Wonderland (8 page)

I
was thirteen. I was walking home from school when they went by on their bikes. “Fag!” they yelled as they pedaled past. I ignored them. I always ignored them. It was just a word, I told myself. Just a word, and it didn't mean anything. It wasn't even about me.

That day, they didn't just yell “fag” as they rode by. They circled back and did it again. And then again. I started to walk faster. I couldn't run. They'd be on me if I ran. I was only two blocks from home. They'd get bored. They were jerks. They'd get bored. Why weren't they getting bored?

They started to circle me. “Fag!” “Queer!” “Homo!”

“Stop it!” I yelled.

“Ah, look, the sissy is crying.” They were getting off their bikes. I tried to run through them, but one tripped me.

“Leave me alone!” I was crying. I hated crying. I jumped to my feet. My hands were bleeding.

“Faggot faggot faggot faggot,” they chanted, in a circle around me, pushing me back and forth.

Eventually they stopped, and I ran home. I hid in the backyard until I stopped crying. My dad hated it when I cried. And what could I say? That guys were picking on me? He called me sissy too, when he was angry. It was just words. I didn't need to cry.

I was fifteen. His name was Nathan. He was blond-haired and blue-eyed and slim and smooth and wonderful. We were in his room studying, when he asked me if I wanted to watch some porn. I was immediately hard. We were sitting there at his desk, and it was the first time I'd ever seen sex. I was watching the guy on the screen, and the guy beside me, and not the girl at all.

“Isn't she hot? Look at those tits!”

I just nodded.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him rubbing his crotch. I saw my fingers reaching out toward him. I couldn't help myself. I touched his thigh.

He jerked away. “Dude, what are you doing?”

I jumped to my feet. “I . . . I . . .”

“What are you, some kind of faggot?”

“No . . . I . . .”

“Get out of my room!”

I ran from his house, crying. “Faggot!” he called after me. It was just a word. Why did it still make me cry?

 

I was seventeen and his name was Taylor. He didn't pull away when I went to touch him. Quite the contrary. He touched me right back. Every weekend, in the quiet darkness of my room, we explored each other's bodies. He was my best friend and my first love.

I knew I was gay by then. I'd admitted it. Only Taylor and Dinah knew though. I wasn't ready to tell my parents, and neither was he. No one really called us that at school anymore. In accepting it was true, we'd stopped reacting with fear and tears, and the joke wasn't as fun for the bullies anymore.

Our teacher had asked me to help Taylor with his math homework, and things had just gone from there. The first time we kissed, we were both laughing so hard, it didn't really work out. But then he looked at me with his deep brown eyes, and I brushed his hair off his face (he had this bang that always flopped over his eye), and things got really quiet, and a lot less funny, and I think I fell in love the first time our lips met.

We had been together for all of eleventh grade, and the summer, and our senior year was starting, and we had made so many plans. We were going to come out after high school. We were going to go to college together. We would sit in his room, or in my room, or anywhere we could be alone, and we would dream. And kiss. And more. But mostly we would dream. Together.

One night, we were doing a lot more than dreaming when his bedroom door opened and the lights came on. We tried to pull a blanket over us, screaming at his mom to close the door. She stammered an apology and we could hear her run down the stairs. We scrambled to get dressed, swearing.

We heard his dad roar from downstairs. “A fucking faggot? No son of mine!”

“Quick! Out the window!” Taylor said, and I grabbed my jacket, and I kissed him on the lips as I slipped out the window. Climbing down the tree that led up to his bedroom, I could hear his dad slam into his room, yelling. I could hear his mom crying. I could hear Taylor crying. I wanted to go back up, to tell him it was just a word. I wanted to tell him not to cry.

 

I was twenty-two, and Dinah and I laughed as we walked down the street. We were done with college, and our lives were all ahead of us, and what better way to celebrate than drinking and dancing at the gay bar? It was a Friday night, and we were young, and we were beautiful.

“I told you we should have come earlier,” Dinah said, as we rounded the corner and saw a lineup. “You always take so long getting pretty.”

“But it will be worth it if I meet some great guy.”

“What about that Aaron guy you went on a date with?”

“We'll see. It went well. I haven't called him yet.”

“Why not?”

“I can't seem needy. He can call me.”

“If you like him, just call him.”

“FAGGOTS!” A bottle came flying out of a car as it sped by, smashing on the sidewalk. We jumped away, as did the other people in line.

“Assholes!” Dinah yelled after them.

“Don't bother, Dinah. It's just a word.”

“It pisses me off though. What are we doing to them? We're just here.”

“That's all it takes sometimes.”

I
woke up, still at my door. It was the middle of the night, and my neck was sore, my head foggy. As I grabbed myself a glass of water, and put down some food for Griffin, I turned on my phone. It was just what I'd expected: a bunch of poorly spelled and bitchy texts from Brandon, and one from Jesse just checking in. I turned it off again.

I crawled into my bed and pulled the blankets up over my head. I never thought about Taylor. I never let myself think about Taylor. I'd run home from his house that day, and told my parents everything, and even though my mom cried and my dad was quiet, they both hugged me and told me I was still their son.

Taylor hadn't been so lucky.

The next morning at school, he wouldn't even look at me. Well, he couldn't even look at me, with his black and swollen eye. I tried to talk to him, and he pushed me away. I tried calling him that night, and his mom asked me not to call there again. I didn't know what to do, but I needed to see him, needed to know he was all right.

I snuck out of my room in the middle of the night and ran to his place, climbed the big tree outside and tossed a couple rocks lightly against his window. Eventually, he opened it up.

“You can't be here, Alex!” he whispered at me.

“I had to know you're okay.”

“I'm fine. Go.”

“I don't believe you. Can I come in?”

“No!” His expression was terrified. “We can't hang out anymore.”

“I love you, Taylor.”

“Don't say stuff like that. It's wrong.”

“No, it's not! It's real. Two hearts, one heart, remember?”

“You need to go, Alex. It's over.”

“Just tell me you're okay.”

“I'm going to be fine,” he said. His terror had faded, and his face was just empty now. “Bye, Alex.”

“I love you,” I said again, to the closing window.

I walked home, thinking about how good it felt to touch him, to kiss him, to be naked with him. That hadn't even been the best part, though. He'd made me feel not so alone. Just knowing that there was at least one other person in the world who felt the same way I did, it made a difference. We just needed to finish high school, and get on with the next part of our lives.

I tossed around in my bed. I couldn't get comfortable. Why was I thinking about that? It was so long ago. It didn't matter anymore. I flipped onto my side and buried my face in the pillow, but I could still see it.

Her name was Mrs. Whiting, and she was our homeroom teacher, and she came in that morning, and her face was gray, and I knew something bad had happened even before she said it. I didn't even hear the words, it was all slow motion. The girl in front of me started to cry. I needed to talk to Dinah. I got up, barely conscious that I was moving.

“Alex, take your seat, please,” Mrs. Whiting called after me.

“He's sad about his boyfriend,” Nathan said as I passed by him. My grief was replaced by rage, and I spun around. The next thing I knew, Nathan was underneath me and my fists were pummeling him. People grabbed my arms, dragged me off him. I melted into a pool of tears. I couldn't believe Taylor was gone.

I flipped onto my other side. I saw me and Dinah, all in black. We were all in black, the whole class, and Nathan's eyes were both black as he glared at me from the other side of the room. I didn't look at the coffin. I didn't look at the flowers. I didn't want to think about the boy in that coffin, the boy who had turned a gun on himself, the boy I loved. I stared at a spot on the floor, and I didn't cry. Dinah held my hand, and her head was on my shoulder and I could smell her shampoo.

My alarm clock went off. I turned my phone back on and called in to work. I was in no shape to go in, and it didn't seem like it was going to change. I took the rest of the week off. I had plenty of holidays coming up. Steven and I had been talking about New Year's on the Mayan Riviera. Now, that seemed unlikely.

I got up, hopped in the shower. The steam reminded me of White Night, made me think of Aaron. After Taylor, I never said “I love you” to another guy until Aaron. And there'd been quite a few guys. College had really been such a blur of bars and booze and boys and blow, weekdays busy in class, weekends busy in bed. I had gotten around. Maybe my apartment door was right. Maybe I was just a faggot whore.

I texted Dinah, and made plans to meet her for lunch. I texted the twins, and we made plans to meet up for wings that evening. And then I sat there, wondering what to do. I angrily flipped through channels. I cranked Lady Gaga and screamed along with “Speechless.” I paced. Finally, I decided enough was enough, and I had to get out.

I made a point of not looking at the graffiti on my door, but I couldn't resist spitting on the Walrus's door.

Outside, it was a beautiful fall morning, and as soon as the sun hit my face, I felt better. I even smiled. With my earbuds in, pumping my brain full of happy music, I headed down to the river valley. I wanted to go to “our spot.”

Our first night together, after dancing away the night, we had only cuddled. As horny as we'd both clearly been for each other, the dancing, the drinking, on top of a long workday for both of us, had just tired us out. I fell asleep in his arms.

I woke up before Steven in the morning, and I propped myself up on one arm and lay there watching him sleep, his mouth partly open. I leaned down, and kissed his forehead. He opened his eyes. They were so green, so bright and wonderfully green. “Brunch?” he said.

He took me to the Duchess, and we ate and played a bit of footsies under the table. After brunch, I was ready to take him back to his place, rip his clothes off, and finally get naked with him, but Steven had other ideas. “I want to show you somewhere,” he said, and he took me by the hand and led me to what became “our spot.”

The river valley stretched out below me, now all orange and yellow, replacing the green as far as the eye could see that first day. The flowers carefully planted in boxes along the path were gone now, but that Saturday, they'd been bright bouquets of color. Steven had led me off the path though, and onto the hill, down a small worn trail through the grass. “Where are we going?” I had asked him.

“You'll see,” he'd said with a smile.

About halfway down the hill, Steven had led me off the path and into the bushes. He had laughed as I'd shrieked at a passing wasp. And then we were there: seemingly in the middle of nowhere, there was a little wooden bench, with a breathtaking view of the river in both directions as it wound its way through the city.

“How did you find this?” I'd asked.

“Stumbled across it by accident,” he'd replied. “I don't even know why it's here, but I like coming here when I need to breathe deep and reconnect.” He took my hand. “I've never brought anyone here before.”

I had kissed him then, long and firm and hard, and then we'd sat on the bench, and we'd talked about nothing, everything. I'd lain there with my head in his lap while he played with my hair and we had just talked. When we were done, I had kissed him, and thanked him for sharing his spot with me.

“Our spot now, I guess,” he'd said, and he'd kissed me.

Standing there, looking at the river in autumn, I wanted him to kiss me again so badly.