Ballerina Boy

41

It felt like hours, but it was only a few minutes for Harry to calm down enough to walk to a park bench in Munn Park with me and sit down so we could talk.

"Why are you acting like this Harry?" I finally asked after a while of silence on the bench. "Why are you always wanting to drink, do drugs, and party? You had so much going for you? You had a scholarship to the University of Florida. Where is that? You were going to be a Gator. Orange and blue man. Why aren't you going to therapy for your depression? What is wrong with you?" 

"I wasn't always like this." Harry whispered as he leaned back to look up at the few stars in the sky.

"What do you mean?"

"I was a happy kid. I was so happy."

"What happened?"

"High school happened. Ed happened."

"Look, I heard your friend Ed died in the military. I'm really sorry about that. But you have to move on, for him."

"Irwin told you didn't he? You guys seemed to be close back then." was all he said to me.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"Well that is what I told everyone at school my Junior year when school started again."

"Is that not what happened?" I asked confused.

"No. That's not what happened."

"What actually went down then?"

"Well to tell you the truth... Ed and I weren't friends."

"Then why are you so hung up on his death?"

"We were lovers."

I was shocked.

"Like real lovers? You weren't drunk?"

"I was completely sober."

"What happened?"

"Well, I met Ed during football practice. I was the youngest on the team... so coach made Ed train me after practice and on weekends. Ed flirted with me first during all of that." Harry said with a smile. "Ed was very attractive, and he was very charming. He could sing too. He'd sing to me when he'd take me home from practice or if I was having a bad day. He was very sexual with his jokes too."

I started to smile at the story he was telling.

"He then finally came out and told me that he liked me and me being a freshman... having a junior like me made me very happy. I didn't care that he was a guy. He was someone that was nice, funny, and he made me smile. So I said yes to the date and on that date he kissed me. We were boyfriends from there on out."

Awe.

"The boys on the team didn't notice. They all just thought that Ed and I had become the best of friends. Which we were... but the kind that suck each others dicks."

I chuckled at that.

"By my sophomore year, which is when the football team you know started to get moved from JV to varsity, and Ed's senior year, we were fully in love. Talking about marriage in love."

Well damn.

"But we still hadn't told anyone about us. Not even our parents. If we told them then we couldn't have anymore sleepovers if you know what I mean?"

I chuckled a little and nodded.

"So we kept it all private and went about our business. We were the cutest couple too. We'd go to pride things in secret and party with other closeted gays at our school. We were having the time of our lives. But that all ended on July 20th. The summer after his graduation and the summer going into my junior year."