Going the Distance (13 page)

“We’re done?” I asked, not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed.

He shook his head as he leaned back in the seat. “Danny. You know I love you, right?” I nodded mutely but couldn’t help but feel the familiar tingle of fear begin to creep up my spine. “And you know I am going to be proud no matter what you do.” I nodded, even though I knew that was a lie. I had already done things he wasn’t proud of, and I knew deep down if he knew everything, he’d end up hating me. “Look,” he said after a few seconds of thought, “you’re trying too hard. Driving a stick isn’t that big a deal.” If the words were meant to be reassuring, they failed in just about every way possible. Not only did I suck, but I sucked at something that was relatively easy. “I think you’re so wound up about what I might say or feel that you aren’t concentrating on the actual driving.”

He was right, of course. I mean, as long he had owned this Jeep, I had been taught it was more than just an average, everyday vehicle. This Jeep was his pride and joy, and whatever brain aneurism he’d suffered that made him think giving it to me was appropriate was all fine and good, but it didn’t change the fact that there were days he liked it more than me. It was like eating on your best china or wearing your best clothes: you just knew if you screwed them up, there was a whole new level of punishment waiting for you.

“Driving a clutch is like…,” he began, mentally searching for an appropriate metaphor. After about thirty seconds he snapped his fingers and announced, “Driving a clutch is like being with a girl.” I looked at him like he’d grown a second head, but he seemed oblivious to my reaction. “Girls are delicate, no matter how tough or independent they seem on the outside. The plain and simple fact is that physically they just can’t take the same amount of punishment a guy can. Now, the worst thing you can do is to treat them with kid gloves, because trust me, they hate that. Then they’ll try to roughhouse or play around like one of the guys. But deep down you know you can’t treat them the same as a guy, no matter how they act. So there’s this line….” Again he paused as he tried to summon up the correct words. This was the most my dad had said about anything except sports in a long, long time. We just didn’t have conversations like this normally. I was seeing a whole new side of him.

“There’s this balance you have to find,” he started again, “where you aren’t walking on eggshells around them, but you’re still respectful of their space.” He looked at me, but I was more confused than when we started. “I’m saying that there is a level of physicality you can have with a girl, but you have to be aware of your own strength at all times.” The blank look on my face must have told him his words were completely lost on me. He sighed and gazed down for a moment as he tried to mentally regroup. “It’s a Jeep; it’s not going to break. But that doesn’t mean you can just jam it into gear. You have to give a little with the clutch while putting just a little gas into it. Balance,” he said, holding his hands out like scales. “Do you understand?” I answered truthfully by shaking my head. “Look, Danny, you’re a big guy. No matter who you end up with, you’re going to have to be careful.”

I froze as my heart skipped a beat.

“You’re going to need to find that line between strength and control eventually,” he added. “This is a good first start.”

I sat there gripping the steering wheel for almost a minute, trying to calm myself down enough to talk. No matter who I ended up with? Was that a crack about a guy instead of a girl? Did he think I wasn’t getting it because he was using a girl as an example? Was that what my dad thought of me? Was I so queer to him that I couldn’t relate to a girl even when one was used as a simile?

He finally noticed something was wrong. He put a hand on my shoulder and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

I pulled away from him with a jerk of my arm. He seemed shocked by the outburst but didn’t say anything.

“Can we just do this?” I asked, obviously upset.

“What did I say?”

I refused to look at him as I shook my head. “Let’s just drive.” I could tell he wanted to say more, but I ignored him, and I turned the key. Was this how Dad and I were going to be for the rest of my life? Was he always going to question my sexuality? Worse, should he? I had no idea what I was, but I knew it was still unknown and every time he opened his mouth, he made it sound like it was a sure thing, and I hated that. He talked as if he had closed the book on what I was, and there was no way for me to change. Would he always be disappointed in me? Was he more disappointed than I was in myself?

“Danny.”

I ignored him.

“Danny.”

I forced myself not to look at him.

“Danny!”

I snapped and looked over at him. “What?”

He pointed at the road. “You’re driving.”

And so I was. I had been so upset and lost in thought about what he had said that I had just zoned out about the mechanics of what I was doing. I almost freaked and slammed on the brakes, but I stopped myself as I realized I had found the balance he had been talking about between the clutch and gas. I smiled despite being upset as I shifted into fourth gear without a hitch.

“See?” he said, slapping my shoulder in congratulations. “I’m glad my talk helped you.”

As we drove across the airstrip, I had an epiphany about what I had to do next. There was only one way I was going to be able to change my dad’s opinion of me and make him proud of me once and for all. An action that would redeem me in his eyes and end my own internal questions in one fell swoop.

I needed to find myself a girlfriend.

I spent the next week making a game plan. I had screwed things up pretty bad with Carol, so she was out of the question, but it couldn’t be that hard to find a girl to go out with. After all, there were always girls hanging around after parties trying to get our notice. Some of the guys took advantage of the readily available attention, which just added to the allure of landing one of us in an actual relationship. Susan dating Tommy was a fluke: no one had expected them to last very long. They were the exception and very much not the rule. Most of the guys played the field in a way that bordered on hedonism, but no one complained. It was an equitable deal; the guys got laid, and the girls got one step closer to getting them to commit.

I was guessing at most of what I just said, of course. The closest I’d been to going out with a girl was Carol, and that had ended
so
well. From what I could tell from the outside, dating looked like a game with very liberal rules and more than a few emotional elbows thrown as it came down to the wire. Guys cheating on their girls, girls playing mind games with the guys—they just seemed to circle around each other in what looked to me like a dizzying display of give-and-take.

As the week dwindled away and the first day of school got closer and closer, I vowed that this year would be different. I was going to socialize more, be normal, and find a girl like every other guy did. No more guy shit, no more being gay. This was my chance to flip the script once and for all.

The night before the first day of school, I lay in bed and tried to will myself to sleep with no success. All I could think of was what a difference a year made. Last year I was scared shitless that I wouldn’t be able to handle public high school, and that I might not be able to handle playing basketball. Now, after Florida, I knew I had real talent, I knew the school well, and I was ready for more. Cody was gone, Tommy had graduated, and what I did was all up to me.

At some point I dozed off, because my alarm clock going off scared the crap out of me.

I threw on some of the new clothes my dad had bought me last weekend; most of everything we had bought last year was already too small before basketball camp. I took a good look at myself as I brushed my teeth. I still looked like a goofball to me. My ears were too big, and my face still looked like a little kid’s, even though I was already taller than most adults I had seen. I was skinny as a rail in my opinion, but in my sweatshirt I looked like I had some kind of a body underneath. I wasn’t ugly by any means, but I wasn’t sure what would draw someone’s attention enough to be attracted to me. Cody had been way better-looking than I was. Even Tommy had more chiseled looks than I had. My dad said I was still growing into my looks, but at six five, I wasn’t sure how much more growing I could handle.

“You’re going to be late if you just keep staring at yourself,” my dad said, coming around the corner of the bathroom. I looked away quickly, but from the way I was blushing, it was obvious he had busted me. “You nervous?” he asked as I rinsed my mouth out. I shrugged as I turned off the water.

“Yes and no,” I answered honestly.

He came up and stood next to me. Even though I was inches taller than him, he was still way more impressive in his BDUs. You could tell I was his son; we had the same general features, except for the eyes. I had seen pictures of Mom, and it was obvious I had inherited not only her eyes but eye color. Where my dad’s eyes were dark brown, mine were a bright blue that just ended up making me look younger in my opinion. Where my dad had ruggedly good looks—that whole square jaw, tough as hell Marine type of face—mine was softer, and I hated it.

“You’re lucky,” he informed me soberly after a few seconds.

“Why?” I asked, still examining the differences in our faces.

“You have those cute, lost puppy dog eyes,” he said with a wry grin. “Girls go crazy for that shit.” I elbowed him, but he pushed back. “I’m serious. By your age I was already shaving every day and looked like a goon. Why your mom ever went out with me, I will never figure out.”

“I look like a baby!” I complained.

He grabbed my chin and shook my face. “But you’re such a cute wittle baby!”

I tried to jerk away, but he just laughed. “Seriously, Danny, you’re a kid. Enjoy it while you can.”

“I’ll try,” I said, suddenly feeling emotional about how fast time seemed to be passing.

“I hate to tell you this,” he said in a deadly serious tone. I paused, dreading what his next words would be. “You’re going to be late for school.”

I looked at the time and realized he was right.

I ran out of the door and threw my backpack into the back of the Jeep. I paused and smiled as I realized it was indeed my Jeep and not my dad’s. I felt like a completely different person pulling into the school parking lot, and, in a lot of ways, I was. I found a space in the student lot and jumped out as the first bell rang. I barely made it to my first class on time; the tardy bell literally rang as I walked in.

The teacher looked over at me with one eyebrow arched. “Perfect timing as always, Mr. Monroe.” A small eruption of laughter from the class greeted his words, and I looked around to find a place to sit. There was only one seat left, and as my eyes fell on it, I knew that fate had conspired to help me out with my plans.

I slid into the seat and, with a small smile, looked over to my right.

“Hi, Carol,” I said under the cover of the teacher’s voice.

“I’m still mad at you.” she sniffed, trying to keep her face serious but failing pretty badly.

“Fair enough,” I said, nodding solemnly. “Too mad for me to try to make up?”

She turned her head toward me almost imperceptibly. “What kind of making up?” she inquired.

“Lunch and a lot of apologizing?” I offered.

She looked away and went back to concentrating on the front board. “We’ll see,” she whispered with a smile.

I tried to hide my own grin as I shifted back toward the front. Though I didn’t like to celebrate before the game was over, I had a feeling that would not go away.

I knew this was going to be my year.

W
E
SAT
in the huddle and pondered on what to do next.

We were in the fifth game of the regional playoffs and were down by six points. With less than twenty seconds on the clock, six points might as well have been a hundred. I looked over at the other team and saw their point guard glancing over at me as well. He had a small grin on his face that told me he was well aware of the fact he had been shutting me down all night like I had never played the game before. I would be furious if the guy wasn’t pushing every one of my buttons when it came to being attractive. He was as tall as me, which was a turn-on, since I loomed over just about everyone my age in my school. He had dark blond hair that was cut short, with a pair of dark eyes I had been staring into all night.

I had been playing most of this game with my downstairs head, and it turns out it wasn’t all that skilled at hoops.

“You still with us?” the coach asked me.

I looked back and nodded quickly as I tried to ignore the rest of the team staring at me like I had a rabbit hidden somewhere on my body. We had played an incredible season up to this point, and if you had asked us last week if we’d be down three games to two with our lives hanging on this game, we’d have laughed in your face. We had been so sure we were headed for our school’s first state championship that we could taste it. We had started the season by the coach putting it to the team who they wanted as captain for the year, instead of him choosing it arbitrarily. I won unanimously, which only solidified my belief that this was my year.

Carol had forgiven me, and we were going out pretty strong now. Unlike her sister, she was far more reserved when it came to physical intimacy, which suited me just fine. I had hoped having a girlfriend would somehow make me like girls more. Like there was some form of social osmosis that would imbue me with heterosexual feelings. All I needed to do was stand next to a girl to make me straight, or that was what I told myself. It had been five months now, and after countless hours of making out and one halfhearted attempt at a hand job after our first game, I was no closer to straight than she was to being a koala bear. She took my reluctance to paw all over her as me being a gentleman, a misconception I didn’t dissuade her of. We made a great couple and everyone seemed to accept it, which worked for both of us on different levels, I assumed.