Billy, Part I

I have been saying that I never told any of my family or friends that I was gay until this past August and that is true, other than some people in blog land who I have been writing to over the last year and a half, no one else or should I say almost no one knew before that. There is one person who did know years ago, I was not sure if I would ever mention it but it has been on my mind a lot lately so here it goes. As strange as this will sound, I did have a boyfriend once, long ago when I was twenty five, it was nice and those memories are another strong reason why I wanted to come out.
I used to swim almost every day, I'm not a great swimmer but for exercise and fun I went to a pool close to my home. Every day around the same time there was a group of people my age that would come to swim also. Being sort of shy, I would only nod my head and say a quick hello. There were two guys that caught my eye, they came the most often and were there almost every time I was. I thought both were cute, they certainly did not look gay to me but I wanted to make friends anyway. One night there was only one guy from the group, Billy. He was a handsome dark haired guy, being too shy I never said a word to him the entire evening. As we were the only ones changing in the locker room getting ready to leave, the little voice in the back of my mind was yelling "say something dumb dumb before he gets away"! I swallowed the lump in my throat and stumbled out "pools kind uh cold tonight eh" being gifted with words as I am! He turned and started up a conversation, he was friendly and seemed to be nice. I did not think much of it as he sat down beside me and we talked, then he reached out and placed his hand lightly on my knee as he spoke. My gaydar sprang on and beeped immediately. Four or five times while talking to me, he would place his hand on my knee and I made no attempt to remove it. While talking to me, he would stare right into my eyes and not the way two straight guys look at each other when speaking. He told me he was from down east and did not know a lot of people around here and said we should go out some time, I agreed. As I left I was thinking, oh man I think I was just hit on by a guy, and it feels so f***ing good to be wanted! Later that night I was so excited I could not sleep, then the thoughts of maybe I was wrong or maybe I misunderstood, then I would worry if he is gay what does he want from me, what does he expect from me. My danger comes from over thinking every situation.
The next day I thought to play it cool, just in case I misunderstood him. When he saw me though, he rushed up to me and was so excited to see me that I knew in that second I was right. At first we would only talk at the pool and one day when he saw that I would walk home he kept trying to give me a lift. I was a little spooked about getting into a gay guy's car, even though he was only a year older, well remember I just came from the country so think 'over sheltered' life. Finally I let him start to drive me home, then he would take me for drives sometimes in the evening. At this time he was not sure if I was gay, so he kept throwing me off by talking about getting married to the right girl and having kids. I was about to send my gaydar in for repair until one night he invited me out for dinner, we went to a straight bar-restaurant and I remember thinking boy was I wrong about this. Later we were driving around and he asked me if I had a problem with gay or bisexual people, I wanted to say 'well I'm here with you am I not' but I just said no. He paused for a bit and said "well I'm bisexual you know" man the bells of happiness went off in my mind! I said it is really hard for me to say but that I'm gay, he was pretty happy then also. We started to hang out together and then one day he asked me out as in boyfriend out and I said no, you read that correctly I said no! I just was not ready for a boyfriend and I told him that, he told me he would wait.
Now in tomorrow's part II, let me explain how Steven screwed up a really good thing and still kicks himself to this day about it.