Openly Straight (12 page)

“I
want to talk a bit today about respecting and understanding differences,” Mr. Scarborough said as he sat down on the corner of his desk and faced us, crossing his loafers. He had become my favorite teacher, and I had spent several free periods in his office, just talking about writing.

“I’m sure there are a lot of feelings going on about your classmate Bryce Hixon, who is no longer in school with us. Now, the word around school, I understand, is that Bryce suffered from depression. Fine. But I want to talk about the invisible elephant in the room.

“Bryce is black. How many other black students are there in the junior class?”

Everyone looked around. The answer was obvious.

“None?” I said.

He nodded. “Oftentimes here at Natick, we talk about being color-blind. But I want, for just a moment, for you to think about what it might be like to be the only black person in the room. Would color blindness then be a good thing, or a bad thing?”

Again, we were quiet. There was awkward foot shuffling.

“Depends?” a kid in the back said.

“Sure. Depends,” Scarborough said. “What else?”

“We’re a pretty tolerant place,” Steve said, an edge to his voice.

“Ah, interesting word. Tolerant. What does
tolerant
mean?”

“It means we tolerate,” Steve said, flat. “We accept people.”

“Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different.
To tolerate
seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn’t it?
Acceptance
, though, what’s that?”

I thought about that. It reminded me of the excerpt from Edmund White’s
A Boy’s Own Story
that Mr. Scarborough had assigned us. White had talked about the strange sort of tolerance his roommates had had for him back at his boarding school in the 1950s. I remembered underlining the word
tolerance
. I mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less. So is acceptance at the top of the pyramid? Is that what everyone wants in the best of all possible worlds? Acceptance? I rolled the idea around in my head. It didn’t feel right, somehow.

No one was saying anything.

“
Acceptance
also has a bit of negative to it, doesn’t it?” I finally said.

Scarborough looked over at me. “Yes! Tell me more about that.”

My face reddened. I knew everyone was looking at me. I didn’t want to stand out in this conversation, but I did have something to add. I took a shot.

“Well, if you need to accept something, that means it’s not like it should be, right? Like you accept something as it is.”

“No,” someone said, from the back. “You get accepted into college. It doesn’t mean you aren’t as you should be. That’s stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Scarborough said. “Stay with me here. That’s a slightly different form of the word. And yet, colleges accept students who are otherwise rejected. Acceptance is an affirmation that you’re good enough.”

We were quiet. I looked around. A lot of the kids, Steve included, seemed to be writing that down, and I almost laughed. It was like,
This isn’t going to be on a test, dummies. Listen. Stop worrying about memorizing things you don’t even understand.
I turned my eyes to Scarborough, and I watched as he saw the same thing I did. I could see that the class’s silence was even more disappointing to him. His expression was sad, and then he caught me looking and put on a poker face as quickly as he could. It made me feel good to know I wasn’t the only one concerned about the lack of intellectual curiosity within this group.

“It’s hard to be different,” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.”

The writing continued, and I looked at Scarborough, thinking:
That’s never gonna happen with this bunch
. And damned if he didn’t look back at me and sigh.

As I walked back to East Hall after class, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A flicker of color, near the tree line. When you walk across the quad toward the dorm, the woods are to the left. There are some dirt paths into the woods, and everyone knows that some kids go there to smoke weed. Infamous. And way risky at Natick; if you get caught with weed, you get kicked out. It’s that simple.

I turned my head, and what I saw surprised me. It was Robinson, emerging from the woods. He was half walking, half jogging toward East Hall, turning his head left and right to see who was noticing. He saw me, and he didn’t freeze exactly, but he slowed his pace and looked down, as if that were somehow going to make him look less guilty. I almost sped up to catch him and say something like, “Busted!” but I didn’t know him well enough to joke around about something that could be serious. And I hadn’t really taken him for a stoner type.

So I pretended I hadn’t seen him or didn’t care, which was basically true. What he did was his business. I just kept walking, a good fifty yards behind him. But about a minute later, I saw another flash out of the corner of my eye, and this time, what I saw sort of was my business.

Toby, exiting the woods as well. Heading toward Academy Hall, the building with all the classrooms, where I was walking from. He didn’t see me.

Toby and … Robinson? In the woods, alone? Robinson was Toby’s mystery boyfriend? The idea made me laugh. Robinson the Jockhead? Gorilla Butt? No way. Robinson was like the weirdest, most random choice. Not that I was surprised that maybe he was gay or bi; lots of people you’d never think could be gay or bi actually are. I knew that, everyone knew that. But … Toby and Robinson? For reals?

We had four wins, two losses, and two draws going into our game with Exeter. And we knew we were going to lose to them. We always do. The question was, how badly?

Well, without Bryce, 6–1 badly.

I had started for the first time, as the left midfielder. They had to move Rodriguez to the position that Bryce had played. The left midfielder needs to be fast and in shape, and be able to dribble the ball upfield and pass to our best offensive players.

I wasn’t great but I wasn’t bad. I definitely don’t think we lost because of me. It’s just that Exeter is superfast and strong, and we couldn’t quite keep up.

“Listen up, boys,” Coach Donnelly said after the game. “I generally don’t praise a loss. Especially a loss by five goals. But I must say, you showed heart out there today. As a team, we have an enlarged heart, and by and large that’s a function of your effort.”

Ben and I walked to the locker room together afterward.

“I’m very concerned about this enlarged heart we have,” I said.

“Me too,” Ben said as he held the locker room door open, and we were hit with the stench of sweat. “We can probably fix it by trying less and relaxing more.”

“Yes. We should send that in to the medical journals. We’ll be saving lives.”

In the showers, it was low-key. The loss had taken the wind out of a lot of the guys’ sails, and that included Steve, who, as striker, had really not gotten the job done. So we soaped and rinsed in silence, listening to the sound of water slapping tile.

I had gotten used to taking a shower at the far end, where I could turn around if I got shy. Showering in the middle of the room seemed like a dangerous thing to do, especially since there was the possibility I could get excited by all the bodies surrounding me. It hadn’t happened to me yet, but there was no telling when, especially since having no room of my own to “take care of things” had begun to
weigh on me. I wondered if storing up semen would have a health impact on me, positive or negative, like shinier hair or weight gain.

“Hey, Steve, did you hook up with Melody?” someone asked. I think it was Zack, but I wasn’t sure because of the sound in the shower chamber.

“Shut up,” said Steve. “Why do you wanna know? You want to hook up with her?”

“Maybe,” Zack said. “She’s seriously stacked.”

“Well, then, yeah. I did. Hands off.”

There was laughter, and then Zack did this thing in which he wet his hair and then shook his head like a dog, getting everyone else wet. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, since we were already, you know, in a shower. I made a mental note to ask Ben about this phenomenon. He was becoming a very good source for long, philosophical discussions about all things less than brilliant at Natick.

“Stop it, freak,” Steve said, wiping the water from Zack’s hair out of his eyes. “You know Robinson’s getting laid. Always off somewhere. You got a babe somewhere?”

“Yep,” Robinson said.

My face flushed, embarrassed for Robinson. I figured he meant Toby. And if he did, here was someone who was actively lying about who he was. Did he feel like he had to? What did he think would happen if his buddies Steve and Zack knew about him and Toby? And why didn’t he come out last year, after the college football player came and talked? I looked over at him, and it was like I could see inside him, inside his rib cage, all the intricate muscles and veins and bone and the same heart that everyone else had. Was it twisting in there? I felt sorry for him.

“Man, I would not want to see that hairy ass of yours in motion, you know,” Steve said, and then he mimed pumping in and out, which, I have to say, was not so bad to watch. Everyone roared with laughter. Robinson just took it. Didn’t really react in any way.

“Zack needs to get laid,” Steve continued. “What about Amber?”

“Amber is a fucking slut,” Zack said.

“Awesome,” Standish said. “Would she do me?”

“No,” Zack said.

It was customary, this naming of girls from Joey Warren. And yet every weekend at our parties, the soccer guys would stand in one corner of the room, looking all preppy and uncomfortable, until finally one of the girls broke the ice by talking to one of the guys. And then it was like the uncomfortable beginning of the party never happened.

“Is Amber the one who got splattered when Colorado threw up?” someone said.

Lots of laughter. I was glad I was under piping hot water, because that way, they couldn’t tell that I was blushing.

“Yo,” Zack said. “She leans over to kiss him and he’s like … blat!”

“Off the hook,” Steve said. “Nice, Colorado.”

“I aim to please,” I said.

“You didn’t want her?” Standish asked. “She’s crazy hot.”

“I was shitfaced” was my response.

“Yeah, true. I had to take him upstairs or he was gonna pass out in his own puke,” Steve said as he lifted his arm and washed the pit. “You have a girlfriend, Colorado?”

I’d thought about this moment all summer. The moment I was finally asked if I had a girlfriend. I’d decided that I’d say no. After all, not all straight guys have girlfriends. I’d skirt the question and remain one of the guys by being more of a listener than a talker. A follower. The quiet guy.

Standing there among my teammates, though, the silence became loud. I felt as if every second I remained quiet, my entire life at Natick was ripping apart. And I couldn’t let that happen. Sometimes, reality makes you ever so slightly shift your plan.

“Yup,” I answered.

“Back home?”

“Yeah. Claire Olivia.” My jaw felt tight.

“Oh, yeah, you read something about her in English class,” one of the guys said.

“Is she hot?” Steve asked.

“Incredibly,” I said, turning to face the shower spray.

“She blow you?” This was Steve, again.

This time I didn’t answer. I looked over at Ben, who was definitely minding his own business. I noticed that he didn’t partake in the trash talk, the girl talk. I liked being part of the soccer posse, but I had to admit, there were about a thousand things I liked better than this part, in which we talked about women like they were just things. I tried to imagine what it would be like if gay were normal and all of us were gay. Would we objectify men in the same way?

My head felt so noisy. The thoughts were rapid and loud, and I put my head under the streaming hot water, trying to wash it all clean.

“Man, you must miss that shit. Why’d you leave?” Steve asked, for some reason taking my silence as a yes.