Authors note

4-The visit

Transition from from freshman to sophomore year was smoother than any transition I had made before this point. My grades were personal bests in all my classes, and I had discovered that love could come in all shapes and forms and from the most unexpected places, and, as it was, such knowledge did not scare me the way it had done before. I saw James more than once in my History of Science Fiction class, he never once talked to me, wether this was out of shame or out of jealousy made no difference to me. His silence was a gift which saved me from all manner of social awkwardness.

***
Watching the hills roll past the window of the train car on the way home for the summer of my second year set a million different emotions rushing through my mind. I felt like a new sort of person, and, I suppose, in many ways I was. In short, I've always known that I was different, even if the reason wasn't so glaringly obvious as it is now. I live with my grandmother, who has always remained extremely conservative and traditional, her reactions to the way I dress and act have never mattered to me all that much, as she is, quite simply, old fashioned, but now something in me felt eager to impress her, I didn't expect her, nor did I want her to accept the fact that I had been using marijuana and alcohol as illegitimate short term cures for my steady nerves over the last two years, (that wasn't something I had been particularly proud to admit myself, let alone discuss with family) but I felt she needed to know that I had found steady sexual relationships with both a boy and a girl and that that was nothing to be ashamed or afraid of.

As it turned out, the alcohol, she was totally fine with, the drugs came as the biggest shock at first, but after some careful explanations on my part about the "controlled" use of it, and about using it in the company of friends, she seemed to understand a lot more than i thought she would. I suppose I should have known that she'd know better than anyone how stressful teenage years can be, after all, and it may seem hard to believe when she bustles about the house in her tabard, but my grandmother had been young once too.

As you could probably have guessed by now, my courtship was one subject that was extremely difficult to broach with gran. She smiled at me ruefully across the table as I wolfed down a healthy portion of salmon en crême fraiche and boiled potatoes and she cooed softly. "So, any boys take you dancing?"

I smiled wider than I had expected to upon realising that "dancing" was a euphemism for "sex" "Yes" I say proudly, memories of my best times with James floating swiftly to the surface of my mind as I spoke, but then I proceed with more caution, as if walking upon brittle glass, my voice began to shake slightly with my unease, "A..and girls..."

Gran brushed this off slightly, by continuing to refer to James, in answer to continuing questions I recounted my best memories of that relationship;'when we sat by the river in the bottom of the school grounds and just chatted, the first time he'd kissed me in the common room, it was like re-watching a favourite old movie. "But what happened, love? Are you still with him?"

I explained how I'd caught him cheating on me, and she looked at me with the utmost vexation and sorrow, and flew from the table to suddenly embrace me. This I was grateful for as it turned out, but her expressions of sympathy, not so much. "Oh you, poor,dear child, such a cruel world we live in..." I opened my mouth to explain that I begged to differ, as I'd found this girl...but I was cut off by more of what seemed to me this time to sound more like forced sympathy, and I was quietly disgusted. "Oh! You're in shock, dear, and as for the girl, well, it's a simple phase, oh no, don't worry yourself about it, you'll grow out of it, I'm sure. "

To cut a long story short, I tried to tell gran about Kelly in more detail, but she diverted the subject too much, I answered what she wanted to know about course work in as short answers as possible so that the rest of the meal was spent in a grudges silence, which was exactly what I had feared may happen, and exactly the opposite of what I had wanted.