I tried to sell the idea of moving before starting junior high to myself by saying that everyone would be on even ground; no one would have been at the school the year before and people would be starting over.  Wrong.  Junior high does turn out that way, but it starts out as a continuation of elementary school where the first years get a chance to see just how it feels to go from being the king of the school to the low end of the totem pole in a heartbeat.  Throw in hormones, drugs and social skills and you've got a recipe for misery and ultimately self-discovery.  Unfortunately at the time, you don't really get the self-discovery part, you just hold on and try to make it through alive and keep out of everyone's way.

Seventh grade I didn't really fit in.  No one fit in, but I felt out of place in a big way because I didn't have any history.  Everyone else had a past they were trying desperately to outrun, but I was new.  I was different.  Different is fine if you're really not, but if you really are and don't want to be, different is bad.  I'm a fun person and knew what it took to be popular and so I made efforts to position myself amongst several groups.  I'm a floater, always have been.  I tend to have a small number of people I can call on for socializing, but in a large setting like school, I don't always do the same thing with the same group of people.  It's a survival thing.

Just my luck music was big at our JH.  We actually lied about our address to get me into the school (which was actually closer to our house than where I was supposed to go, but just on the other side of the hill) because my mom didn't want the $700 she'd just shelled out for a saxophone to go to waste.  Our JH was special in that every spring we put on a full scale musical.  Two casts, a pit, sets, everything.  We were a three year JH so the pit was 8/9 band and the casts were from 8/9 chorus or band.  One teacher taught both classes as well as their 7th grade equivilent.  Only 7th grade band members were allowed to try out for the spring musical because it's easier to make a singer than a musician so we were the more skilled (in theory).

Yes, there is a point to this back story (and if you're looking for the short and sweet, go blogsnoop elsewhere).  Well, me and M were the two better male sax players (we may have been the only 2...) in 7th grade.  M's older brother had just passed through the music program so M knew to keep up with his sax to get what he really wanted, a chance to act in the spring show.  I tried out because the teacher told me to.  I remember her singling me out as someone who should because my voice had already changed (thankfully) and I could hold a pitch. 

So I got into the whole theatre thing, got really into Phantom.  Every fall the music teacher took the 8/9 classes to SF to see a show, yeah, she was pretty cool, but love those budget cuts, we had to supply our own instruments in class and pay for our tix by selling candy bars.  Those things are so nasty I can still taste them as invariably our parents and family would buy the bulk of them (they conveniently were used as ice cream topping which hid their bland flavor).

OK, now we're off topic, but I was on a roll of remembering, who am I to stop a flashback tangent.

So M is the one 7th grader with an actual part in the show.  Myself and the other 7th grade band members had a part specifically written in to the show (the Sound of Music).  We were to be another act in the music festival where the family VonTrapp makes their grand escape.  It fit into the show quite neatly and was some great comic relief in a really really long and boring show (when put on by junior high students).  I got to play the part of the ham of the band who got a little too into the act and started wandering about the stage while the rest played modestly.  It was fun.

So M and I were friends.  Not good friends, but friends.  We didn't really hang out that much outside of school and I remember him writing something really lame in my yearbook like "have a good summer" or "you're really strange".  You know, the kind of thing you expect from those people who always insinuate themselves into the signing of your yearbook but not from someone you consider your friend.  It kind of hurt.  I'm a sensitive guy, what can I say.

Enter 8th grade.  M dropped band and picked up chorus so he could act.  I stayed in band (did I mention I had to get the full use of that saxophone or face guilt?).  I was mostly running with the other chorus/band people.  We also tended to be in the higher academic classes so we saw a lot of each other.  We did Oklahoma! that year and I was Will Parker in one cast.  M was Ali Hakim in the other.  There was some beginnings of a life.  I was more well known and felt more comfortable in school, so things were more normal than the previous year.  The gay thing was still taboo.  That just wasn't something we were. 

Faggots were sub-human was the general thought.  I can't say that that came from anywhere specific.  My parents are republican and though they've had their share of hardships, they're generally well off and so have the usual republican bent of, "everyone different than us is wrong."  I wouldn't say they were intolerant, they were just sheltered.  All of their world is in basically the same sphere of comfort and demographic as their own and that's just fine by them.  It's just easier, I suppose.  This was still the early 90's and gays were still just hairdressers with AIDS, don't forget (thanks 12 years of republican rule!).

Being in the music clique I was finding myself surrounded by a broader range of people and I was beginning to see myself in this subculture.  It wasn't just for the gay.  No one was really that far along in their thought just yet, but we were on our way.  So M and I were friends.  We hung out at each other's houses and played Nintendo, went waterskiing, swimming in his pool.  Nothing really out of the ordinary.

I suppose a why is in order.  As I said in a recent entry of my quasidaily ramblings I wanted to give people a chance to see who I was, have some sense of history to back up what's going on right now.  Right now there's a lot of change, I'm leaving the professional world of IT babysitting to return to school to study Architecture (or as I've been calling it, my 5 year vacation to make toothpick castles until 3am every night). 

My partner David and I have been living together a little over a year and today we got our new couch (if it sounds stupid, try it sometime, the act of two gay men buying a couch together is so much more of a commitment than any ring or sexual act or pact could mean). 

The most important thing to happen to my family in a long time is the birth of my brother and sister-in-law's first child, Samantha Jean Nowacki.  She's two days old today and just came home to see her new room with the mural I designed and painted with my family this July.

My Dad just turned 60 two days before (yes, he was born on the exact day that Hiroshima was bombed, top that 9/11 babies) and my mom is close to follow this November (you'd never guess it).  They're both recently retired and taking far too many vacations for people now living on a fixed income.  Live it up, guys, I'm reaching into that college fund you've held on to for 8 long years.

Here's the last family photo of us before the birth of Sam (still known then as Critter)

As an introduction to the family cast we have (left to right), Dave, me, Missy with Critter, Ryan, Susan and Dean (known generally as Mom and Dad).  If all of this looks like something out of a sit-com wet dream you're right.  Other than the gay thing (which is so 21st century sit com norm), we're right out of the funny pages of pure normal.  At least on the surface.  Mom and Dad have been married 35 years, Ryan and Missy were High School sweethearts and Dave and I have this really cute love at first sight relationship thing going that's really cute (and probably sickening to people).  If we look happy, we are.  It's a good cast of people and I'm lucky to have been put in mid-season as a replacement for Jennifer Aniston (poor thing, all this Brad stress is wearing her out).

I know I'm calling this roostory and this sounds more like an introduction to now, but bear with me, we'll go back in time soon.  Like I said, we're just warming up here so please be patient while the writers work out the kinks in the plot line.