When I did a search for images to go with this story, I found the above. It’s from a 2014 YouTube video I’d never seen before. It’s by ActorVarunPruthi. Please check it out.

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…the time a few of “us” decided to have our own “Stud Bench”.

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The traditional “Stud Bench” at John Marshal High School in 1977 was located on a catwalk between the academic buildings and the sports building. I say “traditional” because it was a fact of life at JM. Everyone knew what it was and where it was. It was there as long as anyone could remember and for all I know, had been there since the school opened in 1958.

It’s probably still there.

Everyone also knew that if you walked down that catwalk at certain times of the day, you had to walk by all the jocks lining the catwalk’s glass walls. The catwalk was almost as wide as any of JM’s hallways but when twenty or thirty big guys leaned against the waist-high railing in front of the glass on both sides, the space narrowed considerably.

It was their hangout, their domain. It was their territory and I wouldn’t have been surprised if they marked it by peeing in strategic places. Athletes, their buddies and hangers on, were at the stud bench everyday without fail. No doubt they must have had protocols according to whatever hierarchy they followed. If I’d been of a mind to back then (as I occasionally was a bit later in life) the social structure of the stud bench may have made for some interesting anthropological study.

Like a baboon colony or something.

Since the cafeteria and recreation center was part of the sports building, and since (unlike art, music and theater) everyone was required to have a gym class at some point, everyone had to walk across that catwalk in the winter if they didn’t want to go outside in the cold. If you didn’t have a car or a friend with one, you were pretty much stuck with the cafeteria for lunch so…

Of course, if you happened to be a “weirdo” or “geek” or a non-jock in any way at all, you were a target.

Heaven help you if you were a woman.

I imagine even the girlfriends of the guys on the stud bench would dread walking the gauntlet that catwalk became every day. Those assholes were constantly on the lookout for reasons to display just how much of a DICK they could be, and I have no doubt that girls who didn’t play along were…

Well… I’d love to hear or read some of their stories. From them.

As for me, I was a bit of a conundrum for the dicks of the stud bench. Since none of them ever willingly went to the area of school where I would hang, they didn’t know about that part of my life. I was a big guy so I wasn’t an obvious target. In fact my size confused them since I was big enough to be considered a possible asset on the football team. They might have even heard their coach mention how he wanted me to try out at some point.

Oh yes, I was known to the jocks. My dad had coached most of them at John Adams Jr. High and many of the teachers at both schools had been friends of our family for years. Most days, I entered the sports building from outside but whenever I did decide to walk down that catwalk, I got an odd combination of confused looks and stupid comments with the odd lame attempt at connection by some of the more knowledgeable members of the stud bench.

To be continued…