Authors: Dani Alexander
“Old news, Angel. And I took the dimwitted pest to her prom, didn’t I? See how well I can please?” “And got caught in her bed that night.” “Her idea to do it in her bedroom three doors down from her parents. Not mine.” I gave my best poker face. “How was I
supposed to know she was a screamer?” I smiled and chuckled again. “Or her mother was too. Julia screaming in the bed, her mother screaming at the door to the bedroom. I blame you for my hearing loss from that night.”
“Mmhm,” Angelica said dubiously.
“Why do half my conversations with you end up about my father?” I sighed and set the bottle down on the coffee table, moving off the couch and into the kitchen. She didn’t follow me.
“Maybe because half of what you do is about your father.” “Not anymore. I gave up trying to be a son when I realized he only wanted one in name.” I peered into the frying pan. “Is this Chinese food?”
“Austin, is this something to do with that?” Or another woman was the unspoken question. Given my history it wasn’t a huge leap. Angelica sounded more resigned than angry. There was an inaudible sigh somewhere in her breathing. “Is that why you’ve been incommunicado?”
The food was boiling so I switched the stove off and took a deep breath. “I think I’m gay. Did you reheat this? Because I’m not ready to try your cooking just yet.” “It’s from Wang’s, and, yes, it’s reheated. I did make the rice.” She finally followed me into the kitchen and lifted the lid to the rice cooker.
My hands dropped to the counter, and I leaned against it, pressing my eyes shut. “I think I’m gay.” “Microwaved eggrolls make me queasy. They’re still lukewarm though. I think we can—”
“I think I’m gay, Angel.”
“I heard you!” Something slammed against the counter. “Stop saying it.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I twisted around and pulled two plates down from the cabinet, eyeing her sideways. She was gripping a bottle of soy sauce tightly. “We’ll talk about something else.” Snatching a couple of serving spoons, I scooped rice onto the plates.
She released the bottle, placed her hand on my shoulder again and pressed her forehead into my arm. “Austin, this is just like the other times. You’re panicking. Eight weeks before the wedding and you’re
panicking
. This is what you do every time.” That had occurred to me, and it was my modus operandi when relationships got serious. Granted, it was usually a woman I ended up with. “We can talk about this. Or we can
not
talk about it. But don’t just slip in comments.” I tossed the serving spoons into their respective dishes, stabbing one into the rice.
“There’s nothing to talk about. This is ridiculous. Gay, Austin?
Gay
?” Angelica’s hand clamped onto her hip as she yanked the soy sauce off the counter. “Do you hear yourself?” “There’s a guy.”
“What?” She whispered. I felt, rather than saw, her step back from me. “Did you…?”
“No. God, no. Nothing happened.”
Nothing of consequence
. I crushed my hands into my hair, pulled at the skin of my face with my palms, wanting to rub myself out of existence. “Christ, Angel, I don’t know how to
not
talk about this with you. I don’t know how to
not
talk about
anything
with you. I’ve told you every single thing since we met. But Jesus, how do we talk about this?”
She clutched the soy sauce to her chest, twisting it in circles.
“Okay. Okay. So there’s a guy. Just one?” I nodded, keeping my vigil over the counter. “So, you’ve thought about one man?” She laughed then, expelled a relieved and frustrated breath and placed her small hand over mine. “It’s normal, Austin. That’s normal.”
“It’s not normal. It’s all I’ve thought about for three days.” “It’s one person. You’re not gay for thinking intimately about one person, Austin. You’re just panicking like you always do and searching for something. We’ll wait it out and see.” “One person the last three days.”
“So?”
“I focused all this energy on him I think because…I didn’t want to think about the other ones,” I said quietly. She was back to hugging the soy sauce.
“You’re right. We can’t talk about this. I’m going home.” She snatched her purse up, still gripping the bottle. “Don’t touch me.” She jerked back when I reached a hand out. “What did you think was going to happen, Austin? Did you think I’d bring out the PFLAG buttons and march in the gay parade for you? Why can’t you end a relationship like a normal person?” “I don’t—”
“It always has to be some dramatic ending. Something sure to drive her away. Sleep with her best friend, her mother, her sister.
But you swore to me it wouldn’t happen with me. You swore we’d talk about it!”
“That’s what I’m doing,
goddammit
! That’s what I’m fucking doing.” I had never raised my voice to her. Not once in ten years. Not even when I was bitching about my father.
“Well, I can’t talk about this! It’s patently ridiculous. I can’t talk about
this
eight weeks before—” She was halfway to exiting when she finally stopped her whirlwind departure. I thought she might add something but two seconds after the pause she was out the door, slamming it hard enough to shake the glass figures on the mantle.
And she took my only bottle of soy sauce.
It’s Easy To Be Brave When No One But The Dead Can
Leaving dinner to rot on the counters, I climbed upstairs. I sat on the bed, pulling off my tie while staring at the dark lines between each wooden slat on my floor. Maybe she was right?
Maybe I wasn’t gay, and this was just the anxiety of a groom-to-be. The stress
was
a familiar feeling. Not just the stress, but the doubts and the pressure. I could trace them all the way back to ninth grade.
So many students. The halls reek of bubble gum gloss, cheap hair products, and teenage sweat. Everyone, save me and a few random kids, are in jeans or casual wear. Skinny, newly acne ridden, awkward and short, I enter freshman year a mere shadow of my eighth grade self.
Puberty has smacked me up and down the ugly tree and then dropped me on my face. I compound all of these problems by wearing the uniform required at my old school.
It isn’t that I prefer to wear these clothes. I watch television. I know what kids dress like. But my father insists I dress “properly”, even in public school. And what Desmond Glass Sr. wants, Desmond Glass Sr.
gets. And what he gets is his son tossed in a locker before second period.
I press my head against the cool metal door, my fist pounding against it. “I’m Austin Glass! I kissed Mitzi Baylor for three and half minutes.
Mitzi. Baylor. She was seventeen! I broadcasted pictures of my dick to the entire biology class. I’ve been kicked out of four prep schools. I’m the guy that spiked the headmaster’s tea with X! I don’t belong in a locker.
Fuck!”
A pound on the other side of the door knocks the metal into my forehead, not hard enough to do more than take me by surprise. “What’s your combo?” The voice on the other side is laughing.
I rattle off the numbers and then stumble out of the tight space.
“Thanks.”
“Mitzi? Is she even real?”
I cup two hands out of my chest and make a show of how ‘real’ she is.
“Her tongue felt real.”
“Dave,” my savior says, holding out his hand.
“Austin.”
“Well, Austin, do you have any cash?” “You’re going to shake me down now?” I tilt my chin up, mouth agape.
He’s taller than me. Same mousy brown hair as mine, same brown eyes.
Loads better looking, but not much heavier, considering he’s about four inches taller. I’m debating whether I can take him.
“I’m going to take you to buy some clothes. Can’t keep pulling you out of lockers all day. Got classes.” His grin is infectious. For a second I think about using my multitude of credit cards.
“Thanks, but if I don’t wear this, my father will spend an entire evening lecturing me on the perils of dressing like common riffraff.” “Sounds brutal. A whole lecture.” Dave laughs. “I thought you were ‘Austin Glass’, kisser of Mitzis and spiker of headmaster drinks?” “I was trying something new,” I mutter. Now that I’m home, I’m
attempting to get on my dad’s good side. Not that it has gotten me far. My father still doesn’t speak more than five words to me. Less ‘I’m disappointed, Austin.’ And more ‘Well done, boy.’ I’m not sure why I’m trying at all. “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s go.” “I’ll drive,” Dave announces. “You can tell me about biology class on the way.”
Dave takes me to Target for the first time in my life. We throw some clothes in the cart, and, later, I change in the front seat of his car. We talk about his dad, the cop, and my dad, the lawyer. His dad takes him to baseball games and lets him sip his beer once. My dad, I tell him, has seen me six times in the last twelve years, four of those were to pick me up from schools when I got expelled. At least one of those times was for doing more than ‘sipping’ beer.
“That sucks, man.”
“I guess. Thanks for the save, Dave.” I laugh and tuck my other new purchases in the locker once we arrive at school. No one is tittering at my clothes this time.
“I gotta get to class, but we can meet after school. I’ll introduce you to some people.”
“Cool,” I say and jerk a nod goodbye.
*
Jesse Chambroy makes my stomach lurch. I’m not sure if I want to throw up or smile back at him. He doesn’t look at me often, just stares at Dave a lot. I’m glad because it means I can count his freckles, and also because I don’t want to think about why he makes me feel that way when he smiles at me.
Jesse is a senior now, Dave a junior, and I’m just finishing my sophomore year. It’s a weird friendship combination, but it works.
Somehow. Maybe because Jesse comes from money, too. So he and I understand things about each other, even though I’m not even sixteen yet and he’s nearly eighteen.
I don’t get what’s going on with him and Dave though. Maybe it’s just that they’re both jocks? Dave on the baseball team, Jesse a football player.
Or maybe it’s that they’ve known each other since they were ten. For that matter, I don’t really get the three of us—Jesse, me and Dave. The only thing we all have in common is that we like fart jokes and Kung Fu movies. But for all our differences, we’ve been inseparable for more than a year, talking about baseball, lighting farts and making Jesse watch Seven Samurai over and over until he gives in and says that it’s the best movie ever made.
My father disapproves of Dave, but not of Jesse. Jesse’s family is wealthy and socially connected. So Jesse comes over often, hangs out in my room and makes my stomach feel like I’m riding a roller coaster. I try not to sniff him as we sit on my bed, flipping through his book of dark sketches.
“That’s a lot of blood,” I point out, wincing at the picture of dark shapes nestled in pools of blood. The bodies are of men, muscled, with stretched lips screaming in pain. I wiggle uncomfortably on the mattress.
“It’s my interpretation of Stonewall,” says Jesse, examining my face closely.
“Okay. What’s that?” I don’t get why he’s observing me with such force, but I feel weird. Hard, too.
“A riot that started the gay rights movement. So they didn’t have to worry about getting hassled or arrested for being gay.” “I don’t get it. Why didn’t they just stop being gay?” “Could you?”
“Me? I’m not a homo. You’re a homo, asshole.” I punch his arm and
climb off the bed, flashing him an angry glare. I’m not angry, though. I know what angry feels like. This feels like fear. I’m afraid. I should be angry, but I’m afraid.
“Austin,” Jesse goes back to his drawing pad, lifting a page up and smiling softly at it. “I am a homo.” Oh. What do I do with that? “Okay. I guess. I mean, you’re not trying to make out with me or something, right?” “No.” He laughs, making my stomach do things it shouldn’t. “Are we still friends?”
“Best friends, dude. Best friends.” I force a smile. “You told Dave?” He nods, laughing a little more. “Him I tried to make out with.” “No shit? Your nose isn’t broken, dude.” “I made him promise not to tell you. I wanted to be the one. He was cool though. Said you’d be fine. That— that maybe you were, too?” “Me? What the fuck, man.”
“You haven’t exactly been dating a lot.” “Not any girls I like.” I shrug, frowning. “Definitely not any my dad would let me date. I’m not a homo, dude. Okay?” Am I?
“Okay. Just, you know, if you…”
“I thought we were going to the waterpark?”
*
“Austin?”
“Yeah? Huh, what?” I blink at the dark room, struggling to my elbows.
“I need a place to crash.”
“Jesse— What?” My eyes slowly adjust until I can make out that Jesse is sitting on the end of my bed.
“They found out, Aus. My folks found out.”
It’s midnight, I note, checking my bedside clock. I’m having trouble comprehending the conversation. “Okay. Found out what?” I blink a few times and rub my eyes, reaching over to click the lamp on. Jesse’s cheeks and eyes are a black-and-blue, tear-stained mess. His blond hair sticks out with clumps of blood mangled in it. “Jesus, fuck. What the fuck?” I’m too concerned to ask how he got into my room.