The Advent of Hope

Chapter 1 I had to trade names with seven different people to get the name I wanted: Tory, a senior like myself. Utopia was a small college, and most everyone knew one another. It was church-based. I didn’t want to out myself as gay to anyone, really, but Tory had captured my heart. I felt I owed it to myself to at least find out Tory’s orientation. We both dated female students. The administration seemed to encourage it because they wanted their male students to become nicely married ministers and the girls to become teachers. The monthly school-run paper always had updates on prior students who now had a church of their own or were teaching. This was so expected. I wasn’t interested in that kind of life for myself. I had been brought up in a different religion, which I had semi-dropped, lately. I had come here because I’d been given a scholarship and couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. Now, with one more semester to go, I was almost twenty-two years old and wanted, even though it was stupid, being gay and all, to join the Navy. At least, I thought I did. Maybe it would please my father. But first, the Christmas party, then two weeks at home, and then the last semester.