A tale about Jimmy, a teenager in West Albany, New York circa 1977...
****
After barely graduating high school in 1977, I was finally beginning to learn why paying attention in school might have been a good idea, because I had been unable to gain admittance to either of the 2 local community colleges because of my poor grades.
That was embarrassing, especially since I don't think that Hudson Valley had ever rejected an application before mine, although that was likely just a rumor or a story concocted by a friend who wanted to rub it in.
I did gain admittance the following year and went on to graduate with respectable grades, so things worked out in the end, but the year that passed after high school was brutal around my house, not that I didn't deserve it in retrospect.
Looking back, I was not nearly as cool as I thought I was. I was a dumpy guy who unwisely took as much pride in my body as I did in my schoolwork. Not morbidly obese but plump, and added on to that I had a wise-ass remark for just about everything made me the kind of guy people find easy to dislike.
One thing I did find out early was that girls didn't find me all that appealing, and that would have made me a lonely guy were it not for the ride some anonymous man gave me one night as the library closed. He found me appealing for some reason, and when he suggested I do something to him to thank him for the ride and I told him I didn't know how, he showed me.
Up until then I was so naive sexually that I thought blow jobs meant you actually had somebody blow on your dick, but that man set me straight. Furthermore, I learned that I liked it, and I liked giving them more than receiving them. That way I didn't have to contend with the shame of my chubby body and my equally fat but short dick.
That willingness to please others made me more popular than I had been, and even though I knew I was being used, it was a lot better than sitting home pouting and eating. My slovenly ways were annoying to my parents though, and when we got new neighbors next door, I paid the price.
Their names were Bruce and Grace Temple, and I paid them no mind when they had moved in many months ago, hardly noticing them except that they had to be the whitest white people imaginable. They were in their late 20's I supposed and had no kids, but they did have one passion that they somehow infected my mother with.
Upon moving in the neighborhood, the couple got in tight with the local church right away, and they talked the priest into starting a youth group because they were concerned that young people were losing their way with all the long hair, the foul language and the pot smoking. The St. Francis Youth Group would seek to change that.
My parents, my mother to be specific, must have had a talk with our new neighbor Grace Temple, because after watching me sit around the house for a while without having a job bite me in the ass, Mom told me how it was going to be.
"You need direction Jimmy," Mom explained. "You need somebody to set you on the right path, because it's clear I'm not able to do it, and neither is Dad. That's why I want you to join this Youth Group down at the church."
I remember brushing that off with disdain, and I think my mother started to cry a little at that point, saying what a failure they were as parents, and while that worked a lot of the time with me, this time I didn't budge.
Sit in a church basement a couple nights a week with a bunch of nerds? Listening to our next door neighbors play missionaries, preaching against everything I liked? I had better things to do with my time, although blasting music through my headphones and masturbating a lot was not all that productive either.
"Besides," I said using my bizarre brand of logic in a vain attempt to make this not happen. "It's a Catholic church and their name is Temple. It's probably some ruse to convert people to Judaism or something."
"Nonsense. Grace assured me it's non-denominational," Mom replied.
"Tens and twenties are preferred I bet," was my rebuttal.
"We are paying for it, so all you have to do is go."
"Waste of money," I responded, surprised that I had guessed correctly the youth group was a business operation.
Frustrated, Mom tried another tactic. I could join that group, or I could move out on my own, and she said the old man was backing her up on this one. With no job I obviously couldn't live on my own, and while I wasn't positive that they would actually throw me out, there was something about the way she talked that had me believing it.
I agreed to it, even though the prospect of spending an hour or so one night a week down there in the basement of the church pissed me off.
"Not one night. They meet 3 nights a week," I was informed. "And they meet from 7 to 9."
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath when I heard that, and I didn't mutter very subtly either because Mom heard it.
"That's why you need this. You always have to have the last word, and that combined with your foul mouth..."
*****
The first night I went down there, I arrived with an attitude and kept my mouth shut while my eyes glazed over listening to Bruce Temple give a kind of pep talk and then tell about this singing group he wanted to start.
"Sort of like 'Up With People' but on a local level," Grace Temple chimed in as her husband handed out sheets of paper that had lyrics of a song on it. "Let's give it try. I'll bet we sound great!"
The Temples were both animated people in the church basement, unlike when I would see them next door where they seemed cold and robotic, and as I looked at this chalky couple I had a revelation of my own.
"You take away his reddish brown hair, put a white wig on him and this guy could pass for Johnny Winter," I suggested to a guy sitting next to me who looked as happy to be there as I was, and he broke out laughing at that, causing people to turn to look back at us.
"Give her a wig and she could be Edgar Winter," he countered as the signing started, drowning out my laugh.
It was a dreadful song sung by the most off-key collection of nerds imaginable, but after it ended Grace and Bruce Temple were excited because to them it sounded divine, and they pictured us going to old folks homes to cheer them up, or maybe roam the halls of the local hospital to brighten spirits.
"Bad enough being stuck in a hospital, but listening to this shit would have half of them jumping out the window," I opined to my acquaintance, who thought I was a riot and introduced himself as Nate.
That was the only night that Nate went there, but he helped make the night bearable and after the meeting broke up and we filed outside he said it was cool meeting me but he wouldn't be returning. I thanked him and told him I wanted to give him something to remember me by.
I brought Nate around the back of the building to a little dark alcove where I went down to my knees, pulled down his pants and gave him head. Nate didn't last long and his dick was actually smaller than mine, something I wasn't used to, but it was the highlight of the night for me.
"How was the Youth Group?" Mom asked when I got home.
"Alright."
"Great!" Mom chirped, so eager to hear what I didn't say that she elaborated on that one word answer. "I told Dad that when you got back you'd say, 'I'm glad I came!' I'm proud of you Jimmy."
I didn't say I was happy I came, but I had cum, getting myself off as I sucked Nate's cock, but I didn't explain that to Mom, choosing to go upstairs and listen to some Johnny Winter instead.
*****
My next visit to the Youth Group was more of the same. We sang that song again and we may have been even worse that time, and there was some talk about selling candy bars to raise money for something, followed by a speech by Bruce Temple about keeping your moral compass focused and being judged by your actions while seeming to be looking a lot at me.
I thought that might have been my imagination, but I was to find out after the meeting that I was not wrong about Mr. Temple looking at me and it was indeed my morals he was concerned about.
