didn’t know how to ride a horse. I never had to bail hail. The most manual labor I did was mowing our lawn on the riding lawn mower.
But as I sat looking at all the pictures of these guys, something didn’t add up. I thought about all my high school friends. The reality was that I did have a lot of friends in high school that were guys. In fact, when I thought about my good friends it was almost half and half, between boys and girls. And then I began to think about when I went to Oklahoma for my ten year reunion last year. The same guys in high school were there, including Chuck Garner, and I felt completely comfortable around them. In fact, everyone had an amazing time.
And then it hit me. The guys I was uncomfortable with were the guys I was attracted to in high school.
In the dim light from my father’s lamp, I smiled. Of course I felt uncomfortable around the Chuck Garners in high school; I totally wanted to suck them off. I chuckled. For years I had thought that I was fucked up in my way of relating to other men, but I realize that the only thing that caused me anxiety was denying my gayness and its attraction. In fact, maybe my gayness actually protected me in high school. In the conservative area I lived in, developing attractions to some of the boys could have been dangerous for me.
As I tossed the papers off the bed, warmth spread all over me. I felt so powerful and lucky to have had that experience because now I realize that my instincts—or in this case—my gay instincts guided me better than my own rationale. I turned off the lamp. I looked out the window. Snow skipped in the wind and fell to earth. I smiled. Who knew that in my boring little town of Oak Grove with nothing to do and nowhere to go, a twenty-nine year old man would find peace, love, and happiness from within?
I hope that those of you who read this find that as well. Happy Holidays.
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Years after moving from Oklahoma, Steve Prince is still acclimating to the gay scene in Los Angeles—he’s a slow learner. By trial and error and a lot of sex, his mission is to make the uncomfortable, comfortable. Also it should be known that he is gayer than butt sex.
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Previously, on A Gay In The Life:
The Birds and The Birds
Lyin’, & Twinks, & Bears—Oh My!
Going Public
Christmas in July
Luck Be A Lady Tonight
I Left My Heart In Oklahoma
As Luck Would Have It
Shock & Awe
Blame It On Britney
The Unending Journey
Makin’ Copies
Bullets and Bracelets… and Lube
To Tell The Truth…
Stars Aren’t Blind
The Dark Knight
Come As You Are
A Date?
A Happy Ending
Better Than Nothing
A Man With A Slow Hand
Taking The Long Way
Everybody Knows
Wake Me Up, Before Ya Go-Go
Definition
The Best
The Upper Hand
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
2000-Date