When Granddad was diagnosed with lung cancer, my mother took leave from her job and flew to Albany to be with him. It became apparent that she was going to have to stay for the duration and suddenly Dad was given the opportunity to accept a position as an engineering supervisor on the Marine Corps Logistics Base. His supervisor at Fort Hamilton helped him to get the job. At the time, we were living in a small rented apartment where we'd moved after losing our house. Mom was relieved and Dad was happy for the first time since the engineering disaster. We were all living in Granddad's house sixteen days later. Granddad was thrilled to have us with him, Mom was happy we were all together again, and Dad seemed like the weight of the Western world had lifted from his shoulders. Alex was not too happy about the move to Georgia but didn't seem to lose much sleep over it. He'd just turned thirteen and really was more interested in playing football than academics. Granddad had told him he would be a football star in Albany.
As for me, I was completely and totally devastated to the point of major depression. I was still in a funk over the business with Carl. I'd lived in New York all of my life among millions of people and I just couldn't believe I was being moved to a small South Georgia city of around 75,000 people. Albany High School had around 750 students in grades 9-12. It was a crushing descent from Brooklyn Technical, the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the United States. During my first week of classes, I felt like I'd left the civilized world and moved to a third world country. I seriously contemplated suicide. It seemed like everything in my life was going wrong and I obviously had no clue about how to handle it. I was a good student whose best subjects were math, physics, and chemistry. The science program at Albany High was no match for Brooklyn Tech. The school counselor enrolled me in their chemistry, physics, and calculus classes although I was warned that I might have difficulties since it was the middle of my junior year. My Dad vouched for me and essentially forced them to let me in the classes. I was astounded that no one there was familiar with Brooklyn Tech. They all seemed to think it was some sort of technical training school where you learned cosmetology or practical nursing, cooking skills, and that sort of thing. A week of class at Albany High and I knew their 'advanced' courses covered information I'd mastered in my freshman and sophomore years. I was so depressed I could barely communicate. It created a problem for me socially because people quickly considered me to be a damn Yankee nerd who thought he was better than everyone else. My calculus teacher was from Japan and she seemed to understand my frustration, giving me extra assignments and attention. She could relate to my dilemma because Japanese education is so different from American.
I'm a good all around athlete capable of performing well in almost any sport, the only saving grace available to me. I was able to bury myself over the remainder of my junior year and throughout my senior year in football, basketball, and baseball. My dad had insisted that his children study martial arts from an early age and so I was able to fend off bullies by beating the shit out them the first time they bothered me. I got suspended a couple of times for fighting in my junior year but it quickly established my reputation as one not to be fucked around with. I got along okay with my fellow students but I didn't form any true friendships while at Albany High and didn't socialize away from school.
During my senior year, my English teacher described me as generally polite and friendly but quiet and withdrawn. He actually wrote in my permanent record that I 'was like a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western clone -- silent, smart, and polite but approach with caution'. I was furious that such a thing was put in my permanent record but my family thought it was funny. By this time Alex was in the ninth grade attending the high school with me. I thought the comment made me sound like a borderline psychopath. When I voiced that opinion Alex shot me down.
"But you ARE a borderline psychopath, Marc. Don't you know practically everyone at the high school, students AND teachers alike, are afraid of you?" Alex laughed.
He thought it was a great joke and everyone at the dinner table laughed but it only increased the feelings of how isolation within me.
At this point I need to make some things perfectly clear. Albany, Georgia really is a beautiful little town and South Georgia really is a nice place. Most people are genuinely friendly and will help a stranger in need without any prompting from someone else, a big change from Brooklyn -- from New York City in general. In New York City, you can fall down dead on a busy sidewalk and people will just step over you and keep going. People don't get involved with other people. It's not cruelty. I think it's more a defense mechanism than anything else. It's dangerous on the streets of New York and there are a lot more weirdoes per square mile than one will find in all of Albany, Georgia. Plus, the damn Yankees (as I was eternally called at Albany High) are more reticent. People in South Georgia are just more open and friendly in my opinion. I personally think it has a lot to do with the fact that one is not likely to be mugged with regularity in Albany, if ever. You can actually walk out of a restaurant without having to have a swivel head looking for danger from any direction. But I grew up in New York City and I'm as accustomed to what is required to live in the New York area as Georgians are to eating grits. More importantly, while it is true that New York has its share of homophobes, in general it has a more accepting attitude for the homosexual community. There are more homosexuals and homosexual friendly people in New York than there are in the entire population of Albany, maybe in the whole state of Georgia. I was terrified that I might be identified as a queer in Albany.
One of the first people to really stand out to me at Albany High was a guy named Joe Tom Aronoff. Aronoff was the superstar alpha male of the high school and to me he was a walking Adonis. He was 6'5", only two inches shorter than me. He was the most beautiful boy I've met in my life. He was slender and muscular with hair so black it had a blue sheen to it. His eyes were so light blue they seemed unearthly. I first saw him changing classes in the hall a few days after I began at Albany High. I had to fight for self control to keep from staring a hole in him and revealing how much I instantly lusted after him. He and I would occasionally pass each other in the halls but we never spoke. Then on the first day of spring baseball practice, there was Joe Tom in a skin tight baseball uniform that had me panting for him. He was good on the field and I was not surprised when he was elected team captain. It was then I heard the first nasty comment about him. A couple of guys were pissed about his becoming captain and amongst their stream of vulgarities they described Joe Tom as nothing but a motherfucking Jew.
Joe Tom easily fended off the Judaism prejudice as just 'one of those things' and was capable of being narrow minded himself. I quickly picked up on Joe Tom's lighthearted banter about queers. Once I heard him talking about the local custom of feeding queers to the alligators in the Okefenokee Swamp. I mentioned it to my grandfather who laughed and said the 'custom' joke probably had a basis in reality, that the local people hated queers and thought they were Satanic, bore the 'mark of Cain'. Granddad also commented that it was only because Joe Tom was such a great athlete and came from a rich family that he wasn't mistreated for being a Jew. Apparently, his family owned a successful jewelry store over in Waycross, Georgia among other business investments.
My conversation with Granddad only served to confirm my original suspicion that I'd moved to the back end of hell, definitely a third world country along the lines of Uganda. A few days after baseball practice began I was in the showers and I first came face to face with Joe Tom naked. It was all I could do to keep from falling to my knees and begging him to fuck me. His body was like a god from Mt. Olympus. He had a light tan and his body was deliciously hairy like my own. He had dark black hair on his legs and forearms. His armpits had the thickest forest of hair I'd ever seen on a boy our age. There was a thick mat of hair in the center of his chest and around his large pink nipples. His abdomen was covered in hair but not so much that you would miss the washboard abdominal muscles. His feet were the most sensual and gorgeous of any guy's I've ever seen, long and slender with clear translucent nails, a light dusting of black hairs on the top of his feet and toes. His penis was monstrous, the thickest I have ever seen, at least 9 inches long circumcised with a huge mushroom that was much larger than the width of his cock with a pair of pendulous balls suspended in a low hanging hair covered pouch. His entire crotch area was covered in a mat of thick long black pubic curls. A walking porno star. I stumbled as I passed him -- so engrossed in staring at his cock that I failed to see a pair of shoes on the floor. Joe Tom reached out and caught me.
"Whoa there, dude! You can hurt yourself falling down on this fucking cement floor. What are you thinking about -- calculus or something?" He laughed at his joke.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to realize I'd been staring at his dick. We were the only two in the locker room. I usually was one of the last to shower because I was afraid I'd throw a woodie in front of the other guys and get caught. I'd be forever condemned as a queer. As it was, there were jokes that I was 'shy' about my nakedness which went along with what was considered to be my aloof personality. Joe Tom walked on past me giving me the opportunity as he walked past to look at his gorgeous ass. It was lightly covered in blue black hair that got thick as it entered the cleft of his butt cheeks. I wanted desperately to see his rosebud asshole.
That night I awoke in a sweat having a nightmare about being eaten by alligators in the swamp. I had to get up, turn on the light, and go to the fridge for a Coke to calm down. I slept fitfully the remainder of the night. I know it was my nerves on edge, fearing my bisexual tendencies would be discovered. And here, there was no such thing as bisexual. You were either normal or a queer. After that nightmare, I nearly quit the baseball team but the coach wouldn't hear of it. He asked if I was getting harassed by some of the other players for being a damn Yankee but I wouldn't offer any comment. I agreed to stay on the team but I was careful to never shower with the team after practice again. I'd just walk home to shower. I nonchalantly tried to pretend that Joe Tom was not around. My ignoring him obviously didn't concern him in the least. He always had a swarm of friends, both male and female, surrounding him.
