little news from bigtown

After the disappointing reconnection with my high school friend D, I was concerned that there was nothing good about Bigtown, my hometown. Now I'm convinced of it. I did a Google search for V, a boy three years younger than me who lived near me and with whom I had a certain kind of friendship when I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman.

I met him and two of his best friends, T and B, all of them athletes, in drama class; they were there for the easy A it promised, I was there because my father had died the previous year and I was finally allowed to do the things I wanted to do, like drama and choir (the gay stuff, really). V, T & B liked me because I made them laugh and because I was old enough to buy alcohol and drive. I liked them because they didn't know the hateful nickname I'd received in the eighth grade, and because they liked to get drunk and pass out at my house, at which point I would sometimes mess around with them. Actually, I only messed around with T (he was the cutest), and only a couple of times. And it's important to admit that right now because I have never been able to find T or B when I've done internet searches, and I only very recently thought to do a Google search on V.

And there he was, listed as a sexual predator in Bigtown for having made some sort of "physical contact" with a fifteen-year-old girl. I guess if I had diddled V while we were drunk and he was passed out, I might have felt a bit of responsibility for his wayward actions. But really, I blame Bigtown, that boring and evil place where I grew up. God, I hate that town! V still lives there; his picture wasn't included in the Sexual Predator Listing, but his birthday and address were, and he's still lives at the same address, just a few blocks from the house I lived in from eighth through twelfth grade. His house was a scary little shack then; I can only imagine what it looks like now. Or what V looks like, for that matter.