Student Art Gallery
Chapter 9: The Student Art Gallery
This story takes place when I was fourteen and in the ninth grade. My town's school system started High School with the ninth grade, and I loved entering the big building, walking past the tall lockers, and seeing all of the many other older kids that were all around me every day. I would stare after older boys whom I admired for their physiques, handsome looks, and deep voices, and I often times romantically fantasized about being with them sexually. I was especially fascinated by the little unshaven scraggly patches of chin whiskers that some had. It never occurred to me till then that as teenage boys we were close enough to being men as to be able to grow hair on our faces! I was just a freshman, a youthfully small one at that, and these older boys completely ignored me... but that didn't stop me from watching them closely and wanting them. I absolutely didn't identify myself as "gay"--that was far, far too heavy for me to deal with. At fourteen I didn't yet devote a lot of thought to my lifelong sexual orientation, assuming that my attraction to girls would naturally develop over time as I grew up, which it didn't.
About me, I was a nice kid. I was clear skinned, with bright hazel-eyes and shaggy brown hair. Braces on my teeth the past two years had left me with a near-perfect, white smile. I was considered good looking, had an easygoing way about me and liked to make other people laugh. Other kids' moms and dads liked me, it was clear, as they would tell me how glad they were to see me when I came over to their houses. One parent even commented to my mother that she wanted her boy to spend more time with me because she thought I was such a good influence on him. I didn't curse (much) or spit or smoke, and the thoughts of doing drugs or drinking were horrifying ones to me. Maybe I was a prude about all of these vices, but my suddenly supercharged sex drive made up for all of that. I was a daring secret experimenter when it came to matters involving my newly developing anatomy. If my friends' parents only knew...
A bit of a late bloomer, most of my physical development had happened in just the past year. I was proud and pleased as I grew taller, sprouted fuzz on my upper lip, and I still recall the euphoria I felt as my muscles grew increasingly stronger and more powerful from the new hormones coursing through my blood with every pulse. I remember feeling newly invincible, like I could lift a car off the ground if I really had to. But the most powerful and profound changes happened in my sex drive. As a smaller boy I had always been curious and inquisitive, getting other boys to play games of "show me yours and I'll show you mine", searching for opportunities to see my friends naked while dressing or getting them to engage in mild sexual play at sleepovers. My whole life I had always been vaguely aware that I seemed far more interested in this sort of activity than anyone else I knew. But, I was unconcerned by it, just figuring that the other boys didn't know what they were missing out on and it was my sacred duty to teach them all.
The sexual aspects of puberty were indeed mind-altering to me. As a little boy, I had frequent erections. But by fourteen, it felt as though I had a constant hard-on. It was 1975, and boys wore straight-legged very tight blue jeans back then. "Shorts" were SHORT... just look back at photos of NBA basketball players from that era for a comparison of how we wore our pants. Today's baggy cargo pants and loose shorts that stop just above a guy's socks would have been welcome fashions to me then, as my erection seemed always on display and in full view. I had a boner in seemingly every class; from the vibrations every time I rode in a bus or a car; and any time I had a sexual thought or saw someone that I was attracted to. Sitting next to or touching someone who was attractive to me produced a very special kind of hard-on that refused to go down. I got used to carrying books and jackets in front of me to hide my near-constant state of sexual arousal.
I'm not sure if others noticed my condition, but I certainly was on the lookout at all times for other boys in the same straits as I was. There were certain boys I could always count on to give me a sneaky thrill... handsome, blue eyed but unfriendly Billy in Biology class, and little high-pitch voiced Charlie in history class especially come to mind. I was eager to sit opposite them as our classrooms were all arranged in a sort of a horseshoe shape. Then as they sat facing me I could watch without even turning my head as they discreetly pushed on their penises, playing with them and moving them around in their trousers to give them room to expand. Billy wore especially tight pants, and when he was erect I swear I could see the outline of his penis head through the cloth. Charlie had an erection so often that his Levis were worn white in the shape of his upright little member. I shamelessly scoped them hawk-like for signs of impending sexual arousal, hoping they wouldn't see me but at the same time secretly wishing that they would, and for them to be as interested in me as I was in them.
Gym class was absolutely the best. I was unafraid of stripping naked for showers, which we were all supposed to take. Ninth and tenth grade boys had gym class together. By ninth grade, about 90% of all the boys had started puberty like I had, but there were still a fraction of the boys who had not started to mature yet. I liked to see them undressed, too, marveling at the drastic contrast between those few boys who were almost men already with large, rangy swinging, loose long penises and low hanging testicles crowned by patches of thick fur that trailed up their stomachs and sometimes even onto their chests, toweling off in close proximity to those small smooth boys with tiny and hairless child-like penises and tightly drawn up balls that made the combined package look like a tiny muffin nestled between their legs. I was always disappointed when some of these smaller boys would consistently avoid the showers, breaking the rules as they went out of their way to dress hurriedly, most likely to avoid showing their tiny and embarrassingly undeveloped bodies naked in this place where the air was so laden thick with testosterone.
I most liked to look for boys who were midway through puberty like me. Young adolescents with smooth chests and hairless stomachs, some hair sprouting on their pubes, some growth of their genitals, but who were certainly not men yet; still just boys like me. I'd get especially close to the ones who looked like they had most recently started puberty; looking for signs of tiny patches of downy hairs sprouting that could only be seen at very close range, thrilling when I saw the evidence.
But I didn't just like to look at all the other boys naked, I looked for other boys who were looking at the other boys naked! I learned that those who were overtly curious like me were the best potential partners for sexual experimentation and antics that I was so fond of, and would make mental notes for planning future sleepovers.
Looking back, it is amazing to me that in this powerfully charged social environment where I was sexually aroused almost all of the time, that I not only survived school but excelled in it. I got excellent grades and was known as a top-achiever, trusted and liked by the teachers, staff and principal.
This status as a stellar student earned me a sort of highly coveted "free pass" during study hall time. While the rest of the student body would be assigned to sit silently in locked classrooms in rows of arranged desks, expected to work alone on their homework, I was allowed to report to the library for independent study. Alone in the cavernous library, I'd usually sit at a far back table and do my work. Other times I'd relax just drawing myself pictures of cars and planes and dragons to satisfy my reeling imagination, and sometimes I'd just let my mind run wild, fantasizing about boys I knew and all the many other boys I dreamed of meeting that I hadn't dared talk to yet. One especially quiet day as I sat alone and sure my privacy, I unzipped my jeans and extracted my cock, then rubbed it quietly until I felt that familiar feeling building. Looking around furtively to make sure no one was watching, I came publicly, shooting small thin jets of cum all over my other hand and the bottom of the table in the most daring solo sexual experience I had ever had to date.
I discovered a quiet underutilized video studio that was in another part of the library. I found it filled with video cameras, tripod lights and recording machines, usually dark but unlocked and unoccupied during the day. I'd go back into the technicians' booth, a simple desk and chair with basic prehistoric 1970's mixing console, separated from the rest of the room by a folding partition, a wooden screen that stood about six feet high and consisted of four or five panels all hinged together. Each panel of the screen was about two feet wide, and was upholstered with colorful burlap, then covered again with thick clear plastic to keep the bright fabric clean. I'd slip into the room and make a beeline behind that screen, and as soon as I was hidden from view in that dark room, I would quickly unzip, push my tight pants down around my thighs, and go to town, rubbing my engorged penis in desperate search of temporary relief from the sexual energy that had been building all day.
It wouldn't take long and I'd start to feel my orgasm coming. Standing behind the folding screen, I'd shut my eyes tightly, lean my head back and thrust my cock out to allow the sperm to fly out, splashing against the clear plastic that covered the orange burlap. Head spinning and suddenly concerned with being discovered, I'd clean myself up quickly with paper towels I had brought with me, zipping up while I carefully looked for any wet spots on my pants that might give away my secret. However, I purposely liked to leave the telltale jets of semen behind, streaks on the back of the screen, almost like the daring and creative work of a graffiti artist. The thin liquid would spill down the plastic, eventually drying and coating the surface with long parallel rows of streaky, translucently white stains.
With heated sexual energy I looked forward to my weekly "private study hall" in the library, and was a frequent visitor to the vacant video room most of the times I went there. Over a period of months I created quite a large, complex yet secret panorama across that screen.
That Spring, the school decided to hold an art contest among the drawing and painting classes in all grades, and display winning entries for all the visitors to see in the auditorium lobby during the Spring Concert. That week the lobby was decorated and cleaned, and all of the blue-ribbon winning entries were brought out and hung on the walls decorating the entire hallway. Easels were used to display some of the larger works, and a collection of the winners stood in the middle of the lobby displayed on a long, brightly colored folding screen.
Yes, that folding screen.
When I first walked into the newly decorated lobby between classes, surrounded by hundreds of noisy classmates I felt a head rush as I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye. Could it be? The student paintings were proudly hung at eye level, their ribbons proclaiming their uniqueness. But at waist level it was there for everybody to see... the 'ribbons' of my own abstract painting created during the same period of time. I had never seen my artwork in the bright light of day until now, and I have to say it was noticeable, and nasty. My creation was larger than any of the other entrants, a veritable mural, painted passionately with the many 'bold strokes' of my hand, and had taken at least as long to create as the best of them. It was awarded no prize, but was there in the middle of the contest on display for all the passing teachers, students and parents to see.
For two surreal, unbearably long weeks it remained there, on view to the entire world, providing a screaming silent testament to my uncontrollable 14-year old libido. I passed by it many times each day, and whenever I did, I felt a mixture of disgust, pride and immensely perverted amusement. I don't know why the maintenance crew never cleaned it up; perhaps it was not so noticeable to innocent parties, only to the guilty one.
But to me it was a living adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart which we had just read in English class; the famous story where the murderer has hidden the body of his victim beneath the floor, yet without logical explanation hears the heart beating every time he is in the room, finally forcing him to rip up the floor, exposing his shame to the world.
However, in my personal situation I have managed to wait more than thirty years till today to tell you my secret. Back then I never considered confiding in even the most trusted friend about this, in the well-founded fear of what could (and likely would) have happened next.....
Let me ask you in your high school, how long would it have taken for this story to have made the rounds and become public knowledge? I'll wager that in your school, like mine, It would have spread like wildfire; a story with accompanying visual evidence that would be just too good to pass up telling to anyone and everyone.