“That’s beautiful,” I said. You’re beautiful, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
“I’m guessing that didn’t happen for you, right?”
“Well,” I said, trying to think of what to say. I’d done my best not to lie to Ben, but this didn’t feel like a time to be evasive, especially since I’d just evaded his last question. “I guess for me it felt, when it was over, like I was this different person. And I wasn’t sure I was ready to be that person? Like something huge had happened and it changed everything, and there was no announcement you could make to the whole world that wouldn’t be superweird.”
That was all true enough, I realized, after saying it.
“Yeah, but what about the act itself? That’s all after stuff. I felt that way too. But, like, when it happened. What did you feel?”
Nothing, I realized, and a lump grew in my throat, thinking about my experience with Clay. By most definitions I was still a virgin, since we’d only fooled around, but still it made me sad to think of how little my first experience had meant to me. But I had to say something, and saying “nothing” was going to lead to a conversation that was going to be really hard for us to have, so I said something else instead. For the first time with Ben, I willingly went deeper into the lie.
“I felt close to her, I guess? Like connected? Spiritually connected. I wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to get all high-fiveish about having sex with a girl for the first time, so I guess mostly what I felt was connected on a deeper level with her.”
“Sure,” Ben said.
And then mostly what I felt was dirty. Lying to a friend sucked. But what choice did I have? Our friendship was amazing and getting better, and that made an occasional small white lie acceptable, right? Not great, but acceptable.
In public, we toned the intensity of our friendship down, knowing that Steve and his posse would not quite get our strange and unusual bond. But in private, we threw away most of our barriers, and that was more than fine with me.
Sex was not on the menu. I hadn’t found the line yet where things would be “too much” for Ben, but I had a feeling we were pretty close to it. For all my fantasies about Ben — and I’d had a lot of them — I couldn’t really picture any of them coming true. So many nights, after lights out, I snuck off to the bathroom and “took care of business,” hoping to God no one would come in and utilize the bathroom in a way that would ruin the mood.
Toby thought it was cute, our bromance. More than once when the four of us were hanging out, he talked about how much he wished he could find what we had, which was funny, since I knew he and Robinson had something going.
One afternoon before dinner, as we did homework in his/our room, Ben got an e-mail from his mom. He groaned, and then read it out loud.
“Dear Benny,” he said.
“Oh, I’m definitely calling you that!”
“You are definitely not. Dear Benny,” he continued. “Do you mind if we invite the Tollesons over for Thanksgiving this year? I know Mitch is not your favorite, but it’s been five years since we’ve had them over and I hate to be rude.”
He pantomimed putting a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
“Mitch Tolleson is not exactly your favorite?”
“He’s this kid I hung out with when I was six. We parted ways when he shaved his head and got big into hunting. Now he dresses in army fatigues and has a Confederate flag sticker on his pickup truck.”
“Delightful. And your parents like him?”
Ben flopped onto his bed and crossed his arms against his chest.
“My parents believe in civility at all costs. Even if your neighbors raise a skinhead, it’s better not to make a fuss.”
I shook my head. “Our families are not so similar, huh?”
He pursed his lips, like he was already imagining Thanksgiving dinner. Ben was obviously the oddball of the family, into books and ideas. I remembered how uncomfortable his dad looked at Natick, and now it began to make more sense to me. I’d been so caught up in my own stuff that I hadn’t even realized that this person, who was superclose to me, felt so alienated from his own family. Suddenly I recognized what I had to do.
“You obviously can’t dine with Mitch Tolleson,” I said. “He sounds like a Nazi.”
He shrugged. “Oh, well,” he said.
“Well, you won’t be dining with him. What with you being in Boulder and all.”
This caught Ben off guard, but then he looked like a kid who had just gotten the best Christmas present ever. He got this goofy smile on his face, like all his cares had lifted. That I could have such an impact on someone as awesome as Ben made me feel amazing.
And then I remembered the obvious: Bringing Ben to Colorado could be total suicide for our relationship. I was going to have to figure out how to “reconcile” with Claire Olivia, for starters, since there was no way I was going to go home and not see her. How the hell was I going to be the same person in Boulder as I was here at Natick?
“You serious?”
“Of course,” I said, willing those thoughts away. “It’s all done. You’re coming with me.”
He lowered his head again. I’d forgotten Ben was on scholarship at Natick. My family was well-off enough, but a ticket to Denver wasn’t exactly something Ben could call home for.
“My parents bought you a ticket. It was supposed to be a surprise,” I said. It wasn’t a total lie, because I knew that even if they wouldn’t do it, I could. I had a few hundred dollars saved from my summer job at Ripple, this frozen-yogurt place back home. Ben was worth it.
“I can’t accept that,” he said.
“Yeah, you can,” I said. “You’re my friend. They want you there. I want you there. Benny.”
It took a second, but soon that goofy, slightly uneven smile of his came back, and I knew for sure that I loved Ben. Any fears I had melted away. Ben. In my house. In my room. Yeah, I could make that work.
MAYBE IT WAS having a closeted semiboyfriend who wouldn’t be seen with me in public, but the little things that used to bug me about being out were making me more and more annoyed.
It was right after Thanksgiving break, and I was in the cafeteria with Claire Olivia, eating Rangeview’s version of tacos — reduced-calorie tortillas and ground turkey that tasted like sadness — when the Kaitlins attacked.
Every girl in Boulder who isn’t named after a color or a month or a city or a state is named Kaitlin, Brittany, or Ashley, according to Claire Olivia. All the Brittanys wear cool hair bands. The Ashleys are smiley and apolitical and tend to be cheerleaders. The Kaitlins are blond, inquisitive, and prone to be on the yearbook staff or reporters for the Boulder Tattler.
Kaitlin One in this case was petite and wearing a peach sweater and dangling turquoise earrings. Kaitlin Two was tall. A volleyball player, I think.
“Hey, Rafe, Claire,” Two said. I felt Claire Olivia tense next to me. Call her Claire and you leave yourself open to lotsa bad possibilities, most of them violent. Two didn’t wait for any response beyond a nod. “That was so mean, what they did with the church.”
I knew she was referring to our history class. Ms. Peavy had taken the subject of church burnings in the South during the civil rights movement and likened it to what had happened locally, four years earlier, at the church where PFLAG met. Someone had spray painted “Die Fagot” on the side of the church, and there was this huge outcry. And of course there should have been. It wasn’t a church burning, but it was terrible that someone would vandalize a church, not to mention the spelling issue.
But this being Boulder, the powers that be had to organize a vigil. (This was before my mom was involved with PFLAG.) At the vigil, apparently, everyone got to express how they felt, and there was lots of hugging. Then they formed a committee to figure out how to respond to the event. After three months of meetings, the committee started a hotline, which people could use to call in and express their feelings about the hatred shown in the spray-painting act.
&nbs
p; Ah, Boulder.
This time, Ms. Peavy hadn’t asked me for the official gay opinion on the vandalization. Progress. But now the Kaitlins were. I shrugged.
“It was bad,” I said.
“Totally,” Kaitlin One said, nodding. “But also too, Mayor Barkley’s wife was, like, African-American, so it was like, you know, he understood oppression and he should have organized the vigil.”
I nodded, unsure of what she had said, or what that had to do with anything. “Right,” I said. “The personal is political, and all of that.”
Two nodded this time. “You’re so smart. You’re going to go to, like, Harvard.”
“For spring break,” I said, for no apparent reason. I was getting bored with the Kaitlins, and I was afraid that for every minute they stayed there, the likelihood of Claire Olivia starting an international incident was increasing.
Both Kaitlins laughed, and one of them, One or Two, said, “Oh, my God! You’re smart like Will and funny like Jack. From Will & Grace? Which one are you?”
They didn’t wait for a response. “You’re Will. Will is so funny.”
I stared out the window at some guys playing hacky sack, and sighed. “If that’s what makes you comfortable, I guess I can be that,” I said.
They walked away. Not two minutes later, Jasmin Price, who is pretty much an Ashley, came up to us.
“Did I see you at Eldora this past weekend?”
I said I was there. She looked surprised and said, “I didn’t know gay guys liked skiing.”
Claire Olivia looked up from her incessant texting and gave me a moon-eyed look. I ignored it and nodded at Jasmin.
“We really do,” I said. “It’s a little-known fact. You can tell who is gay by who skis and who snowboards.”
And I could actually see the wheels turning. She was thinking, Wait, doesn’t so-and-so ski? I was about to say, Just kidding, but then I got fed up and went to get rid of my tray.
There was Clay, across the room, sitting with his friends. I caught his eye and smiled, and he barely nodded. I envied him then. He could have lunch in peace. Why couldn’t I?
And there was Caleb, holding court at another table, surrounded by girls. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. No doubt it was at someone else’s expense, but still, they were laughing. That wasn’t the kind of guy I was. I mean, I loved the time Claire Olivia and I spent together, but I wasn’t flamboyant and always surrounded by girls who wanted to be entertained.
When I got back to Claire Olivia, Jasmin was gone. I rolled my eyes and Claire Olivia rolled hers.
“Hey, did you know I was gay?” I asked.
“Shut up!” she said. “Really? I had no idea, since it’s not like the only thing people talk to you about.”
“I know, right?” I said. “I am so fucking tired of being seen as ‘the gay kid.’”
“Well …” She made a face and ran her hand through her hair.
I tensed up. “Well what?”
“I mean, no offense, Shay Shay. But it’s not exactly a cosmic mystery how that happened. I mean, it’s not like you told the world, and visited other schools to talk about it. It’s not like your mom is president of PFLAG Boulder. How rude of people to make a big deal out of you being gay.”
I curled my lower lip down to show her my feelings were hurt. Making the face was a joke between us; it was supposed to mean our feelings weren’t really hurt, but that they would be if we were more sensitive. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that almost every time I did it, my feelings were actually a little hurt. I wonder if that was true for Claire Olivia too.
“Aw,” she said, teasing. “Poor Rafe.”
“You’re always yelling,” I said, putting my fingers in my ears.
Rafe,
Okay, here’s an assignment for you. It’s simple. I want you to take the sentence that begins, “But the more I think about it” from the third-to-last paragraph, and keep writing from there. Do a fastwrite, like the ones we do in class. Notice that you are reflecting now about how you felt then. How does that differ from the (generally well-written) pieces you have given me all semester? Remember Doctorow’s quote! Go!
— Mr. Scarborough
For the first round of the soccer play-offs, we played at home against Belmont. We’d beaten them early in the regular season, when we still had Bryce, 4–3. Without him, we knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“All right, fellas,” Coach Donnelly said in our pregame locker room pep talk. “I want to talk about selflessness. Selflessness involves giving up your self. You become a martyr. Like the Hindu kamikaze warriors. These Japanese Hindus chose to give up their lives, and they were killed if they didn’t. Imagine what their families felt. One day you have a father, and next, you’re watching him fly a plane into a ship on Pearl Harbor on television. Those kids didn’t do anything wrong. They just lived in an evil country. The axis of evil. That sort of evil is beyond anything you or I will experience in our lifetimes. So be glad. Be glad we live in the US of A. Be glad we get to choose, with our freedoms. Now get out there and fight!”
My mind was only half there. I had bigger salmon to sauté, as Claire Olivia would have said. She had called back, and this conversation went a little better.
“I’m really upset,” she said. “I’m upset about what you did, and I’m even more upset that I yelled at you and hung up on you. I should not have done that.”
“Well, I should have probably told you sooner.”
“Yeah. Way sooner.”
“I should have just told you last year, when I decided to do this, but I was afraid you’d tell me not to.”
“Well, I probably would have, since it’s, like, insane,” she said.
“Yeah. I know. But I gotta tell you, it feels so right. I am having this bromance like you wouldn’t believe. We’re really good friends, and that never would have happened if I hadn’t done this.”
“Bromance? Can gay boys have bromances?” she asked. “Is that why you did this?”
“No! It’s just … a great perk.”
“It’s that Ben guy, right?”
“Yup,” I said. “You’d adore him. Well, actually, I don’t know if you’d adore him. He’s really smart and funny, but he’s kind of a jock. You might actually hate him.”
“Fantastic,” she deadpanned.
“Well, there’s one way to find out.”
“I am NOT coming to Massachusetts to see my best friend, who is straight slash gay. That is so NOT happening.”
“I’m coming back for Thanksgiving. With him.”
“Wow,” she said. “Do your parents know what you’re doing? Are they cool with this?”
“Not exactly. But they’re trying.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be very good at playing along.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Think of it as an acting job. Don’t you love acting?”
“Ahk-ting … is be-ing,” she said, in this terrible, stodgy British accent.
“Could you? Please? I wanna hang out with you AND Ben while he’s there.”
“This is so weird.”
“Please? For me?”
“Oh, you know I can’t say no to you.”
“Tee hee. I thought not.”
“You owe me big time.”
“I know, I know, I know, I know. Last thing: And, yeah, I owe you for this too. Put it on my tab: You were my girlfriend before you got angry and broke up with me a few weeks ago.”
She sighed. “Sounds about right.”
Belmont scored a goal forty-five seconds into the game, when Robinson let a pretty easy shot slide through his fingertips. A couple of minutes later, he made a nice dive on a shot to his right. Unfortunately, the ball flew by him a second earlier.
Down 2–0, I overkicked Steve by about fifteen feet on a pass. I felt it, in my chest. Failure. This jittery sensation that was like a chill. Steve shot me a look from across the field, and I got the feeling I was going to be hearing about that
.
We didn’t get another really good chance. In some ways, that made it easier, because when you lose 4–0, one play isn’t to blame. But the fact is I didn’t have a good game. I stood out. And as we trudged back to the locker room, our season over, I wasn’t liking the feeling.
The group was dangerously sullen as we listened to Coach give his final talk of the year, something about a German submarine found off the coast of Carolina “back in the day.” I was having trouble paying attention; I just wanted to get showered quickly and slip away to the dorm, where I could hang out with Ben some more. I guess one difference between me and the real jocks was that I didn’t care enough to get really passionate about a loss.
Of course, the showers are never a solitary, quick endeavor. The mood, the tone were ugly from the start. I had a feeling I was about to witness what happens when the positive façade of Natick jocks disappears.
“Nice season, Ben, nice season, Zack,” Steve said, rinsing off his back. “In fact, most of us had pretty good years. I just wish I knew how you miss a ball that hits you in the hands.”
I looked over at Robinson, who was going about his business.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I know I sucked.”
“Yeah, well, being sorry won’t get us to the next round,” Steve said. “Maybe if you weren’t out getting your cock sucked by Toby twenty-four seven, this wouldn’t have happened.”
The shower room got real quiet, the sound of rain on tile reverberating through the room.
“Shut up,” Robinson said.
Zack took over. “You think people don’t notice you guys going into the woods separately, coming back separately? What are we, fucking stupid? You screw that faggot in the ass too?” he asked.