A Secret Edge
Robin Reardon
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
For Jody Thomas, 1951–1993
In 1983, across a table at a New York City sidewalk café, my friend Jody Thomas told me in hushed tones about the “gay plague.” I’d never heard of it before. Neither of us knew then that within ten years it would claim him.
Jody made me believe that, for him, gay pride was not pride in being gay but pride in being himself.
Jody, this is my square in the quilt for you.
Contents
Chapter 1: Dream a Little Dream
Chapter 2: At the Mall
Chapter 3: Moving Fast
Chapter 4: Sword vs. Knife
Chapter 5: Love and Philosophy
Chapter 6: Watershed
Chapter 7: The Reluctant Student
Chapter 8: Another Man’s Poison
Chapter 9: His Royal Highness
Chapter 10: Enter Stage Left
Chapter 11: Of Knives and Brothers
Chapter 12: False Impressions
Chapter 13: Jason on Hold
Chapter 14: Everybody Out, Now
Chapter 15: What Are the Rules?
Chapter 16: Lucky in Friends
Chapter 17: Blue
Chapter 18: Resorting to Nonviolence
Chapter 19: Friends and Lovers
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 1
Dream a Little Dream
It’s like most of these dreams, when I’m lucky enough to have them. The other boy is a little taller than me, dark hair where I have blond, and deep brown eyes where mine are blue. His touch electrifies me, and my back arches in response to the kisses he plants on my neck, my shoulders, my belly.
And then I’m sitting up, alone.
I throw myself back down onto the bed, embarrassed, wanting to cry. Wanting to dream it again. The boy had been no more recognizable than any of the others. So I guess he was no more or less attainable.
I hate what happens when I’m determined to dream about girls. Which of course I should be doing if I’m trying to be like the other guys I know. Girls are what they dream about. But no matter how hard I try, the girl always turns out to be David Bowie. I barely know who David Bowie is! Just from a couple of tunes and that weird movie I saw at the retro theater last year. But there he is in my dreams, sharp bones of his face, lank hair, scrawny body, calling up feelings every bit as strong as the dark-eyed boys who haunt me.
I’m sixteen years old, for crying out loud! Shouldn’t I be having normal dreams by now? I don’t mind the sexiness of the dreams, but the sex of the people in them is making me crazy. I’m dying to ask someone about this, but there’s no one I can think of to talk to. Not Aunt Audrey, that’s for sure. I can just imagine her response.
“It’s called a wet dream, Jason.”
“Yes, Aunt Audrey, I know that. I’ve been having them for years. But why is it always boys in them?”
“Don’t worry about that. It will pass. It’s just a phase you’re going through. Did you take the sheets off the bed?”
But I do worry about it. I think it means I’m gay.
Really, you could ask Aunt Audrey anything, she’s so gentle, so even tempered. And there’s something about the fluffy style of her “prematurely” (she’s careful to stress that when she mentions it) gray hair that gives off a soft warmth.
But if I tell Aunt Audrey, there’s no way not to tell Uncle Steve as well. And then I’d have to be prepared for a no-nonsense answer. Matter-of-fact doesn’t come close to how he approaches life and everything in it. I don’t want a no-nonsense approach to this question. No-nonsense makes it seem like nothing is more important than anything else. Even me.
But that’s not fair. All right, they won’t let me have my own cell phone (“When you can afford to pay the bills yourself, young man…”), but I know they care for me. I mean, if they didn’t, would they have kept me? I was dumped on their doorstep at the ripe old age of two, after my parents died in the car wreck that didn’t do more than scrape my tender baby skin in a few unimportant places.
Aunt Audrey has told me that I’m like the child she and Uncle Steve couldn’t have. But we have an understanding, he and I. I don’t bring him anything that isn’t really important, good or bad, and he doesn’t make me feel silly for bringing something to him.
Aunt Audrey may be easier to talk to, but she can be tough as nails when she needs to be. Even a crisis wouldn’t faze her. I know she’s cool in a crisis, because the surgeons at the hospital want her more than any of the other nurses when they’re in the operating theater. But—I need more than her usual cool reaction, so I don’t bring this question to her.
So she wields a knife, in a way, where she works, and—unbeknownst to her—I wield one where I work as well. School.
Okay, wielding a knife is overstating it. I just carry the thing around. I’m probably giving the impression that my school is a dangerous place, which it isn’t. We don’t even have metal detectors, or I couldn’t carry it. But I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to run all the time, away from the bullies and the tough kids who think I’m easy prey just because I have this baby face and I’m not very tall. If they believed I was gay, it would be even worse.
Anyway, dream over, I massage myself into something resembling calm and roll away from the wet spot. And before I know I’m asleep again, the alarm goes off.
The day begins like any typical day, despite how important it will turn out to be. Despite the fact that it will change my life. Aunt Audrey has already left for the hospital and Uncle Steve is still in the shower by the time I’m dressed—his schedule at the vocational school where he teaches math is later than Aunt Audrey’s—so I grab something from the kitchen and gnaw on it while I’m dressing. I could catch the bus that picks up kids who live over a mile away from school—I’m a mile and a half—but unless it’s pouring rain, I walk. And I walk superfast, to keep my breathing in shape for my favorite “subject.” Track. It’s spring-training time. I don’t pretend I’m Olympic material. I just love it.
I love the long-distance run, when you feel like you’re about to die and if possible you’d hurry it up because you feel like crap, and then suddenly you reach this place where your mind and body are the same, no difference, no boundaries, and you feel like there are no boundaries for you anywhere. I also love the short dashes, the sharpness of my senses as I wait for the signal, the huge burst of energy that the signal releases, the feeling that, once I’m under way, no one can catch me. Most guys are much better at one or the other—distance or dash—and it’s true I’m faster on the dash. But I love all of it.
Most of all I think I love it because now, now that my knife and I have scared most of the goons away, I run because I want to. Not because they want to make me.
Today after school the trials for track intramurals start. One thing I’m competing in is the hundred-yard dash, but my real goal is to be anchorman for our relay team. Anchor is the last of four runners, always the fastest. So, yeah, I want to be picked for best.
My last class of