Jon From High School

by Jeremy Jenkins

  What he didn’t know was that I only did it to escape my own head.

  The only way I could hide from the truth was if I hung out around other people.

  But for once, now I craved alone time in my head.

  Terry left too, tromping through the trees, still staring at his phone.

  I stared into the dancing flames, trying to come to terms with this thing that had been inside me all this time.

  I was gay. I liked guys.

  But I didn’t think that way about any of my friends.

  Only…

  A branch creaked in the darkness.

  My gaze snapped to the trees. “Who’s there?”

  There was nothing.

  Maybe I’d imagined it.

  I returned my gaze to the flames, thinking about how it felt when Kyle accused me. Even revisiting it in my memory filled me with an uncomfortable feeling.

  Another snap in the trees.

  I stood up, my heart racing. “Come out. I know you’re there.”

  It may have been intuition swirling within me. It may have been my budding obsession with him.

  But for some reason, Victor’s face swam to the surface of my mind.

  Then he stepped out from behind a nearby tree.

  “The fuck?!” I said, staggering backward. “How—how long have you been there?”

  “Long enough,” he said. Then, “You stood up for me.”

  He let the truth hang in the air between us, charged like a magnet. Though whether it was an attractor or repulsion, I still didn’t know.

  “I told the truth,” I said.

  “They told you the truth, too,” he said, the firelight glimmering in his eyes.

  My first instinct was to deny it; to fight it.

  But with Victor—the only person that knew the truth, the only person I could trust—I just couldn’t.

  I sat my ass back down on the log and peered into the flames.

  Maybe if I ignored him, he’d go away.

  I hoped he wouldn’t go away.

  I just wanted to talk to him.

  I wanted to talk to someone about this… this monster inside me.

  Why couldn’t I just be normal? Why couldn’t I just be straight?

  But I heard the dried leaves breaking as he took a few steps forward, the sound soft and gentle in my ears like a pom-pom.

  Part of me wanted to bark at him to step back; to stay away.

  I couldn’t even make myself to that. I wanted him next to me too much.

  He sat on a log a few feet from me.

  I kept my eyes glued to the fire and started to speak.

  “When did you know?”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  “When you were… you know. Gay. Gay for real.”

  He crossed one of his skinny legs over the other. In the darkness, they looked like a pair of bent black chopsticks. “I dunno. I’ve sort of always known.”

  “So you’ve never been in the closet,” I said, snapping a twig I’d been fiddling with.

  “I guess. I don’t know… sometimes it still feels like I’m in a closet, you know? Even though no one directly asks if I’m gay or not, I still feel like society’s built these walls around me without my permission. Only it’s not a closet. It’s a labyrinth. And I have to keep trying to find my way out.”

  I chewed on his words. This sounded like some artsy shit I’d need time to marinate on. “Is that a yes or no?”

  “A little of a, a little of b,” he said. “Look, I know you’re going through some whole finding yourself phase right now, but I’m not here to be your experiment—”

  “I don’t want that,” I said.

  The truth cut through the conversation like a butcher’s knife.

  He went quiet. Then, “What do you want from me, then? Friendship? Because that kiss in my car earlier sure didn’t feel like friendship.”

  Maybe it was the Miller Lite in me that made these words spill out of me. Maybe it was only under the influence that I could speak truly, throw my voice beyond the barrier in the amphitheater.

  “I’m tired of putting on a show,” I said. “I feel like I’m an actor on a stage, and the whole school—and the sports world—has its eyes on me.”

  “I guarantee you’re not that important,” he said.

  His words stung, but I knew they were true. “I’ve got a few colleges scrutinizing my every move on the court.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything about your personal life,” he reasoned.

  “It does. People are starting to pry.”

  “How so?”

  I sighed. “Every morning I wake up with more random follows on my Instagram. More Facebook friend requests. The news has mentioned me a few times for basketball—if it gets out that I’m… I’m…”

  “If you’re gay. Which, you might not be gay, you know,” he said.

  I snapped my gaze to his. “Really?”

  He leaned back and chuckled. “There’s more than just gay and not-gay, you know, no matter how many times you say ‘no-homo’ with your dude-bro jock friends. You can be bi.”

  I frowned. Sure, I’d been with women before, but it never felt like…

  It never felt like it did with Victor.

  And that word—bisexual—it didn’t have the same resonance with the core of who I was than that other word did.

  Gay.

  But I was only gay for Victor. And how the hell did I even begin to explain that?

  I didn’t even understand it myself.

  “Look, I see what you’re doing,” Victor said, swooshing his long wing of hair out of his eyes. “You’re asking yourself all these questions about human sexuality.”

  “Shut up, I was thinking about basketball.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, you were thinking about balls and it sure as hell did not include a basket,” he said with a weak smile.

  Playful. Light.

  This was different than the mood over the campfire when my friends were here.

  It felt safer. It felt easier to let my guard down.

  “Fine. Maybe I was thinking about that. A little,” I admitted. “But it’s weird because I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about this before. And I feel like I can tell you, because you didn’t tell anyone… what happened.”

  “I did not,” he said.

  We shared a long, lingering look. And maybe it was my buzz talking for me, but I said, “I’m sorry. About how I acted earlier in the car.”

  I could have tacked on excuses. I could have told him that I was just confused, or that I was dealing with all of these feelings, or describe how lost I felt.

  But that felt like it would cheapen it somehow.

  Victor nodded. “Apology accepted. Even though I know I should probably forget about your ass.”

  “You should,” I said. “Why do you keep being… being so nice to me?”

  Victor re-crossed his spindly legs, his skinny jeans flexing at the hip. “Honestly? Because I’ve been there. I’ve been where you are now, only I had to go through it a bit earlier.”

  “It’s not your job to help me through this,” I pointed out.

  “You’re right. It’s not. But it still feels like the right thing to do.”

  I thought of the bandaid he brought to me in the bathroom. I thought of his kindness, his unwavering support. No matter how much I picked on him—before and after we hooked up—he was always just… just…

  Good.

  Victor Petoskey was a good person. And maybe I picked on him because I knew that at my core, I wasn’t.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  Victor cocked his head, the sheen on his emo hair shifting in the light. “Hm?”

  “Tell me what it was like for you when you… you know. Realized.”

  “I already told you. It’s something I’ve always kind of known.”

  Something stirred within me. Had I secretly always known? “I don’t think I’m bi,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been with women before. Lo
ts of women.”

  “I’ve heard the rumors,” he said.

  It was impossible to read his expression in the darkness. Was he jealous?

  Worse: Did I want him to be jealous?

  If I was with my buddies, I would have smiled and made crude jokes. But here with Victor? I didn’t feel like smiling. I felt like telling the truth.

  “It was lackluster,” I said. “I mean, I heard from all of my friends how great sex was and all that. And then when it finally happened, I was thinking, ‘that’s it?’”

  Victor nodded, listening.

  “So I kept having it. The girls kept coming. It started to feel like a chore to keep up with it.”

  “Keep up with what?”

  I wished there was more beer, but I’d drained my can. I threw the can into the flames. “Keeping up with everyone wants me to be.”

  Victor sighed. “Poor little jock. The world picks on you, and you have everything you want, and all you have to do to get it is pretend to be straight. Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

  I turned to him. “That’s the hardest part.”

  A silence stretched between us.

  The way he looked at me that night at the fire… I knew I couldn’t walk away from it.

  I could fight it. I could push it away.

  But the way his eyes looked with that burning determination…

  That image was tattooed on my soul.

  “I’m tired of pretending,” I said.

  Victor’s eyes took on a wary look, and I didn’t blame him.

  I wouldn’t have put up with my bullshit, either. I wouldn’t have trusted me.

  But Victor was a better person than me. Still, he said, “You have to choose what you really want. A lot of guys stay in the closet their whole lives. They get married, have families, and live life to fit in with everyone else. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course I want to fit in,” I said stubbornly. “If I didn’t fit in, I’d be like… like you.”

  “It’s not so bad being a black sheep, just so you know,” he said. “The worst part is being surrounded by a bunch of asshole rams like you and all of your friends. But at the end of the day, you’ll find your own patch of grass.”

  “…I don’t know what that means.”

  “That’s not important to me,” he said. “It’s not my job to explain myself to you.”

  I scrunched up my face, and for some reason, desire pulsed in my gut. “How can you just… not care what anyone thinks?!”

  He shrugged. “Practice.”

  I hadn’t realized it, but I was leaning toward him. Too much, too much—!

  Then my lips were on his again, and I felt home.

  5

  Victor

  So, here we were again.

  This confused Jock, who was way too beautiful for his own good, had his lips planted on mine.

  I didn’t know what he wanted. Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted.

  In my long drive around earlier, I resigned myself to not care what happened. All I could do was keep existing. Keep being myself, and if Jon wanted more, he would come back.

  Well, here he was, coming back sooner than expected.

  He leaned into the kiss, and our tongues danced.

  The crackling fire snapped somewhere to my left as a log collapsed.

  Jon wrapped his hands around the back of my neck.

  I slid off the log under his weight, then leaned against it.

  “This feels right,” he said, taking a breath.

  My gaze flickered up to his.

  Though his breath smelled like nasty-ass Miller Lite, his eyes were clear.

  He meant what he said. This was the real Jon—the Jon only I got to see.

  And there was something so special about that.

  So I let myself melt underneath him.

  We deepened our kiss, rolling on the ground.

  I didn’t care about all the bugs our here, or the dirt that got on my black Fall Out Boy hoodie. Everything could be washed.

  Even this.

  Even this connection I shared with Jon.

  We could get it all dirty, then clean it up. Over and over and over, but we were always tumbling around together, here in this secret, gay world.

  His sculpted lips were gentler this time.

  Not as gentle as they were in the car; there was a seed of lust here.

  But it wasn’t sloppy like that first time outside the band room.

  This… this kiss meant something.

  Suddenly my mind was whirling with doubt. If he was drunk, did this mean I was taking advantage of him? A wicked part of me writhed its hands at the thought—it felt like payback.

  Disgusted at myself for thinking that, I pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, rising to his knees.

  “You’re drunk,” I said, feeling the hard edges of my words as they left my mouth. “You’re not thinking right. This isn’t real.”

  Inside, I was screaming. I knew this was the right thing to do, but dammit, I wanted him so bad—!

  I’d given him an out. An excuse to escape if this was too much for him, because I believed I wasn’t enough for him. If he wanted to, he could use that excuse as a foothold and step on me; claiming that this was nothing but him being drunk. I’m sure if word of this ever escaped our dark world, that’s exactly what he would do.

  “I’m not drunk,” he said. “We’re just having fun.”

  “Fun,” I repeated. I was tasting that word; trying it out.

  Was that all we were doing here, together? Was that all this was to him? Just fun?

  “Aren’t you having fun?” he asked. “Doesn’t this feel right?”

  Oh, it felt right all right. But it felt more than fun, too.

  And that scared me to death.

  He took my jaw in his hands and forced me to look at him. “We don’t have to think here.”

  And that… that gave me pause. He didn’t sound like Jon. He sounded like someone else.

  I had to wonder—who was the real Jon? Because when he acted like a douche at school, he seemed like any other dumb jock. But this guy I was rolling around in the dirt with? He had depth. He thought about things. He was lost.

  Hell, maybe I was lost, too. We were both just lost boys.

  But there was something there.

  Our lips collided again.

  I relaxed against him.

  There’d be plenty of time to go through my thoughts, pick everything apart later. There’d be plenty of music and alone time in my room and things to write down and obsess over.

  But in front of me? Here? We were still in this moonlit clearing next to the fire pit.

  We were still rendering the dream.

  I leaned back on the ground.

  His tongue slid into my mouth.

  My tongue slid into his mouth.

  Since we’d done this a few times before, we were better at it now. He was getting a feel for how fast to take things, and when to slow down.

  And dammit, I liked kissing Jon Preston.

  I more than liked it.

  He dipped his body over mine.

  I more than liked that, too.

  I could feel his hard ridge press against mine.

  Jesus… I’d forgotten how much I wanted it. How it looked in my hand that night in the band room, how he tasted…

  This couldn’t be so wrong, could it?

  Fun. It was all just fun.

  Fun and games.

  Who was I to call them off? For what? It’s not like I even wanted anything close to a relationship with Jon. He just wasn’t the type.

  But the guy making out with me right now didn’t feel like this constructed persona of Jon Preston.

  It felt like… like something much more profound. He felt like a different person.

  A more real person.

  The giant jock that wandered through the hallways every day was nothing more than a pretty boy cardboard cutout; one-dimensional and flimsy.

>   The guy on top of me? He was three dimensional. He was made of clay; something soft and vulnerable that could be shaped.

  Something that could be shattered, if you apply enough heat to it and then throw it on the ground.

  I had to be careful, here. Though he said it was still a game, we both knew it wasn’t.

  Something that felt like this? A guy that kissed me with this kind of tenderness?

  This wasn’t a game. This was real.

  And things that were real like this needed to be cherished; protected.

  But most of all, they needed to be enjoyed.

  I moved my trembling hands down his torso, feeling how hard his body was underneath my fingertips.

  He moaned.

  The fire crackled nearby, cheering us on.

  Jon kissed me deeper, then moved to the side of my neck.

  He was still a little clumsy, a little new at this, but there was something about that that made this even hotter.

  Goosebumps broke out along my flesh, making all my hairs stand on end.

  I arched my back as he moved down to my collarbone.

  Then I felt a tug as he pulled at the zipper of my hoodie, exposing a little more of my naked chest to the cool night air.

  “Yeah…” I hissed, arching my back, lost in the sensation.

  His hand traveled to my pants.

  All I wanted to do was take his hoodie off and feel his naked chest against me.

  All those… abs.

  It wasn’t fair to be as pretty as him, and worse: Jon was the type of person that got hotter every time you looked at him.

  Because every time you looked at him, a layer came off.

  He sat up on his knees, then peeled his Hollister hoodie off.

  Underneath, he was wearing a tight shirt that was so thin I could see through it. I’m sure it cost at least sixty dollars…

  My eyes traced his abs, again.

  God, I couldn’t quit my obsession with his abs…

  I moved my hands up to his sides and slid one of them under his shirt.

  His mouth came open at my touch.

  Jon’s skin felt warm, and I could feel the tension and excitement running across it. Then I moved my hand down to his pants, to his button.

  He stopped my hand.

  I looked up at him.

  He was giving me an intense look that I couldn’t quite place.

  All I knew was that he pinned me to the ground like a tent stake with the weight of his gaze.