"You really are a little faggot aren't you? Like not even joking, I mean like a PROPER faggot." The beast snarled inches from my face. He was what most of the kids in my year called the "cock of the year", a wrongly affectionate term for the strongest, most feared arsehole that the school had to offer.
Pinned up against a wall with two hands gripping at your school jumper should give you the thought to either run away or fight. Running away was impossible and fighting would have ended in something of mine inevitably getting broken.
I was focusing so hard on my dad's advice to `not let them see you cry' that I realised moments had passed without me saying a word. I looked down at my shoes trying to ignore his horrible breath pouring over my face.
"What do you want?" I tentatively asked without looking directly at him.
"I know what you would like you little queer. You'd like a bit of this wouldn't you." He pulled his hand from his grip and grabbed at his crotch.
The road outside the school was deserted. I had waited what seemed like an age for John to appear and had the wonderful fortune to run in to this situation instead.
My mind tumbled over the fear of whether my morning's kiss had been seen by someone and my face burned red at the thought. I looked up at the moron in front of me and saw the miserable wry smile on his face. I was sure he knew everything. I didn't know what to expect and was almost glad when the tension was broken by a swift knee to my balls. I tried to fall to the ground but was propped up by him. I waited for another blow to fall.
"Good afternoon..." We both looked around and saw the slight figure approaching. The moron let his grip go and I almost panicked as I saw who the voice belonged to.
"Run..." I blurted out. Both the beast and John looked at me with perplexed looks and I looked over at John again before he smiled slightly at me.
"I see you've got the big guns out today, all polished and shiny." John said to the bully that had started towards him.
"You what you little prick?" He snarled over at him.
"You know, taking trains all over the mountainside in spring will stop the stars from bursting." John said brightly.
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" the bully snapped in his direction.
"Take silver bullets, add rice and cake mix and you've got one hell of a firework."
What happened next confused me even more than whatever it was that was unfolding in front of me. The tyrant shook his head, picked up his school bag and walked off shaking his head.
The pain in my groin came back in to sharp focus and I bent over clutching at my manhood to make sure everything was in place. John came walking over and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Are you OK?" he whispered.
"Am I OK?" I looked up at him. "What the hell just happened?"
As I tentatively stood upright and looked at John he smiled and turned back to make sure the monster had vanished.
"I was watching this programme on TV the other day that said if anyone was being aggressive to you that you should say some absolute nonsense and that by the third thing you say, it kind of makes the brain do something which leaves them confused and eventually they would walk away."
"And you thought that would work!?" I asked with genuine fear.
"No... when I come to think about it that was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done... and I think I crapped my pants a little..." John's eyes widened and a fake scared look lay on his face before a smile broke through.
I started laughing in his direction and he joined in happily.
"Come on..." John said calmly as he reached for my schoolbag before handing it to me.
My knight in shining armour!
As we made our way down the road, my seemingly on fire genitals slowing us down, a beautiful silence surrounded us. I was unaware of what the right words would be.
I could talk about how much I had missed seeing him in the six and a half hours of school. I could talk about how many times my trousers had become tented throughout the day at the thought of what happened that morning. I could also talk about how stupid I was at the lack of agreement of what the bully had said to me. I REALLY was a faggot, wasn't I? My immature brain had no ability, or perhaps no desire, to make any sort of acknowledgement of the fact.
But it never really mattered. I mean really, why would you put a label on something when you have so little experience of life? I certainly had no desire to highlight any such label to other people anyway, and even when I would eventually come to terms with it myself, it stayed a secret for such a long time.
"So, any idea what that was all about?" John quietly broke my deep thought.
"Oh I don't know." I replied. "He's had a bee in his bonnet about something over the last couple of days, he's been at a few different people's necks."
"He's had a what in his what?" John looked at me quizzically.
"What?" I muttered back.
"A bee in his...?"
"A bee in his bonnet..." I looked at John and saw his eyebrows raised. "You've never heard that before? Come on, you can't look at me like I'm talking nonsense after all the stuff you've just come out with!" I smiled at John and he laughed slightly.
"But why you?" A serious look came on John's face. I wondered if he shared my fear that we had been spotted that morning.
"I don't know, I'd thought maybe he... Well I don't know..." I stopped short, I almost didn't want to acknowledge the kiss in case it hadn't really happened.
"What?" John prodded for my feelings and I felt myself closing up.
"Nothing, it doesn't matter."
"No, come on, you were going to say something..." John looked worried at me.
"No, it's just...what he said to me... I was just scared that he had been walking our way to school and he had seen something..."
"Oh." John almost whispered.
We kept on walking but John looked down at the floor. I felt like I had ruined everything. I looked straight ahead desperate to figure out what he was feeling. Had he regretted what happened? `He started it' I childishly thought to myself.
"I'm sorry." I softly uttered in his direction.
"For what?" John almost snapped back.
"I don't know." John smiled at the response.
"Do you..." John hesitated a moment. "Are you..." John grimaced "I don't know what to say."
We carried on for a moment, I had no idea what was going through his head. Kissing seemed a lot easier than talking all of a sudden.
"Do you wish it hadn't happened?" John looked over at me with wide eyes and I looked straight back at him. My jaw fell open and my eyebrows raised that he would think that this was true.
"Are you serious?" I snapped at him. He looked down at the floor. "Nothing in my life has ever been as good as what happened this morning."
John looked back up at me with a quivering lip, his face was all smiles but I could tell that a relief had washed over him. I was actually quite shocked at myself that I had managed to be so coherent to manage to vocalise what I had desperately wanted to say.
John looked down the street from where we had walked and then in the direction we were heading before moving closer towards me.
He put his hand up to my face and placed it by my ear, pulling me ever so gently towards him before kissing me again. The world fell to pieces around me and fireworks went off in my brain. I almost exploded where I stood. It may have only lasted a moment but it felt like the world had frozen around us. He was so close to me I could feel his chest fill with air and push against mine. I had thoughts of where I wanted to put my hands but I couldn't bring myself to see how far I could push my luck.
I was sure I could feel my hip being prodded. As he pulled away from me he had a shy smile on his face.
"Sorry about that..." He said cheekily.
"You better not be sorry about that." I quipped back at him.
We walked on in to the field by the forest and the sun shone down on one of the favourite days I have ever experienced, even if my testicles were still singing a miserable song.