Trevor (4 page)

Nine

Meanwhile school continued
to be dreaded and horrible. Whose idea was school anyway? A sadist's, no doubt. For example, my particular form of torture was being trapped in an environment in which everyone was going around saying that I was gay. Whether I am gay or not is not the issue. The issue is this: it is wrong to declare someone
else
's sexuality, and it is equally wrong to go around demanding that someone declare his or her own sexuality if he or she doesn't feel like it. Just because you yourself happen to be uncomfortable with uncertainty and can't stand ambiguity and/or paradox, does not mean that everyone in the world is wired in the same way. Some of us prefer to remain a mystery—even to ourselves—until we are ready.

The GSA-ers were the worst; they claimed that I was in denial, and they told me to my face (repeatedly) that if I would just admit my homosexual tendencies I would feel a whole lot better about myself. I thought they were just trying to up their membership and make it seem as though the Gay-Straight-Alliance was a real club with actual members instead of a fringe group of geeks with dyed hair and pierced eyebrows. I told them (repeatedly) that I would feel a whole lot better if they would just leave me alone, which of course they didn't seem to want to do. They suggested that I consider labeling myself “Questioning” and leave it at that. Or maybe I could declare myself an “ally.” I asked them why I needed a label at all; why did I need to declare myself as anything other than Trevor? Isn't that enough?

Miranda Lemley, a sophomore with a round face, sparkly blue eyes, baggy pants, perfunctory piercings, and an impressive grill of dental work, sighed hard. As she fussed with her green Mohawk, she said, “Look, Travis, we're just trying to be friendly. You seem lost and lonely. Once upon a time we were the same way, so we thought you could use a kind word. But if you're gonna be that way about it, forget we ever said anything.” She then turned on her heel and walked away. The others followed after her.

“TREVOR,” I called out after her. “My name is Trevor!”

The jocks also began to taunt and abuse me. Without Pinky and his posse around to provide a little street cred, I might as well have been wearing a target on my back. In addition to
Faggot
, some of the names they called me to my face were as follows:
Fruit Loop
,
Poof
,
Sissy
,
Girlyboy
,
Nellie
,
Big Nell-box
,
Nancy
,
Mary
, and
Evelyn
. There was a large football player named Turk who apparently decided that his mission in life was to make my life extra miserable. Why Turk felt the need to pick on
me
when there happened to be so many other kids in our school who were weaker, more defenseless, and (excuse me for saying it) more deserving, remains a mystery to this day. In any case, Turk found it in his heart to jab me with his fist, his elbow, his knee, his thumb, a book, or whatever he had handy whenever I passed him in the hallway. And because he was the king of the jocks, his minions did the same. As a way of defending myself I tried to make myself invisible, but again and again I was unable to activate that particular superpower. At night, I busied myself by deleting the hateful comments that were posted to my Facebook wall. It was exhausting work, but the thought that Pinky might be checking out my profile and could possibly see these remarks made me work even harder and I was kept up late into the night.

Sometimes to entertain myself I tried to imagine the unhappy futures that were in store for my fellow schoolmates. For example, I envisioned Turk living in a one-bedroom, low-rise apartment with a partial view of an unremarkable third-tier American city. I imagined that by the age of 30 Turk would be stuck in a job that went nowhere and meant nothing. He would have neither a wife nor a girlfriend, maybe a cat. His football trophies would be placed prominently on top of his TV, but only he would admire them. Most nights he would sit there trying to figure out where he went wrong. How did it happen that one day he was so on top of the world and then practically overnight he was nothing, no one? Then one evening after months and months of soul-searching, it would come to him in a flash.
I see now,
he would say to himself.
I should've been nicer to that Trevor kid back in high school. Everything in my life would be different if I just hadn't been so outright mean to him.
Later that evening he would get the idea to call me so he could make it up to me personally, tell me that he was sorry before it was too late. He would look me up on Facebook
, and when he couldn't find me there he'd go to the White Pages website and do a search. Sadly, he would not be able to find me there either because it would be too late. I'd already be dead.

Ten

I
came home
from my piano lesson and found Father Joe sitting on our living room sofa. He looked like a dark cloud in his priestly blacks and clerical collar, but a cloud with a big smile and a firm handshake. Right away, he offered to take me to the Dairy Queen. I was suspicious from the start. First of all, we were never that religious as a family. Yes, we believed in God, but we were never that big on His local representatives regardless of their affiliation. For example, I can't remember any one of them being invited into our house. Ever. Father Joe and I drove across town to the Dairy Queen in Father Joe's blue, midsize Malibu, and the whole time he asked me questions about my schoolwork, about how I was getting on with Mom and Dad, and about the kids at school.

Father Joe had a big doughy face with features that were unremarkable: nose, lips, eyes, and chin were all standard issue, not one of them stood out among the others. I noticed that his hands were unnaturally clean and he kept his fingernails neatly clipped. Dandruff dotted his shoulders like the first bit of snow on a paved street. And the whole time he was talking, I couldn't help wondering if he had ever kissed a girl. Did he turn against a life of sex and then decide to devote himself to God, or was it the other way around? Did he find God and then force himself to forgo the sex altogether? Either way, it seemed a shame. Not that I was interested in having sex with Father Joe. Please. But still, shouldn't everyone have the right to enjoy themselves in this world? Shouldn't everyone be loved? And why would God want a person to
not
have sex? What would be the point of that?

Anyway, he parked the Malibu around the side of the building, and as he ran down the list of ice cream treats we might enjoy, I found myself actually praying:
Please, God, do not let anyone from school see me in the company of a priest on a Saturday afternoon. No offense, but it will ruin me.

Instead of accompanying Father Joe into the place, I opted to stay in the car and wait for him to bring me a hot-fudge sundae. And it's a good thing because, as I was going through the glove compartment (a Bible, a pack of tissues, a county map, a bottle of aspirin, the registration, and a book of matches from a bar called The Hideaway), I happened to look up and spot Miranda Lemley walking into the Dairy Queen with a few of her lesbian friends. I thanked God for saving me the embarrassment of being recognized, and promised to do charitable works for the rest of my life. Eventually, Father Joe returned to the car and, just as I was about to dig into my sundae, he introduced the topic of sex.

“What about it?” I inquired.

Father Joe seemed to be under the impression that I didn't know where babies came from or how they got made. Before I could correct this misperception, he launched into a description of the process, giving me a blow-by-blow account of what men and women get up to when they are naked with each other. It was only then that I began to realize this whole outing had been a miserable set-up between my parents and Father Joe.

“So then the man's penis becomes blood engorged,” said Father Joe as he reached for his soft drink and took a sip. “He gets hard.”

How was it possible that this was happening? Why hadn't I seen it coming? I felt like a total stooge.

“And then the man inserts his penis into the vagina of the woman, which is lubricated in its own natural juices.”

I swear it was like gag city.

And then just when I was grossed out to the max and humiliated to the point of never wanting to have sex with a single living person for the rest of my totally sorry life, Father Joe turned to me and said: “Trevor, have you ever had desires? And I'm talking about sexual desires for another boy.”

I decided that in fact this was not happening; it was a bad dream. It was a nightmare and I'd be waking up in my bed in just a moment. Wake up, I told to myself. Wake up! Wake up! I tried to scream, but I found that just like in a dream, I couldn't. WAKE UP!

“Be honest with me, Trevor. I can help you if you are honest.”

I looked away, hoping that by removing Father Joe from my sight I might somehow make him disappear from the face of the earth or at least from my vicinity; it didn't work. I was still trapped in a nightmare, and he kept talking, making it worse.

“Have you, for example, ever wanted to touch another boy . . . like . . . and I'm not suggesting anything here, but, like Pinky Faraday?”

After that I can't remember much of what was said. I completely blocked him out, and all of my powers of concentration were focused on devising a getaway plan. I briefly considered opening the car door, leaping from my seat, and throwing myself into the oncoming highway traffic, but every time I took hold of the door handle, something made me pause. Eventually, Father Joe stopped talking, drove me back home, and dropped me off, but not without first promising that we would do this again real soon. What I wanted to say was:
Just kill me now.

“How was your visit with Father Joe?” Mom called out from the kitchen.

“Fine,” I replied as I ran up the stairs and into my room.

After what they'd put me through, I felt entirely justified in not mentioning my plans. Mom and Dad did not need to know that the following day I was going to start a new life. That was my business. But just so that the plan would remain fresh in my mind, I sat down at my desk and wrote it all out longhand.

MY PLAN

Dye hair and eye lashes.

Change name, identity.

Change schools.

MapQuest Mexico.

Change religion.

Eleven

They say that
when you die your whole life flashes before you, but what they don't tell you is that the very last day is the worst day of all and you'd rather not replay it. There are no statistics, but I'm guessing that the last day is the final straw, proof that your life was so not worth living.

The toilet in the master bathroom flushed—a sure sign in our house that the day had officially begun. Mom was up. I could hear her humming.

Mister T, our cat, was downstairs, wide awake and waiting to be released into the wilds of the backyard in order to begin his daily business of disturbing (and possibly killing) whatever wildlife he can sink his teeth into. Mister T is a real terrorist, but rather than targeting a particular population such as field mice or house wrens, he likes to spread his enmity all around to include everything and everyone in view. We humans are especially subject to his disapproval. Only my mother seems to be exempt from being clawed, chased, hissed at, scratched, and bitten on a regular basis. I suspect that Mister T considers Mom necessary for his survival. When it comes to the rest of us, he either hisses at us in order to get us to understand that we are sitting in his spot or takes a swipe to let us know who is boss.

I've read stories on the Internet about how cats are supposed to know when a person is close to death. Apparently household cats have extrasensory powers that tell them to sleep outside the door of the soon-to-be-deceased. Possible? Sure. But no one has been able to prove it. Personally, I think it's just an urban legend, the result of that weird aura cats give off like swamp gas. In any case, Mister T would not be the right cat to study in order to prove this premise, because on any given day of the week, he could care less whether I am dead or alive. Most mornings he just sits at the back door, occasionally licking his chops, cleaning his paws, and waiting for my mother to open the back door and let him loose upon another unsuspecting day. Like everybody else in the house, Mister T had no idea what I was planning for myself.

I figured that if I actually went through with my plan, I would be spared the torture of having to face another day (i.e., Turk and the kids in the cafeteria). I was counting on this whole charade being over and done with and hoping that some kind of eternal silence would descend like snow falling on Christmas morning. In other words, I was looking forward to being done with this world.

But . . .

What if death wasn't really the end of everything? I mean no one really knows for sure what happens after you die. I've read about the afterlife on the Internet. People who died and then came back to life always say how peaceful their dead bodies appeared to be while they themselves were floating up near the ceiling looking down on the whole deathbed scene. I was looking forward to that kind of peace. In fact, I couldn't wait. I imagined the dead quiet, the eternal peace, the ceiling, the floating, the end.

But what if I was forced to witness the whole unhappy course of events that followed on the heels of my death? Suppose I had to stand by and watch my mother discover my dead body lying on the bed? That would be awful, and I wasn't sure that I could handle it.

Imagine that I'm sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide open, but seeing nothing. This time instead of just pretending that I'm dead, like I used to do on occasion, I am actually and truly dead. Mom walks into the room, sees me lying there, and freezes. When she realizes what's going on, she lets out an involuntary scream. But in order not to wake Dad, she quickly catches herself and covers her mouth with both hands. She shuts the door. All the color has drained from my face and my skin has a bluish tint, making me look more than a little ghoulish. The color has drained from Mom's face too, but she is still alive. She falls down onto the carpet and, while kneeling beside the bed, she takes hold of my shoulders, shakes me, and repeats the words, “Why, why, why?” over and over. My face is cold as stone but I look relaxed, peaceful, and almost happy. My plaid Converse high-tops are lying on the floor beside the bed, their mouths wide open and tongues hanging out. Mom picks up one of the sneakers, looks at it as if it is something that's fallen from outer space, and then she unexpectedly presses it to her heart. I am forced to watch her as she starts to sob uncontrollably. I don't say anything. I can't. I'm up near the ceiling, dead. And besides, what would I say? “It's going to be all right. Don't worry, Mom, I'll do better next time.” No. I just have to float there and endure her heartache until the pain becomes too much and I am forced to fly off to God knows where.

This was the kind of thinking that could sometimes discourage me from going through with my plan. But then I would tell myself, “
It's a good thing that your mind is made up. Now all you need are the means to do it.”