Frightening. Frightening to my soul. My life was going along fine, and then Antonio decided to shake things up a bit. Throw a wrench into the smoothly running engine of my life to make me reevaluate things. Watch a movie or something? The international code for “let’s get it on.”
“ASHLEY, ARE
you there?” Chris asks, pulling me back to the present. I grip the phone a little tighter.
“Yeah, sounds cool, I’ll be over in about half an hour, all right?”
“Great. See you soon.”
I hang up and stretch my arms up heroically. “We Will Rock You” blares through the stadium and the crowd goes wild. Until I realize I’m in desperate need of some antiperspirant. Okay, get changed and let’s go.
THE WALK
from my house to Chris’s is lined with blossoming trees, rolling streets, and large old houses nestled in gardens of beeswax, robin’s egg, coral, and ivory flowers. My breath lives shortly in the night air as I arrive and knock on the door. It opens to a vision in faded jeans and a blue T-shirt taut over his chest, a precocious smile, and those big intent blue eyes that haunt me. “Hey, you look great,” he says, giving me a hug. “Come on in.”
I remove my boots, my Airwalk snowboarding pair that I love though I don’t board, and listen to Chris chattering and apologizing for the mess. How his roommate is such a slob, leaves his socks everywhere.
God, you’re hot
, I think. His apologetic, self-effacing nature is so endearing. It’s also a weakness, I realize. He doesn’t comprehend the magnitude of his talents, his looks, or his charm. People like him, all people. You seriously can’t get mad at the guy. He could be a lot more commanding. Really go for what he wants. But that’s not his way, I guess.
“What are you thinking?” Chris asks, sitting in his black leather swivel chair facing me as I sit cross-legged on his bed.
“How weird this all is. How much I’m into this, into you.” I can’t even look at him without smiling. “I mean, I know I wanted something to happen between us the first day at school, the first time I saw you.”
“Me too.”
“It was just, I had a girlfriend and wanted so desperately to maintain that facade of a
normal life
, you know? I wanted the family, house with picket fence, some sort of stability, all that bullshit.”
I sit in silence for a moment, trying to grasp the implications of a life alone. That’s the thing. I can’t imagine myself getting married to a guy. Even living together would seem strange to me. My concept of accepting gay life is associated with loneliness. I pull at the fray of a hole in my jeans and high school comes rushing back.
THE ONLY
thing I lost when coming out was my best friend. The one I longed for, my buddy through it all, and my imagined lover. How ironic for him to push me away! He was gorgeous to me in his boyish way and mannerisms. He was skinny and lanky, but his blue eyes called me. His goofiness and humor attracted me, and one day I realized I was falling for him. I knew his body as well as I knew my own from changing together in gym, swapping clothes, and having sleepovers until we were sixteen. Sharing the same bed, under the same sheets, inches away but never touching. I’d never slept less in my life, adrenaline pumping and my mind racing as I stared at the ceiling all night.
We used to do everything together until I told him I was gay. I was going away for the weekend, and he was driving me to the airport. I thought it was time he knew. Lighting a cigarette for him and one for myself, I exhaled my secret. “So you know I’m gay, right?” He shifted awkwardly in his seat and took a big drag off his smoke. We both stared straight ahead out at the highway in silence for what seemed an eternity. Then he turned to me and promised it was fine, and he wouldn’t tell anyone until I was ready. The weight I felt crushing my chest for so long was finally lifted. I had shared myself with someone, and he accepted me. I flew away that weekend with a new sense of freedom and excitement. Maybe, just maybe, he was gay too and now he would come out to me. I actually expected that.
I came home from my weekend away and arrived at school to strange stares from people and fingers pointing from clusters gathered in the locker-lined hallways. Everyone knew. When I confronted him, all he could say was, “You didn’t actually think I could keep something like that to myself, did you?” From then on everything changed. We stopped hanging out. Just like that. Before the deadly poison was released we hung out every day, talked on the phone for an hour every night. Now, if I was lucky I got an awkward lift of the chin in recognition down the school hallways. I stopped him one day and asked why it was weird. I told him I wanted my friend back. He replied, “I’m still your friend, I just hate gays. I think it’s disgusting.”
I guess that’s when the loneliness started to settle in.
“DO YOU
remember when we did that AIDS walk together in the fall?” Chris asks, pulling me back to the present. “I wanted to ask you out so badly, but then you told me you had a girlfriend. I was crushed.”
“I probably didn’t even realize that you were interested. Actually I know I didn’t,” I recall.
“It was like we were part of each other’s lives but we kept missing each other. You were always there and I could sense it, but it was like you were behind a scrim I couldn’t penetrate, so to speak.”
I laugh at his innuendo. “Yeah, it was a growth time for me. I was discovering I actually had feelings and needed people.” I lie down on his bed and place my arms behind my head, closing my eyes. My mind drifts to the many ups and downs I’d experienced since coming to college, this place of self-realization.
I open my eyes in contented disbelief to the sound of Chris gently singing. Propped up on one elbow, he strokes my hair with one hand as he smiles and continues singing. I take his hand in mine and shove any thought of how cheesy this all is out of my head. I don’t care! I lean over and stop his mouth from the second verse with my own.
I ROLL
over and fumble with my alarm clock until it stops its annoying, pulsing beep and grab a pen.
March 18
6:00 a.m. Here I am, devoted to these damn morning pages…. The life and times of Ashley no doubt! What did this little devil do last night? Or should I say today? I went over to hang with Chris. Where did we end up? Oh, making out. And then I slept over. Funny, I feel no anxiety about writing it now for the first time.
I am gay
. I am a homosexual. I like guys. I just broke up with Rachel like a month ago. I know. It’s crazy. I don’t know what I’m doing but it feels right. I feel I’m taking the correct steps towards truth. Yeah, so it happened. I’ve been dying for a kiss, to hold his hand. When it started out the rule in my head was “above the belt” and we kept it there… mostly. Shit! I loved it. It felt so right and so good….
The walk or ride home after sleeping with someone is always full of excitement. Ideally you want to spend the night in each other’s arms and wake up to kisses you wish were post the magic of a toothbrush. But that shimmy down the fire escape, the walk home in that miraculous moment when the night conceives the dawn is beautiful. Whether you’re stuck in early morning traffic, greeting the window cleaners, realizing you forgot your key, or it starts to rain; you’re happy. You just made love. And that makes you feel good.
I think one of the best parts is when you can smell the other person on you for the rest of the day. Maybe I have extraordinary olfactory senses, but sometimes even after a shower I can smell sex. It’s great. I’ll be sitting in class or at lunch and I smell sex and I can’t help but smile!
Of course it eventually goes away and then I’m forced to press Play on my mental VCR and view past adventures for stimulation. This can be greatly entertaining and especially useful if you can view past tapes with your eyes open, caught in a dry conversation or boring location. I don’t bore easily, though. I think I was bored once when I was like seven and started coercing my playmates into mild strip games. That’s when my mother explained sex to me. I’ve been interested ever since. Growing up was an endless game of truth or dare. Truth held my interest for a while, but I loved to give and get juicy dares. I played with groups of girls (which was fun) and groups of guys (which always left that feeling of going over railroad tracks in my stomach).
I remember the first time I saw a real “dirty” magazine. I was thirteen and my older brother was driving me to my friend Kellyn’s house. Halfway there he pulls out this magazine from his backpack.
“Here, feast your eyes on these titties!” he said, throwing it in my lap. With my jaw slack, I ripped through pages of beautiful women exposing their breasts and inviting me with their eyes into their world. Then I came to “Ricky and Rebecca.” They have guys in these magazines too?!? I was instantly hot and sweating as I gazed at Ricky staring back at me. The next five pages were Ricky and Rebecca teasing each other, stripping, and getting it on. My eyes were glued to this man, this beautiful naked male. Even as I tried to “rush” past the layouts with guys to confirm my heterosexuality for my brother, I was downloading every picture I saw, saving each as a jpg. file to bring up later. When we arrived at Kellyn’s house, I handed my brother the magazine from sweaty hands and hopped out of the car mumbling a good-bye. I could hardly walk. I beelined around the corner and into the back alley where I could calm down before going in to meet the girls. When I was on a level playing field, I went to the house where Kellyn, Joanne, and Erin met me at the door. In that moment I realized that “Ricky” was equally if not more appealing to me than these girls.
After discovering that I had a keen interest in the male body and once the imprint of “Ricky” started to fade in my mind, I needed new fodder. The adult magazines I occasionally found in my brother’s room or the washroom seldom quenched my desire. I had to tear through pages and pages of women to maybe find one picture with a guy in it. I mean come on! What’s up with that?!? Didn’t Larry Flynt know there were starving young homos out here?
At 7-11 one day, I stumbled across the magazine rack and noticed some scarcely clad guys on some covers. They were workout magazines like
Exercise For Men Only
, and
Body
. I picked one up and casually flipped through its pages. The men were in underwear or swimsuits working out. There were often pictures of them in a towel, in the tub, behind a motorbike cleverly placed to hide their package. This was awesome!
I picked up two and walked to the register to pay. A little embarrassed, I placed them cover down on the counter. Of course the lady at the cash register turned them over commenting, “Wow! He’s hot, huh? You like working out?”
I mumbled a response, turning red, grabbed my magazines, and darted out of the store. Once outside I slipped them down the front of my jeans and walked home so no one would catch me with the incriminating evidence. Arriving home I yelled a hello, ran downstairs to my room, locked the door, and lay on my bed examining these beautiful men.
I wish I was examining one of those beautiful men now instead of writing these damn regurgitations of streaming consciousness. At least I’ve stopped listing nonsensical alliterations and graduated to forming nearly coherent sentences. Things are looking up!
Dear Antonio,
Please, please, please let Chris and I get cast together in a summer show. It would be perfect! We could move in together. I’ve never had a roommate that I had so much fun with and adored. Oh, if only Chris, Michelle, and I could be contracted together, I’d be so happy. That’s all I really want. But as always let Your will be done…. Did I say pretty please?
“SO WHAT
did he say? Is it over with Jeremy?” Michelle asks. Michelle is my buddy, my confidante, and a best friend to both Chris and me. She is a vision with streaming blonde hair, a perky bust, and a dancer’s figure. The rumors around college point to us as the new couple, which we both laugh at. As we walk toward Oak Bay Village with its quaint bookshops, Londonesque streetlamps, and potted flowers lining the cobbled walkways, I confide all my secrets to her.
“I think he’s going to break it off. He really wants the three of us to live together. Is that okay with you? Like would it be awkward?” I ask.
“As long as you promise to install my pole for strip dancing, you guys can do whatever you want!” Michelle laughs, throwing a leg up on a streetlamp and giving me her best porn star face. I laugh and although I think she’s joking, I actually do plan to furbish the pad with a fireman’s pole.
“Hell, I’ll use it too,” I exclaim, ducking in to kiss her quickly on the cheek. There has always been a sexual chemistry between Michelle and myself, and I have envisioned a few lewd acts with her. That’s where I get torn. I mean, the smell of her hair and the way she walks are sometimes enough for me to get excited, but just for a minute. Any longer and I may be sucked back into Breedersville.
“So what do you think? Can friends have sex and still just be friends?” Her question catches me off guard.
“Ummm…. Yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Why? I mean sex always involves emotions, I think.” The conversation hangs in the air for a few moments and then dissipates into silence around us. The sun beats down on my face and I am thankful. My mind, however, is in consternation over our last jolted comments. Can friends be friends after sex? Something must change, right? Once you share something like that, it must be hard to look at them the same way over a cup of cappuccino. The conversation could be foraying into stock market crashes, and all I can think is
I saw your hoo-hoo. You touched my ding-a-ling!
Maybe I’m just very immature. But there definitely are emotional ties that bind with sex.