A New Beginning

Let's pause for a moment to gain some perspective about our characters, Richard and Carl. Using some of the information gleaned from the story, and some hitherto unknown information, here is something to help you better visualize the boys. If you feel you know them well enough, then by all means skip this Synopsis and head straight for chapter 5.

Richard Bambrough: At fourteen years of age he is a bit tall at five foot seven inches. His hair is blondish brown and cut close to the sides - he is a swimmer, after all. The top is longer and quite curly. He's starting to grow a nice patch of hair where it's so important to boys to grow such a patch. The rest of his body is smooth. Well, he would point to and have you peer closely at his upper lip, swearing that the downy fuzz was the start of a moustache. But, truth be told, the cat could probably lick that off!

Because he's a swimmer, he has that typical swimmer's build - you know the type, no fat and with rather muscular, slim legs. He has good definition in his arms and shoulders that also come from his sport. While we couldn't define him as having a six pack at this stage in his development, there is no lack of definition here either. His waist is slim and his abdominals are solid. And Carl spoke of Richard's cute, dimpled chin, which in reality is a distinguishing looking cleft. This will be the cause of numerous 'ouchies' whenever he first learns to shave.

Have you seen boys hard at play in really cold weather so that their cheeks have that bright, flushed look? Well, Richard has those cheeks year round and it is in these rosebuds that his real dimples are so apparent. The dimples are very pronounced when he smiles. These are the culprits that give poor Carl his pup tent when he stares at him in math class.

Then there are Richard's eyes - blue, but of a shade rather difficult to describe. Let's just say they are like looking at the sky on a bright, cloudless day. That is not to say that they are a washed-out color by any means - they are of a deep, penetrating intensity that seem to draw your own eyes to them like a magnet.

He's a rather likable chap. He describes himself as having a number of friends at school, and indeed he does. Most of these friends are of the masculine persuasion as he is not very comfortable around girls. And while he is quite certain that no other boys have his twisted sexual attraction - read this as homo - it is actually his extreme good looks that have made him as popular as he is. Quite a number of lads and lasses have gotten butterflies by looking into those light blue peepers of his. And those tingly butterflies tend to turn into flocks of geese when Richard loosens one of his dimply smiles. Carl's pup tent aside, there are a number of army and circus tents erected around this boy on any particular day.

His popularity not withstanding, Richard is rather a shy and introverted person. The reflection he sees when looking into the bathroom mirror is somewhat less spectacular than what other people see. As many of us do, Richard tends to look a bit more at his imperfections. He is certain they must be as apparent to everyone as they are to himself. And perhaps what colors his self perception more than anything is his attraction to other boys.

So our Richard is a rather humble, self-deprecating sort of a boy: handsome, but rather unaware of his own good looks. He is somewhat outgoing with his friends and mates but shy and retiring around new people, or, most especially, boys he feels attracted to. All in all, he is the sort of person you would not mind having as your own friend - or more.

Carl Fuller: At age fourteen, Carl is a bit on the smallish side at four foot nine inches - although he is not quite the pygmy he perceives himself to be. He has a mop of brown hair that just seems to resist the efforts of a comb or brush. Add to that a rather pronounced cowlick or topknot of hair that wants to stand straight up. Carl wears his hair a bit longish on the sides trying, not very successfully, to cover what he calls his Dumbo ears. Now while they might stick out a bit more to the horizontal than the average set of ears, they are actually rather small and not as pronounced as he imagines. You would look at them and say they were cute - while Carl looks at them and calls them radar cones.

Carl's brown eyes are probably his most distinctive and endearing feature. I rather like the way Richard describes them as "Damn cute eyes, too; brown, kinda like a doe." You would probably describe them as puppy-dog eyes - sort of soft and soulful.

Something Carl detests about his features, that others seem to like, is a plethora of freckles. These brown spots are a pronounced slash across the bridge of his button nose that end at both upper cheeks - kind of like an upside down Nike slash mark. They, more than his diminutive size, tend to give him his adolescent appearance. And, if he were to remove his shirt, (please do, Richard would say) both shoulders and his upper back are similarly amassed with these brown spots. His freckles are only as apparent as they are because of a summer spent shirtless under a California sun. They are his body's endeavor to tan. Everything else just gets red and peels.

His body doesn't have quite the same athletic build as Richard's. While his mass is proportionate to his height, he does still retain a teensy bit of baby fat. Richard would describe him as having cute widdle pinchy wuv handles.

You heard Carl complain about the nickname he earned at his old school? As you recall, it was a reference to the diminutive size of his ... ummm ... let us call it his 'little' Carl. So Carl is sensitive to his size in two areas, his height and his length. And because he checks faithfully every morning, he has finally found a single hair in that area where boys tend to want scads of it.

Now, did you ever catch reruns of the Andy Griffith show on TV? They were later rebroadcast as Mayberry RFD. Well, our Carl has an amazing resemblance to Opie, played by Ron Howard as a child actor. People would expect to hear him say something like... "Gee, paw, how come Barney carries his bullet in his shirt pocket?" Or, as Richard was fond of thinking... "Gee, paw, I think that boy likes me. He wants me to play circus with him. He has a tent and everything!"

Owing to his rather small stature and what he considers his goofy looks, Carl will usually place himself in the role of class clown. After all, it hurts much less to have people laughing with him than at him. Lately, though, owing to his nervousness of being the new kid (and gay) he has become much more introspective. Can Richard draw him out again?

Well, dear reader, thank you for indulging me in this rather longish break in the story. I just thought it might help you to visualize our characters a bit more clearly. So ... on with our story.

When last we left our heroes, they were headed out the door of their school, side by side. Let's pick them up from there and see what misadventures ensue in the next chapter. 

And, by the way, the cafeteria ladies ask that you please quit flinging your pizza slices up onto the cafeteria ceiling. That artificial cheese dries like cement.