Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [43]
Freckles paused for a moment, and Milo used the opportunity to stop the tape, consumed by an odd blend of emotions. Though he felt genuine sorrow for Freckles, who was clearly plagued by childhood cruelty, he also couldn’t help but feel a sense of camaraderie in her confession, knowing full well how difficult childhood could be, especially as an outsider. Though Milo also wasn’t a popular kid in school, he had found a niche of friends through his participation on the cross-country team and the chess club (which eventually morphed into his first Dungeons & Dragons group). He didn’t have many friends, but he had a few good ones and had never been forced to endure a lunch period alone. But he remembered the kids who did and suddenly felt as cruel to them as Freckles had been to Sherry Ferroni that day in Mrs. Walker’s language arts class.
Not that high school had been easy for Milo. Even with his modicum of social standing, he had been a late bloomer in terms of dating, though initially he had thought it would be otherwise. Milo could remember with remarkable clarity the day in Mrs. Shultz’s sixth grade math class when he noticed Amy McDonald’s breasts for the first time. In Milo’s mind (and perhaps it was true), it was as if one day her chest was as flat as his own and the next day it wasn’t. Small round orbs were suddenly protruding from Amy’s yellow and peach sweater, and Milo could barely take his eyes off them. Forget her blue eyes, her high cheekbones, or her impossibly wide smile. It was all about the boobs. And sure, he had seen breasts under sweaters before (and had even seen the bare breasts of a neighborhood mom as she passed by her picture window one evening), but he had never understood their magnificence and allure until he had seen them on a girl his own age. And in that moment of recognition, any possibility of a homosexual future was erased with the startling launch of an erection from beneath his corduroy hand-me-downs. The unconscious and damn near traitorous act of his penis had forced him to conceal its exuberance beneath Principles of Mathematics, the textbook that had rarely served Milo as well as it did at that particular moment.
Despite the awkwardness of sporting a boner in math class, Milo had felt nearly euphoric that day. It was as if the universe had opened and revealed one of its greatest secrets to him, and like Gollum’s hoarding of the Ring, he was determined to keep this precious treasure to himself, revealing his revelation to no one.
Of course, Milo later learned that he was probably already behind the curve in terms of noticing Amy McDonald’s breasts. His innate shyness and desire to keep certain aspects of his life private (even back then he struggled with inexplicable demands) prevented him from dating until late in his junior year, when a sophomore named Jennifer Ray showed interest in him despite his awkwardness and verbal incapacity around girls. Before that, Milo had doubted that any girl would ever like him and had already resigned himself to that fate. As a member of the crosscountry team, he could remember passing through Boston one autumn afternoon on his way to the state championships in Lynn, Massachusetts. As the bus drove past the exit for Chinatown, one of his teammates announced, “If you ever need a hooker, that’s the neighborhood for you!” Milo had filed this information away, determined to remember it, certain that the only sex he would ever have would be with a prostitute, when he was old enough to venture into the seedy parts of Boston and find one for himself.
He had never told anyone that story but wished in this moment that he could tell