The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Fine.” I was trying to keep the anger out of my voice, but I feared I was failing. I just physically hurt to hear the way she spoke about Dre because, in a way, it felt like she was talking about me too. “Then I’ll tell Astrid it was a mistake and we need to cancel.”

  “Well, you know we can’t do that. How would it look if you withdrew? Like you were scared, that’s how it would look.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  My mother pursed her lips, then let out a sigh, resigned to this. My joy at knowing I was going to see Dre was tempered by my mother’s attitude. I’d won, but the cost had been high. “This is the last time you go behind my back, Dean.”

  “You know I would never—”

  “Inviting Tamal to the debate?”

  “Dad told me I could invite him.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve already spoken to him.”

  Everything I’d said was strictly true, but my mother knew there was more to it than what I’d told her. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know you were hoping I would hit it off with Mindy, but she isn’t my type.”

  “That’s fine, but when you’re seventeen and you’ve never had a girlfriend, and then you start palling around with someone like Andre Rosario, tongues will wag, and that is the last thing I need right now.”

  “What if I don’t want a girlfriend?” I asked, my tone sharp. “What if I never want one?”

  My mother got a frosty gleam in her eyes. She was not used to me arguing back, and here I’d done it twice in one conversation. I had always been the dutiful son, and this wasn’t how dutiful sons spoke to their mothers.

  “Now you’re talking nonsense, and I don’t have time for your foolishness. Do your debate, and then I don’t want to hear about Andre Rosario again. Understood?”

  Dre had been right. This was how my mother actually felt. She wouldn’t accept me for who I was. She could talk about going on Ellen all she wanted, but the truth was that she didn’t mind queer people so long as her son wasn’t one of them. The fight in me vanished. I didn’t have the strength to argue with her because there was no way to change my mother’s mind once she’d made it up. I could be her son or I could be true to myself, but I couldn’t be both.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When I’d started questioning my sexuality, learning about asexuality and demisexuality and exploring who I was attracted to, I’d known that it was something my parents might not be comfortable with, but I’d remained certain that they loved me and would support me. And as I trudged back upstairs to my room, I found that my certainty had fled.

  Dre

  I COULDN’T STOP shaking. Why was I shaking? It was only an auditorium filled with high school students. I was a high school student. They were like me. Nothing to be scared of, except I was definitely scared.

  When we found out that Dean had accepted my challenge while giving an interview to the student paper at his own school, Dad had said there was no way in hell I was going. I’d played the whole thing like the challenge had just been me shit-talking and that I didn’t care one way or another. It had taken Jose and Mom teaming up on him to change his mind, with Jose saying the press couldn’t hurt and Mom promising that I’d be on my best behavior. Besides, she’d argued, how much trouble could I really get into in one night in Tallahassee? Florida was more boring than Rhode Island. Finally, my dad caved, and I was allowed to go. But I had to keep my cell on so my parents could check up on me, and I had to call them from the hotel that evening so they could be sure I hadn’t run off to Orlando to visit Hogwarts.

  I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. In between trading messages with Dean, I’d been trying to figure out what I was going to wear. The agreement Dad’s people and Governor Arnault’s people had come to with the school was that press would be limited and only the students would be allowed to ask us questions, but we were still likely to make the nightly news, so I had to make my outfit count. I settled on jean shorts, because Florida, duh, and the shirt Mel had given me. The palette was a little subdued, though, so I painted my nails Granapple Green.

  “You’re making me anxious.” Dean stood beside me wearing jeans and a blazer with a shirt and tie. It was the wardrobe equivalent of a mullet. Still, he looked cute, and it was taking every ounce of willpower I had not to pinch his ass.

  Mrs. Hicks, the social studies teacher who’d been showing us around—well, showing me around, since this was Dean’s school—was giving her long-winded introduction and explaining how the debate would work. I probably should’ve been paying attention.

  “Unlike you, I’ve never debated anyone before.”

  “You’ll do fine,” he said. “And I’ll go easy.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “You want me to destroy you?”

  “I want you to try.”

  Dean grinned at me and winked, and I wanted to kiss him so damn bad. “Hey,” he said, “how would you like to come over to my house after we’re finished here?”

  “For real?”

  “I am for real,” he said. He must’ve noticed I’d gone pale because he quickly added, “My mother is in Wisconsin and my father is in Texas, I think. Either way, they won’t be home.”

  I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. “You want to bring me to your house while your parents are away? Why, Dean Arnault, are you trying to seduce me?”

  A deep blush rose in Dean’s cheeks, but he quickly recovered. “I wasn’t,” he said, “but now I might give it a shot.”

  This was Dean’s plan to defeat me! How was I supposed to debate him when all I could think about was being alone in his house with him? Well, I refused to let him win that easily.

  Mrs. Hicks finally called us onto the stage, and as we walked out and began to head to our separate sides, I whispered, “Prepare to be humiliated.”

  Someone hooted Dean’s name, and it was picked up by a few others before the teachers in the audience quieted them down. I didn’t know how popular Dean was, but I’d assumed since we were at his school that he’d get a better reception than me. I was just grateful no one booed me or threw rotten vegetables my way.

  The first couple of questions were easy. Where did we stand on banning meat from school lunches? Were we for or against standardized testing? Should schools stop teaching old books with racist and sexist language in favor of newer books by contemporary authors? I thought I handled myself pretty damn well, but Dean was a natural, and I would’ve been happy to sit back and listen to him talk all day. Wouldn’t have mattered what it was about. He was confident but, more importantly, he was sincere, and it made me like him that much more.

  “How do we stop school shootings?”

  I couldn’t see who’d asked the question, but there was a layer of sadness and resignation in their voice that cut me deep. Dean got the chance to answer first, and he talked about the importance and history of the Second Amendment, and suggested the answer wasn’t to regulate gun ownership but rather to better identify those who shouldn’t own guns, such as people on no-fly lists and people accused of domestic violence. Mostly, he said the same things we’d all heard before. He wasn’t talking about arming teachers like his mom often did, but it still didn’t seem like a solution. And then it was my turn to talk. Up to that point, I’d been hiding behind the podium, leaning on it and using it like a shield. This time, I pulled the mic free and stepped out from behind it. I sat on the edge of the stage and let my legs hang over the side.

  “I was in Target with my friend Mel. You might know her from Dreadful Dressup. She’s the smart one; I’m the pretty one.” A few people in the auditorium clapped. “Anyway, we were wandering around and there was this boy shopping with his dad. He was maybe seven or eight. Looking at toys. He grabbed a Captain Marvel action figure off the shelf, and his dad took it away and told him to pick out a real superhero. Said that dolls were for girls.

  “I don’t even need to tell you how many things are wrong with what that kid’s father sai
d. Though Mel took ten minutes to explain them to him, loudly, and I’m sure there’s a recording of it on YouTube or something if you do need to know. She was amazing. Sadly, her words couldn’t penetrate his thick skull, and his son walked away believing boys couldn’t play with dolls and that girls couldn’t be superheroes.”

  I wasn’t sure where I was going with this, and I was worried I might lose everyone, but I kept talking. “Boys are taught a lot of toxic crap. Like that it’s not okay to paint your nails or to care about how you look. That it’s unmanly to show emotions or cry. That they should be able to handle their problems on their own and should never ask for help because it’s weak.

  “The problem with school shootings isn’t really about guns, is it? I mean, guns are part of the problem, but take them away and shooters would just use a different weapon. We keep talking about guns because that’s easy. Either we take them away so no one has them or we arm everyone. We can fight about that back and forth forever so that it looks like we’re doing something when we’re really not.

  “The real problem is us. Boys. That we live in a world where boys get so lonely or confused or hurt that they think the only way to be seen or understood or to stop their pain is to hurt other people. That boys are taught that there’s something wrong with expressing any feeling other than rage.”

  Someone in the back row shouted, “Ban all boys!” and a few people laughed.

  I smiled, but I didn’t laugh. “It’d stop the shootings, wouldn’t it? But, like, these boys who do these horrible things don’t appear out of nowhere. They’re in our classes with us and on our football teams and we eat lunch together. But we don’t see them. We don’t see what they’re feeling or what they’re going through. Usually because they don’t let us. Usually because they’ve been taught to not let us.

  “The thing I like about doing monster makeup isn’t making people look like monsters, it’s finding the person inside the monster. Because every monster was a person first. Every school shooter was a little boy whose dad wouldn’t buy him a Captain Marvel action figure. Who was taught that it’s more manly to fire bullets than to shed tears.

  “And I’m not saying we give boys a pass. Girls have always had it worse. Plus, there’re racial issues, like how white boy shooters are lone wolves while brown boys are terrorists. But if we’re serious about ending school shootings, then we gotta stop pretending the problem is with the guns and admit that the problem is with us.

  “We have to get better at seeing the person inside the monster. And maybe if we stop filling boys’ heads with so much nonsense, they won’t turn into monsters at all.”

  I shrugged and got up, feeling a little embarrassed for rambling. “I don’t know if that answered your question.”

  I turned and walked back to my podium.

  Dean’s voice cut through the silence that followed, and I thought he was gonna add something or rebut what I’d said—I knew he could; he was an amazing debater. But instead, he said, “I’m sorry for speaking out of turn, but I think we can all agree Dre won that round.”

  Dean

  DRE WAS SITTING beside me in my father’s car—which I hadn’t strictly mentioned I was borrowing, though my father had never refused my requests before—playing with the infotainment center like he’d never seen one before. In the span of only a few minutes, he had managed to delete all of my father’s preset stations and changed the navigation voiceover to a genderless British person.

  And I couldn’t stop smiling.

  “You did great today,” I said as I drove us back to my house. I’d decided to take the long way because while I was excited to be alone in my house with Dre, I was also terrified to be alone in my house with him.

  “I kicked your ass.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “Because you’re a poor loser?”

  I laughed out loud, which put a smile on Dre’s face. “Are you sure you haven’t thought about going into politics?”

  The idea seemed to cause Dre to grimace in disgust. “I’m not that person,” he said. “You are and my dad is, but I’m not.”

  “That’s why you’d be good at it.” When Dre gave me a confused look, I said, “I think a lot of people who are supporting McMann are doing so because he’s not a politician. Because he’s different and offers solutions no one else has.”

  “Okay, his solutions are bonkers, though.”

  I nodded. “Very much so. But yours wasn’t. Everyone else sees the problem of school shootings as a gun problem, but you see it as a people problem. The solution may not be as simplistic as you made it out to be, but I think it’s a great place to start.”

  I think I was embarrassing Dre because he turned toward the window and tried to make a joke out of it. “Copyright Andre Rosario. You know, so your mom doesn’t steal my idea.”

  “That wouldn’t work for her,” I said. “It’s her military background. She thinks solutions start at the top and that it’s everyone’s job below to carry it out.”

  “My dad’s kind of the opposite. He worries how something will affect every single person, and he stalls out if he thinks someone’s gonna be mad at him.”

  We pulled through the gate of my house, and I waited to make sure it closed behind us before pulling up the long driveway to the garage.

  “Oh shit,” Dre said. “You never told me you lived in a mansion.”

  Now I was the one getting embarrassed. “It’s not a mansion.”

  “Looks like a mansion to me.”

  My parents had bought the house before my mother’s term as governor had ended, and they planned to keep it even if my mother won the election. It wasn’t nearly as big as the Florida governor’s mansion, but it still had more rooms than we needed. The front was landscaped with native Florida plants to provide as much privacy as possible.

  “I’m sure your house is just as big.”

  “It’s all right. Let’s see inside.”

  After Dre’s reaction to the outside of the house, I was kind of nervous to show him the inside. I wasn’t embarrassed by it, but I didn’t want to look like I was bragging either. I’d always understood that my family was well-off, and that most of the money had come from my dad. Some of it he’d made, but he had also inherited quite a lot. My mother, on the other hand, had grown up in a tiny house with parents who had both worked long hours at tough jobs to provide for her and her sisters. Her parents had helped her where they could, but she’d worked hard for most of what she had, and my mom had made sure I knew where she’d come from and how hard she had worked to ensure that I had a better life than she’d had.

  I led Dre into the house through the garage, showing off the kitchen, the back patio, the sitting room, and the living room.

  “You have two living rooms?”

  “One’s for watching TV and hanging out; the other’s for when my parents have guests. They do a lot of fundraising here.”

  I showed Dre all around the house, avoiding my bedroom until I had run out of rooms to show him. At my door, I pushed it open and he dashed in like he was afraid I was going to change my mind and refuse him entry, but I doubted I could have refused Dre anything.

  “It’s so clean. And you make your bed?”

  “Every day,” I said. “It only takes a minute to do while I’m waiting for the shower to warm up.”

  Dre thumbed through the books on my shelves and examined the photos on my dresser and the awards hanging on the walls. He opened my drawers and my closet, and I let him because I had nothing to hide from him.

  “I’m seriously concerned about the lack of you in this space.”

  “There is plenty of me in here.”

  Dre stood in the center of my room and held out his arms. “Where? I mean, who decorated this place?”

  “My mom.”

  “See?”

  “But I don’t mind,” I said. “It’s not like I have burning opinions on bedding sets or wall colors.”

  “You should still be allow
ed to be yourself in your own bedroom. It looks like no one even lives in here. What would happen if you left your bed unmade or didn’t put your books away or bought a TV and a PlayStation?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of time for video games or TV.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “I’m sorry my bedroom doesn’t meet your expectations.” I stood stiffly at the door, feeling attacked. “Feel free to leave anytime.”

  Dre’s shoulders slumped. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?” I asked. “Because I’m exhausted trying to please everyone and I thought, you at least, were the one person who accepted me the way I am, which just happens to be tidy, organized, and boring.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “And you’re not boring.” Dre walked toward me and slipped his arms around my waist. “At least, you don’t bore me.”

  I put up a token resistance to his charm offensive, but I was beaten the moment he touched me. “Are you sure?”

  “Sometimes I forget how different we are,” Dre said. “I see a blank wall, and all I can think about is what colors I can paint it. You don’t. And it’s not a bad thing or whatever. I like your sport coats and ties and loafers, even though I’d bathe in honey and roll around in fire ants before wearing them myself, and I like that you like them. They’re what make you so damn sexy.”

  “Really?”

  “Those sexy, sexy argyle socks?” Dre bit his knuckle and made a sound like he was suppressing a groan. “You’re lucky I didn’t jump you on that stage in front of your classmates.”

  “Speaking of my classmates,” I said. “I might have invited a couple of them over for pizza tonight.”

  Dre’s arm around my waist loosened. “So when do I need to be gone by?”

  “Gone?”

  “Obviously, I can’t be here when they’re here.”

  I shook my head because he’d misunderstood me. “No, they want to meet you.”

  Dre’s look of hurt turned to shock. “You told them about us?”

  “Heavens no. But I told them that it would be rude for me to let you spend the night sulking in your hotel room, replaying in your head how badly I destroyed you during the debate, and that the gentlemanly thing to do would be to invite you for dinner. We’ll have to pretend to hate each other a little.”