The Heritage High School Years

My time in high school was no more or less eventful than anyone else’s experience in high school. I was excited to be moving from Walland Middle School to Heritage High School. It would almost be like starting over, for there would be several middle schools going to Heritage, so the chances were high that I would find a new pool of people with which to make friends and identify with. Thankfully, my older brother paved the way for me. He had joined junior ROTC and had already established several friends. I too joined ROTC, mostly to get out of gym class (you had to take one year of gym or ROTC). I quickly became involved in everything ROTC. I latched on and immediately felt welcome. My ROTC instructors, especially Chief Eades, brought structure and discipline to my life that I desperately needed. It became important to me that when I wore my uniform on Tuesdays that I passed inspection. Sometime I didn’t but most of the time I did. Preparing for inspection the week and night before taught me how to plan and how to break down things into manageable pieces. For example, I had to make sure my ROTC uniform was back from the cleaners, I had to make sure my shoes were shined; I had to make sure my haircut was up to regulation; all of these were things that you just couldn’t wait until the last minute to accomplish.

I also got involved with the Honor Guard. I discovered a talent for rifle drills, which is ironic because in every other aspect of my life I am a huge klutz. I had many growth experiences on out=r drill team trips! I once broke my right thumb at practice trying to perfect a triple flip in the air. We were practicing at the Walland Middle School gym at the time. I was so focused on my drill exercises and practice that I didn’t even realize my thumb was broken until I tried to open the car door and my thumb bent back in an unnatural way. Only then did I feel pain.

Another time we all went to the Ohio Valley drill tournament, the most competitive and prestigious event in the eastern half of the country. It was a huge moment for both me and the team. I was the only one of two freshmen on the drill team. Getting there was just as fun as the event itself. Of course the guys snuck into the girls hotel rooms (through the air conditioning vents of all things), but just to be rebellious, not to actually have sex or drink or anything bad like that. I honestly can’t remember how we placed in that competition though. I can still see images in my head of our competition, rolling like a movie clip, just as clear as that day.

At Heritage, the drill team and ROTC in general were always enemies with the band. I don’t know why that was the case but it just was. However, I found myself also associated with the band clique. I think it all began organically; it wasn’t like I set out to become friends with the enemy. I became close to a girl named Beth, a year ahead of me. And later on, I also became friends with Danielle, Rebecca Keller, and Maryanne Bucher. I also became close friends with Sally Turnmire; she was not in band but she was friends with Danielle. Sally later turned out to be a 3rd or 4th cousin as well. It was this group of girls whom I became closer too in time. ROTC gave me structure and all that, but my outside-ROTC friends gave me warm and fuzzy feelings and we just simply had non-competitive fun together.

It was with these girls that I subconsciously became more comfortable with my gay feelings as well as my feminine side. I believe the parents of all these girls must have knew on some level that I was no threat sexually to their daughters. We would always have sleepovers at Maryanne’s house and it was as if I was one of the girls. We even joked about it, always saying I was “one of the girls”; it never felt weird or uncomfortable hanging out with the girls, it just simply felt natural. One of our favorite activities was to sneak off to Gatlinburg. Beth was a school year ahead of me, and everyone else was a year behind me. Beth was the first to get her driver’s license and that is when all of our sneaky, yet normal teenage activities went to a new level. To us then, being naughty and rebellious was sneaking off to Gatlinburg and the Pigeon Forge strip to play pool. Beth and Rebecca would flirt with the country guys we ran across, and I always wanted to join them in flirting, but I also didn’t want to get beat up! It was always strange to be the 5th wheel when they did meet guys.

Danielle and I became close. We had such great adventures together! One time that sticks out in my mind as one of the happiest moments of my life, is when Danielle invited me up to her house on Top of the World in order to cook and have dinner with her and her family. The part of that night that sticks out the most is her and I making twice baked potatoes. To me then that was an exotic thing to eat at home; to me that is something fancy one orders when they go out to eat. I remember every step of us making those potatoes, even down to cutting the sliced American cheese into tiny little pieces so as to mix into the potatoes. That was the first time I had met her family.

Sally, Danielle and I also had our own adventures together as well. We had become friends with Jerri Johansen, who was a year behind me in school. She had this hot, hot brother named Bryan who was a year or two ahead of me in school. Sally had a pool at her house, so we often found ourselves at Sally’s hanging out. Our time together mostly was us hanging out in Sally’s basement or swimming in the pool, if it was summer. One time we got the idea we wanted to get all dressed up and go out to eat. Bryan said he would drive us, as none of us had our license yet, or if we did I don’t think we were allowed to drive to Knoxville. So, we all spent time shopping, and picking out our dress up clothes. I remember the tie and shirt the girls picked out for me, my first time outside of ROTC having to wear a tie. Lord, I can’t remember where we ate, but I remember the drive there was so full of laughs, so full of life and there was absolutely nowhere else I wanted to be. I believe we at at Outback Steak House on Merchant's Drive, but I am not positive. It was one of those moments in life that stick out with such intensity and happiness that if ever I was able to go relive certain days of my life, this would definitely have been one of them.

At the time I had a mad crush on her. I would sit at home at night and stare at the ceiling fantasizing what it would be like to go out with Danielle. I did the same thing regarding Rebecca as well. I think my teenage mind was confusing friendship with love, and I was always left confused because I was very close to these girls, but yet we never ever got to the point of dating. I think my gayness and subconscious sense of “oh come on now!” simply wouldn’t allow me to explore heterosexual dating because somewhere way, way down deep I knew it simply was not who I was.

My friendships with all of the girls became close, and I so wish to this day that we were all still friends. When I graduated high school in June of 1993, I promised myself (as does every person at this stage of life) that we would ALWAYS be friends and we all vowed nothing would ever tear up our friendship. But life happens, people grow, and the only thing about life is that nothing stays the same. Yet, I still hold all of my friendships to that high standard I felt between myself and the girls. Every friendship since then is always compared to that.

Being friends with the ROTC crowd was always competitive, especially with a guy named Sid Hill. Sid was the only other freshman on the drill team. He came from the Maryville City school district, known to Heritage people as the stuck up, snooty, and rich crowd (a label that was very much true, and still is true to this day). I am guessing he must have come to Maryville to escape bullying or something like that, as he was small and nerdy, as I was myself. I believe it was the fleeing from bullying that must have drawn us together, as we both went through similar experiences perpetrated on us by polar opposite types of bullies. Sid was very prissy and persnickety and a know-it-all. He was prone to pouting if things did not end up his way. However he was much more tenacious than I was in almost every endeavor. He won many of our “competitions” because at that time in my life I tended to bow out of anything competitive that I may not win, whereas such insurmountable odds gave Sid his strength.

Sid and I had many adventures together, usually, but not always, in the company of my brother’s friends: Ben Pack, Sammy, Brad Lawson, Lance Webb, and George “Thai” Daugherty. I believe Sid and I followed them because they had such a closely knit brotherhood that we wanted to be a part of, and there was safety in having a group of older, tougher friends. We hung out with them to be cool. Everything they were doing seemed much better than anything Sid and I could come up with on our own. We were all in a role-playing Dungeons & Dragons phase together, though I only did that a few times with them. It just simply was not my thing. We would also spend time at Lance’s house in Townsend. He had an A-frame shed that was converted into our clubhouse, and Lance also had the entire basement of his house to himself, so our privacy was assured. I smoked my first cigar (in the film of that event I was a green as a Granny Smith apple), and I got sick from smoking my first cigar. I remember laying out in the field in front of Lance’s house listening to Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”, begging myself not to throw up. I have always had a huge aversion to vomiting; I would rather spend hours trying to make nausea go away rather than just throw up and get it over with.

I also had my first beer while hanging out with the guys in Townsend. We decided to take a night trip to the Y, just to hang out and smoke cigarettes or whatnot. We had found a 6 pack of Pabsts Blue Ribbon beer someone had chilling in the river, so of course we took it. I drank one gulp of it and knew instantly I would never be a beer drinker. Also that same night, we decided to night hike just up from the Y (I forget the name of where we were headed but I will find out). I remember walking up this steep incline and not being able to see my hand in front of my face. The river was down an extremely steep embankment on our left. About this time, Brad asks me if I have ever smoked a cigarette with no filter. All I had smoked up to this point were Capri cigarettes stolen here and there from my mom. The filters on Capris are 5-feet long and you really have to inhale hard to get a hit off it. Well, I decided to try a puff on this filter-less Camel Brad offered me. I put it up to my mouth and took this HUGE drag off it, as hard as I would smoke a Capri. I inhaled so much smoke, I felt like my whole body was full of it, and I immediately starting hacking up. At the same time, the large amount of nicotine hit me and I became extremely dizzy…down I started to fall, over the cliff to our left. Thankfully Brad caught me and I think I started having a crush on him at that point, though it never went anywhere other than in my head.

Sometimes Sid and I hung out alone. I spent the night at his house once, and remember thinking how well off they seemed, like they were real cultured and rich. This label I gave him was reinforced by the fact that they bought Sid a car, which we used to get around. Mostly we would drive up to Gatlinburg or just bum around Maryville. I remember us listening to Technotronic at his house and we being silly and dancing to it, God help us if anyone ever saw us acting to silly. Even though he and I were competitive I still had somewhat of a crush on him. He came to be the framework of one of my “type” that I am attracted to – small bones, petite, nerdy, cute. Nothing ever happened between us since Sid was and is straight.