Raise Your Glass (7 page)

I don’t know if I was surprised or disappointed that she didn’t look hurt or even slightly uncomfortable. She just kept staring at me. “Since now. What is wrong?”

“Go away,” I said, sitting on my bed. “Just leave me alone.”

I could feel her just standing there, not moving, not talking, just staring at me. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I didn’t want to cry in front of anyone, if we are bringing the topic up, but life always seemed to have other plans. Finally she began to turn and then stopped. “You know, Kyle, you say I’m never there and all I care about is myself, and I understand why you’d say that. But later, when you are busy hating me in your mind and you tell yourself I never tried, I want you to think about this, right now. I am here, trying, and you are the one telling me to leave.” Her voice sounded tired and sad. “And we both know this isn’t the first time.”

She was right. She had tried before, and I always pushed her away. I didn’t want to get used to her being there or start to depend on her. I never wanted to get used to being able to count on someone besides myself because I knew sooner or later they would just screw it up and I’d be where I started in the first place. Alone. At least this way, I was ready to be alone and was never disappointed.

She began to close the door, and my mouth moved before my brain could stop it. “I’m gay!”

She paused before turning slowly to come back into the room. My heart was pounding so loud it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest all Indiana Jones-style. There was a buzzing in my ears that made everything muffled as I waited for her next words. I thought she might take some more time to consider it, but instead she just responded with a simple “Okay.”

I blinked a few times, not sure now if I’d heard her.

“Okay?” I asked back.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

I stood up. “Just okay? Seriously? I tell you I’m gay and all you can say is ‘okay’?”

She cocked her head. “Are you upset because I’m not reacting?” She laughed shakily to herself. “Did you want me to be upset at you?”

I didn’t know what I wanted. Did I want her to be mad? Did I want her to freak out and throw me out of the house? I was so fucking confused.

“Kyle, what happened at school?” she asked with real concern in her voice. I felt the walls in my head starting to break as all the emotions I had been holding back began to spill out. One sob slipped out of my mouth, and I began to crumble. “Kyle, why are you home?” she asked, taking a step closer.

I felt my resolve give out from underneath me as I began to cry and cry and cry.

And I didn’t know if I would ever stop.

Brad

I
WATCHED
Kyle walk away and felt my heart tear in half.

Half of me wanted to run up to him and just hug him until graduation. The other half wanted things to back to the way they were and for all of this to have been a bad dream. Life without Kyle? Life without baseball? Stuck in this town for the rest of my life? Dead-end job, being considered a freak by the people who used to be my friends?

“Screw it,” I said as I started to run after him.

I felt a hand grab my arm and spin me around. Kelly looked me right in the face, no malice, no sneer, just an intense look of concern. “Dude, what is wrong with you?”

I pulled my arm away angrily. “Get out my way, Kelly,” I snarled.

“Are we going to have another problem?” Mr. Adler said once it was clear Kyle was not coming back.

“No problem, sir,” Kelly answered quickly. “Just trying to talk some sense into him.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but then I saw the old man nod in agreement and say, “Well someone needs to. Carry on.”

Kelly pulled me aside as the crowd dispersed, obviously disappointed that there had been no bloodshed. I let him pull me around the corner to the alley between the music building and the gym. I watched as he made sure we were alone before he hissed in a fake whisper at me, “Have you lost your fucking mind?” This wasn’t normal Kelly, and it would have been obvious to anyone who had grown up with him. He wasn’t being mean or sarcastic; in fact it looked like he was actually worried about me. “Do you have any idea how bad you’ve fucked up?”

My knee-jerk reaction was to argue, but I stopped myself. “How?” I asked, wondering where he was going with this.

He checked again for anyone listening. “Look, dude, you had everything and you’re blowing it over”—he looked like he was about to spit, the way his face scrunched up—“over fag shit?”

“Don’t call it that,” I warned him.

He held up his hands in apology. “Fine, gay shit, whatever. You really want to throw your life away over something that stupid?” I didn’t have an answer for that. “Your popularity, your chance for a scholarship? Bro, what are you thinking?”

I hated that he was making sense. It was as if my inner fears and anxieties had been given voice through Kelly, of all people. I just shook my head. “I don’t know.”

He took a third look around and took a step toward me. “Look, man, if it’s about getting off, we can deal with that.” He put his hand over my crotch and leaned in to kiss me. I was so shocked his lips actually touched mine that I couldn’t even process it. I felt his tongue press against my closed mouth, and that was it.

I grabbed his hand and took it away from my dick. I squeezed it hard, causing him to jerk back from me as he screamed in pain. I twisted his wrist slightly, and he went down to one knee almost instantly, trying to move so the pain was less crippling. “Let me see if I get this straight,” I said, putting the slightest amount of force into the hold. “I can like guys as long as it’s you?” He shook his head but I ignored it. “I get to keep my friends and my life as long as it’s you who sucks my cock? Really, Kelly? Was that how you saw us ending up?” It was right, then, that I realized Kelly might have taken more away from us fooling around at football camp than I thought. As with most things in my life, I had been so busy worrying about myself, I completely forgot there were two of us in that bed. Some random kid turned the corner and saw us and ran off instantly. I was running out of time.

I let go of his hand, and he sat there rubbing it for a moment. I knelt down to make eye contact with him. “Was that the plan, Kelly? You and me, we get wives, have kids, but then go off up to the lake to fish every weekend? Some random hotel now and then?” I could see him fighting back tears as he dropped his gaze, and it wasn’t because of the pain. “Is it worth it? Is all this worth never having what you really want?” I wasn’t angry at him anymore. All of that rage and fury had turned to pity as I began to feel like I was just kicking a three-legged dog. I grabbed his chin and made him look me in the eyes.

“There is nothing in that life that is worth not being who you really are,” I told him in quiet words, no longer sure if I was talking about him or me. “Play their game and you will end up a miserable imitation of the man you could really be.” I moved my hand down his cheek in the only actual display of affection I had ever given him. “I’m sorry, Kelly, I shouldn’t have treated you like that.” He pressed his face against his shoulder, trapping my hand for a moment. He looked so miserable it was heartbreaking. I could see his future unfold in front of me instantly.

He was going to graduate, then wander from one meaningless job to the next. Maybe get some girl pregnant, have to marry her and settle down. He’d probably get a job on one of the ranches out here just to pay the bills. He’d be in rest stops and dirty bathrooms on the weekends, blowing strangers in a vain attempt to quell the hunger that was just beneath the surface of his skin. Never able to face who and what he really was, he’d grow up to be a miserably angry man who wondered why life was always against him.

He sounded just like my dad.

I pulled my hand free as a couple of people raced around the corner, eager to see what they were sure was round two. Instead they saw us kneeling there, as if in prayer. I held my hand out to help him up, and I saw his face change in a flash. The change was so fast and final that I swore I could hear the door slam on the prison cell of Kelly’s life. He’d made the decision that quickly, as soon as someone might actually have seen him and me.

He pulled back from me, slapping my hand away. “I said no, you faggot!” he yelled, making sure everyone heard it. “Stop asking me!” He stumbled away from me, making a great show of how disgusted he was by me and my gay advances. Some people nodded, as if that went along with their preconceptions of who I and all gay people were. But I saw more than a few look at him with narrowed eyes, obviously not buying it.

He ran away from me, no doubt ready to spread the news in his own Paul Revere way. I could just hear him:
“The gays are coming! The gays are coming!”

I just sighed and stood up, feeling like I was already an old man.

No one said a word to me as I walked past. I couldn’t blame them. If I had been standing where they were, I’d have no clue what to say, either. The bell rang and everyone began to scatter toward their classes. I looked at the path Kyle took and thought about trying to catch up with him but I honestly had no idea what I was going to say.

I opted for going to class instead.

To save time and sanity, let me recap what my last three classes were like:

Walk in. People whisper. Sit alone. Ignore people staring at me. Rush out the door as quickly as I can. Try to figure out what to do between periods since I am basically avoiding everyone. I had never been the first in a classroom before, and let me tell you, I hadn’t been missing a thing.

The only advantage of having no one to talk to was that it gave me time to think. Everything I’d said to Kelly was true, but the words meant nothing when I tried to apply them to me. I’d always had a plan to get out of this town. I was going to play my ass off, get a scholarship to a college on either coast and never look back. Fuck my friends and their two-faced ways. Fuck my parents and their series of civil war reenactments. And fuck this one-horse town and everyone who thought it was the center of the world. I had dreamt of seeing that “Welcome to Foster, Texas” sign that sat on the outskirts of town in my rearview mirror since I could remember.

Kyle was not part of the plan.

That wasn’t fair. Liking guys wasn’t part of the plan, and it should have been. I’d spent so much time running away from what I truly was that I shouldn’t be the least bit shocked at how it turned out. Like any other bimbo in a horror movie, I had actually run toward the horror I had been trying to flee and it was going to cost me. Blaming Kyle was just me doing what I always did, deflecting responsibility to anywhere but me.

I wandered into the locker room and began to change out for practice, my thoughts a million miles away.

“Greymark!” Coach Gunn’s voice echoed through the locker room. I froze in place, my fingers stopped at the third button of my jeans. I looked over and saw him walking toward me with three other guys from the team in tow. “What are you doing?”

I wasn’t sure what exactly he was asking, but I had sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like it. “Changing out for practice?” I offered.

He shook his head as he stepped closer. He started to speak. “You can’t—” And then stopped as he noticed we had an audience. “Don’t you idiots have somewhere else to be? Like running laps?” They scattered pretty quickly. In a lower voice, he started again. “You can’t be in here.” I shook my head in confusion since I had spent most of my high school life in this locker room. He obviously didn’t want to elaborate, but when he saw I wasn’t getting it, he sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. “Brad, you can’t be in here any more than I can let one of those guys change in the girl’s locker room. It isn’t allowed.”

I felt my face grow red with embarrassment. I pulled my shoulder away from him angrily as I heard someone laugh a few lockers back. “What do you think I’m going to do?” I asked him as I pulled on my shirt. “I’ve changed out here since I was a freshman and now I can’t?”

The coach didn’t look like he was enjoying this any more than I was. “Things have changed, Brad, and you know it. People are going to be uncomfortable undressing next to you, and you should have thought of that before you….” I could tell he was trying to find another way of saying “coming out” but nothing was coming to mind. He finally just said, “You should have thought of that before telling everyone your business. I’m sorry, Brad, but you can’t be in here.”

I pulled my sneakers back on. “Then where am I supposed to dress out?”

Now he looked like he’d swallowed a bug. “Brad, you can’t be in here.”

“I got that, so where do I dress out for practice then?”

And then the other shoe dropped.

“You’re kicking me off the team?” I practically screamed at him. When he didn’t say anything back, I lost it. “I gave you four years! Four fucking years of blood, sweat, and tears, and you’re kicking me off the team? I got you to state last year!”

“You weren’t gay last year,” he responded without expression.

“Yes, I was,” I blurted out. “The only difference was that you didn’t know.”

“No, the only difference was you didn’t feel the need to stand in front of the school and announce it.” He didn’t sound nasty saying it, but it hurt nonetheless. “This is out of my hands, Brad. You can’t be here.”

I looked past him and saw the rest of the team staring at me. Some were flashing me shit-eating grins, others looked shocked. One or two actually looked upset. No one said anything in my defense.

Fine.

With what little pride I had left, I grabbed my stuff and walked out of the gym for the second time today. This time, though, it felt like it was for the last time.

I threw my duffel bag into the backseat and burned rubber out of the parking lot. I was so pissed I couldn’t even see straight. As the Mustang screamed past the school, I saw the banners hanging on the back fence proclaiming it the proud home of the Foster Cowboys. I resisted the urge to stop and pull the damn banners down and light them on fire. I just kept driving. I turned on my stereo and blasted it as loud as I could, driving toward nowhere in particular.