Openly Straight (25 page)

I
spent all morning writing. Once I finished, I lay down in my bed and called my mother to tell her what was going on. I knew she wouldn’t say she told me so. That’s just not the kind of mom she is.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Feel my arms around you from across the country.”

“I could really use that,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

I closed my eyes and let the room spin. My brain was tired from all the writing and thinking. “I dunno. I don’t want anything I say to hurt Ben. But I think I probably need to tell people the truth.”

“How do you think that will go?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not ashamed of being gay.”

“I never thought you were. You always seemed to be fine with it.”

“I was. I am. And then I went and screwed it all up. My whole life.”

She laughed. “You screwed a few months of your life up. Not all of it. You can make it better anytime you want to.”

I knew she was right, but it pissed me off a little too. Because why do I always have to do the right thing? Around the globe, people
do the wrong thing all the time and the world doesn’t end. Then I go and avoid being totally honest for once in my life, and it blows up in my face.

“Why can’t I just be bad?” I asked, figuring my mom would have no idea what I was talking about.

“Well, that’s easy, sweetie. You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.”

I let that sink in a little. Yeah. Simple. Funny that I’d never thought of that before. There was no law against not being openly gay. It only hurt me inside. A lot. Because gay
was
inside me. And when outside didn’t match inside …

“Earth to Rafe.”

“I’m here,” I said. “It’s just … Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And one other thing.”

“What?”

“Thanks for the coming-out dinner at Hamburger Mary’s.”

My mother laughed. “That was years ago. Why are you saying that now?”

“Just because. I’m pretty sure I didn’t say it back then. Thanks.”

“You are very welcome. Dad and I love you exactly as you are, and we want you to be happy. That’s all.”

“I know. Thanks, Mom. So can you up my allowance?”

“No,” she said, laughing.

“I thought it was worth a try.”

I had lunch with Albie and Toby, which was reasonably fun, although Toby’s game of Vacation, Move to, Bomb (someone yells out three
places, and you have to decide which place you’d like to vacation, where you’d move to, and where you’d bomb) wore thin after about three rounds. Then I went to my afternoon classes, feeling a little better. I didn’t want to see Ben, but I also didn’t want to flunk out of Natick.

As soon as class was done for the day, I called Claire Olivia, even though I knew it was two hours earlier in Colorado, so she’d still be in school. She answered anyway.

“So how’s Boulder?” I asked, curling up under my blanket, still in my clothes.

“It misses you. Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I said. “Guess what happened?”

She sighed, weary. “You repressed your sexuality in the name of boredom, and now you’re sad?”

“I told Ben. Everything.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Huge blowup,” I said, chewing my fingernail. “Very not good here.”

“Sorry, Rafe. I really am. I know I gave you shit, but I am sorry. I know you really liked him.”

“Loved him,” I said. It was the first time I’d admitted that to her. I wondered if she knew how much losing him had hurt me.

“Loved him,” she repeated. “What are you gonna do?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said. “Am I a terrible person?”

“Yes.”

“Come on.”

“Well, don’t ask questions when you know the answer already!”

“Okay. So why do I feel like a terrible person? Like you were mad
at me for lying, and now Ben is furious at me. If I’m not a terrible person, why have my two closest friends both called me a liar?”

“Well, it’s pretty simple, really,” Claire Olivia said, and in the background I could hear the noises of Rangeview — lockers shutting, people shouting. “We called you a liar because you were lying. You’re a great person who was lying. Obviously you felt like you had to lie, or else you wouldn’t have, because, as I said, you’re this incredibly great person. And great people don’t just go and lie about things unless they really feel like they need to.”

The line went silent, but my brain was filled with thoughts. What she’d said reminded me of one of the things my mom always said: “Guilt is about something you do. Shame is about who you are.” Guilt, she’d explained, was useful because a person could learn from it and do the right thing next time. Shame, on the other hand, was useless, she’d always said. What is to be gained from thinking you’re a bad person? I wasn’t bad.

So I was guilty. Not shameful, but guilty. Guilty of what? Lying. I knew that. But like Claire Olivia had said, I had felt like I needed to lie.

I pictured Ben, and how hurt he’d looked when I’d told him everything. My heart lurched into my stomach. I realized this was simple, really. I had done something wrong, and it didn’t matter why. And it didn’t make me a terrible person, just a person who had lied to someone he loved and needed to make it right.

“You still there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just … pondering. What you said.”

“Good,” she said. “But there’s something else I want to say.”

“Say anything. I’m listening.”

“Good, because for a while there, these last few months, I wasn’t sure if you were.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Well, that’s the thing I wanted to say. Because maybe I wasn’t exactly the best friend I could have been, because I totally didn’t pay attention when you were telling me about all this stuff last year. I didn’t get it, and maybe if I did, you wouldn’t have gone across the country to get away. So who’s the terrible person now?”

“Not a terrible person. Just someone who maybe could have … I don’t know,” I said. “Anyway, you’re a great friend. Always were. My best.”

“I just wish I had let you talk about it for once, and not been such a bitch.”

“Not a bitch. Never.”

“Well, sometimes.”

“Yeah, true. Sometimes. But thanks, I needed that,” I said.

“Anytime, Shay Shay,” she said.

When
the door swung open, six hopeful faces turned and looked to see who it could be. Toby smiled right away, and I smiled back. Mr. Scarborough also gave me a nod, which I returned.

“Boys, it appears we have a new member!” Mr. Scarborough said. “I’m sure you all know Rafe Goldberg.”

The other four members of the GSA were people I didn’t know very well. I mean, I’d seen them around. Natick School isn’t so huge that there are too many kids whom I’d absolutely never seen. But they weren’t in my circle. Whatever that was.

“Hey,” I said, and everyone welcomed me in and Mr. Scarborough pointed to one of the empty chairs in the circle. There were twelve —
I guess you’d call that wishful thinking?
— and I took the empty one next to Toby, who reached out and squeezed my arm.

I felt super-self-conscious. These kids could become a big part of my future at Natick, and I wondered if they’d like me. My eyes darted around to the different members, knowing that they were all sizing me up. Was I a good addition, in their minds? I hoped so.

One of the kids I recognized as a sophomore from the cross-country team. He was blond, with big eyes and smooth, pale skin, and he always wore this black overcoat and a green-and-blue scarf. His name was Jeff and I had maybe said two words to him, but I’d definitely had him on my cute list when I arrived. I nodded at Jeff and he nodded back.

Toby leaned over and nudged me.

“You’re drooling,” he whispered. “Is Jeff the next Ben?”

I looked at him, horrified.

“Too soon?” he asked.

“Too soon,” I said, knowing that Toby couldn’t possibly know how much the loss of Ben was still twisting me up inside. I liked Toby a lot, but that wasn’t something I was planning on sharing with him. I tried to put it out of my mind.

Everyone got settled and the sharing started. Basically, it was like a feather circle back home, only without the feather. (Feather circles may be only a Boulder thing, come to think of it.) This one kid named Ned talked about whether he could come out to his roommate. It was kind of interesting, emphasis on
kind of
, because he punctuated every sentence with the phrase
or so
, which made sense about 6 percent of the time.

“So I think I might tell him before the break or so. Maybe it’ll be good to give him a chance to think it over while he’s at home with his family or so.”

I drifted off as he went on, looking around the circle. Across from me was this freshman I’d seen on campus several times, Carlton. It was hard to miss him. His features were so feminine — his mouth framed by pouty lips, his eyebrows arched up like he’d
plucked them, which perhaps he had. He was wearing black skinny jeans and a formfitting black blazer that looked like it had been cut for a woman, and his hair was impeccably styled — perfectly tousled like Justin Bieber’s.

Here was someone who could pass for a girl if he tried. I had never wanted to be a girl; that one time as a rocker chick had been plenty for me, thanks. I imagined me wearing his outfit and thought:
Oh my God, how would Steve and Zack react if I walked across campus like that?
And then I imagined what it would be like to spend so much time in front of a mirror to look that perfect, and did anyone at Natick really care or compliment him? What did he do it for? Could it ever work for me?

And those eyes, so hazel. Hazel, was that right? They were looking right at me, and that’s when I realized Carlton was watching me watch him. I looked away. Then I glanced back, and even though he didn’t look offended, I wanted to say to him,
Don’t worry, I wasn’t really judging you. I was thinking about myself.

Oh.

Wow.

I was thinking about myself!

It was like the world opened up to me at that moment, and my thoughts tripped over one another. I was staring at this effeminate kid, and judging my own masculinity, or lack thereof. And was I so different from everyone else? Who was to say what Mr. Meyers in Boulder was thinking about when he looked at me? How come I was assuming his staring at me had anything to do with me? It was probably all about him. Same with everyone.

And as I thought these things, I realized that I wasn’t listening either. Here Ned was talking, presumably about something that mattered a lot to him. He’d probably spent a lot of time choosing his words and thinking about how it would all sound. And here I was, thinking about myself yet again. Was everyone this way? And if so, did that mean that maybe I was off the hook a little? Maybe I could spend a little less time worrying about what people thought about me, since they probably
weren’t
thinking about me at all. They were probably thinking about themselves instead.

“Rafe?” Mr. Scarborough said.

The room was quiet. Everyone was looking at me.

Oh, shit. My turn. I’d spaced out at the end of Ned’s sharing completely.

“Just wanted a dramatic pause,” I said, cursing myself. I really needed to learn how to listen. I looked at Mr. Scarborough and it was as if he could read my mind, because I could see that he knew I was thinking that. It was unnerving.

So I talked about coming out for the first time and being out, and then deciding I wanted the label to go away. I explained a bit about my time at Natick, leaving out the bromance, since it would be pretty obvious to anyone who had eyes who I was talking about if I mentioned those details. I focused mostly on why I’d come there and why I hadn’t been out.

“I just wanted to be me for a bit. Without my sexuality being on display, you know?”

Blank stares from Ned and Carlton and the other kid I didn’t know too well, Mickey.

“I get that,” Jeff said. He had a deep voice that I liked. “Go under the radar a little. I’m like that sometimes too. Like, why do we have to march in parades and all that stuff?”

“But if we don’t march in parades, people don’t see us,” Mickey said. He was wearing a paisley shirt and his hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

“What do you mean?” Jeff said. “People aren’t going to stop seeing gays because they don’t march in some stupid parade. Straight people don’t march in a parade.”

“Well, they don’t have to,” Mickey said. “What do you call it when a straight person comes out?”

“What?” Jeff asked.

“A conversation,” Mickey said. “Straight people don’t have to think, every time they talk, about whether they are coming out. We do. That might be hard, but that’s also why we have to come out. If we don’t, it’s pretty much impossible to have a conversation about anything beyond the weather without lying. We really have no choice, do we?”

Jeff crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Except that’s not true,” he said. “Gay is just one thing I am. It doesn’t define me.”

“Maybe not,” said Mickey. “But if you don’t embrace that one part of you, forget it. Rafe just said it. How did that go for you, Rafe? Leaving part of yourself behind?”

I realized two things right then: One, I didn’t like this Mickey guy. Two, he was totally onto something.

“You’re right,” I said. “When I put away the label, things were great for a bit because the burden of it all went away. But then it was like I went away too, and that part sucked.”

Finally Carlton said, “I hate labels. I’m just me.”

And this started a really cool conversation about what it meant to be yourself that Jeff got into, and then Toby disagreed and sided with Mickey and Carlton, and Ned wasn’t sure where he stood on it. We laughed about the time Toby did march in the parade in Boston, with a youth group. Toby was wearing a camouflage T-shirt and torn jeans, and this superqueeny kid from the group came up to him as they walked together and said, “Oh, Toby. I’d like to take you home, undress you, and redress you.” There was something so natural about the give and take of the conversation, and we were all involved, and it kept on like that.

And that’s when I noticed it. For the first time in a long time, I had lost myself. The camera. Gone. I had forgotten that the other kids might be looking at me, and I had stopped trying to come across in a particular way. And I almost laughed, because it was so simple.

No one had really been looking at me all the time. Other than me.

That felt like a huge thing to realize, and I wanted to figure out how to spend the rest of my life turning that camera off, or pointing it outward so I could see other people as they were. Not, like, to judge, but just to see. Because here were a bunch of people I didn’t know that well yet, and if I was lucky, I could get to know them.

And maybe they could even get to know me a little too.

For the rest of the meeting, I stopped worrying about how I looked to anyone else or what they were thinking. I was smiling and not worried if I had food stuck in my teeth. I was laughing and not wondering what it sounded like. Along with my times with Ben, and some of the time I spent with Albie and Toby, this was the happiest
I’d been since coming to Natick. I realized I wanted more of that. And the cool thing was, with these guys, all possible new friends, maybe I could have that.

As I walked out of the GSA meeting with my new buddies, Steve happened to be coming down the hallway toward us. He scanned the group of guys I was walking with, and he gave me an odd look. I realized I should probably just tell him now. He’d know sooner or later, and even if I no longer liked him and his posse, we were still going to be teammates. I told the GSA guys I’d meet up with them at dinner, and I ran after Steve.

“So you’re probably wondering what that was all about,” I said as I caught up to him in the stairwell.

He shrugged and didn’t stop descending. “Not really.”

“Well, so it’s said: I’m gay. I wanted to let you know so you didn’t hear it from someone else,” I said, stopping walking as we came to the landing.

He stopped too, but I could tell he didn’t want to. “Oh-kay …”

We looked at each other, and at least for me, it was like seeing him for the first time. He was just this guy. Well built and handsome, sure. But whatever power he once had over me, as if he was this icon of what a male person ought to be, was gone.

“So I just wanted you to know,” I repeated.

He shrugged. “I don’t give a shit who you have sex with. So long as it isn’t me.”

I had to laugh.
Problem solved, Steve. No need to worry.
As good-looking as he was, he was about last on my list. And I remembered
his comments in the shower, so I knew there was at least a part of him that gave a shit.

“So if I had come out before the soccer season, would you have been as nice to me?”

“Sure,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Oh-kay …” I said, imitating him.

“I mean, we would have had to figure out some other shower arrangement, because, you know.”

I wanted to say:
No, I don’t know. Not every gay guy wants to go to bed with you, you asshole.
But I didn’t say that.

“Well, have a good holiday,” I said instead, and he said, “You too,” and kept walking, and I realized I wasn’t going to miss the soccer posse all that much during the off-season. What had I ever seen in them in the first place?