"Ben Jeapes - Pages Out Of Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jeapes Ben)

met up in Leicester Square, went to see Superman and afterwards went to
their home in Kensington for dinner. Just the four of us, and when their
parents came home we had a couple more drinks and the party broke up.
It was still the first time I'd talked to a girl other than my sister --
yuk! -- or one of her friends -- yuk! -- for years; certainly the first
time since girls had become something more to me than inferior imitations
of boys, flat all the way down, to be avoided and despised. Alice and I
circled each other like a couple of teenagers on a first date, which is
exactly what we were, but we got on well enough and enjoyed each other's
company. Just before setting off to catch the tube we managed a quick, shy
kiss, and it was like heaven.
I had been much too absorbed in Alice to think of how Tom was getting on
with the sixteen-year-old Maria, much less wonder about how he had managed
to bridge the age difference so effectively. There is a lot more than two
years between a sixteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy. On the
train back, it occurred to me to comment in as tangential a manner as
possible.
Tom grinned and gave his one comment on the subject.
"It's company I'm after, not sex, Will," he said, "and that's just a
question of knowing the right words."

Fourth form, Winter term, 1979
Tom and I finished our first year as the closest and best of friends and
made arrangements to keep in touch over the summer holidays. When we
returned for the fourth form we had progressed from the dayroom to shared
studies. We got to choose room mates and inevitably we shared together.
This was more like it! A year older, several inches taller and much, much
wiser than the previous Autumn, and (best of all) one step up the maturity
ladder from the new third form. We had passed through the worst traumas
and adjustments that adolescence could throw at us and we weren't so
worried about flaunting our heterosexuality at all and sundry, but again I
began to wonder about myself. Had Alice (who I hadn't seen since) been
just a flash in the pan? I was the only really close friend that Tom had;
he seemed to make a deliberate effort to seek out my friendship, which I
found flattering, but ... I put it down to the fact that I had been his
friend even before his volte-face the previous year.
But even so ...
I plucked up my courage one evening to tell him my fears, in the privacy
of our study with no one else about, and he laughed.
"You're not gay, Will," he said. He was the first person I knew to use
that word, and he said it with such conviction that I was paradoxically
hurt.
"How do you know?" I demanded, and bit my tongue when I realised how I
sounded.
"You're not," he repeated. He turned back to his work, then looked up
again. "Gale is."
"Gale?"
"Sure. What made him such a dork was that he was terrified of anyone
finding out and so he had to act like he thought a strapping hetero
should. He'll come ... I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he came out at