Heart's Desire

Chapter 31 - Monty

My whole life, I always felt a little out of place; like everybody else was dancing to the same tune, and I just couldn't get the rhythm or the steps right.

For example, coming out.

The first of my siblings to come out was Freya. She couldn't hide it, and even before she did her first Shift, it was pretty clear our parents had a daughter, and not a sixth son.

Then Dane quietly announced, one night over dinner as our parents discussed Pack relations, that he'd prefer a male Mate, if he had a choice. That was that, and nobody remarked on it much.

Noah was a little different. He never actually came out, in any formal sense. It was just obvious, from a young age, that he didn't see any hard lines when it came to gender and sexuality. Neither was he much inclined towards any particular variety thereof.

By the time I woke up to my own inclinations, well into high school, it felt a bit late and awkward to bring up the fact that, on the few rare occasions when I found myself attracted to another person, that person was a man.

It pushed the bounds of believability, I thought — that out of eight kids, four of us would be different like that. I knew my parents wouldn't be bothered, but I worried what other people would think of them — like maybe they'd done something wrong, raising us.

It was a misplaced fear, and now I understand it's not so surprising: given the words, and the room to describe themselves, more people probably fall somewhere along the spectrums of gender and sexuality than inhabit either extreme pole.

Anyway, I ended up hiding it, almost unconsciously. In high school, I didn't want to be more different than I already was.

Dane was lucky; he grew slow and only shot up to his full height the summer he was seventeen.

I was always tall. Always the tallest kid in class; taller than my big brother when I was twelve; taller than most adults by the time I was fourteen. And once I hit puberty, I packed on muscle just by breathing, it seemed.

Soon, I was the biggest, tallest guy in just about any crowd. You might think that made me popular, or cool, but I'll tell you something: there's an upper limit on how tall you can get before it stops being a good thing. Beyond that, you become a freak. For me — in high school, anyway — that limit was six-foot-two, and I passed it in my second year.

It didn't help that I was awkward and shy, and no good at making friends. I had my siblings, of course — Dane was two years ahead of me, and the triplets a year behind — but we didn't see each other much at school. Besides them, there was just the basketball team.

I'd been roped in to trying out, of course, and I got picked — not because I was particularly good, but on account of being tall. It was only later Coach James realized being tall wasn't always a good thing; I got in my teammates' way more often than I blocked an opponent. Coach kept me on the bench, most of the time, but I didn't mind. Being quiet and out of the way was where I was most comfortable.

Then, during a match one time, I was playing center, and the other team had the ball. I saw this kid line up a perfect shot, and I could've blocked it easily, but he had such a look of pure hope on his face that I let him take it.

Coach pulled me aside, afterwards, and yelled at me for a long time.

Later, when I went home, I asked my dad what a 'pussy' was, and why it was such a bad thing to be. We had an interesting conversation, then, and I came out of it enlightened on some points, and still confused on others.

Dad had a conversation with Coach James, too. I don't know what he said to him, but I never got yelled at like that again. Course, I got dropped from the team, too.