Frustration -SERIES- [Part 1] [boyxboy]

Chapter Four

A couple of weeks passed and things settled down to a nice normality. Josh and Rachel were really pleased that I'd broken things off with Conor, and I was seeing quite a lot of Jackson, who was, surprisingly, growing on me quite a bit. He made me laugh, sometimes on purpose but more often than not by accident, doing something clumsy or ridiculous that somehow tickled me in the right spot and even had me grinning like an idiot hours later if I happened to think back on it. Rachel was gloating like she'd set up an international peace summit rather than just two friends, even though she still couldn't seem to set herself up with Josh. My best friend was taking the piss as much as usual but that hint of malice he always had when talking about Conor was gone – unless he was talking about Conor, of course.

Speaking of whom, despite the serenity I seemed to have managed to achieve that had been lacking for the past two Conor-oriented months, I still had more than my fair share of moments of consternation; namely, whenever he was within a three hundred foot radius. I'd stopped inviting Jackson up to Glenstal Abbey on the off chance we ran into him, because his homophobic tirade seemed to have stepped up several notches in the last fourteen days.

It all came to a head in Drama class the third week of November. Drama is the only class the whole year takes together, so three times a week all one hundred and eighty of us are herded into the gym and forced to act like flowers and windmills and so forth. If you've learnt anything about me by now, you'll deduce that it's not exactly my favourite class.

As there are so many of us, other teachers are often assigned to help the Drama teacher, Ms Hughes, who is a bit dithery, keep the peace. Today we had Mr Price and, unusually, the principal, Mr Doherty.

Ms Hughes stood on the stage while we all congregated on the gym floor, sitting Indian style or just sprawled out, and she clapped her hands to get our attention. We gave in after a few minutes, solely because of the presence of Mr Doherty, and Ms Hughes started talking loudly so we could all hear.

'Okay,' she squeaked, 'as you all know we finished up our section on modern drama last week, which means... We need to start working on our performance section!' A cheer went up from the class; performance drama is always the most fun. The whole class is required to contribute in some way to a production which is put on in the last week before Christmas holidays, whether it's set design, costumes, music, acting, anything really. Josh and I always opt for costumes, and we get away with it just because I am gay. We're onto a winner though; other boys don't want to be seen dead working in costumes whether they like fashion design or not so we're the only two in there, the rest are girls who simply don't want us interfering. Ordinarily we'd get kicked out for not contributing, but I will shamelessly play the gay card if I have to, and it works every time.

Ms Hughes continued to soliloquise about the plays she wanted us to consider and what area we would like to work in, but everyone was already off whispering amongst themselves about exactly that.

'Costumes?' Josh asked. He was laid out leaning on his palms, his legs crossed at the ankle in front of him, leaning backwards to raise an eyebrow at me around Rachel.

'Course,' I said, but I was looking beyond him at somebody else, somebody who was smirking to his friends about how they would, once again, monopolise the music part of the production so that they were in charge and nobody else got to really participate.

'Costumes?' Rachel demanded disbelievingly. 'Why on earth would you two want to work in costumes?'

'I'm gay,' I replied automatically.

'It's true,' Josh concurred. 'He is.'

'But you're not interested in fashion design.'

'Yeah. But I'm gay.'