I have decided to tell you the story of Chris, my longest and oldest and first "Best Friend". I can remember back to age of about 4 years old, and Chris was always in my life. We both lived on Baltimore Ave in a little small town in South Georgia. His dad was in National Guard and he was the youngest of 6 brothers and sisters. I lived up the street from him and my dad was a traveling sales man and I was the youngest of 4 boys. His mother was a stay at home mom while my mom worked for the school systems as the head of the lunch room. Yes my mom was the lunch room lady, go ahead and laugh all you want, but it was cool in elementary school with her there, I could do what ever I wanted in the lunch room. I never had to wait in line, and I could always go back and get all that I wanted, or all my friends wanted...LOL!!!
Chris and I used to play all the games that little boys used to play back in the day. He was the only friend that I remember up until the age of about 8 years old. When I was about 6 years old, my parents decided to move and built a new home about 5 miles from where we lived but as fate would have it, Chris's family also moved to a new home about 2 blocks from our new house so we were still together. He went to a school at his church and I went to public school, but we were together every afternoon and spent most weekends at each others house. We were just the typical two little boys have having a good time...then came the teenage years!!
Well since Chris and I went to different schools we both developed a different set of friends, but we managed to mix the two separate groups together pretty well, but we were not as close as before. We still spent a lot of time together but we also spent a lot of time with other friends. We went through all the trials and tribulations of puberty together and explored all the things little boy explore as they are growing up, so needless to say we knew each other pretty well and shared a lot of things.
By this time I had already learned that I like boys more then girls and I was learning what it meant to be gay. The major problem was that I didn't have anyone to talk to about this and I felt like I was left out on an island all alone, even when I was around my friends. This was a time before the internet and there was no real outlet to the outside world beyond the small town life that I lived. One major problem, or fear that I had was that my mother was born and raised in this town and so was her mother, so she pretty much knew everyone and everything that went on. To add to my paranoia about being gay in a small town, my dad had stopped traveling when I was 6 and opened his own business, all three of my brothers were high school football stars, and my parents best friends (my god parents) were the high school principals secretary and the head coach of the high school football team. So needless to say, everyone knew me or my parents or my brothers, no matter if I knew them or not. My mom would know what I did before I woke up the next morning. It was like being under surveillance 24 hours a day...every day. I was scared to death to take the wrong step or try to explore what I felt on the inside so I decided to hide.
I learned to keep more to myself and to become more self aware of what I was doing at all times. I still hung out with my friends but I would spend a lot of time alone. I was so scared that I would do something or say something that would give my secret away. Living day to day with such a huge burden on such young shoulders and to be so scared that you would not live up to your parents expectations really effected my personality and how I interacted with others. When I was young and before I became aware of my sexuality, I was an extremely out going little boy that was always smiling and laughing and enjoyed life, but that all changed. I mean I still had fun with my friends and family, but now I had a wall up and was always on guard as to what I was saying but the worst part was that I started listening to what others were saying very closely and would turn these words against myself. I developed a habit of always looking for meaning in everything everyone said, and in my own paranoid mind, these words always took on a meaning that reflected what I was thinking they might be thinking of me. This is the main reason I started becoming more of a loaner. If I wasn't around others, they couldn't see what I was doing and they couldn't say anything about me, so I wouldn't have to worry what they thought of me.
We anyway, I am getting off on to me instead of Chris, which this post is all about. Chris and I continued to be friends into about 9 grade when his dad got a promotion and they moved to Atlanta. After this we kind of lost touch with each other. I was lost in my own little world of life and fantasy, wishing what I could have but never trying to obtain it. After Chris moved to Atlanta, I got to go see him a couple of times, but not until I was in college and I could drive my self up there. My dad was not fond of Chris, he never told me why when we were little but looking back on it, he thought Chris was gay and didn't want me hanging around him. He thought he would change me...little did he know. I wish I would have known, and we could have had each other to talk to, I know things would have been so much different for me and for him.
Once I got out of Waycross and off to college things changed for me...but that is in the next post.
