and assured me that my secret was secure with him for as long as I wanted or needed it to be. He hugged me as I left, and while I was grateful for his kindness and lack of condemnation, I also wished that those strong arms and that hard body could be pressed up against me more often. I left his office with a lighter conscience, and a woody…

My agenda for college was to explore everything. I had not declared a major as yet, and was concerned only with getting all of the ditzy undergraduate requirements out of the way as quickly as possible, and hoped that by then I would have some clearer direction for my life’s path – both professionally and sexually. I took some theater classes, and communications courses, and psychology courses, and met some openly gay guys and girls for the first time. I got on the net and explored some sites – as I had never dared to do at home – and learned a few things. My most courageous act during my entire first year of college was in going to an adult video store and renting a gay video – but that whole experience is another story, for another time…

During spring semester, one of my classmates in one of my theater classes, a really cute girl named Andrea, asked me one day if I knew anything about running a sound board. I said not really, but I had seen it done and it didn’t seem to be that difficult. Andrea said that a friend of her mother’s owned a bridal shop in town, and that they were having a big fashion show on a Saturday afternoon at the Country Club, and they needed someone to DJ for the models as they came down the runway. She said the music selections were already downloaded and all I had to do was cue them at the proper time. She said there was no money, but an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner afterward. That sounded fine to me.

I showed up at the Country Club at the appropriate time, and changed from my street clothes into my rented tux from the shop – it made me self-conscious, as I hadn’t worn one since the Senior Prom. Andrea showed me how to work the board, and the cue list for the models. They were all in order, so it was just a matter of flicking from one selection to the next in mid-song. We tried a couple out and I got the hang of it pretty quickly – Andrea said that she would have done it herself but that she wound up having to model a couple of the gowns and didn’t want to be running back and forth. All the girls were chasing around in their gauzy white creations, or in the bridesmaid’s outfits, and I just sort of stood back on the edge of the swirl, which is where I liked it best.

The Ballroom filled up, and Andrea threw me my first cue, and I started the first song, and the first model came down the runway. The shop owner, Mrs. Merovsky, was at the mike introducing the models and describing the gowns, and she nodded to me for my second cue, and it was on with the show.

Everything went like clockwork, no mishaps, until the very end of the show – these were not girls in dresses, but guys