The Headmaster’s Story

Chapter 1

My name is Ansel Christoph, and I live in the multi-culturally diverse city of Portland Oregon. I’ve always loved Portland, mainly because it’s the most progressive city in all of Oregon. It’s a recovering city that almost lost its way. But now it’s a city that’s moving quickly into modern enlightenment. In many ways I feel it’s a city that mirrors my life. Except for a troubled marriage, I feel life has been good to me. I married my high school sweetheart while we were both attending college, and our lives together seemed almost perfect until our daughter reached the age of 18. My daughter’s age actually had nothing to do with why my marriage failed, and I only mentioned it because it was on my daughter’s 18th birthday that my wife first pointed out that I wasn’t living up to her father’s standards. An observation and disappointment she continued to make known to me almost every day thereafter.

The thing was, the more she made that point, the more I realized I didn’t want to live up to her father’s standards. He was a wealthy, self-made, obnoxious, man who owned his own aviation avionics company; a man who held several very lucrative patents having to do with aircraft instrumentation, control, and navigation. And as a result of those patents, he has had very lucrative relationships with several aircraft companies, including Boeing, Grumman, and Douglas. I, on the other hand was a mere high school guidance counselor. I loved my job, and I loved working with high school aged kids so much that I really didn’t care about making a lot of money. Of course, the truth was, even if I had wanted to, I knew I would never measure up to my father-in-law, and so I didn’t feel the need to even try.

To tell you the truth, I actually thought things were going well between my wife and me. Kathrin and I were both 34 when Megan turned 18. We were living in a very nice home in an upscale neighborhood that Kathrin’s parents had given to us as a wedding present, so we didn’t even have a mortgage to contend with. Yet Kathrin continued to make it known that she thought I should be making more money, and should have at least been promoted to a principal position in our school district by the time Megan turned 18. So, she began to put more and more pressure on me to look for more lucrative employment in the private sector. As you might imagine, all of that began to affect our relationship, including my performance in our bedroom.

Now it’s only fair I mention here that not all of our marital problems were of Kathrin’s making. Some of our problems, especially our bedroom problems, may have stemmed from the fact that I began to realize that my true sexual desires were far more homosexual than heterosexual. There were other factors you might not think came into play, but they did, and in a very unexpected way. First of all, our immediate neighbors to the left of our home were Steve and Margret Paulson, and their son Brice. While to our right of our home lived Ann Hamlin, a divorcee, and her son, Gary. When I really think about it, the only people who really made a difference in my life that year, were Brice Paulson, a large over weight boy with a propensity toward bullying, and Gary Hamlin, one of the cutest, sexiest boys I have ever known. And so, I wasn’t surprised that the same was also true for our daughter, Megan. Although Brice and Gary were almost the same age, Gary was much smaller, standing at about 5’ 4” or 5’ 5” by the time he entered high school, while Brice at that same time stood a good 5’ 11” to 6 feet tall. Still, it was Gary who was the real hunk, so it was sweet lovable Gary whom I wanted to see Megen hook up with.

Gary and Megan had been all but constant playmates since they were infants, whereas Brice seemed to run in a different crowd. But that wasn’t true for Brice’s mother, Margret, as she had always been pretty tight with my wife and Ann Hamlin. And that fact was the flickering flame that caused my life as I knew it to boil over, and occurrence that began when Brice, Megan, and Gary were all 18 years of age, and were all students at my school. What started the ball rolling was the fact that Gary woke up sick one morning. His mother figured he most likely had some kind of stomach flu, or perhaps food poisoning, and so decided that a good enema might do Gary some good. I’m sure that treatment wouldn’t have had much meaning to this story, except for the fact that Ann Hamlin decided to tell my wife, and Margaret Paulson about Gary’s enema while the three women were having a neighborly get-together in our kitchen later that afternoon. I truly think their conversation was most likely innocent mother-talk, and so shouldn’t have been an issue. But for some unknown reason, Margret decided to mention the fact that Ann had given Gary an enema, to her son Brice. And then Brice, being the bully he was, decided to tease Gary about having his naked ass hosed out by his mommy in front of other boys in their P.E. class the day Gary returned to school. Now even though I doubt Ann Hamlin ever mentioned that her son had developed an erection during his enema, Brice being Brice added that spicy bit of information to his story, causing all of the other boys to laugh.

You might think that shouldn’t have been a big deal, but unfortunately that caused a fight to break out between Brice and Gary, which in turn caused both boys to end up in after school detention. I didn’t know anything about any of that until Gary stopped by my office that following morning. He was anything but his usual happy-go-lucky self. In fact, he opened that conversation by telling me he wanted to drop out of school. As he had been a consistent B+ A- student I couldn’t believe what he was saying, and so I immediately rose from my desk and went to my door to close and lock it so Gary might feel more free to discuss all that was bothering him. It took a while, and even some tears before the whole enema/boner story came to light. But when it did, I felt so much love for Gary that it was all I could do not to take him in my arms and hug him as if he were my own son.

As it turned out, I talked Gary into staying in school. It wasn’t easy as he felt vulnerable, crushed, and shamed by Brice’s exposing the fact that his mother had given him an enema. In fact, that incident even changed Gary’s relationship with his mother, as he felt he could no longer trust her to keep his secrets. But more importantly, his relationship with me also changed, because after that morning in my office he began stopping by my office almost every morning thereafter for the next two or three weeks, and then he continued to stop by on a weekly basis until he finally graduated high school.…

Now that could have been the end of this story. But remember Gary was not only a student at my school, but my next-door neighbor. Add to that, he and Megan had begun dating almost immediately after his fight with Brice, which was a situation that made me very happy. What didn’t make me happy at that same time, was the fact that it was then that Kathrin announced that she wanted a divorce. And so, for the sake of family harmony, I moved out of our home that very night.

Because my father-in-law wanted to be the big man in the eyes of his daughter and granddaughter, I ended up with no alimony payments, although I insisted on continuing to support Megan. You might think that at the age of 36, I might enjoy being foot loose and fancy free, but the truth was that Kathrin and I began getting along better than we had in years, something that allowed me to remain a big part of Megan’s life, and in some odd ways, Kathrin’s as well. None of that would be particularly important to this story, except for the fact that our improved relationship finally allowed me to be able to tell Kathrin that when I was honest with myself, I was pretty sure I was gay.…

That brings us to Gary’s and Megan’s high school graduation. They had both turned 18 by that point, while I was a 38-year-old divorced high school guidance counselor. For a while I tried to join in and become part of Portland’s gay community, but I quickly realized that scene just wasn’t right for me. So, for a while I became a loner, maybe even a hermit. And then one Saturday morning, not long after Megan and Gary had graduated, there was a knock at my apartment door. And when I answered it, there stood Gary in all of his sexual splendor. I don’t think I even invited him into my apartment. He just entered the instant I opened its door. And once inside, he turned and took me in a hug. As I wasn’t ready for such a show of affection, I’m afraid I didn’t respond as honestly as I would have liked. But while standing in the middle of my living room, Gary said, “Look Mr. Christoph, I’m tired of playing games with you. I’m tired of trying to live a lie. And I’m particularly tired of playing like you don’t mean anything to me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t under…” was all I managed to get out of my mouth before Gary went on to say, “Please don’t get angry with Megan, Mr. Christoph, but she told me you are gay. Is that true?”

That statement caught me flat-footed, and so once again I didn’t know what to say. But Gary knew what he wanted to say, and so before I could respond, he came right to his point by declaring, “Well I’m gay too, Mr. Christoph, and I’ve been in love with you for most of my life. And since you helped me through that incident with Brice Paulson, it’s been all I could do not to tell you how I feel about you, because the truth is I’ve wanted to be loved by you my whole life. I need you, and I’m tired of not having you.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “So, now you know, and now I need to know if I have a chance with you.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, “What kind of chance? Don’t you think I’m a little old for you?”

“No, I don’t think that at all. I think you’re perfect for me. I mean if you don’t think I’m too young for you?”

I hesitated, and so once again Gary took the lead by saying, “Please say something, Mr. Christoph. I need to know how you feel about me.”

I grabbed Gary, took him in a hug, and while speaking about an inch from his ear, I said, “I didn’t think I would ever have the courage to tell you this, but I’ve been in love with you for at least the last eight years.”