“It’s like that for me too,” I admit. “Only it isn’t a blade.”
He thinks I’m talking about drugs, but I’m not.
In group it comes out that I’m gay—kind of hard to avoid when Seth’s name keeps popping up—and a couple nights later when Ryan can’t sleep, he starts sharing with me how hard it is for him at home. How he doesn’t have too many friends, and he’s really horny all the time, but girls don’t like him because he’s chubby and insecure and has acne. “All they want are jocks,” he says, “or guys who can buy them shit.”
I tell him it might not always be that way and that those girls sound pretty shallow to me, but he still feels pretty bad and even starts crying a little. I can tell he’s trying to hide it, which makes it even worse.
Long story short, I end up giving him head. He asked me to—it’s not like I offered. I don’t even think Ryan’s gay or bi or pan; I think he’s just really lonely. It seems like a small sacrifice on my part if it makes him feel even a little bit better about himself. I don’t even consider it messing around, since it was pretty one-sided.
I don’t know why I have to make that distinction. It’s not like Seth and I are still together.
Anyway, I tell Dr. Denovo about it in our one-on-one. He asks me if I wanted to do it, and when I say, not really, he asks me why I did it anyway, so I tell him I felt bad for Ryan and he says, “Why aren’t your desires as important as others?”
That’s the thing about Doc. You’ll be talking, talking, thinking he’s only half-listening or just being a sympathetic ear, and then he’ll pull out a question like that. He tells me he wants me to do this exercise where before I say yes or no to something, I ask myself if it’s what I want and to give that more importance than what the other person wants, even if it feels uncomfortable.
He also tells me he’s going to have to tell administration about the “incident,” but that I won’t lose any privileges, since we’re working through it. Ryan and I both get moved to singles. Strangely, it’s even harder for me to fall asleep without his snoring.
Ryan asks me not to tell anyone about it—me giving him head. I think he’s ashamed. I want to tell him what Dr. Denovo said, We live in a culture of vicious shame, but you can’t just drop that shit on people without context, and I don’t trust myself to explain it correctly. Besides, there’s nothing more annoying than when one of the residents tries to play therapist.
I tell Ryan he doesn’t have to worry about anything getting out. I’ve always been good at keeping secrets.
THEN
On the nights when Seth wasn’t out with his friends, he called me, on FaceTime so he could see me, even if we’d already spent the whole afternoon together. I got the impression Seth didn’t have much homework or student activities to keep him busy. He also didn’t seem to sleep all that much either. Luckily, Mai and my bedrooms were upstairs, so my parents, for the most part, couldn’t monitor what we were up to.
I was laid out on my bed with pillows propped behind my head when Seth asked me if I was out at school.
“No, I’m not out to anyone.”
“Not even your parents?”
“Nope.” I didn’t want to tell him I was still figuring things out. He seemed so confident in who he was while I was still muddling through.
“Would they kick you out?” Seth asked.
“I don’t think so, but it would make things a lot harder around here. Especially with my dad. We don’t have the best relationship.” I’d be happy to graduate high school and move out without ever saying anything to him about it.
Seth probed me on the subject, and I told him a little bit about how it was between Mai and me. How she was really smart and a hard worker and had, like, a photographic memory. She could memorize all kinds of stuff, which meant her test scores were always off the charts.
“I didn’t talk much in kindergarten,” I told Seth. “I was shy or whatever. The teachers thought I had a learning disability, so they held me back. I think that set the tone with my dad.”
“Must be hard living in your sister’s shadow,” Seth said sympathetically.
I told him about how my sister was the district champion speller for three years in a row. My dad went with her to the National Bee in D.C. every time. Then, thinking he was the reason for her success, he tried to mold me in the same way. “I can’t spell for shit,” I told Seth. Seth laughed his ass off at that. I tried to join him, but I could still see my dad sitting across the dining room table from me, drilling me with words and getting frustrated when I made a mistake. My mom finally had to step in.
I said this to Seth, “It’s like he expects the worst of me and even when I do something good, it still isn’t near as good as what Mai can do, so it’s still a disappointment.”
“That’s shitty,” Seth said. “What about your photography?”
I’d sent Seth a few links to my various online galleries. He raved. It shouldn’t have affected me like it did, but I wasn’t confident in my art the way he was. His praise seemed to count for more than any of my other friends.
“My dad’s not really interested in that.” I explained to Seth our immigrant lineage and how the view in our household is that anything that doesn’t translate to a steady job or prosperity isn’t really a priority. My mom grew up in Japan and moved to the U.S. to pursue an accounting degree, so both my parents had similar mindsets on that.
“It’s like they don’t even know you,” Seth said, and in a lot of ways, he was right. He asked me if I wanted to come out at school, and I told him it would just make things harder. I was the only Japanese kid in just a handful of Asians. I didn’t really need another thing that set me apart from everyone else.
“But that’s what makes you so cool,” Seth said. I believed he meant it. Seth was counter-culture, a rebel and an artist. He had tattoos and broke rules and was not heterosexual. He also seemed to have a taste for the exotic, which worried me as well because being Japanese was only one part of my identity. I didn’t want to be a fad for him.
My door opened a moment later, and Mai stood there. “Who are you talking to?”
“Just a friend from class.” Seth could still see me, but he couldn’t see Mai.
“You never talk on the phone. To anyone,” she said.
“It’s for a project,” I told her. The lies slipped out so easily. I omitted a lot of information with my parents to keep my dad out of my business, but I was usually pretty honest with Mai. She glanced at her wristwatch—it was nearing midnight—and gave me a suspicious look.
“All right but keep it down. I’m studying for a test I have tomorrow.”
She left, and when I looked at my phone, Seth was shaking his head with a mischievous grin. “So many secrets, Hiroku Hayashi.”
I sighed in relief. Confessing my sins to Seth made the weight of my deception a little less heavy.
“You have no idea.”
I was able to maintain my double life in part because Seth didn’t acknowledge me at school, not in an obvious way at least. No one knew we were…whatever we were. Not my parents, not my sister, and to some extent, not even Sabrina, so I was surprised when Seth sought me out at school a few days after our FaceTime exchange.
Ours was a fairly big public high school located between our suburb and downtown Austin—one of the oldest in fact—with a magnet program for the arts, which included music, visual and digital arts, recording, theater, and dance. Over the years the art kids had slowly been taking over, which meant our football team sucked, but the marching and symphonic bands were outstanding.
It was during lunch, and I was sitting with Sabrina and some of her band friends outside the orchestra room where there were a few picnic tables. The arts disciplines tended to be turfy like that—band geeks stuck together, as did the theater kids and the dancers. Technically, I should be hanging out with the arteests as Sabrina and I called them, but I didn’t get along too well with my own crowd. As individuals, they were tolerable, but as a col
lective, they were a bunch of pompous, know-it-all assholes. Perhaps because art kids rarely had to work as a team, they were all super competitive with everyone hating on each others’ artwork behind their backs.
I saw Seth coming down the sidewalk that lined the front of the main building. He strutted up to us with confidence and introduced himself formally with, “Greetings, freshmen, my name is Seth Barrett, and I’d like a word with Hiroku Hayashi.”
“We’re sophomores,” Sabrina said—most of them were—and fixed her cold gaze on Seth. By this time she knew I’d been hanging out in Seth’s garage and watching his band practice. I hadn’t told her yet about the physical stuff, but she was protective nonetheless.
I unfolded myself from between Sabrina and a saxophonist name Rico.
“Bring your stuff.” Seth smiled when he said it, but I sensed from Sabrina’s face she didn’t like his tone.
I crammed the rest of my lunch into my backpack and threw it over my shoulder. At our school the freshman got the shittiest lockers, way up on the third floor, which was a major inconvenience, so most of us carried everything around with us like pack mules. It was even worse for the kids who had to lug their instruments to and from school every day. Regardless, it meant I had everything with me already.
“What’s going on?” I asked Seth when we were on the sidewalk heading in the opposite direction. I thought something bad had happened.
“Impromptu field trip. I want you to come with us.”
I didn’t know who “us” was or where they planned on going. I only knew that it meant I’d be skipping school. “They’ll call my dad’s cell. The school will, I mean.”
Seth shot me a confused look as though that hadn’t even factored into his decision. “Oh…right. Well, can’t you just make up something?”
There were things I left out when it came to my parents, but I tried not to deceive them outright. “Like what?” I asked. Nothing seemed plausible.
“How about this? Sabrina is having a bad day—she broke up with her boyfriend or got her period or something—and you went home with her to comfort her, and you ended up staying the night at her house.”
“This field trip is overnight?” I still hadn’t said no, even though it was sure to lead to trouble.
“I really want you to come with us. Please, Hiroku?” He actually batted his eyelashes at me. It actually worked.
“But…” I’d never skipped school before—that just wasn’t something I did. I might get into trouble—big trouble—with my dad, not to mention I still didn’t know where we were going. “I don’t have anything with me.”
“We’ve got everything packed already. You don’t need a thing.”
I hadn’t realized where he was leading me until we were at the edge of campus. Mitchell was idling on a side street in his maroon Chevy Malibu, and there were already four people in the car.
“There’s no room for me.” I gripped the shoulder straps of my backpack like it was the last parachute.
“You can sit on my lap. Come on before someone sees.”
I glanced around the campus and considered backing out, but this felt like a test. I had to prove to Seth I was one of them or risk him losing interest. Besides, it was just one afternoon, and Seth’s excuse did sound pretty believable. And it could be a lot of fun—definitely better than balancing algebraic equations.
“Okay, fine.” I handed him my backpack.
Seth squeezed into the back seat and shoved my backpack between his knees. He patted his lap.
“What about seat belts?” I asked as I wedged myself into the small space.
Seth smiled affectionately. “Everyone, this is Hiroku Hayashi, and he’s here to make sure everything is OSHA-approved.”
They laughed at me, but it wasn’t in a mean-spirited way, more like I was a novelty to them. Seth situated me right on top of his crotch, which probably wasn’t an accident—he loved to make me squirm. The two girls in the back seat scooted closer together and didn’t complain about being squished.
Mitchell introduced me to his older brother Caleb and their girlfriends, Jeannie and Sasha. Sasha had died black hair, thick black eyeliner, and so many piercings she was probably magnetic. Jeannie had a pretty heart face and warm brown eyes with a dainty piercing in her right nostril. Except for Seth, they all called Mitchell by his first name, but I couldn’t get used to it, so I stuck with what I knew.
We drove out to McKinney Falls, a place I hadn’t been since I was a kid. The park has this huge limestone table where the water from Onion Creek flows over its edges into pools large enough for swimming. The distance from the stone ledge to the water below was about twenty feet. My parents were too afraid for our safety to let me or Mai jump when we visited, so we ended up splashing around in the water and having a picnic on the rocky bank.
But I remembered watching the older kids jump off the cliff and wishing I could too.
I didn’t have a bathing suit with me, but neither did anyone else, so we all stripped down to our underwear and acted like that was normal. Seth, for once, had worn boxer briefs. Black ones that clung to his ass like a second skin. Seth caught me checking him out and smiled roguishly, further evidence that my thoughts were completely transparent to him.
I never liked cursing in front of little kids, and our bunch was pretty foul-mouthed, but luckily there weren’t many other people out, so we could be as obnoxious as we wanted. They’d been to the falls several times before, so they all raced to the ledge and then debated as to who should go first. Mitchell grabbed Jeannie, lifted her easily over his shoulder, and threatened to toss her in. Jeannie screamed bloody murder until finally he let her go. She was still laughing though, and I thought the whole ruse was just an excuse for him to touch her. I wished Seth would do something similar because I wanted his hands on me.
“I’ll go first,” I offered because the longer I waited, the more my anxiety grew. Whenever I was confronted with a situation such as that, I always preferred to grit my teeth and get it over with, rather than dick around.
“I’ll go with you,” Seth said. “Count of three.”
We perched at the edge of the rock. The adrenaline thrummed inside me like vibrations through a taut wire as I surveyed the water below to estimate its depth. The surface looked farther away from up here, and it made my insides a little squirmy, but there was no way I could back down now.
“One…” Seth took hold of my hand. “Two…” He glanced over at me, held my gaze. “Three…”
We jumped, releasing each other just before we hit the water. I dropped in like a pencil. The water was cold and sliced right through me. I stayed there for a moment in the deep, letting the thrill of it roll through me, tickling me all the way to my toes.
When I surfaced, Seth’s eyes were electric. “Like that?” he asked, and I nodded enthusiastically.
The girls went next and then Mitchell and Caleb. Each time I was perched at the edge of the cliff, I expected the thrill to be dulled somehow, but my adrenaline spiked every time, the water shocked me, and my body responded.
“You might be an adrenaline junkie,” Seth said after my ninth go-round.
I was the last to jump. The five of them were all laid out on the rocks, warming themselves in the late afternoon sun like lizards. Nearly naked with their limbs draped casually across one another so that it was hard to tell where one body ended and the other began. I used the camera on my phone to snap a couple of pictures, wishing I had my real camera to properly capture the pastoral quality of our surroundings and the group of them lounging there like river nymphs.
Seth motioned me over. I dropped down, and he guided my head to his stomach. The rock was rough but warm against my back. My chest and arms had goose bumps and my nipples pebbled from the cold. Seth draped his arm casually over my chest and stroked my belly, which tickled a little, but I didn’t dare stop him. I luxuriated in his touch.
Mitchell and Caleb talked about some of the crazy shit they’d seen working
at the gas station, and the girls’ laughter tinkled like wind chimes. A lazy smile stretched across my face. Even though I didn’t say much to contribute, I felt accepted and part of something in a way I never had before.
After a while when we were all dried out, the guys wanted to go make camp. We got dressed, and I started to go with them, but Jeannie grabbed my hand. “We’re keeping Hiroku here with us.”
Seth eyed Sasha in particular and seemed about to argue, but Sasha cut him off with, “Hurry back now, boys.”
We stayed there on the rocks, sitting with our legs crossed in a huddle like schoolgirls gossiping during recess. They wanted to know what grade I was in, how Seth and I met, whether we were together or not. I couldn’t answer the last one conclusively. “We’re together for now, I guess.”
Sasha laughed. “That sounds just like something Seth would say.” Jeannie nodded, but I could only worry at what that meant. I didn’t like to think about it.
“Seth’s a player, huh?” I asked them.
Sasha nodded enthusiastically. “Total slut.”
Somehow that sounded worse.
“But he seems to really like you,” Jeannie said. “He doesn’t usually introduce us to his…” She stole a glance at Sasha. “Friends.”
I wondered what it was she was going to say.
“Your skin’s so clear,” Jeannie said, perhaps trying to change the subject. “What do you use?”
I shrugged. “Soap.”
“Not fair,” Sasha groaned. “It’s so pretty. I wish I was…what are you?”
“American,” I answered in a flat tone.
“No, what else are you?”
“Japanese.”
She nodded with satisfaction. I’d been bullied so much as a kid that I never knew how to respond to compliments about my appearance. There was also a fine line between flattery and fetishizing. I asked Sasha how many piercings she had to shift the conversation away from me, and she detailed all of them—where they were on her body, how old she was when she got them, and who she was with at the time. Then she lifted her shirt and pulled down her bra to show me her twin nipple piercings, a silver hoop in one and a barbell in the other.
Hiroku Page 4