Hamilton Prep

Chapter 7: Caldwell- You Bring All Them Gay Boys to the Yard-

It’s a Monday. I hate Mondays.

I walk into my first period classroom late with a goal in mind. I need to talk to Vitale. It’s not to tease him, to make him blush or anything of the sort. I need to talk to Vitale to get my thoughts straightened out.

I have to see if these mixed up feelings that have kept me up these last couple nights are really from him and not something I’ve created. Maybe these feelings swimming around my head are just me reaching out to someone. My therapist said that I might force feelings onto myself for attention. She explained that because of the lack of compassion from my parents I thrive off of the compassion of others. Of course I don’t go and see my therapist anymore. I haven’t needed her in years.

“Hey, Cald!” James greets me when I sit down in my seat. I stare at the spot where Vitale should be. He’s not here.

“Hey, James.” I smile up at him. I should tell James about my mixed feelings. James doesn’t care if people are gay, he won't hate me. “Have you seen Vitale today?”

James tilts his head to the side, confused. “Who?” I point to Vitale’s empty seat when James asks this. “Oh that quiet kid?” James snaps his fingers when he remembers who Vitale is. “Uh, no. Haven’t seen him today. Why?”

“No reason.” I can’t tell James about my confused feelings right now. We are in a room full of people plus I don’t even know about my feelings. I’ll tell James everything when I get it all sorted out. Then, Princeton loudly enters the classroom. His face held nothing but pure frustration. Princeton sits down in the seat in front of me dropping his bag to the ground.

“What’s wrong, bud?” James asks.

“My roommate.”  

“What’d he do?” I ask Princeton. I don’t know who this roommate is but he needs to buzz off.

“He needs to learn to put pants on.” What? Princeton was mad because his roommate was in his underwear? I walk around in my boxers and James couldn’t care less. Why does it matter so much to Princeton that this guy wears some pants?

“I don’t see the big deal in not wearing pants. He was wearing underwear right?”

“Yes he was. The problem is... ugh you wouldn’t understand, it’s just wrong.” Princeton glares at his desk. James and I exchange looks. That was all we said during math.   

~

“Stop swimming like snuggly bunnies!” Coach Acks yells as the whole swim team pushes themselves through the water. “My great grandmother can swim better than this and she’s dead!” I finished the laps first and pulled myself out of the water.

“I think I did pretty good, coach.” I walk over to the bench and drop down onto it, waiting for the others to finish. One by one swimmers began to pull themselves out of the water and join me on the bench.

“You did okay, Irvine.” Coach Acks walks over to where I was seated, his white tennis shoes stepping in the small puddles of water. Coach turns and blows his black whistle, that was hanging on a purple string, at the remaining swimmers in the pool. “You slow pansies get out of the pool now so that we could start the next exercise.”

Swimmers begin to fill the area I was sitting in. Coach starts to shout out orders at us and gets us set up for the next set of laps. He blew his whistle to signal us to start.

Coach Acks was a strange man in my opinion, from his almost knee high white socks to the red sweatband around his head, he was the kind of guy to go all out on everything; He tried very hard to get us to do our best and he also tried hard to look good. Of course “look good” was a white t-shirt tucked into red shorts with a matching red belt. Most of the time he worse his aviator glasses, even though we are inside a building. Like I said, he was an odd one.