Bad Kid (5 page)

By Friday morning the pungent tang of my own body made my eyes water.

“You smell like a French whore,” gagged my mom as she rolled down the driver's-seat window on the way to school. “Honey, too much scent is almost worse than none at all!”

In gym class I sat down in front of Greg and waited expectantly for him to say something. After a few moments of silence, I decided to kick it up a notch. I began making big, exaggerated gestures as I took off my coat, hoping to fan my splendiferous odor in his direction. But nothing happened. So I made my movements even bigger, swooping my arms out wider and with more velocity. Within five seconds I was struggling violently with my coat, flapping like some great, crippled bird attempting flight.

“Crabb!” yelled Coach. “What the hell? You got bees in your bonnet?”

“Oh,” I stammered over scattered laughter. “My coat's stuck.”

“You look like you need the damn Jaws of Life up there!” Coach smiled mockingly as everyone laughed.

“I got it,” Greg said as a hand clamped down on my sleeve. With one light tug it was over. Greg had not only talked to me, but touched me. Greg Brooks had . . . touched me.

“Time to change, boys,” Coach yelled before focusing his gaze on me. “You think you'll be able to Harry Houdini yourself outta that shirt, Crabb?”

“Um, yes,” I whimpered as everyone jogged to the locker room.

I turned to thank Greg but was confronted with his perfectly still, sunglasses-wrapped face, like a contemporary re-creation of
The Thinker
with more stylish hair and headphones. Could he hear me? Was he looking at me? Did he realize how perfect he was? There was no way to know. And, until I grew some balls, no way to tell him.

By December, Greg still hadn't changed out. And I still hadn't really made any friends. As much as my manifesto was working,
the isolation was starting to wear on me. Between classes I would look at other groups of kids in their cliques, laughing and whispering in the hallways. To an outsider looking in, their friendship configurations seemed obvious and dull. All the girls with a certain type of purse and blouse ate together in one area, while boys with long hair and rock-band T-shirts smoked cigarettes in another. In the parking lot, clean-shaven guys with big muscles and checkered shirts gathered around one car, while girls in matching school jackets carrying musical instruments rode away in another. There was no special science or deductive method required to figure out why people in high school had the friends they had. Reminding myself of that made it easier to judge them, and judging them made being alone feel easier. Friendships were basic and beneath me.

But on certain days, in certain moods, it all looked so pleasant. I'd watch them cackling hysterically while reading a note by someone's locker or giggling over a foot-long pizza-cheese strand in the cafeteria. Suddenly I'd think that no ill will or cruelty could exist in them. And in that brief instant I would doubt all the careful planning I'd done based on my fear and dread. For a split second I'd feel like a fool. But then I'd remember the dull thud of those heavy, brown leather books on either side of my skull and know that my manifesto was right.

On the last day of school before Christmas break, while the gym class did indoor push-ups and jumping jacks, I watched Greg chat with a few other boys at the edge of the bleachers. The boys looked normal, but I assumed that they, like Greg, harbored some gruesome physical abnormalities that kept them from participating in class.

As I started my set of one hundred push-ups, I considered
each possible secret illness or malady. Perhaps, beneath all those fashionable clothes, Greg's body was horribly deformed. After all, I'd never seen him shirtless or in a tank top. What if he had been in a fire that precisely disfigured his torso but somehow left the smooth, sinewy skin of his arms intact? Realizing I'd never seen him in shorts, I thought that maybe he'd lost his legs in a car accident. Under those perfectly fitted Girbaud jeans might be a complex system of steel rods and hydraulic joints, intricate prostheses that allowed Greg to walk but not run, jog, or jump. I imagined rubbing soothing salve into the burnt cheese pizza–skin of his chest while singing him to sleep at night. In the morning, he'd passionately kiss me good-bye after I WD-40ed the high-tech gears and pulleys of his squeaky RoboCop legs.

Each deformity I imagined was more grotesque than the last, but it didn't matter. I would love him regardless of his scabby foot-long tail, boil-covered penis, or swastika-shaped port-wine birthmark. I would love him for what was on the inside, as he would love me. Greg was gorgeous and effortlessly cool, and he smelled great. And one day he would be mine.

Pushing my body off the ground for the ninety-ninth time, I peered with laser-focused intensity at my intended's face, thinking,
What could be wrong with someone who looks so perfect?

“One hundred,” I groaned before lying flat on the ground. I raised my head up to the bleachers as rivulets of sweat stung my eyeballs, gazing at the length of Greg's body flexing and twitching as he yawned.

“Why are you lying there like a dead frog?” Coach Allen asked, his blinding white sneakers so close to my face I could smell them.

“Just . . . need . . . one . . . minute . . .” I panted, breathing deeply and slowly against the red rubber mat beneath me.

“Well, don't be late, Crabb,” he grunted before shuffling away. I lingered on the gymnasium floor and closed my eyes, hoping that the unyielding boner beneath me would dissipate so I could stand up.

Maybe I wasn't quite ready to meet Greg.
After the holidays
, I told myself as the gym emptied.
After the holidays
.

During some of the more painfully anxious years of my life, I would find solace in other peoples' pets. In any situation around family or my parents' friends in which I felt vulnerable to questions about sports and girlfriends, I would find the pet immediately and force every bit of my love and attention onto it. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent in my mom's boyfriends' backyards or my grandparents' garage playing fetch or tug-of-war with a mutt. Parties with other kids my age were the worst, as they weren't easily tricked like adults into thinking I was “normal.” Here I am taking solace with Whitney, the poodle of a seventeen-year-old girl named Michelle. I'm also taking solace in the third glass of wine cooler mixed with Sprite that Michelle snuck me at this party. I'm actually quite happy here. Even as an adult, “tipsy while holding a dog” is still one of my favorite states of being.

I
f
Why don't I like girls?
was the controlling thought of my life in middle school, my high school brain was consumed by
Why
do
I like boys?

I asked myself this repeatedly, my gaze roaming up and down the length of his chiseled physique, his body so spectacular that I didn't know where to focus. The ripples in his abdomen transfixed me. The magnificent striations in his upper thighs were stunning. There was also that beautiful space near the armpit where the muscles of his chest and arm merged, flexed from holding the weight of his body up against the giant wooden cross.

“Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius,” hummed Father Carol, gassing our entire pew with incense fumes from his swinging thurible.

“Oh dear,” my mother coughed, overcome by smoke, “it's enough to knock you out. Isn't it, Leonard?” She glanced around
me to my father, who was so bored by Christmas Mass that he looked dead, like a pale, bald corpse propped up in his seat as a holiday prank.

“Uh-huh,” he groaned as we proceeded to lip-sync another hymn.

Since their divorce when I was two, my parents had held on to the idea that their spending time together in my presence was good for me, regardless of their differences. My mother had grown up deeply embedded in the Catholic Church. She remained devout in an open-minded way that allowed for her other interests: metaphysics, exorcisms, and Shirley MacLaine books. Her esoteric hobbies were at odds with my dad's interests in astronomy and fiber-optics.

After Mass my father took us to Church's Chicken for lunch, a prospect that appalled my mother.

“Church's?” she muttered as we arrived. “Fast food on Christmas Day?”

Half an hour later we were gathered around a sad pile of cardboard and Styrofoam that sat atop a yellow linoleum table. My mother was not happy and, in a passive-aggressive fashion, made a big show of picking greasy bits of napkin off her manicure.

“I guess it's not about where you are but who you're with,” she sighed with a Plasticine smile, sounding like she'd rather be anywhere else. I stayed quiet and gorged myself on drumsticks, again trying to soak up the tension in my bones with the food in my mouth.

“You eat up, sweetie,” my mother encouraged. “You've gotten so skinny lately. Hasn't he, Leonard?”

My father nodded silently behind the reflective lenses of his sunglasses, which were lightly misted with mashed-potato
steam. Mom continued to chatter on the way home, a nervous response to my dad's silence that, ironically, only made things more tense.

By the end of the day I was emotionally exhausted. I went to bed early but couldn't stop thinking about Jesus, in the
bad
way. As I imagined dragging a moist cloth down the length of his torso, it occurred to me that maybe, instead of giving him a sexy sponge bath, I should ask him for help. So I closed my eyes and posed the simple question:
Dear God, why do I like boys?

I waited for an answer from on high until eventually I fell asleep, but I decided to keep at it. I started the new year praying all the time: in the car on the way to school, in the locker room after gym class, during my lunch break in the library. Sometimes I prayed in sync with my sinful thinking, asking Christ to heal my wayward soul while I watched Greg Brooks's beautiful butt ascend the bleachers ahead of me.

At first, I asked God for his help nicely.

Dear God, please help me get rid of the ideas in my head about boys. Let me meet a nice girl who will marry me one day and have my kids. Thanks and amen
.

But as the weeks passed and I sensed no improvement in my condition, I began to daydream about suicide. I imagined an elaborate, cinematic death scored by Sinéad O'Connor's “Nothing Compares 2 U.” In my fantasy, a camera descended from an overhead crane as my father found me bled-out in a pink-hued bathtub surrounded by white candles. Trembling, he'd read the epic twelve-page good-bye poem I'd left for him beneath a razor blade. He'd lift my limp body from the tub and gently lay me across his lap before raising his fists to the sky, creating a tableau that was part Pietà, part
Platoon
. As thunder rumbled and a torrent
of rain was somehow unleashed inside the bathroom, Leonard would scream skyward, “NOOO!!! If only I'd accepted you for YOU! But it's too LATE! TOO LAAAATE!!!”

Suicide wasn't a way out but a high-drama bartering tool for fair treatment.
My dad would finally understand me
, I thought, glossing over the fact that my being six feet under might get in the way of feeling accepted.

Look, God
, I eventually demanded,
I didn't do anything to hurt you or anyone else. I love my parents and I don't steal or cheat. The only sin I commit is lying, which I have to do
because
of you. And it's all
your
fault!
You
are making me a sinner by letting me be this way. So stop being a jerk and make me better already. Amen!

I talked to God less like he was a deity and more like he was a negligent customer-service operator at Verizon.

I took the whole day off work and it's already 5
:
30! Where's the damn cable guy?

As nothing changed, I became more fearful. The threat of familial rejection and social isolation of being gay was scary enough. But now there was something else. Something worse—AIDS.

In 1990 you couldn't watch MTV for more than ten minutes without hearing about AIDS.

Stay tuned for Madonna's new PSA about . . . AIDS!

Next on
The Real World
: in which someone struggles with . . . AIDS!

Here's TLC in costumes made of condoms, rapping about . . . AIDS!

At first I thought I could contract it through the air, as if HIV particles floated around, waiting to slip into my pores as soon as I thought about something remotely gay. I became my own
thought police during high-risk scenarios involving underwear catalogues or Johnny Depp scenes in
21 Jump Street
. I even trained myself to avoid looking at Greg, whose dapper spring wardrobe and slightly blonder hair were proving hard to ignore.

Something else was also hard to ignore—Greg's new girlfriend, Jill.

Jill had a freckled face, pale pink lips, and a head full of long, bouncing blond curls. I first noticed them together in the parking lot after school, leaning on the hood of a car and holding hands. Then I saw them in the cafeteria, sharing headphones and Mexican food on Taco Tuesday. Although we shared second-period history class, I didn't count Jill among the small group of less-popular girls I called my “acquaintances.”

One day, as we waited to be excused, I watched Jill reading a note from Greg out loud to her friends as they giggled and shrieked.

“Oh my God, Jill!” Paula Simms squealed. “He is SO crazy about you!”

“I know, right?” cooed Jill, clutching the note to her chest and rolling her eyes skyward. “I think I love him!”

As the group of girls tee-heed and swooned, I fantasized that a bolt of lightning would suddenly tear through the roof of the classroom and rip Jill's head clean off her shoulders.

“Are you sick, David?” someone asked me. I turned to see my desk neighbor, Patty Marks, a mousy brunette with pale, meaty cheeks and hazel, almost yellow eyes. Patty was smart, quiet-natured, and generally regarded as a bit of a Jesus freak.

“Oh, yeah, Patty,” I answered, realizing that my face had been stuck in a contorted sneer as I watched Jill. “It's just my, uh, stomach.”

“Here, drink this,” she said, reaching into her brown paper lunch bag. Patty passed me a can of ginger ale and flashed a bashful smile.

“But, Patty, it's your drink and I . . .”

“No, it's okay. I can drink water,” she said, nervously fondling her crucifix necklace. “Oh! And this is for you,” she added, sliding over a tiny red envelope.

Oh no
, I thought. Jill's love note suddenly made sense. It was Valentine's Day.

Seconds later, the bell saved me from having to read Patty's note in front of her. “Thanks,” I blurted before running into the hallway to look at the card, which pictured ALF holding an armful of red roses under the phrase “Be mine!”

The rest of the day was excruciating. Girls skipped elatedly down the hallways holding heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. Boys walked bashfully, holding cheap red gas-station roses for their girlfriends. Juniors and seniors sucked face against lockers uninterrupted, knowing that administrators would let their public displays of affection slide. It was all so loud, so cringeworthy, so desperate. I told myself that I was merely offended, but in truth, I wanted to be part of the ritual too.

Looking down at ALF's big, pleading eyes on Patty's card, I thought that maybe it was time to give it a go. After all, I'd been asking God for a girlfriend for two months. Maybe Patty could make me realize that I loved her above Ricky Schroder, Mackenzie Astin, Patrick Swayze, the Tom Selleck look-alike my mom used to date, half of New Kids on the Block, and the entire model cast of the
International Male
catalog.

The next day I slid Patty a card that asked, “Want to go
steady?” She passed it back with the “Yes” box checked, and smiled at me. It was easy as pie. I had a girlfriend.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Patty's company that first week. She was a demure girl from a devout Christian family and didn't really have much to say. I could ramble to Patty for hours and she'd barely make a peep. I'd forgotten how pleasant it was to simply talk to someone. It was also satisfying to show the world some living, breathing evidence of my “normality.” In the mornings I'd meet Patty near the drop-off circle, where my mom would be able to see us hug as she drove away. In the parking lot I'd make sure Greg noticed me and Patty holding hands near the blue car where he met Jill after school. In the cafeteria I'd get us a table near the lunch line to ensure that most of the student body would see me sharing French fries with Patty Marks, my girlfriend.

One day at lunch, a couple weeks into our relationship, Patty handed me a brush.

“Would you mind?” she asked, turning around to chat with a friend about Bible study.

Running the brush through her hair felt familiar and calming, like a meditation. It took me back to better days with Amber, before the “incident.” But Patty was no Amber. Neither was her hair. The brush kept catching and pulling as I tried to work it through her wiry, dull mane, which, upon closer inspection, was flaked with dandruff. As I combed, Patty scooted herself between my legs, which were straddling the lunch-table bench.

“You're sweet,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder as her butt made contact with my crotch. “I wanna kiss you soon.”

My guts suddenly felt like they were full of turned milk. Bells and whistles began to ring in my head. A blaring internal alarm was bleating,
Danger! Danger! Danger!

Over the next week, Patty Marks became my least favorite chore. She followed me everywhere. Between classes, during lunch, before school, and after: Patty Marks was there. But something in her eyes had changed. The way she looked at me was different, more intense,
charged
. By the time the weekend came I couldn't wait to be free of her, in spite of our plans to see a movie at the mall.

On Saturday morning I let the answering machine take Patty's call.

“No, Mom!” I yelled as she reached for the phone. “Don't answer it!”

“What is it, honey? Aren't you seeing a movie with Patty today?”

“No,” I stammered. “I'm going with some guy friends.”

“Oh, that's sweet,” my mom beamed, patting my cheek. “A boys' day out.”

In the mall I walked toward the theater, two hours earlier than I'd made plans with Patty. I was excited to see
Arachnophobia
on my own, without Patty grabbing me and fawning all over me. But there she was, smiling in high-water pink denim jeans, with her dull-as-dishwater hair up in a crooked ponytail.

“You didn't answer the phone this morning,” she chirped. “So when I realized I missed you, I decided to come here early.”

“Hey,” I said, trying to act happy to see her. “When did you get here?”

“When the mall opened, silly!” she peeped, grabbing my hand.

“Oh,” I said quietly, spooked by the realization that Patty had been standing alone in front of the Odeon 14 Cineplex for three whole hours.

As
Arachnophobia
played in the darkened theater she squirmed against me like a fitful baby. “No!” she yelped, grinding against me so hard she was practically in my lap. Her wandering fingertips felt like the spiders in the film, crawling all over me in the dark as she cringed and screamed. As the credits rolled, she swiftly leaned her face toward mine. I turned my head quickly, barely avoiding my first mouth-on-mouth kiss.

“Okay,” I said, jumping up from the seat. “I gotta get home.”

“Um, okay,” she called after me as I wiped spit off my cheek. “See you Monday!”

Throughout the next week, Patty's companionship was an increasingly grueling burden. I disliked everything about her: her weird copper-colored eyes, her dry, brittle hair, and her meaty, clammy paws, which were shoved into mine all the time. It was like holding room-temperature hamburger meat. My mother told me she was sweating because I made her nervous.

But I don't want to make anyone nervous
, I thought.
Couldn't we both be adults? Can't I just have a nice
,
unthreatening girlfriend to watch
Blossom
with every Tuesday?

I decided to change up my prayer routine. If God had brought me Patty, couldn't he take her away?

Dear Lord, please make Patty Marks dump me. I don't care if she hates me forever. But please help. Amen
.