Bad Kid (4 page)

But my dominance was short-lived. A week into our trip, I noticed the edge of a magazine under a stack of toilet-paper rolls beneath the bathroom sink. I pulled out the August 1987 issue of
Penthouse
magazine and was flabbergasted. This issue was different from the others I'd seen before at neighbor boys' houses. As opposed to a centerfold of a lone woman, this issue contained a spread of a woman
and
a man getting nasty on the beach. She wore big '80s sunglasses and a big '80s hat, and had big '80s areolas. They were the size of salad plates. The caption referred to her as Candy. Her male companion was swarthy and strapping. Lush locks of black hair hung into his dark, dusky eyes. The only thing covering any part of his muscular, caramel-skinned body was a tiny white G-string that was almost damp enough to see through.

Apparently the editors at
Penthouse
didn't think he deserved a name. But I did.

So I called him . . . Rolando.

I quickly became obsessed with every page of the photo spread, each image burning itself onto my brain like a molten-hot brand.

On page thirty-two Candy was awkwardly bent over a wheelbarrow. Rolando was taking her from behind, gripping her hips with his strong hands; his face was obscured by wet bangs that hung over his eyes. I looked at this image so many times that I started to question its minutiae.

Why there was a wheelbarrow on the beach? Was some beach worker transferring sand around with it? How could someone even operate a wheelbarrow in the sand?

On page thirty-four Candy was spread-eagled on a beach towel as Rolando mounted her missionary-style. Both of this dark stranger's firm, flexed butt cheeks bore the delicate, sandy handprint of his lover in perfect symmetry, a Rorschach butterfly of ass-hands.

Page thirty-seven was my favorite. Candy squatted in front of Rolando in platform heels, her big rump taking up most of the lower part of the page. Just above her head you could see Rolando's sweat-drenched torso, rock-hard abs, defined chest, and square jaw; and then, right above his perfectly shaped lips, the page ended.

Who was this man of mystery?

With no discernible face, he could be anyone: George Michael in reflective aviators and a crucifix earring, telling me “I want your sex” in the back of a London taxi; Ricky Schroder with gelled hair and tapered jeans, saying “I love you” as we rode a mini choo-choo train around his mansion; or Chris Wolfe with his sandy blond hair and Roman nose cornering me in the locker room, telling me he knew exactly how to make up for the encyclopedia incident. Rolando was my dream lover, everyone and no one.

With only a few days left in our two-week road trip, I knew I had to maximize my enjoyment of Rolando, my beautiful Latin (but possibly Italian or maybe even Greek) lover. And unless I wanted my father taking me to the ER for a colonoscopy, I needed to be crafty about it. So while my dad left the RV to work on phone lines, I stayed behind and filled my days with chronic
masturbation. It was so epic that my fingers pruned. My forearm ached. My penis felt and looked like it had been resting under a heat lamp, red and throbby like E.T.'s magic finger lighting up to heal Elliott's wound.

Oooooouch
.

My dad and I spent the last day of our trip driving for ten straight hours. He was tired and hungry. I was sex-starved and angry. We were both sore, for different reasons. Four spins into George Michael's
Faith
, he poked my arm.

“So, DJ . . . What's the girl situation like?”

It was a question I didn't want to hear and had been hoping to avoid.

“Um, well . . .” I carefully composed my answer, fumbling with my headphones as I paused the Discman. “Um . . . The girl situation is . . . pretty good. There are a lot of girls at my school. And they all . . . really, really like me.”

My dad's grin widened. I imagined his eyes beaming with pride behind his sunglasses. “Girls really like me,” I exclaimed, getting a little cocky. My dad let out a little chuckle, and I knew it was working. “Yeah! All of them do,” I blurted, feeling really proud of myself now. “Actually, all my friends
are
girls!”

I looked at my father's face and knew I'd said too much. His smile went slack as he aggressively readjusted his sunglasses. He cleared his throat and checked the rearview mirror for unwanted rear-enders, a preoccupation that was starting to seem increasingly symbolic. My father spotted a violator and began pumping his breaks. Profanity was screamed. Horns were honked. Birds were flipped. And then silence.

Sitting there beside him at a red light in some tiny town outside Dallas, I could sense my dad's disappointment with my answer.
I thought of Amber's sad, sweet-smelling letters and Chris Wolfe's spiteful glare. I remembered my mother's face a few weeks earlier, looking confused and saddened by my stack of khakis and basic white tees. I thought of her repeatedly asking me, “Why are you so quiet lately?” and I wondered what it felt like to see her son fade away from her the way I was. Was it like watching light collapse inside the gravitational pull of a fissure in space?

Maybe, in spite of their credentials and bestselling books, Sagan and Hawking had no idea what they were talking about. Maybe black holes
were
just empty space.

“The girl situation is good,” I muttered to my father as he choked the steering wheel in his fists. “It's . . . good.”

That day my mom took me and my zits to the mall: A Family Photo.

I
woke up for my first day of high school with a knot in my gut, a gut that had expanded throughout the summer. I'd spent the two months after the road trip eating spray cheese and Ritz crackers while watching Maury Povich with the shades drawn. My lethargic solitude and love of heavily processed foods resulted in my pudgy new back-to-school figure. I grunted and exhaled in the full-length bathroom mirror, laboring to zip up the khakis my mother had bought me only a few months earlier. After gelling down my hair and slipping on my white tennis shoes, I jumped into the car with my mom. The ten-minute drive felt like a walk down the plank. I imagined endless spine-chilling scenarios, most of which ended with wedgies, my head in the toilet, and the F-word.
That
F-word.

“Honey,” said my mother as we pulled into the drop-off circle at my new high school. “Are you gay?”

“What?” I shrieked, spitting a sip of orange juice onto the dashboard of the Chevette. “You're asking me this on my first day of high school?”

“I'm not accusing you of anything, sweetheart,” she said, turning down our favorite Wham! cassette. “But I worry about you. You used to have friends and date, but all you did this summer was sit in your room alone. If you
were
gay, you could tell your mother!”

Teri always talked about herself in the third person when she addressed me in any serious way.

David
,
your mother wants you to read this sexuality book for preteens
.

David
,
your mother wants you to be open-minded at the metaphysics workshop today
.

David
,
your mother is going to pee her pants if we don't find a gas station
.

“David, listen to your mother,” she insisted, gripping my hand tightly. “I would understand if you were a homosexual.”

Ho-mo-sex-u-al
. It's a weirdly clinical word, like something you hear in chemistry class to describe a type of combustion.

“You'll be fifteen soon! You're becoming a man and you'll have needs,” she explained. “Your mother wants you to be secure in those desires and . . .”

“I'm NOT gay, Mom!”

“But being gay is perfectly okay! I'd much rather that than a son who was a pervert or schizophrenic like on one of those Lifetime movies your mother watches. Or a pedophile clown! Now
that
would be awful, honey.”

My mother had always thought herself an amateur forensics expert. Her bookshelves were packed with a mix of Precious
Moments angels and Charles Manson biographies. It was an odd collision of interests, but that was Teri: a forty-year-old maternity-store manager who'd rather be dusting for fingerprints over the corpse of a partially cannibalized stripper.

“You could be a sex-freak murderer like Ted Bundy,” she continued. “Granted, he was handsome, but he
was
a maniac-rapist!”

“MOM! I'm not a rapist!” I huffed as we pulled through the drop-off circle in front of Gunther High.

“But your mother would love you
even
then. Even if you had multiple personalities like Sally Field in
Sybil
! We'd make the best of it,” she assured me. “It would almost be like I had
more children
!”

“I don't have a split personality!” I said as I slammed the car door. “And I'm
not
gay!”

By the time fifth-period gym class rolled around, I had never been more sure that I was gay. Eleventh- and twelfth-graders were like fully grown men. They shaved and sweat and layered thick streaks of deodorant onto their hairy armpits. Those ten minutes in the locker room after gym class were the single most nerve-racking part of my first day at Gunther High.

The entire campus was covered in boys who, although they were only a few years older than me, looked like college kids. In the courtyard they roamed in packs, wearing tight jeans and laughing in deep, manly voices. In the cafeteria they gave each other tight, one-armed hugs and threw around the word
pussy
like it was their profession. In the parking lot after school they sat smoking cigarettes while bouncing giggling girlfriends on their laps. As I walked home through the athletic field, I saw them at football practice. A
black-haired Mexican boy in a sweat-drenched T-shirt was helping a small, stout blond boy up after a particularly rough tackle. “It's cool, brah,” he replied as they slapped each other's asses.

Was this a cruel joke?
I thought, watching them grunt and hustle across the field.

I got home at four o'clock feeling like my heart was going to pump out of my chest. My breath was shallow, and my stomach felt like a pincushion full of tacks.
How was I going to do this for four years?

All the careful planning and structure I'd established for myself in middle school wouldn't work in high school. It was going to be tough, and I needed a new game plan. So I developed a locker-room manifesto.

                 
1. Avoid any boy-on-boy interaction.

                 
2. Keep a towel nearby for coverage at all times.

                 
3. Be the first one in and out of the shower.

                 
4. Monitor the pitch of your voice.

                 
5. Run laps alone to avoid group sports.

                 
6. Don't look anywhere you don't have to.

Number six was my biggest challenge: keeping my latitudinal gaze in check.

The next day, after running laps for forty-five minutes, I found a small corner locker to change by. Just as I sat on the bench, a thickset eighteen-year-old with a husky voice and full, bushy pubes approached me from the shower.

“Hey, dude. Are you using this locker?” he asked, his dewy genitals bouncing mere inches from my face as he towel-dried his hair.

“No,” I answered in a low-pitched, testosterone-full croak, like a robot with a vocal modulation disorder.

Don't look down. Don't look down. Don't look down
.

I stared as hard as I could into his eyes as he towered over me, which was probably creepier than if I'd just looked down and answered his dick directly.

No, Mr. Penis. I am not using this locker. You and your pendulous, man-size testicles are welcome to use this locker if you wish
.

Creepy or not, my little manifesto was working. By carefully following my strict set of guidelines, I avoided all unnecessary human interaction. Sure, there were a few girls I'd chat with in class and a nerdy boy with weird teeth who'd talk to me in the library. But by October, outside of a few blink-and-you'll-miss-them interactions with acquaintances, I hadn't made a single real friend. I was proud of myself.

One day in October I was running laps when I heard Coach Allen blow the whistle. The coach had a head of pale yellow-white hair and a pinched, sunburned face. He looked like a bigger, sloppier John Madden.

“Come on in, ladies!” he bellowed like a human foghorn, his bowling-ball belly hanging over his tight blue shorts. “Time to change out!”

By that point, I had my locker-room process down to a science. After a quick armpit rinse followed by a towel-shielded change-out, I was done. Five minutes later I was walking back to the bleachers to wait for the bell before the other boys were even out of the shower. I felt pretty good about my process over the last few weeks and smiled, happy that I'd reached a whole new level of camouflage and solitude so quickly.

And then I saw him.

Near the top of the bleachers was a new boy. His hair was expertly moussed. His clothes were perfectly unwrinkled. He had clear, tan skin and a strong, square jaw. He wore Ray-Bans and stared down into a notebook. I couldn't tell if he was reading or sleeping, but it was clear that he hadn't broken a sweat in the last hour.

I sat down a few feet away from him in my pale-blue polo shirt and tan slacks, dressed like a used-car dealer or someone's stepfather. In his backpack I noticed the name
Greg Brooks
scrawled across the spine of a textbook. Greg was dressed like someone from television, in stylish acid-washed Guess jeans and a striped Cavaricci pullover. The boy sat as still as a marble sculpture, listening to his Sony Discman. It was the newish pale-gray model with orange control buttons that I'd been wanting for weeks.

Hey, Greg. I'm David
.

I could imagine myself saying it, and almost hear the words coming out of my mouth. I cleared my throat and thought I saw his eyebrow flinch, which sent me into an anxiety hole. I had to talk to him. I took a deep breath and parted my lips just as the bell rang. Greg sprang to life and sprinted away with his backpack. He moved so quickly that it took my breath away, like everything he would do over the next few weeks. Every color-blocked ensemble, every slight variation in hairstyle and gelling technique, every pair of patterned socks peeking out beneath his smartly tapered jeans was impeccable.

Each day at 2:20 p.m. I gathered the courage to attempt an introduction. And each day, just as I was about to speak, the damn bell would ring. I failed to see, of course, that the problem wasn't the timing of the bell but my own confidence. The bell could've
been late by five minutes or two hours or four weeks, and I still wouldn't have spoken. If the bell never rang again I probably would've spent all of eternity in a panicked silence, unable to simply turn and say,
Hello. I'm David
.

In lieu of speaking to Greg, I spent that fall trying an assortment of nonverbal ways to get his attention. In the bleachers I would cough extraloud to see if I could get him to flinch behind those black-lensed Ray-Bans.
Was he even listening to music?
I thought, straining to hear any sound coming from his headphones as I whooped and gagged. By the end of that week, my persistent hacking had convinced at least one person that I was deathly ill.

“Take a hint, Typhoid Mary,” growled Coach Allen as he dumped a handful of Halls cough drops into my palm after gym. “You sound like you're drilling for oil out there.”

Every day, as fifty of us walked across the gymnasium floor to run laps outside, Greg stayed behind with a few other boys scattered in the bleachers. As the weather got chillier, the activities moved indoors. Throughout November, as I repeatedly failed to serve a volleyball correctly, Greg sat in the bleachers writing in his wire-bound notebook, somehow exempt from participation. What was wrong with Greg that kept him from physical activity? More important, what was wrong with
me
that I still couldn't speak to him?

The week before Thanksgiving break I tried a new tactic, using the Sony Discman my mom had just gotten me. It was the gray model with orange control buttons, just like Greg's. I sat in front of him and made a point of jamming out extra-hard to my music, practically banging my head to Jody Watley's “Looking for a
New Love.” After roll call I made a huge production of putting the Discman away, delicately winding the headphones around it like I was swaddling a preemie.

That's just like my Discman!
I imagined Greg thinking when he saw it.
It's a sign. I've gotta talk to this friendless, little typhus-ridden dude who dresses like a Mormon missionary
.

But nothing.

Greg wasn't so expressionless when I saw him in the courtyard with his friends, a group of cool boys who weren't identified with any specific clique. They weren't jocks, but they weren't bookish. They weren't alternative kids, but they weren't quite preps, either. They wore clothes a bit more expensive than the ones my mom could afford: brown leather Bass shoes and fitted Guess jeans cuffed at the ankle, plaid Gap shirts tucked behind woven brown leather belts. My favorite thing about them was their scent, which was strong enough to let you know they were near before you saw them. They didn't smell like all the Eternity-drenched athletes in the locker room. Their more obscure colognes smelled sweeter and spicier. Sitting downwind of Greg every day in the bleachers, I could smell the wondrous, manly musk of him behind me. I had to find that remarkable scent.

In the mall on Black Friday I went to the magazine section of B. Dalton books, where I lingered until the register was so busy that no employees were on the floor. And then I began my research, looking through men's magazines like
GQ
and
Details
for cologne samples. I checked over each shoulder to make sure no one was watching before I began to tear open the glued-down paper strips, quickly smearing my wrists, forearms, and elbow crooks with Escape, Joop!, Cool Water, and Drakkar Noir. I moved quickly from magazine to magazine,
trying to remember which scent I had wiped on which part of my body.

“Excuse me, sir,” I heard, and turned to see a small brunette wearing a name tag. I froze midsmear, with a copy of
Esquire
magazine pressed against my neck. “You know they'll give you free samples at Dillard's?” she asked with a grin.

“Oh,” I stammered. “I didn't mean to . . .”

“It's okay, honey,” she said, walking forward and patting my back. “Wanna know which one I love? All the boys are wearing it now.”

She looked over either shoulder and pulled down a copy of
Men's Health
. “It's this one,” she said, tearing open the sample flap at the center. I lowered my face into the magazine and was suddenly overtaken by the exotic, musky scent of Greg Brooks.

“Thank you,” I whispered, genuinely grateful for another retail angel in my life.

That day my mother bought me the fragrance—Fahrenheit. On Monday morning I sprayed loads of it on my neck and wrists, not wanting the scent to fade before fifth period. In gym class I sat in front of Greg and waited for him to say something. I imagined him tapping me on the shoulder to compliment me on my great scent, but nothing happened. Each morning I lathered on more and more Fahrenheit, oblivious to the absurdity of my plan: how would Greg be able to smell
me
over himself when we smelled the exact same way?