Openly Straight (18 page)

It
was Tuesday night, two days before Thanksgiving. Ben and I were packing and talking about what we were going to do in Colorado the next three days, and there was a knock on the door.

Ben crossed the room and opened it, and I saw his expression before I saw who was there. His mouth opened wide, and then his eyes got wide, and it was like he came to life in a way that I hadn’t ever seen.

Standing there at the door was Mr. Donnelly, and by his side, with a sheepish grin on his face, was Bryce.

“B!” Ben said, and the two of them hugged hard. Mr. Donnelly stood smiling at the reunion, and I looked out in the hallway and saw that other kids were milling around.

“How are you?” Ben asked.

Bryce waved the question away, like it didn’t matter. Of course it did, but when someone’s been depressed, I guess you give them a little leeway.

“You got another roommate?” he asked.

“Unofficially,” Ben responded, pointing to me. “Bryce, you remember Rafe?”

“Oh, right. Broken nose guy. What up?”

“Not much,” I said, feeling awkward. I went and shook his hand.

“You back to stay?” Ben asked.

“Nah. I’m here to pack up my things. I’m fine, don’t worry. Just need to be home for a while.”

“Oh. Okay …” Ben said, and I couldn’t quite read his emotion.

“You guys probably have lots to catch up on,” I said.

Ben nodded. “Just for a bit. But I want the three of us to hang out.”

Bryce looked at his watch. “My mom’s downstairs in the car. I told her an hour.”

“See if she’ll go for two, okay?”

Bryce texted his mom. She answered right away, and Bryce smiled. “Yeah, I can. She said she’d go get coffee.”

“I’m out of here,” I said. “Back in?”

“Like an hour,” Ben said, and Bryce nodded.

I went and hung out with Albie and Toby in my old room, listening to the police scanner and barely drinking a Red Bull. They talked about EMT training, which Albie was thinking of doing over the summer. He thought maybe he’d take a year off before college and try that. Toby said that if he was going to take a year off from school, it would be to become a Rock Cat. And then he started kicking really high, which was weird.

“What the hell is a Rock Cat?” Albie asked.

“You know. Radio City Music Hall in New York? Every Christmas? The Rock Cats. Duh.”

“Did your mom put battery acid in your cereal?” Albie asked. “They’re the Rockettes.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“Uh. Yeah. They are.”

Toby blushed. “Well, you think that old song is about a ‘Hollow Batgirl.’”

“Shut up,” Albie said, turning away.

“What’s a hollow batgirl?” I asked.

“It’s a ‘Hollaback Girl’ when you have trouble hearing lyrics and all your pop culture references come from
Survival Planet
,” Toby said.

I laughed. “Albie. Dude.”

“Whatever,” Albie said. “I like the image of mine better. A batgirl who is hollow. It’s poetic.”

“Very. Especially for a song where the singer spells ‘bananas’ for the audience,” Toby said.

“‘Help Boy Scouts Blind Kids,’” Albie said in a monotone.

Toby said, “Stop. Shut up.”

Albie ignored Toby. “We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, ‘Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.’ Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, ‘That’s not right. They need to be stopped.’”

I cracked up. “Oh no,” I said.

“When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby’s whole face went white. He said, ‘Forget it. Let’s go.’ But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him
walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, ‘I didn’t see the comma.’”

I turned to Toby. “You thought the Boy Scouts were collecting money so they could actually blind kids?”

He shrugged. “Well, they’re anti-gay, you know. I guess I didn’t think it was a huge stretch. Besides, I was mostly joking?”

Albie shook his head. “Yeah. He really wasn’t.”

“And how were they going to go about blinding kids, in that crazy brain of yours?” I asked.

Toby was making a careful study of the floor below him, like it was really fascinating.

“Slingshot,” he finally said.

I couldn’t wait for the hour to be up. So at fifty-seven minutes, I knocked on Ben’s door.

“Here’s the guy,” he said, letting me in.

Bryce was sprawled on his bed, which was now stripped of sheets. “Hey. Sorry, but you just lost your sheets and comforter. Gotta bring ’em home.”

“I hope it was okay….”

“Oh, yeah, no worries. I’m just glad you’re here.” Bryce smiled, and I realized why Ben liked him. Bryce was a genuinely nice guy. I saw how Ben’s face lit up in his presence.

Ben and I had plastic screwdrivers and Bryce drank the Gatorade straight. He couldn’t drink anymore because of his depression medication. We talked and laughed and the time went by like nothing. Bryce really could do amazing impersonations, and he was glad to get caught up on Donnelly’s rants, which he joked was the thing he missed most about Natick.

I knew Bryce had already told Ben what was going on, but he had no problem telling me too. He was in therapy, like, five times a week. He had to take an antidepressant. His mom was homeschooling him, which was pretty rough, because it meant living with your teacher 24/7.

I couldn’t imagine being homeschooled. Especially by my mom. I guarantee I’d become homicidal within a week.

Way too soon, Bryce looked at his watch and said it was time to go.

“I’ll text you,” he said. “Don’t worry, okay?”

“Cool,” Ben said. “Just let me know how you’re doing, man. Two months without talking to you at all sucked.”

“Okay,” Bryce said.

“I love you, buddy.”

“I know,” Bryce said. “Love you too.”

He turned to me then. “Thanks for looking out for Ben,” he said. “The thing I felt most guilty about the last couple of months was thinking that Ben was all alone here at Natick. He’s not, so that’s cool.”

“Yeah, um, no problem,” I said, my face reddening.

When Bryce left, Ben flopped down on his bed. I flopped down on the one that was now really mine. We just hung out there in the calm silence of the moment.

“He’s … a great guy,” I said.

“I know.”

“Why do you think he was depressed?” I asked.

Ben thought about it for a minute. “I think being different is really hard, for one.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, he was double different, because he’s a good, sensitive guy, and he’s black. So that’s like two lenses.”

“Lenses?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Bryce said it’s like lenses that you see the world through. They shift your perspective on everything you see. They create what’s real for you, and unlike glasses, you can never take them off and see what normal is to other people, you know? Bryce had two, and he said it was hard to relate to some of the students here, who seem to have none.”

“Well, you have one,” I said.

“I guess so. You do too.”

“Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes. I imagined lenses. And then I tried to imagine what Ben’s lenses might see. In me. When I opened my eyes, Ben was looking directly at me. I held his gaze and he held mine, and we saw each other. We saw. As clearly as my lenses would allow, I saw who Ben was, and it was good. And I could tell from his expression that he was seeing me too. Really seeing.

We each had another drink and were pretty tired by midnight. Tomorrow would be a long travel day, with the flight from Boston to Denver in the morning. But other than waking up, there wasn’t that much we needed to do, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus I had a nice buzz on.

“I should go get my sheets and blanket,” I said, struggling to stand up. I was a little bleary, but for comic effect I pretended to be worse than I was. I pushed down on the mattress and undulated like I couldn’t lift myself, and then I collapsed back onto the bed.

Ben started cracking up. “Don’t fall.”

I thrashed around for a few more seconds before finally lifting myself to my feet. I swayed exaggeratedly.

“You’re gonna fall,” he said, even though I was joking. “C’mon.”

“C’mon what?”

He sat up and patted his bed. “C’mere, you doofus.”

I tentatively sat down on the side of the bed. Ben was lying on his back, his eyes closed, his huge arms over his head. He reached out and put his hand on my arm.

“Just sleep here.”

“Okay,” I said, finding it hard to even breathe.

Silently, he scooted over and pulled up his comforter. He had on his sweatpants and T-shirt. I left mine on too. I settled under the sheets facing away from him, because if I faced him, he would have gotten seriously poked. He turned and put his arm over me.

“I’m so glad I know you, Rafe,” he said.

“Me too,” I whispered, kind of holding my breath.

He hugged me, and the heat of his torso and stomach against my back made me feel like melting. I could feel and smell his vodka-tinged breath as it blew across my ear and over my cheek. I had to concentrate on my own breathing. I couldn’t move. I had never, ever wanted to do something more than I wanted to push back into him, to feel whether he had a hard-on. I wanted to know, needed to. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Colorado tomorrow,” I said.

“I can’t wait.”

Soon I heard his snores, soft and familiar. The same snores I’d heard and loved from across the room for the past two months. Soon, hard gave way to soft, and I relaxed into Ben. And even though I didn’t sleep a wink all night, it was the best night of rest I’d had my whole life.

“This
is the longest flight I’ve ever taken,” I said, settling into seat 20E. “By a lot.”

Ben was in 20D, and no one was in 20F, the window seat. It was first-come, first-served seating, so Ben told me that to make sure no one else sat in our row, I should scoot over to the window seat during boarding.

“Nobody likes a middle seat, especially between two guys, and especially when one of ’em is me,” he said, sitting up straight so his broad shoulders looked even broader.

Then he instructed me to stare menacingly into the eyes of anyone who glanced my way. It was hard to do, because I kept laughing, but Ben seemed pretty intent on following his own rules. And just as he planned, the doors closed and no one sat between us.

The plane took off, and we settled in for the four-hour trip. Neither of us said anything about anything when we woke up that morning (well, when he woke up and when I pretended to), or when we finished packing, or when we got in the cab. It was like it was just our sleeping arrangement. Then I wondered if that was what this
was, like a
Brokeback Mountain
thing. We’d sleep in the same bed for a year, and finally we’d do it, but we’d never talk about it, ever, and then Ben would get married and I’d be killed in Texas.

Probably not, but you can never be too careful with these things.

“Do you think Toby and Robinson?” Ben said as we reached cruising altitude and I’d popped my ears so that I could hear.

I looked at him. There was no irony in his voice, nothing that told me he was pretending what happened last night hadn’t happened. No
Brokeback
here, I realized. Ben was too good for that.

“I don’t know. Hairy butt and all?”

“Perchance,” Ben said.

My brain was spinning. Maybe all the guys were doing gay stuff, like if we dug a little bit, we’d find out that Steve and Zack were buddies too. “Do you think it’s, like, everyone?”

“Everyone what?”

“Never mind,” I said.

We played cards and I ordered spicy tomato juice, which was apparently only available at high altitudes, since I’d never even heard of it before.

“People are really stupid about gay stuff,” Ben said while shuffling, after I’d beaten him twice.

“Yeah,” I said. “People really are.”

The silence was deafening. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, but I was too afraid. How did straight guys do this? Tiptoe toward the line and then maybe cross it, maybe not, without ever discussing the rules? It was exhausting, and I wasn’t even sure if there was a line. I mean, nothing had happened, really. Just two guys sleeping together. It happened out in the wild all the time. Of course
Ben had no idea that I was hard as a rock for a good half hour. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been, which made me wonder more whether he was simply a nice straight guy with a close guy friend whom he happened to love. Could I be that too, if I tried? Would I want to be?

As we flew over Ohio, and then Indiana — I knew this because the annoying pilot kept telling us where we were — I felt like I needed to say something. It was burning the back of my throat, all the not saying.

“Did you and Bryce ever do that?”

Ben looked up at me. “Ever do what?”

“I dunno. Sleep in the same bed?”

He laughed. “No.”

“But we did.”

He laughed again, his warm, translucent eyes looking into mine without any fear. “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

“I just wonder … what it means, if it means anything, you know?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess it means we’re comfortable with each other and we love each other, I guess.”

The old, bald guy in the seat in front of us looked back, saw how big Ben was, and turned forward again. I looked away from Ben too, because I was afraid what my eyes would reveal if I kept looking at him.

“Huh,” I said.

“Well, I know what part of it means, and part of it I don’t. I guess that’s all I can say,” Ben said.

I laughed. “Maybe you could just explain that cryptic statement.”

Ben lobbed his head from side to side. “Perchance I could.”

We looked at each other again, as if we were both asking permission, permission to talk, permission to be open. It seemed crazy to me, given how we talked about everything.

He said, “Part of it means what I said. I love you. You love me. We love each other.”

“Right,” I said.

He went on, “The Greeks were smarter than us, and they had different words for different kinds of love. There’s
storge
, which is family love. That’s not us. There’s
eros
, which is sexual love. There’s
philia
, which is brotherly love. And then there’s the highest form.
Agape
.” He pronounced it “aga-pay.” “That’s transcendental love, like when you place the other person above yourself.”

“You are so going to get into Harvard.”

He laughed. “So, obviously our friendship is to some degree
philia
.”

“Like
pedophilia
or
necrophilia
?”

“That’s disgusting,” he said. “But, yeah, same root, I guess.”

I nodded.

“And I don’t know about
eros
. I guess that’s the part I mean by ‘I don’t know.’ I mean, for me, my
eros
has always been pointed toward girls.”

“Girls like that,” I said. “Me too.”

“I guess I’d like to think of what we have as
agape
. A higher love. Something that transcends. Something not about sex or brotherhood but about two people truly connecting.”

That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn’t. I wasn’t big or masculine enough. In
my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all
agape
on your ass, and you’d just sit there like, huh.
Agape.
Interesting.

“
Agape
,” I said. “I like that.”

A smile crept across his face. “Me too.”

“So we’re not … aga-gay?”

He laughed. “I knew you were thinking that. I guess I sort of was too. You know what, Rafe? If I was ever gonna be aga-gay with anyone, it would be you.”

The guy in the seat in front of us turned and looked at us again. Ben glared at him and he turned back around. I don’t know what shade of red I turned or whether Ben even noticed.

“Me too. With you,” I said.

Ben reached over and touched my hand, and I opened my fist, and he put his hand in it. It felt warm, slightly damp. I wanted to put my lips on the area between his thumb and forefinger, and keep it there, forever.

“Like in India,” I said.

He smiled. “That’s right.”