Thursday: Coming Out, Going Down

"Aaron would you please hold still?"

"But it tickles!"

Max sits back on his heels and I twist to look at him beside me. Paintbrush in hand with a blue smudge on one cheek, he looks like the art student he always was at school. But at the moment he is only wearing jeans and I am dressed in exactly nothing. It's also only about half six, but I was willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of art, and possibly sanity. Max gives me a faux-stern look, I pout, and he gets back to painting. It's the most intimate experience, body paints and various sized brushes and my best friend moves around me using my skin as canvas. Wrists to throat, a pattern winding up half my face, throat to ankles. The paint licks at my crotch and Max puts his brushes down, dropping to his knees before me. Coloured fingertips brush my cock and I get hard faster than I can draw breath to tell Max to stop. His fingers close around me and he pushes. It almost hurts but I understand what he's done, negative blood flow, and I go soft once more.

"Plenty of time for that later." Max says with a smile and continues to paint me.

I only barely recognise the boy in the mirror. There is a river, complete with fish and reeds, winding across my chest and down my left leg. Strange and swirling Celtic designs adorn my other leg and are echoed on both my arms. There is a snake coiled around my neck, his eyes gleaming in the hollow at the base of my throat. On my back and huge red dragon spouts blue flame, his wings spread across my shoulder blades. Where the patterns merge are loops and swirls of colour, little beasts leaping out of them, miniature designs, a cat nestled in my elbow, a family of tiny songbirds on my hip, a tracking of canine paw prints down my ribs, tiny wings on my heels. There is something green, a cuttlefish, swimming round my ankle, a row of hearts and stars along one finger. Half my face is covered by a jewelled bird's wing, the feathers brushing my eyelids. The art is the most glorious thing I've ever seen, and I'm wearing it.

I have no problems posing for Max and his camera as the paint dries. I know he's trying to capture as much of the actual art as possible, the opportunity to use a whole person as a canvas doesn't comes across that often, and this will look great in his portfolio. Once the paint is fully dry I pull on my jeans and we have breakfast in the kitchen. Max walks me half the way to school, but lets me go the last part alone and heads off to college for the day.

Getting naked this morning isn't nearly as hard as it was yesterday. I still don't want to, but everyone is looking at me anyway. The best part is, Max's idea seems to have worked, because the looks I'm getting aren't at me, they are at the artwork I'm wearing, awe and wonder for the detail on my skin. A girl, a little second year, asks to come closer, and my reasonable request for the morning is just to sit, as I am, and let her pore over the designs on my skin. She is fascinated by the little beasts and even tells me about a few on my back I hadn't seen; a twisted nest of snakes, a crane at the base of my hairline and a pair of Celtic dogs just about my arse. Wearing Max's artwork on my skin is making me ridiculously proud. He's even signed me, a looping black squiggle, right in the centre of my left butt cheek. You kind of have to admire the guy's style.

I walk out of a thankfully deserted girls bathroom in the language block to find myself surrounded by a group of guys from the year below me. I recognise them as sports types before my cheerfulness evaporates into fear. I look at one, the biggest, half a fraction of a second too long, and suddenly all five of them are trying to hurt me. Hands push and pull, a fist finds my stomach, another on my spine, but not before a crack a good blow to the leader's jaw. I stay still too long, get swiped by an uppercut as the bell rings and the five of them vanish faster than morning mist under the sun. I collapse against the wall and dab at my lip, my fingertips coming away bloody. I ache, my breathing comes shallow and I probe my chest with my fingertips, checking for broken bones, just as the whole of year nine come swarming in to get to their form rooms for registration. They all stare at me, for my paint, my nakedness or my cut lip I'm not sure. I groan, pain shooting up my back, get up and walk, not stagger, to my form room, just in time for the bell to go. Mrs. Roe frowns at me, but marks me off on the register anyway. It's not shaping up to be a good morning.

Art first thing. Everyone admires my paintwork, which is thankfully undamaged, and I sit for a while, just breathing, holding off the pain. I tongue my split lower lip, which hurts, but I do it anyway, a tingling distraction from my laboured breathing and my bruised ribs. I feel like I want to be sick but I only wretch dryly, clutching the edge of the large ceramic sink for support.

The lesson plan is almost instantly scrapped in favour of body painting. The only other boy in my class removes his shirt. Three of the girls go topless without their bras on the proviso that they will paint each other and the rest of the girls just go without shirts. I get grouped together with a nice, slightly overweight, girl called Lindsey and her diminutive friend Madeline. Together we paint Lindsey, I get her back, and begin to paint large swirling, oceanic designs in varying shades of blue. It's quite relaxing and the three of us talk a bit, we scold Lindsey for moving too much and it is shaping up to be quite a good lesson before the teacher is pulled away to the other room to sort something out.

I am painting a series of large orange and red fish on Lindsey's back when someone mentions my split lip. The room goes silent and I am aware of everyone but Lindsey looking at me, and she doesn't dare move for fear I'll ruin her artwork. It seems that the fight this morning didn't go entirely un-noticed. The whole feel of the room changes and I slink off to the sink, ostensibly to wash brushes, but more to get out of their range of vision. As if I am no longer in range of their hearing, normal conversation starts up again. When I come back, the moment of tension is broken and the only look I get is from Lindsey, who is smiling and wanting to know what I am doing on her back.

I get to maths alright, everyone I see gapes at me, which is enough to keep them from making any requests of me as I go to my classroom. I'm expecting maths to be an easy class again, but instead of our usual teacher we have a young woman, a substitute, who is all too eager to make use of a Program student. She promises a reasonable request to anyone who can set me an equation that I can't solve on the board. This also requires them to find the right answer, before I do.

However it's not very long, maybe only ten minutes, before there is a knock on the door and a slightly scared looking second year pokes his head around the door, coughs, then steps into the room. Everyone turns to look at him and the room falls silent. For some reason no one has ever been able to explain to me, every time a class is interrupted, by anyone, this scene happens, everyone goes quiet and inspects the intruder. The boy seems to be a runner sent from the main reception desk, identifiable by the slip of pink paper he holds.

"Phone call for Aaron Caine." He glances around the room, but everyone looks at me eventually. The teacher looks annoyed, but if they've sent someone to get me she has to let me leave. I go with the boy who waits for me just outside the door.

"Yes?"

He gives me this pitying look as he begins to walk back to reception.

"It's your mother."

The reception staff, a trio of middle aged women, leave me in the back office alone with the phone. I pick it up, as if it's a snake that might bite, and hold it gently to my ear.

"Mum?"

"Aaron! Oh god I was so worried about you. The school phoned and said that you'd been in some kind of fight and that you'd run away. Your head teacher sounded very angry. Are you in trouble?" I don't actually get a chance to reply to this as I start to wonder how long my mother will be able to go on for without drawing breath, "And I tried to call you but your phone was off and you didn't come home. Your friend Christian said he didn't know where you were either. And I was so worried and your father was up all night and he spent a long time talking to the parents of the boy you hit. What did you think you were doing? We've always taught you not to hit other people."

Finally she stops. Long enough to draw breath.

"Well? Do you have anything to say?"

"Sorry Mum."

"Better. Now tell me where you were."

The conversation is painfully slow and precise. Yes, there was a fight, no I'm not hurt. I'm very sorry, I will go and apologise. I lost my temper because she didn't ask, that's all. I stayed at Max's, no I'm not in trouble. No Max's isn't in trouble either and he was wonderful, he made me dinner and made me up a bed in the spare room and everything. I don't think, at this point, telling my mother exactly where I slept would be a good idea. No, again, I wasn't in trouble with the school and that I was really safe last night. Yes I'd like them to come and pick me up after school to take me to the Doc. Could they bring me some more clothes please. Yes, yes of course I'd talk about what we mentioned the other day, about my, I shudder to hear my mother say the phrase, sexual preferences.

I put the phone down over half an hour later, suddenly exhausted, and stand in reception, trying to work out whether or not it's worth the effort to go back to maths. The decision is made for me when Johnson walks down the stairs from his office into the foyer.

"Aaron! Just who I wanted to see. My, that is some impressive paintwork that you're sporting."

I stand still and let my Head Master pace his shiny-shoed way around me.

"Unfortunately for Max Dolan, a teacher's meeting has decided that your use of body paint counts as a way to cover yourself and is thus banned under Program regulations. I think you'd better go and take a shower don't you?"

I open my mouth to complain, protest, but Johnson is not someone who usually stands being argued with and I may have already pushed him too far by running off yesterday, I'm surprised he hasn't brought it up. I nod silently and head off towards the sports department. Once I remove my paint I'll be just as exposed as I was yesterday.

When I get to the girls changing rooms I am slightly shocked to discover the showers already on and occupied. The fourth year girls have been doing hockey in the field, and mud splattered as they are, have had the water turned on for them. All conversation stops as I appear, a streak of colour, in the doorway. Someone I don't recognise shouts a welcome, a slightly sarcastic one, but a welcome none the less. A couple of girls move over and I get a shower on the end of the row.

Under the hot water my paint begins to peel away. I scrub at my skin with my fingers, paint coming away in flakes, staining the swirl of water around my ankles. The girl next to me passes me a bottle of vibrantly pink shower gel, that from the particularly flowery smell of the room, they have all been using. She smiles at me and goes back to her own shower. I take a look around. Most of the girls don't seem to have altered their behaviour now that I'm here, they are neither hiding nor being blatantly sexual. The worse I get are disdaining sneers, and those I can deal with. It makes me realise that me being gay has put me into one of two categories. Either I'm not worth their time, or I'm not a threat, since sexually at least, I'm not interested in them.

Of course all this non-attention ends quite abruptly as the lack of paint begins to reveal the dark fist sized bruises that are blossoming on my ribs and abdomen. My jaw is dark too and the blood from my split lip makes me look even paler. I crouch, wincing, and scrub away all the paint on my legs, feet and groin, and finally, devoid of colour, I stand and step out of the shower jet.

I mark easily, that much is obvious. Everyone stares as I stand and drip in the changing rooms, squeezing out my long hair with my hands since I have not come equipped with a towel. No one offers me one and I'm not surprised. I run fingers through my hair, tugging at my fringe to cover my eyes, and leave, still damp, as the bell goes for the end of break. I return to the maths room, collect my gear from a group of wide-eyed first years and head out of the main building towards the workshops, hoping that Mr. Thomas will take pity on me once again and leave me to read in peace.

No such luck. Dai Thomas had found a fairly sturdy apron for me and told me to get on with it. Which was more than slightly pointless since the wood I need to start making my art deco style chair with hasn't yet arrived. Instead I get accosted by Debz's best friend Thea, recognisable as such by her black hair, dark eye make up and the large amount of metal decorating her ears, nose and eyebrows. She begins to chatter on about what Debz had told her about me, most of which I don't catch because we were standing right next to the overly loud dust extraction unit, and eventually she drags me along by the front pocket of my apron to the pillar drill which she can't get to work correctly. I am unhappy about having either a girls hand, or a large fast spinning piece of heavy machinery, that near my cock, apron or not.

Half way through the lesson Mr. Thomas comes over to tell me to leave the apron with him and report to the Head Master's office, since Mr. Johnson has requested me to join him there. My stomach ties itself into a knot and I walk through the deserted halls to his office, dreading what he's going to ask me.

Johnson's office is of medium size, but made smaller by an oppressively large oak desk. I have no idea how they ever managed to get it through the door. I sit on one side of the desk, he sits on the other, and the only thing between us is a cut crystal bowl containing a number of white bon-bons. He's offers me one and I decline, the last thing I want to do is choke in surprise.

"Those are some interesting bruises Aaron."

"Yes Sir," I've decided to keep my answers to a minimum.

"You didn't have them yesterday."

"No Sir."

"Aaron," Johnson looks annoyed, and slightly worried, his brow creased, "How is everything at home?"

Now it's my turn to frown.

"What Sir?"

"We are very worried about you Aaron. Firstly, you aren't reacting very well to The Program, not allowing yourself to be touched, the destruction of that girl's camera yesterday. I don't see for there to be any need for you to ashamed of your physique. You keep very much to yourself. Have you any idea why that is?"

"No Sir," I'm lying through my teeth.

"Indeed. Secondly I am concerned about your injuries. Your mother has spoken to me and it seems you have not been home since yesterday morning. So at what point between when I saw you yesterday afternoon and now did those bruises happen? Are you being bullied outside of school? Is that why you got Max Dolan to paint you?"

"No Sir." I'm not going to tell him. It won't do any good. I don't know their names anyway. The whole of the fourth year will get a lecture on bullying and in the minds of the guys who did this, they will know. I'm certain of that. Vengeance on their part will be swift and painful, and it will continue until either I can get them arrested or they kill me. No, I won't say a word.

We spend a long two minutes staring at each other across the table. Finally he sighs, having realised that he will get no more useful information out of me. He comes around his desk and opens the door for me. I gather my things and leave, walking down the empty corridors to my French lesson, where I am already late for a lecture, the whole of my year crowded into the largest of the languages rooms, to hear about the wrongness of bullying and verbal abuse. Standing in the door I am in the spotlight and so I sit just outside, out of sight from most of my peers, trying not to listen as Barton begins to talk about the fair treatment of Program students and how all these 'teething issues' as she calls them, should all be resolved by next week.

I decide to skip the cafeteria and the second the bell the rings I begin to head over to the art rooms, which I hope will be deserted. Unfortunately, on the way there I get apprehended by a group of third year girls whose stunningly embarrassing reasonable request is to see me get hard. A couple of them even offer to help. Unfortunately I can't actually deny them, if it gets back to a teacher I could find myself with a whole extra week of naked studies. My exposure makes me nervous, but not enough to stop me from producing a Nate-fantasy induced erection. The girls smile and thank me, and once they've taken off I am left nursing a semi with nothing to do. I escape to the art rooms and vanish from sight into the little concreted area where I first met Jeremy on Monday. What I find there demolishes what was left of my hard on almost instantly.

Ranged around the courtyard is a large group of boys from my year and the fourth year. They include the boys from this morning's fight, a number I don't know, Justin and Darren from English and Toby, Ben and Josh from my physical education class. A blind person would be able to see the hostility here and I step backwards to get out of here as fast as possible only to find my way blocked by another of Justin's friends, a big guy called Aiden who is even taller than I am.

Oh shit.

Aiden grabs my left wrist and Darren grabs the other. I struggle against them, but I am already tired from this mornings fight and they are a lot stronger than they look. I am pulled further into the courtyard. Everyone closes in, but no one says a word. I know that appealing to Justin or his friends is beyond pointless, but perhaps talking to Josh or Ben might buy me some time.

"Guys, Josh, c'mon man, you're gonna get expelled because of some stupid rumour?" Josh refuses to meet my gaze, but he doesn't say anything either. "Ben, dude you said it yourself, I'm not gay." Ben doesn't say anything either, but his eyes are cold and hard.