Posted by Techie on January 04, 19100 at 21:04:30:
How do you describe something you consider to be the most beautiful object you have ever seen? Suppose that object is something you are deeply in love with.
Let’s see.... would you use something traditional like “incredibly beautiful”?
How about a single word that’s a little more modern like ...... “awesome”?
You could say something a little more physical, like “breathtaking”?
Or, how about simply........ “drop dead gorgeous”?
What, exactly, does ‘drop dead gorgeous’ mean, anyway?
Just because the program was over for the summer, didn't mean I stopped seeing all the boys that had played on the team. We all lived in the same neighborhood, so every now and then we would see each other and say hi. School started and I went into my senior year, the summer turned to fall, and then fall turned to winter. Christmas came, and then New Years day. Then we all went back to school for the spring semester. Through all this I saw Robby maybe two or three times, said hi and asked how he was doing. The last time was just before Thanksgiving.
It doesn't take winter long to turn to spring in San Diego, and it was a great time. I was enrolled in a Vocational Program in school, so I had to go to school early, but I would get out of school early. This meant that I got back to the house in the early afternoon. I had ordered a set of Throwing Knives, and every day I would go outside in the yard and practice. I had set up a target against the fence, and would throw the knives at the target.
The neighborhood where we lived was built in the low rolling hills at the end of Mission Valley, and my house was located at the top of one of these hills. If you looked over the top of the target I had set up, off in the distance you could see the elementary school where we had held the summer program. Since I got home early, I was out practicing with my knives when the elementary school got out. I could watch the kids leaving the school and going home. I used to see Robbie off in the distance, riding his bike home from school. He usually rode his bike home by going up a really steep hill on another street. I could see him well enough to know who it was, and even though he was pretty far away, I could see that he was starting to grow. One day I looked up and noticed Robby was riding his bike up the hill towards my house, another typical Southern California boy, all blond hair and energy.
I don't know what made him decide to take the road by my house on his way home. Maybe he felt it was easier to go up the hill that went by my house, then go up another hill that went back the other direction to get to his house.
Then again, maybe God was bored that day, and for a bit of amusement just whispered in his ear, "turn left" and Robby did. I’ll never know.
What I do know, is he rode that bike up the hill, right next to my house, and that this was not the same Robby! Something had changed. He was a little bigger, and a little more filled out, but the biggest change I noticed was that everything about him was beautiful.
He was riding a brand new 26 inch, ten-speed racing bike that he got for Christmas. That bike was almost as big as he was, and his brother had the seat adjusted just like you were supposed to for a road racing bike. That's where, when you're sitting on the seat and the pedal is all the way at the bottom, your ankle has a small amount of rotation left before the ball of your foot can't go down any more. When this happens, your leg should be fully extended and straight. He was wearing some pants that were left over from the fall semester, and for some reason those pants hadn't grown when he did. So as his legs were going up and down, those pants were so tight you would think they were painted on.
It hit, like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky.
My heart started beating so hard if I hadn't had a shirt on you could see it beat from the outside. I felt so giddy at the time I think I actually started shaking a little.
This boy had the most beautiful legs God ever gave any living thing on this planet! I think they went all the way up to his armpits. There he was, working those legs up and down, arms relaxed, blond hair all in his face, working his ass off, and grinning from ear to ear as he went by. Somehow, in spite of all the effort he was putting out, when he saw me looking at him, he looked me straight in the eyes, managed to wave and said hi.
That was all it took. By the time he got next to my house, I was on the verge of panic anyway, and when he looked at me I realized the color of his eyes had changed to a sort of light cobalt blue. When he locked those eyes on me, as he did with everyone he talked to, I almost lost what little control I still had!
You know what “Drop Dead Gorgeous” means? It means that the object you’re looking at is so beautiful that when you see it you might just drop dead from the sheer beauty.
This was the most awesome, incredibly beautiful, breathtaking, drop dead gorgeous boy in the entire world!
All this took place in a span of about 2 minutes. In 2 minutes my life changed forever. It took a bit longer for me to realize that I was in love with that boy, and what that meant about me. By this time he had gone by my house, turned at the corner and disappeared out of sight.
When I realized what the consequences of that love meant, I was so distraught that I leaned against the fence, bent over and heaved my guts out.
What am I going to do now?
That was the question I asked myself, over and over and over.
Why couldn’t life be simple? Why couldn’t I just be like every other boy I thought I knew?
WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH ME?
I knew one thing for a fact. My love for Robby was never going to happen. As far as I was concerned, Robby was ‘Forbidden Fruit’, and I knew it.
At that time I didn’t even consider the sexual aspects of our relationship. But I wanted to hold him, cuddle with him, run my fingers through his hair and tell him how beautiful his eyes were and exactly what I thought about his legs. I wanted to tell him things that would make him blush so hard his blond hair would be stained pink.
I already knew that he was my friend, and I wanted to be his ‘best’ friend
I could not do anything remotely related to what I wanted to do. There were several reasons that I could come up with for thinking that. To begin with, this was the mid-sixties, and grown men didn’t say things like that to 12 year old boys. I could never even remember seeing a grown man telling a boy “I love you”. Not even their own son, much less some one else’s son!
Add to that the fact that he was a really nice kid, and probably didn’t have a clue as to how I felt about him. Somewhere on the list of reasons was the fact that his brother was a year older than me, weighed about 40 pounds more than I did, and was going to college on a football scholarship. I could just see how well he would react to my making a move on his little brother!
I didn’t have any experience in dealing with this type of relationship in a social environment. So I didn’t say a single word to Robby about how I really felt about him. I cried inside every time I saw him, but kept my mouth shut.
Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything.
If you think I could just walk away from him, you don’t know much about being in love. I saw him almost every school day, because for some reason he continued to ride that new bike up that same hill that went by my house. I just about wore those damn knives out, using that as an excuse so I Could be there when he went by. He always looked up at me, locked those cobalt blue eyes on mine, smiled that ear to ear smile and said something.
In March, Little League started back up. Robby, along with several of the other boys from the youth program team, was already on a Little League team, so he didn’t have to try out. This turned out pretty good, because several of the other boys from the youth program team all knew me, and suggested I come help. I asked the t eam manager (who was also the father of one of the other boys) if he could use some extra help with the team and he readily accepted my offer. I showed up at practice, and then when the season started I would show up at the games, even though I couldn’t sit in the dugout.
Everyone on the team seemed to like me, and I started feeling a little better about myself. I was learning how to cope, how to survive in the real world. A photographer came out and took the team picture, with Robbie and all the other boys in it. I decided to buy one, and when I went up to order it I found out that the photo’s wouldn’t be in until after I had to leave for the Marines (which was the end of June). I knew that my brother was planning on moving soon, so I told them to send the picture to Robby, and figured I would get it sometime.
Towards the end of May, or the first week in June I started noticing a difference in the way Robby behaved when he was around me. I like to think he liked me. Sometimes I would daydream about our being alone, and I would tell him how I really felt. In my day dreams he would always come back and say he liked me a lot.
I caught him a few times looking at me with a really intense look in on his face, and those cobalt blue eyes looked like they were a thousand feet deep. At first I didn’t think anything about it, but then I began to notice that when I would run into him with his mom or his brother, he would look at me and say Hi, and then turn and look the other way. I knew then that something was bothering him, but I didn’t know how to bring the subject up.
One day in early June I was out riding my bike (yea, at that time ‘some’ high school seniors rode bikes for transportation) and decided to go up the hill and watch the sunset. If you went up the hills behind where I lived, you could see all the way down Mission Valley to the Pacific Ocean. During June the sun would set right in the middle of Mission Valley, and it was pretty awesome to see.
I picked a spot and stopped to watch, when suddenly from out of nowhere comes Robby. I said hi, and we did the small talk thing, and then I asked him if something was bothering him. He turned away and looked at the sun for a minute and then turned back to me and said “You like me a lot, don’t you?”.
Well, there it was. Just the two of us, alone, and he comes up and asks that. The meaning of that sentence hasn’t changed a bit since this happened. It still means the same today as it did then, and I don’t think I have to go into detail about the meaning.
Now what the fuck do I do?
I had thought about this a lot in the past few weeks. In fact I had dreamed about just this situation occurring so I could tell him how I really felt. Well, here we were, and I still didn’t know what to say. I wanted so bad to try to tell him how I felt, but I didn’t know how without making it sound like I was a queer and all I wanted was for him to be my lover.
That was the ‘last’ thing on Earth I wanted him to think.
You have to remember, that this was something that was forbidden as far as I was concerned, and I just naturally assumed the same rules applied to Robby also. I simply could not bring myself to humiliate him like that, even though there was only the two of us around. So I looked straight into his eyes and said “Yea, I like you a lot. I think you’re my best friend. But all I want is for you to feel like I’m your friend too.” He didn’t say much, just sorta grinned that little boy grin and promptly changed the subject.
We stayed there until it got dark, making small talk and laughing at things. Then he had to go home, and we left.
The summer flew by, I had my eighteenth birthday, and then it was the end of June and I had to go. I went to my last practice with the team, and everybody on the team wished me luck in Marines. I went up to Robby and shook his hand, and ran my fingers through his hair. I told him he was my best friend, and I’d see him around. All he could do was try to smile and look away.
What I wanted to do was hug him and give him kiss, tell him I loved him and I always would. But I didn’t do any of that. In my opinion, for me to do that would have absolutely humiliated him, because it was forbidden. At that time men didn’t act like that with boys. It wasn’t allowed according to some stupid code of socially acceptable behavior. Inside I was dying, and I couldn’t let anyone know it.
So I told him I’d see him around, then I left.
I had planned on going in the Marines and then coming back and picking up where I left off. But plans often don’t go the way you want them to, and this was no exception.
I never saw my blond haired, typical Southern California boy, with those devastating cobalt blue eyes again.
Ever.
He moved away with his family shortly after I went in the Marines.
How this story came to be here.
I spent three years in the Marine Corps, including a tour in Viet Nam. I saw some real heavy shit that year I spent in Viet Nam. I’ve always said I looked the Satan right in the eye and I spit in his face. I also feel that I’ve made reservations for a first class suite in Hell, and Satan’s just waiting it out.
That year in Viet Nam changed the way I looked at life for a long time.
When I got out, I went back and tried to pick up the pieces as I had planned on. Three years may not seem like a long time, but as the saying goes, it’s not the miles, but the condition of the road that matters. I was a different person when I got out of the Corps. I had new demons to fight, and it took me a few years to get back to something that resembled the person that graduated from high school in San Diego, California. By the time I had done that I was living in another state, married, and on the way to raising a family of my own.
Shortly after I got back from Viet Nam I got out of the Corps. While I was trying to put the pieces back together, I had a talk with one of the other boys that had been really good friends with Robby. Robby had confided to his friend, as only 12 year old’s can talk to each other about things like this, that he had crush on me, and that he liked me a lot :-) He didn’t tell me, because he didn’t know how to. He had the same problem dealing with me as I had dealing with him.
A few days later I was visiting my brother and his wife. They had moved out of San Diego, but were still in Southern California. I was sitting in their living room when my sister in law remembered something and told me she had something for me. She got out a big folder, dug around and pulled out a big envelope and gave it to me.
Inside it was that Little League team picture I had purchased. Robby had taken that picture and had all the boys on the team sign it on the back. He then took it up to my old house and asked my sister in law if she would see that I got it. Well she did, it was just a little long, about 3 years, in getting to me. I turned it over and looked on the back where all the kids had signed it. Robby had signed it last. I bit my tongue so hard I think it started bleeding, to keep from crying. A few minutes later I said I was going for a walk, went outside, and started walking down the street. I started crying, and couldn’t stop for a long time.
That was over 30 years ago. I had put that picture away, and got on with the rest of my life. I still remembered Robby, but like everything that passes with time, I had forgotten a lot of the details. A little over a year ago my life was devastated by the loss of my daughter. I became an emotional basket case, and almost went off the deep end. For the first time in many years I found myself contemplating ending it as a effective way out.
But this wasn’t the same world that had been here 30 years before. I’m a very private person, and will not just start talking about something unless I know that the person I’m talking to can understand what I’m trying to say. If you read Forbidden Fruit Part 2, you can understand why I’m like this. Sure, I could have gone to a shrink, but I know that in reality he wouldn’t really understand how I felt, and if I wen t over the line he had a legal obligation to report it to the proper officials. I can’t live with either of those two options.
I had a computer, and knew what the Internet was, and had heard there were places where “boylovers” could talk about their problems. I started searching, and with a little help, found this board, and the people that call this board their family. I noticed that most of the regular posters here used photos of themselves when they were kids to go with their nick names, and I thought that was a neat idea. One day I went looking for some early pictures of me as a boy, and while I was looking through the suitcase that had all that kind of stuff in it I came across that Little League photo.
I took it out and looked at it, turned it over and looked on the back, and all the memories of Robby started coming back. It’s a good thing I was home by myself, cause I think I cried for over an hour. Part of my tears were for my daughter, the rest were for Robby, because of the way he signed that picture. Robby left me the greatest gifts any two people can ever give each other. Thousands of memories, which I’ll cherish forever, of the good times I had with a blond haired, Southern California boy with devastating cobalt blue eyes, and a picture signed on the back
“To my best friend
Robby”
I know now that good memories should be cherished, because in the end they are all you have left.
I also know that true friendship lasts as long as the memories of either person still live.
Techie
Who’s still love's his Southern California boy with the cobalt blue eyes.
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