My time as a junior high jock changed my life forever, for better and worse. My best memory would have to be watching all those naked butts in the locker room, an endless parade of (mostly) pale white asses, often encased in even whiter, sweat-soaked jockstraps.For seventh and eighth grades, I went to an all-white private school, forever immortalized as Private Parks Academy in my fourth novel, Walt Loves the Bearcat. My junior high angst is actually a running theme throughout the book and plays an important role in the novel's most climatic football game.
At “Private Parks,” I played on the football and basketball teams. The school was K-12. The junior high boys shared the locker room with the high school boys. Naturally I sized up the boys my age, but I was mostly drawn to the older, high school boys, with their more advanced bodies, and the young coaches, who used our showers, showing us all what our bodies would end up looking like.
I couldn't act on or articulate my appreciation of the male physiques within arms reach, but I can
still remember the shock I felt the first time I saw the beautiful, long, thick penis of my math teacher turned coach as he entered the showers, no doubt noticing the surprised look on my face as we passed one another.I can still remember the ripped wrestling jock who transferred to our school midyear as a sophomore. He seemed more worldly than his provincial peers, more like a rebel. When he walked naked through the locker room (usually to take a dump in the restroom's doorless stalls every afternoon around 3:45), he walked with a confidence and comfort level that was new to me, almost as if he enjoyed strolling around nude, showing off one of the best asses I've ever seen.
“How's it going?” was his standard greeting in the hallways of our hallowed private school. It was the first time I had ever heard that
phrase. It's my standard greeting to this very day.For me, being drawn to the boys did not mean not being interested in girls. It simply meant boys were a much higher priority for my budding adolescent soul. I grew up my father's son in a man's world, bonding with boys. Now those boys were naked in front of me daily. As difficult as it was thinking “faggy” thoughts, women were even more remote and inaccessible. And they weren't showing me their asses in a jock!
A playful childhood experience had taught me the joys of sticking one's face in another boy's ass. When I began to see boys' butts in jockstraps in junior high, I knew there was no turning back from being certifiably Jock Crazy.
