Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 6: The Bellion rebellion
From the outside, grade 11 would have looked like a good year for me. I had become part of several clubs, I had participated in a couple of musicals, and I attended church on a regular basis.
But I was no closer to a solution to my gender problems, and it was wearing on me greatly.
I became frantic to find a way to bolster my masculinity, and I held out hope that finding a girlfriend would be a major step forward in that fight.
As if in answer to my need, a young woman who I will call here Katherine decided she wanted company to go to a Seven-Eleven store across the street, and seeing me hanging around, grabbed my hand and made me her escort.
Through her, I got to know more of several members of the Drama club, and at the same time I started hanging around some girls from the Dungeons and Dragons group I had joined the previous year.
I dont remember if I ever actually asked any of these girls out. My preferred method of trying to get them to date me consisted of me hanging around and listening, apparently in the hope that by sheer availability I would move up the list of eligible boys.
Most of the girls responded to this tactic by sharing with me the stories of their relationships with other boys, and two of the girls I had met through Dungeons and Dragons showed me quite thoroughly that I simply wasn’t seen as boyfriend material when one hot day while we were sitting a basement together they decided to take off their tops and pants and hung around in their underwear, and talked me into doing the same.
The fact that I didn’t do anything but blush probably should have been a clue to me about certain things, but nobody will ever say I’m a quick learner ...
The other development on the gender front came about through Alan Kiev .
He had been a friend of my brothers before we went to Colorado, even sending him cassette tapes with messages from Calgary. (I know, it sounds so stone-age compared to e-mail and instant messaging, but hey, it was still the 80’s.)
I met him in person when we got settled in our old house, and he was the one who got me into Dungeons and Dragons which led me to the encounters I have already described. He was an odd person, who often looked to shock people. One example was his name, as he had gone from his birth name to one that used a Russian town as his new last name ...
Then when I was in grade eleven, he shared a secret with me after I confessed to struggling with my gender.
He told me he was a cross-dresser.
He even went out to events dressed, and he had a collection of crossdressing magazines which he gave to me to look at.
It was a mixed experience. On the one hand, it comforted me a little to know I wasn’t totally alone in struggling with being a male. On the other, it became quickly clear to me that whatever I was, I wasn’t like the guys in the mags. They seemed to be focused on sexual experiences, whereas I didn’t get terribly aroused by dressing as a girl.
Meanwhile, the school year continued, and then a very interesting opportunity came my way. I discovered that there was going to be an election for student body president, and at that point there was only one candidate for the office.
Not liking that lack of democracy, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. And for some reason, the idea of me being in the race inspired people. One person made posters with the slogan “The Bellion Rebellion”, and soon my name was everywhere.
I did better than I figured was possible.
They actually had to do a recount, it was that close.
And in losing the election I managed to put a positive image of me in the minds of a large body of my classmates.
Which didn’t make as much as a difference as I could have hoped ...
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