When Everything Feels like the Movies (6 page)

Tobey told me what being gay meant, as if I hadn’t downloaded Grindr when I was like, nine, and my mom gave me her old phone. He said that I was gay, but he wasn’t because he had a girlfriend.

And then we took turns fucking each other with my Barbies.

The first person I came out to was my grade-two teacher. Her name was Mrs Schaeffer. She took me out of class because I spontaneously broke out singing Britney Spears during a test. When she told me to “Stop that racket!” I said, “It’s not racket. It’s Britney, bitch.”

Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know what to do with me. She had already called my mom and told her she should take me to the doctor. Mom did. The doctor prescribed Ritalin for me after diagnosing me with ADHD, even though my mom said I was just an attention whore. I never did take the Ritalin; Ray got to them before I could. Mrs Schaeffer took me out in the hall and crossed her arms, looking down at me. “Every day it’s the same thing, Jude. You insist on causing trouble for yourself.” I tried to make myself cry because tears get you out of everything. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer. She looked at me, waiting.

What
was
wrong with me? Well, I never watched cartoons growing up because my mom always wanted to watch her shows:
Days of Our Lives,
Gossip Girl,
and
The Real Housewives of Orange County.
What do you expect from a boy whose only role model was Blair Waldorf?

“Well?” She asked again, crossing her arms to stop herself from hitting me. “What’s wrong with you?”

I looked up at her and shrugged. “I’m gay.” That was what everyone else seemed to think was wrong with me.

“How do you know that word?” she gasped.

Mrs Schaeffer called my house that night. I heard the whole conversation because I was sitting next to my mom on the couch, helping her sew one of the broken straps of a sequined bra. Most kids had to vacuum once a week for allowance. Not me. I had to wipe down the latex.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” Mom asked once she’d hung up the phone.

I shook my head.

“Something you told your teacher?”

I shrugged.

She looked at me for a second and then lit a cigarette. “That Mrs Schaeffer sounds like a real bitch,” she said, blowing smoke.

I told my mom a few days later. We were standing in line at Safeway when I read a headline on the front of a tabloid that said, “Kanye’s Secret Shame: He’s Gay!” I stared at it as we waited and kept thinking about it while we put the groceries in the trunk of the car. When we were driving home, I asked my mom, “Do you think Kanye West is gay?”

“Does taking it up the butt with your own head count?” she asked.

“Do you think it’s bad to be gay?”

“What? Didn’t I tell you to forget everything Father John Paul says as soon as he says it? I don’t even know why I let your grandmother take you—”

“It wasn’t anything Father John Paul said,” I interrupted. “It was just that a magazine made it sound like a bad thing.”

“What maga … Well, magazines make everything celebrities do seem like a bad thing.”

“Yeah, Lindsay can’t even do a line in peace.”

“I know,” my mom sighed. “Poor girl.”

“Well, I’m gay,” I said. “But I hope Kanye West isn’t. Straight people can keep him.”

My mom looked surprised for just a second and then she smiled. I don’t think she was acting. Sometimes my mom would smile, but it was as real as her tits.

“Shocker,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve only been walking in heels better than me since you were three years old!”

8

Movie Poster

A
ll the girls had crushes on Mr Dawson. Alexis Crane was always squeezing her chest together, trying to give herself cleavage in front of him. He liked to start each class by reading to us for fifteen minutes. I could tell that what he liked the most was hearing his own voice. It was totally narcissistic but also kind of cute. When he read, he got so into it, you couldn’t help but feel transported. Everyone else thought he was a loser because he read Jane Austen with an English accent, but I started having sex dreams about him when he asked us to write an essay on a movie that changed our lives.

I chose
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, obviously, and even dressed as Frank-N-Furter to read my essay in front of the class. When I whipped off my cape to reveal my corset and garter belt, Matt yelled from his desk, “Go back to Transsexual, Transylvania freak!”

“What country is Transylvania in, Matt?” Mr Dawson asked, once everyone had stopped laughing.

“I don’t know,” Matt shrugged. “Who cares?”

“So you know more about transsexuals than geography?” Mr Dawson smirked.

Suddenly, it sounded like the room was full of owls. I’m surprised Matt didn’t get up and punch Mr Dawson in the face, but for the first time, he looked embarrassed. I was never intimidated by him after that. Shame is so boring. I traced my tongue over my glistening red lips and stared straight into his eyes, arching one of my thick, illustrious brows.

“Everyone keep your mouths shut, please,” Mr Dawson said. “Jude, you may continue.” I kept reading with my voice shaking because the room was so quiet. I was waiting for someone to laugh every time I said a word with an “s” in it. And I couldn’t have that, so I started singing, dancing on desks, shaking my ass. Soon, everyone was cheering for me. Everyone wanted a part in my movie.

When I finished, I got a standing ovation. Then the bell rang and everyone got out of the class as fast as they could. I went back to my desk and got my books. As I was about to leave, I tried to think of a way to thank Mr Dawson. That was the first time anyone had ever stood up for me, besides Angela, who usually just butted in because she liked the drama. I was worried that “thank you” would sound lame, or worse, like I was hitting on him, which was basically what every guy thought I was doing whenever I gave him a little attention. On the rare occasions I talked to Ray, he always looked at me like I’d just asked if I could give him a blow job.

I decided not to say anything at all and started to walk out of the class, but Mr Dawson stopped me. “Remember, Jude,” he said, “don’t dream it, be it.”

As I walked out of his classroom into the hall, I imagined him slamming the door shut before I could leave. He ripped off his tie, and I fell onto his chest. His breath was hot. He was bulging. My garter belt snapped as he pulled off my necklace, pearls scattering to the floor. I ran my hand through his finger waves as he pushed me against his desk. A satin heel slipped off my foot. He pulled me onto his lap, and as my legs spread, the seam in my black underwear ripped down my ass crack which he spread open and …

I never skipped Mr Dawson’s class after that. I’d skip other classes to walk around town and listen to music. I liked walking on the sidewalk, slipping on frozen dog shit, blasting Grace Jones’
Bulletproof Heart
. The only problem with skipping class too much was that, when you flunked, you had to go to summer school with all the burnouts and teen moms desperate to get on MTV.

I sat behind Luke and Madison in Mr Dawson’s class. Their desks were closer together than anyone else’s. I think Madison moved closer to him every class to get him stoned off her knock-off perfume and give him hand jobs under the desk when she thought no one was looking. Didn’t she know there was always a paparazzi up her skirt? Of course she did. That’s why she never wore underwear. I’d watch as her left arm crept under his desk, onto his lap. His ears would slowly turn red. Even if the classroom was full of voices, all I would hear was the sound of his zipper. Madison’s arm moved in slow motion. She was a great Movie Star. She could really act. Sometimes she’d have an entire conversation with Alexis, who sat in the desk on the other side of her, while surreptitiously jerking Luke off. I’d chew the end of my pencil, waiting for Luke’s ears to turn so red blood spilled out of them. When they did, the pencil would drop out of my hand, and my mouth would gape, saliva strung between my top and bottom lips, like his semen.

When the bell rang for lunch, I stood up and almost brought my desk with me. Angela was waiting for me at my locker.

“I’m hungry,” she said, barely glancing up from her phone. “And you’re late.”

“You’re not hungry, you just need a cigarette. And speaking of late,” I smiled, touching her stomach. “Are you pregnant again?”

“Fuck you,” she laughed. “I just forgot to barf my breakfast.”

“I see an anonymous source has sold another story about me,” I said, pointing to the “Jude Rothegay is a fudge packer” that someone had written on my locker with a Sharpie. It was fresh and shimmering, like the letters of a marquee. “They’re so obsessed with me.”

We bumped into Mr Callagher as we walked down the hall. He had a sadistic smirk and was slapping detention slips against his palm.

“Ah, Jude,” he said when he saw me and, I swear, it was like he wanted to say Judy. “Mrs Whiltman has notified me that Glinda the Good Witch’s gown for
The Wizard of Oz
is missing. Do you know anything about this?”

“No idea, Mr Callagher,” I shrugged.

“Didn’t you storm into my office just before winter break, complaining about casting?”

“I told you, I have to have one outburst an hour for my reality show. You know, contractual obligations. But I’d never sabotage the school production. I’m way too apathetic to care about a failed-actress-turned-junior-high-school-drama-teacher’s casting decisions.”

“Mrs Whiltman did cast you as the scarecrow,” Mr Callagher said.

“Too bad I was auditioning for Glinda.”

“We’ve been over this,” Mr Callagher sighed. “The school wants to avoid last year’s
Chicago
backlash. I’m still getting phone calls.”

“Well, it was pretty stupid to cast Jude as Roxie Hart,” Angela piped in. “Everyone knows he’s heartless.”

“And on that note,” Mr Callagher said, “Mrs Whiltman has informed me you still haven’t returned your costume or wig!”

“My mother mistook them for her work uniform,” I said. “But I’ll get them back, I promise. As soon as they’re dry-cleaned … ”

“And Glinda’s dress?”

“Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, maybe an hour in detention will help you remember.” He licked his lips like he enjoyed saying that a little too much. “See you at the end of the day.”

“Looking forward to it,” I gave him a thumbs-up, which became my middle finger when he turned his back.

The truth is, I kind of liked detention. I would pretend the detention room was my trailer and I was taking a break from the pressure of the set. It was a place where I went to learn, not just recite, my lines.

“You did take that dress, didn’t you?” Angela asked as soon as Mr Callagher was out of earshot.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “And those ruby hooker heels, too.”

When we got back to school after lunch, I stood in the hall next to a poster for the Valentine’s dance, watching Luke and Madison at their lockers. I had to stop myself from tearing down the poster. The pink, boxy font made me nauseous. Underneath the words was a picture of a big red heart. I took a marker from my backpack and drew a crack down the middle.

I tried to read Luke’s lips, which were smeared with a lipstick that I wished was mine. I wanted to know what he was saying to Madison so that, when I was alone, I could imagine him saying it to me.

I was always pretending to be Madison Sinclair. I would suck in my breath to make my waist thinner and roll up my shirt, because Madison’s stomach was always bare. I’d put a layer of mascara on my eyes and some ChapStick on my lips. I always felt so naked being her; she needed much less makeup than me. I’d pretend my hair was as long and blonde as hers, and so shiny that it could be in a shampoo commercial. I’d look in the mirror and move my hips the way she moved hers, like she rolled instead of walked. I wanted to be Madison because she seemed so perfect—and like such a lie. And I loved lies because, when you’re a lie, you’re anything, you’re everything. I wanted to be Madison because I thought it would be glamorous to have a million Twitter followers. I didn’t know that having it all is boring. When you have nothing, you have dreams.

Matt was standing near Luke and Madison at their lockers and caught me staring. I couldn’t look away; they were French kissing. Alexis took a picture of them with her phone. They looked so flawless, the school should’ve blown up a picture of them kissing and put it on the Valentine’s poster. A girl as deceitful as her blonde hair and a boy-next-door with charm and a hockey butt. Her eyes were wide, and his jaw was square. Her pussy was baby pink, and his ball sweat should be bottled.

Sometimes, I fantasized that my stalker had gotten to them too, tore them open from head to toe, and offered their filthy gorgeous insides to my shrine.

“Hey, Luke,” Matt said, as Alexis’s camera phone flashed. “Looks like your other girlfriend is getting jealous.” I was so absorbed in watching them that I forgot that I could be watched, too. “Why don’t you give him a kiss?” Matt laughed, and my cheeks turned red, but not as red as Luke’s. “Come on, man,” Matt said. “Judy’s already puckering up!”