{"sf1_id":119464,"sf2_id":"B1QdM4on","title":"Another One (Prologue)","author":"Der Doberman","words":628,"posted_at":"2010-01-13T18:29:00.000Z","tags":["College","Plot Development","Prologue"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/119464-another-one-prologue","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/B1QdM4on","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/51/bd/51bdab71-314d-4e1f-8f8e-a849c1397277","description":"","content":"\u0026nbsp;\n\nPrologue: The Sun Also Rises\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nThey say that you can tell a college student by his walk. His gait carries an air\u0026nbsp;\n\nof authority, a devil-may-care saunter, as if nothing in the world can touch him. And\u0026nbsp;\n\nit should. In college, you're invincible. Where else do you get the chance to make all\u0026nbsp;\n\nof life's mistakes and still have your parents show up to bail you out?\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI never learned to saunter like that. Growing up, I had it hard. No, my mom\u0026nbsp;\n\nwasn't a crack addict, and my dad wasn't a jobless loser drifting in and out of jail. We\u0026nbsp;\n\njust didn't see eye-to-eye all the time, and money was always tight. My parents\u0026nbsp;\n\ndidn't know what to expect of me; a part of them must have known I was bound for\u0026nbsp;\n\nsomething great, but then again, I think that's a part of all parents' thoughts.\u0026nbsp;\n\nSecretly, I'm sure they thought I'd turn out to be a Joe-everybody, high-school\u0026nbsp;\n\ndropout and mill worker like the other eighty-percent of my hometown population.\u0026nbsp;\n\nWell, at least until I \"outed\" myself around my seventeenth birthday.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nThat's right. I, Thomas Delanor (don't ask) McDonald am a grade 'A', straight-\n\nfrom-the-store homosexual. A faggot, nancy-boy, queermo, what-have-you.\u0026nbsp;\n\nWhatever you call it, I can't help it; I feel it from the tip of my nose to the point of my\u0026nbsp;\n\nfluffy tail. A fox has to do what a fox has to do, and I was certainly more inclined to\u0026nbsp;\n\ntake home-Ec my senior year than the alternative metal-shop. The conversation\u0026nbsp;\n\nwent something like this:\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nDad: \"Thomas, every man takes metal shop. Home-Ec is\u0026nbsp;\n\nreserved for women, and men who want it in their\u0026nbsp;\n\nass every day from a dirty, sweaty Wolf.\"\n\nMe: \"I can't help what I want! You don't control me!\"\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI know, I know. Lame, right? Well, what's even worse is that somehow the\u0026nbsp;\n\ninformation from this conversation (which I admit was more-or-less mistakenly\u0026nbsp;\n\nvolunteered) spread to my high school. And then around the school. I swear, by the\u0026nbsp;\n\nend of the week I was the most well know gay guy in the whole county. Not that it\u0026nbsp;\n\nmatters.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nWell, it does a little bit. Apparently, the faculty of my high school, along with\u0026nbsp;\n\nthe state university, get together each year to give out a scholarship to the student\u0026nbsp;\n\nwho has faced the most adversity and come out alive. Apparently, being the only gay\u0026nbsp;\n\nstudent (yeah, right. Once you're out, you'll understand what I mean. Anyone who's\u0026nbsp;\n\never had the slightest inkling of curiosity about it will come to you like you're a\u0026nbsp;\n\nfucking expert) automatically earns you the prize. Such was the way that I came to\u0026nbsp;\n\nattend Westshore University.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAt Westshore, they stick the freshmen in one of two places: Riley Complex,\u0026nbsp;\n\naptly named after univerisity founder Melvin Riley who, at sixty-eight, went crazy\u0026nbsp;\n\nand hung himself in his basement; and Point Royal, which is essentially a quad-\n\ncomplex, complete with cracked swimming pool a crack-head manager. I was stuck\u0026nbsp;\n\nin the latter, since the nature of my \"merit scholarship\" suggested that I might make\u0026nbsp;\n\na roommate uncomfortable. Ahh, good old-fashioned discrimination. But who was I\u0026nbsp;\n\nto complain?\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nHowever, this isn't about my freshman year at Westshore. No, fast-forward\u0026nbsp;\n\nthree terms to my second year. After I escaped the torment of over-sized portions\u0026nbsp;\n\nsaturated with salt. After I learned how to sleep during class without getting caught.\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd yes (this _is_ one of _those_\u0026nbsp;stories, after all), after I lost that jewel called\u0026nbsp;\n\nmy 'virginity' on a half-drunken dare to my now-(straight)-roommate, a coyote\u0026nbsp;\n\nnamed Breckin. After I did all that, I finally got to experience a more real, although\u0026nbsp;\n\nstill safe, version of life.\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n_This_ is that story:\n\n  \n  \n\n"}