Openly Straight (24 page)

I
chose Sunday morning to talk to Ben. Maybe it was a church thing, like my way of doing the right thing when most folks were out doing their version of the right thing.

I knocked on his door and he answered it in a black T-shirt and his blue sweatpants. He looked at me and a smile crossed his face, and a strong feeling of relief surged through my temples. I wanted to say,
I love you, I’m in love with you, let’s stay in love no matter what after this conversation.
But that isn’t how it works, maybe. I guessed I was about to find out.

He let me in and closed the door, and I sat down on Bryce’s/my old bed. It felt cold, unslept in. Not much mine anymore. He sat down on his bed, and tapped the space next to him.

“C’mon,” he said. “We need to talk. Come over here.”

My heartbeat accelerated as I crossed the room and sat down next to him, picking up his usual garlicky, sweaty scent. We were inches from each other. I glanced up at his eyes and was surprised to find them looking soft, kind. Red.

“I miss you so bad,” he said, and the first tear fell. “This week
hasn’t been right. It’s been all wrong. I just … I miss you so bad, but this is hard.”

“I know,” I said, putting my hand on his leg and rubbing.

He settled into the touch, breathed into it, relaxed.

“You see, I do love you, Rafe. But. And I know you love me. I know that. But. I just can’t bear the thought of you being mad at me, and this is fucking tearing me apart.”

The tears were streaming pretty good now, and I let myself cry too. Here we were, two jocks, crying together.

“Please don’t hate me. It’s just, I know I love you. But the thing is, I lied to you.”

I couldn’t swallow.

“I lied to you when I said I was perfectly okay with being gay or straight. I’m not. I mean, for other people, I am. But for me, I’m not. I have to be straight.”

My stomach dropped. “I understand,” I said.

“Here’s the thing, Rafe. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, so please just hear me out before you say anything or walk away.

“I love you. I really do. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, you’re the person I’m closest to in the whole world.”

And the tears again, but he didn’t wipe them away and he didn’t stop talking.

“The thing is, I’m pretty sure you’re gay. I just know it. You never talk about Claire Olivia unless I bring her up. I think you’re gonna figure out over time that you’re gay, and I’m totally okay with that. But the thing is, this, us, is something that’s just not gonna happen, because it can’t.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

“So even if you tell me you aren’t gay, I think you probably are. And I’m pretty sure I’m not. Because I can’t be. My family just isn’t like yours, and … I’m not ready to give them up. They’re all I have, Rafe. Other than you. So we need to not do that. Okay? Can you still love me as your friend even if we don’t go there?”

As noisy as my head was, it took me a few moments until I was actually able to speak.

“Well, you’re right, Ben. I am gay.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “And it’s so good that you know too.”

I wanted to stand up. I wanted to stand and pace. I wanted to pull my hand off Ben’s leg and pace around the room. But I felt glued down.

“Well, there’s more. There’s more that I have to say. But promise me if I tell you what I have to tell you, you’ll let me tell the whole thing, and not let this come between us? Not just walk out or walk away?”

Ben’s expression was pained then, and I felt like my head could explode because of the pressure in there.

“I promise, Rafe. Just tell me. You’re scaring me.”

The entire explanation took a little over ten minutes. I told him the truth about what my life had been like in Boulder, and how I wanted things to be different at Natick. I told him that I didn’t mean to fall in love, and that by the time I had it was too late to say anything without risking the friendship. Ben sat quietly for a moment, not looking at me exactly, not really looking anywhere. His eyes, his liquid, beautiful blue eyes, were painfully unfocused, and I just wanted to go envelop him, and tell him again and again how sorry I
was for not telling him everything, and especially for not telling him sooner.

When I finished talking, the room was dead quiet. Ben and me, sitting together. My hand still on his leg, but now awkward, wrong. I took it off.

And then Ben stood up, walked across the room, grabbed his shoes and coat, and walked out the door.

I
found him in the library. Sundays aren’t a big library day at Natick, at least not in the morning, and he was alone in the carrels, reading. He looked up and saw me, and turned away.

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I can’t. We need to talk this out. This isn’t the end, Ben. I mean, it doesn’t have to be. If you can just let me explain …”

“Really, no,” Ben said, raising his voice a bit, even though we were in public. “This isn’t a friendship anymore. Do you have any idea what you put me through? I can’t believe I thought I fucking loved you.”

“I did love you. I do,” I said.

“Yeah, well,
I
didn’t have all the facts,” Ben said, lowering his voice again. “I thought we were going through the same thing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like experimenting,” Ben said. “Two guys figuring stuff out together.”

“But that’s exactly what it was. What we are.”

He shook his head. “Apparently you were way ahead of me. You just didn’t tell me.”

“So you wouldn’t have loved me if you knew I was gay?” I asked him.

He said, “I guess we’ll never know.”

I sat on the floor at the foot of his carrel and said, “You know, I get that I screwed up. And I’m so sorry. But what I don’t get is why me not telling you everything about my inner thoughts is worse than you not telling me about yours.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Whatever,” he said.

That pissed me off. “Because it’s not like you shared everything with me. Fuck
agape
. That was
sex
, Ben. And I’m a guy. And don’t even tell me that you never thought about that before, because obviously you did.” I was surprising myself with how bold I was being.

“It’s totally different,” he said. “It’s normal not to share every inner thought with someone. It’s not normal to actually BE openly gay and not share that little fact.”

Now I shook my head. “This is about the label, isn’t it? If it’s two straight guys playing around, experimenting, that’s cool. But if one of the guys is gay, it’s not okay. Perfect.”

Ben took a deep breath. “You can make this about whatever you want to make this about. But the fact is, you made up an entire person who was my best friend. Who I had
sex
with,” he said, lowering his voice again. “How do you expect me to feel?”

“Everything else was really me,” I said. “Just the one thing that wasn’t.”

He cringed. “What does that even mean? How can you turn off such an important part of yourself and expect everything else to stay the same? You lied to me, Rafe. That’s who you are. Not gay, not straight. Someone who lied to me and who I can’t trust.”

“You don’t get it. I didn’t want to lie. It was just, this barrier. There was this barrier between me and so many guys. I couldn’t take it anymore. You have to understand. I was so tired of feeling different. I just wanted to feel like one of the guys for once.”

He bit his lip so hard I worried it was going to bleed. “So it’s okay you lied because you wanted to feel like, what? One of the guys? What does that even mean? You lied, Rafe. That’s the only thing that matters here. Not why. Just that you lied.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, hiding my face with my hands. “Really I am. Just try to understand. I need you to understand because if you don’t, I won’t have anything or anyone.”

Ben stood up. He said, “The barrier isn’t straight versus gay; it’s real versus bullshit. I thought you were real and honest and now I think that was nothing but a load of crap. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

“It just snowballed. It’s kind of hard to tell somebody something when you don’t tell them up front,” I said.

“That’s why you shouldn’t do that,” Ben said. “So that a few months later, your once closest friend doesn’t feel like killing you.”

I could not have imagined he could get that angry over a simple omission. “What about Robinson? I’m not the only guy who’s ever not told people about being gay.”

“No,” Ben said, gathering his books. “But you’re the only one who ever did it to me.”

That one stung. I didn’t know what to say. Ben shook his head, and once again he walked away. Ben leaving a room. That was something I was getting used to. But before he walked off, he said one last thing.

“I should have gone with what I thought of you that first day. I knew what you were.” His eyes were cold, dead to me.

“Gay?” I asked.

“No,” he said, exasperated. “Fundamentally dishonest.”

“You
were quiet all period,” Mr. Scarborough said, when I visited him in his office after class on Monday. “Not a fan of A. M. Homes’s?”

“She’s fine. Mostly just not a fan of Rafe’s today.” I flopped down in the chair across the desk from him.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “What happened?”

I put my head in my hands. “My lives have officially collided,” I said. “Huge crash. Major casualties.”

“Ah,” he said. “So what now?”

I hadn’t told him about Ben. When I stopped by, we mostly talked about books and writing. “I have absolutely no idea,” I said.

“Write about it.”

“But what about
A History of Rafe
?”

“What about it? Seems like your history caught up to your present. Write about the present. Write about how your attempt to divorce yourself from your past is working today. From what I can see, I’d say it’s not going so well.”

“It’s not. My best friend …”

He waved his hands. “Don’t tell me about it. Write it down. I’m pretty sure at this point you’re well past the part where you start with nothing. Just go from where you are. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I dropped my pen and groaned. “This is bullshit,” I said. “I’m doing it again.”

I looked around the empty room. It was Tuesday morning and Albie was at class. I was skipping math, because this felt more important.

“And now I’m talking to myself. Great. This is an excellent sign.”

Why did it always feel like I was on stage in my writing? Who said shit like “I am fully aware that I’m not an orphan in Somalia?” It was just more bullshit, wasn’t it? That’s what Mr. Scarborough had been saying all this time, but that’s how I was used to writing.

“Okay, Rafe,” I said to myself. “Try again. Stop writing shit.”

I got up from the desk and went and got a soda from Albie’s refrigerator. I’d owe him one. I sat back down at the desk and tried to concentrate. Why was I writing about Lady Gaga and cameras? What the hell did this have to do with what I was feeling?

But that’s what a fastwrite is about
, another part of me argued. I re-read the page. The line “I got so tired of being looked at,” stared me in the face.

The words blended together. Looked at. Lookedat. Igotsotired. What did it all mean? I picked up my pen and took a deep breath.
Write until something happens
, I told myself.
Just go.

I picked up the paper and re-read what I’d just written.

“I didn’t tell him I was gay because I didn’t want anything to come between us,”
I said out loud.

I chewed on the edge of my pen and let those words and their meaning seep into my brain. And I was like,
Wow. Did I just write that? I didn’t want who I am to come between us? How could I not have seen that?

I ran my pen over my top teeth like a percussion stick across a xylophone. I didn’t want anything to come between us, so I withheld a part of me? How hadn’t I realized that doesn’t make sense? How was I expecting to get closer to someone by not being truly me?

I felt drunk, wobbly. I looked at the Coke can to make sure I wasn’t drinking beer without knowing it. How had I not seen that before?

I had to keep going. See what other crazy shit was occupying my brain.