School bully come good.

This post has been parked for a long time now. It’s not an easy subject to talk about, but as my age increases and I approach my 47th orbit around the sun I thought it was time to discuss the matter.

As a teenager I was a strange one. Very nerdy, often found hanging around the computer room. I was an unknown quantity to most of the other kids at the school as I was always rather bright and logical in my ways. I didn’t have that many friends there, but the few I did have were very close and indeed are still friends today some 30 years later.

I was rather confused about my sexuality. I knew I wasn’t gay, I was very aware of that as I had a rather major crush on one of our French teachers. I know I didn’t do very well in French because I used to spend most of the lessons admiring her rather stunning breasts! Definite mamnesia!

The problem was I also had feelings towards some of the boys too, not sexual, not friendship, an undescribable feeling. One in particular I found very attractive. I tried not to show it, and I tried to court girls, but being socially awkward and of ambiguous sexuality it was incredibly difficult, and so I just buried myself in the computer room or the music room.

I wasn’t really bullied though, to say I was that weird kid, I was pretty much always left alone. One attempt at bullying left a kid with a broken nose and me sat in the headmaster’s office being told “no matter how hard they push you can’t do things like that”. However, there was one kid who would not let up. He wrote “Kris is a bummer” on the walls of the toilets, and on one occasion I saw him graffiti “Kris is a pufta” (SIC) on the wall of the swimming baths.

This lad, let’s call him J, was actually quite attractive and hung around with the cool kids. He played football (a game I hated then and still hate to this day) and he always dressed well and kept himself tidy.

…and that was the point at which 16 year old me totally missed the signs…

Well J added me on Facebook recently. It turns out he also now identifies himself as bisexual (although he’s more 75% men whereas I always identify as an 80/20 preferring women) and it turns out the poor guy had an awful time after leaving school. He was queer bashed in his late teens after one of his school mates who he confided in then turned out to be a huge dick. He’d seen my shares and posts about supporting LGBTQ people and about how homophobia is wrong to the core and he decided that it turns out the nerdy kid at school is actually one of the nice ones.

As it happens, writing I was a bummer on the toilet walls was actually attempting to keep in favour with a group who turned out to be quite manipulate, and spending his life trying to hide his sexuality caused him some rather serious and suicidal moments in his early 20’s.

There’s a happy ending here though. At 25 he moved to Leeds. He still speaks to his mum, although his dad died when he was 18, and his mum is OK with his sexuality. His family in general has been quite accepting although he has a gammony relative who he no longer speaks to. Pretty much his first message to me upon me accepting his friend request was “I’m so very very sorry”. It actually made me really sad and happy at the same time.

Finally, he still looks as good today as he did back then (definitely spankworthy!), and he definitely dresses as fine as ever, although he did admit that his black hair is no longer natural. He describes himself as a dapper poof he affectionately called me a “shiny bear”. I really can’t get where he got that idea from?

Amusingly he commented that he noticed the rather shiny trousers I wore when we were doing A-Levels. I suppose he noticed my tenancies before I noticed his. They weren’t PVC or leather or anything like that, they were just a fairly high sheen black fabric, as was quite fashionable at the time.

He also now reads my blog, but I promised him copy approval on this before I posted and I now have that approval, so here you go. Hope you enjoyed reading.