“You all right?” I ask, trying not to laugh at him again.
“Yeah.” He sits up, rubbing an elbow. “I think I have enough, you know. I’ll take this with me.” He nods toward his notebook, which we’ve been writing in.
I can sense there’s something else going on, but I don’t know what. “That’s fine. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He slides over to lean against the wall, a few feet from me. “Yeah. I just—well, I guess I just need to be sure of something.”
He stops. I wait.
I give up. “Like what?”
“Those guys today. Jimmy and Dane. Jimmy called you—he called you a faggot.”
I try not to let my cringe show. “So? He calls everyone a faggot. He thinks it’s this big insult.” I stop, hoping that will do it, but—no. “Are you asking me if I’m gay?” He says nothing, but the look on his face tells me that’s it. “So when I touched you just now, that made you nervous, right?”
Maybe a year ago I would have laughed as hard as I’d laughed at the Brandenburg error. Maybe, if I hadn’t been dreaming those dreams.
He shrugs. “Well, I mean—sure, he probably says that to a lot of guys. But you…I’ve heard some of the girls say how cute you are. Maybe that kind of boy thinks you’re cute too.”
On one hand, I like this. I do have a nice build, even if it’s not supermuscled; I’m a runner, not a football player. And I spend as much time looking in the mirror as anyone else. So it’s nice to know that others like what they see. But—that kind of boy, eh? “That kind” might be me.
But this isn’t something I want to deal with here. I attack from the side. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Now he looks scared, and I do laugh. I can’t help it. “Robert, will you chill? I was going to suggest that we double-date this weekend. I’m going to ask Rebecca Travers out, and in the past she’s had an easier time getting permission if it’s not just the two of us. What do you say?” I hadn’t really been planning to ask her out this weekend, but I may as well.
He’s grinning a little sheepishly now, still rubbing his elbow absentmindedly. “I, uh, I—honestly, Jason, I’ve never asked a girl out.”
If I weren’t afraid of offending him, I’d try to turn the tables and ask if maybe I’m the one who should be afraid he’s gay. At least I’ve been dating for a year, even if it was just for show.
I collect the stuff we’ve strewn all over the floor as I tell him, “That, my friend, will be another lesson, then. Tomorrow after school, you and I will go to the mall, and I’ll teach you how to talk to girls.”
I stand and hold my hand out. He grins and then takes it, and I haul him to his feet. Or at least I provide a balance point; he’s too big for me to haul anyplace. And then we go massacre half a batch of cookies.
That night, as I’m trying to fall asleep, I’m haunted by my deceit, by what I’ve done to mislead Robert. To mislead everyone. Even me.
It’s true that I’m not the least intimidated talking to girls. I feel like I’ve got nothing to lose. But most of my dates have been with Rebecca, someone I’ve known all my life, someone who lives in the next block from me. In fact, I’d started asking her out almost by default. And partly out of a sense of—I don’t know, maybe expectations. Other people’s expectations. I mean, wasn’t I supposed to want to ask girls out? Wasn’t I supposed to want to touch them and kiss them and have them touch me and kiss me?
Rebecca and I have been kissing since we were six, and although it’s true the kisses have, well, matured, they haven’t led to much else, and so far I haven’t been tempted to get them to. I was a little surprised, actually, the first time she opened her mouth when I was kissing her. After all, I was just practicing; wasn’t she? But then I decided this was practice too. If I was expected to do this, I’d better learn how. But it felt wrong somehow. I don’t mean like we were doing it wrong; how would I know that? But I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. What I want. What I want is something I can let myself have only in my dreams.
I shake my head to clear it; those dreams are scaring me. In the dreams, I’m not in control. Because then, when I can’t stop myself, that’s when it’s a boy I want touching me. A boy I want kissing me.
But that isn’t an option!
Is it?
What really scares me is that it might have to be Rebecca for me, or someone like her, which is to say someone female. I guess when I asked her out the first time, I was thinking, you know, believe it and you will see.
And I tried. I tried really hard. I started to pay more attention, watching TV or at the movies, when a man and a woman would kiss or more. When some girl in a song would gush about some boy or some boy would wail if some girl wouldn’t notice him. I paid attention to the way kids at school would talk. Even guys who don’t admit to being afraid of anything can’t hide when they aren’t really sure a girl will go out with them. Heck, if the girl will even talk to them!
I never felt that fear. Partly it’s because there was never any girl who made me want her. So I never worried about whether a girl would go out with me—at least, not in terms of having anything really personal at stake. And I also never felt those butterflies you hear so much about. You know the kind? When you think of the person you want to be with, and something fluttery happens inside.
And since it was so obvious everyone else did have these feelings, it started to make me feel isolated. Separate. Like not only was there something wrong with me, but also I couldn’t join in. I wasn’t part of the club. So I started asking out Rebecca, because it was easy. Because I didn’t want anyone else any more than I wanted her. And despite her parents’ concerns, I’ve never wanted to do anything they wouldn’t approve of. Caressing shoulders and even the roundness of her backside doesn’t seem to count for much when you consider the other treasures I’m supposed to have intentions about.
My mind drifts kind of automatically from what I don’t care about when I’m with Rebecca to something I used to love when I was little. When I spent as much time as I could with Darin, one street in the other direction from Rebecca’s house. Darin, who used to hide with me in his mother’s walk-in closet in the dark, shining flashlights onto each other’s naked groins. Darin, who got really brave one day and reached out a hand and touched me for real. Just thinking of that now sends these jolts of something through me, makes me breathe oddly.
It didn’t end there, either. Well, I mean, we didn’t do much, you know? We were kids. Sometimes we’d shut the door to his room when his mom was someplace, maybe out sunbathing in the backyard, and we’d lie on the bed and hold each other’s dicks. We’d press them together and giggle wildly.
I still remember the time he kissed me. It was just before his family moved away, when we knew we probably wouldn’t see each other anymore. We were nine. And we weren’t even doing anything. We were fully dressed, sitting on the floor in my room. It was August, and hot, and if we’d been “normal” boys we would have been outside playing tag or ball or something.
Hell, we were normal! It’s just that…It’s just that when he left that day, I knew he’d be gone. Sure, there was e-mail, but what’s that compared to having someone touch you where no one else does? To feeling about someone the way you never feel about anyone else?
I was looking at his face, trying not to cry. He reached out and touched my shoulder, caressed it a little, and then pulled me toward him.
His lips were so soft. And it felt so right. So fucking right.
Darin never liked Rebecca.
I toy with the idea of trying to dream about girls tonight, but I’m not in the mood for David Bowie. Finally I begin to drift off.
And