I was always in the talented and gifted program in school. Teachers never seem to know what to do with these collections of academically talented students. They couldn’t simply be given an accelerated curriculum because it would render the rest of their classes redundant, so teachers had to come up with their own activities for these students.
Some teachers would simply assign a report on some obscure topic or high-level novel. Others would come up with an elaborate group art project, apparently under the assumption that the ability to retain information was the same thing as artistic skill. My favorite teachers were the ones who allowed the students to come up with a project and simply provided guidance and support. Under one of these teachers, we wrote and performed a play one year. Another year we entered a quiz bowl. Most teachers, however, left us to our own devices. And with no assignment or encouragement, we became little more than a club of students who had been told they were superior.
These were my first friends. Though we weren’t the sort of friends who visited each other’s houses or hung out after school. I wouldn’t make a friend like that until Allie. Allie started going to our school in the seventh grade. Because of her grades at her old school, she was placed in the talented and gifted program. I don’t remember our introduction or our earliest conversations, but I do remember the conversation that made us friends.
She had brought in some large, glossy hardcovers full of pictures of fantasy creatures. Fascinated, I asked about them and she introduced me to tabletop RPGs.
I was immediately entranced. I had never quite grown out of playing pretend, even as my younger brother had lost his interest, and here was a grownup way to play pretend, with formalized rules and an element of chance. It sounded wonderful.
She asked me to hang out at her house. I felt a twisting in my stomach. I suddenly felt vulnerable, as if she were trying to steal me away. I turned her down, but quickly regretted the decision. Thankfully, she asked me again a few days later and I said yes. The first time I visited her, I was so nervous that she said I reminded her of a frightened rabbit. The nickname “Rabbit” stuck.
We would hang out in her basement, looking through her books together and setting up miniatures. She still had her aunt help her when playing actual campaigns, so she wasn’t able to manage an actual session yet. Instead we would just make up characters and stories based on the pictures in the books and act them out with the miniatures. She promised that one day she would invite me over to make a proper character and play with her uncle and cousins.
I developed a particular fascination with one of the miniatures, a female elf wizard wearing a slitted dress and holding a staff. Allie didn’t seem to see anything strange about me wanting to play as her more than any of the other figures, and that fact made me feel safe.
Sometimes our games would extend beyond the miniatures, to us running around the house or outside, pretending to be our characters. I knew I should be embarrassed by this behavior, but if someone as amazing as Allie enjoyed it, I figured there couldn’t be anything wrong with it.
One day, while she was portraying a villain, who had captured my hero, she decided to tie me up. She found an old shirt she no longer cared for, tore it to shreds, and used it to tie me to her bed with makeshift knots. I became acutely aware of the feeling of her hands lightly touching me, guiding my wrists and ankles to where she wanted them, tightening the knots. By the time she had finished, our game was forgotten.
From then on, we had a new game. She would tie me up in various positions, delighting as she figured out unique ways to make me unable to move, and poke me or tickle me and laugh at the sounds I made. Having put up with more than a little bullying at school, I was surprised to discover how much I loved having her tease and mock me. It felt as though she had found a way to distill all of the vulnerability and safety I felt around her into a single intense sensation. It didn’t seem sexual to either of us. Our only understanding of sex was the reproductive process. I still wasn’t even thinking about romance at that age, so I couldn’t even say that I had a crush on her. It was simply a game we played.
She moved away less than a year after I met her. We never even got a chance to try any of the games that had originally brought us together. She gave me the elf miniature as a gift. After that, we stayed in touch for a few years, but gradually found our interests drifting apart. Sometime in high school she unexpectedly converted to Mormonism.
