Straight

by Seth King

  And so out of my door and into the December cold I run, accompanied by visions of bus rides and decks of cards and a pair of blue eyes that just won’t stop shining, no matter how dark the world around them may become…

  20

  Time and space start to melt together again. Before I really know where I am going, I look down and see the familiar cobblestones of River Street.

  You knew where you were going, a voice laughs from somewhere deep somewhat haughtily, mocking me. And maybe the voice is right. Maybe I’d always known where I was going, ever since that very first day on the bus. Maybe I just didn’t know exactly how to get there, or maybe I was just too much of a wimp to admit my own feelings to myself. But the question remains: will Ty even want me after all this? Will he even take me back? Or is he already back with his ex again, trying to rebuild?

  I shake my head, sickened by the thought. I still have to try, even if I make an ass of myself. I am over the hills in love with him and I will regret it forever if I don’t try. Who knows – maybe December will bless me with a cheesy little Christmas miracle.

  As I speed-walk downhill to the river as I see the opportunities exploding out in front of me again; I see a future I am no longer going to let the world’s fear steal from me. From us. I see dreamy days and comfortable nights and lazy walks through large green parks and afternoon naps in an apartment with Ty’s artistic tastes and my lived-in clutter. I see the future unfolding, and I want to reach out and grab it like glitter in the air.

  I try Chuck’s Bar first, pushing through a surprisingly large crowd before remembering it isn’t just Christmas Eve – it’s also the weekend, too. Finally I take a second to really soak in the Christmas-ness of it all. The bar is frosted with lights and tinsel, a tiny tree stands in every corner, and Michael Bublé is softly singing about chestnuts on an open fire – but they are not here. No Ty; no mysterious ex. I turn and decide to try Club One, but I feel someone lightly pulling at my arm. I turn and see a ten-mile-tall guy with chocolate skin and black eyes, one I think I’ve seen at the gay bars before. And he is beautiful.

  “Hey man,” he smiles, his teeth white as snow, and I get a little jittery. “I’ve seen you around.”

  “You have?”

  His smile grows. “Yeah, I’m Nicholas. Do you wanna grab a beer or something? My family’s not in town and I’d love the company.”

  I bite my lip. I can’t deny that this dude is sexy. Model-worthy. And I dumped Ty and humiliated him and betrayed everything we ever had together – who’s to say he’ll even give a shit about me, if I find him? Why not take this dude up on his offer? Who knows where it could end up?

  He smiles again, but something is off, and that’s when I realize – he isn’t Ty. That’s what’s “off.” Nobody will ever be Ty except Ty. Nobody has eyes like Ty, nobody knows me like Ty does. And then I admire this guy’s dark skin and realize something uncomfortable: Ty is also the reason I am even speaking to this guy in the first place. I was sold lies all my life. My parents, although liberal, still said some highly questionable things about black people (and our Hispanic lawn workers, and our Asian housekeeper…) when I was a kid, and I have to admit I kept my distance over the years because of them. I wasn’t anywhere near racist, but I still surrounded myself with people who were exactly like me, as if there was some line in the sand between “us” and “everyone who wasn’t us.” But Ty changed my definition of “us.” He turned me into a person that could talk to anyone in the world and treat them as the equals they were. And really, I was doing to minorities what straight people did to gay people…I was turning my nose and keeping a comfortable distance and keeping things “separate but equal.” The sad current state of the gay struggle was close to modern-day segregation, and it was all the same. All hatred came from the same fear.

  The light in the bar shifts, and this is the moment where I realize the true, full extent of how deeply Ty revolutionized me. I’ve never believed people are inherently evil – after all, I wasn’t born thinking that Hispanic people are lazy and black people are violent and women who are assaulted are crying for attention. Those things were taught to me, by people who’d been taught them as children before me. Inside the isolated, protected brain, evil can seep in and bloom. We are not bad, but when we allow ourselves to close our minds and become islands of ignorance, our worse impulses can take over. We have to unlearn all those things; unteach ourselves the lessons of our fearful fathers. When we see injustice in the world and do nothing, we are just like the oppressors – because silence is an answer too. It is only when we are forced to see things through someone else’s eyes that we can wipe them off and see the truth. And Ty was my pair of brand new eyes. If you are sitting in a dark room with the blinds closed, how can you know the weather outside? There is a big bright universe out there – all you have to do is be brave enough to walk outside. And Ty opened the door for me. All along I was scared of something that wasn’t even scary. The LGBTQ community was the least-scary thing in the world! Who could ever be afraid of love and happiness and joy? Who could ever be afraid of twerking and tequila shots and Miss Famous?!

  What am I even doing? I suddenly wonder as I stand there, my skin itching and my legs twitching. I need to find him. I need to fix this before it breaks.

  “Actually, thank you so much,” I say as I turn for the door, “but I’m gonna take a rain check. Talk to you another time, though – I promise.”

  “No problem at all,” Nicholas says, and I leave that bar because I am Ty’s. I was always Ty’s. And I want more than anything in my sad little life to be his again. For good this time. Because I have nothing to hide anymore, and I will come into his arms a free man. Freer than I’ve ever been before…

  Soon I realize I am not walking up River Street to the staircases leading back to town, I am running. And really, I realize as I get closer, it was always him. Since that first bus flirtation, since that first magical talk in my kitchen, since our first time in my bed, and in a million other different moments, under a million different skies, it was always Ty. Maybe even before then, too – maybe I was born to be in his orbit. Whatever destiny is, maybe ours were written with the same pen. I don’t even care what it means for my identity anymore – maybe identity isn’t something you’re even born with, anyway. Maybe it’s something the world tries to create for you, forces onto your shoulders over the years as humanity’s judgment and dogma and incessant desire to label everyone whittles away at your bright bold soul until you are just another factory product. Maybe you have to choose for yourself – maybe we all have to choose. Maybe I could choose to be Henry James Morgan, brave and new and in love. Because bars can be shot up by hateful maniacs and epithets can be hurled in restaurants and ignorance can be spewed from pulpits, but the world will still never be able to assassinate the love that sometimes blooms between two human souls. Even if one of them happens to be straight…

  I run faster up the sidewalk, indelibly alive. As I grow older I am starting to learn that a human life is not made of just one life. We are a million little shifting periods and jumping moods and switching phases, seasons made of joy and anguish and pain and heartbreak and sheer, wild bliss. Some of our seasons last years, some are over within minutes. Lord knows I am not the same guy I was five years ago, and the dude I will be in five years’ time – he’s a stranger, too. I used to be Henry the heterosexual, and now I am clearly not him anymore. But all of my lives, all of my blurred colors, all the little different versions of me – they were all geared for him, because he’s who took all the little Henrys and harmonized them into one note. He made me make sense to myself. All of my lives have been lived in preparation for him – I just had to arrive at his doorstep to realize it. And here I am again. But will this be our last chapter, or the start of a whole new story?

  I turn into Club One’s dim entry hallway, the pulsing music seeming to thump inside my own chest as my legs carry me toward the dance floor. My eyes adjust to the light and sure enough
I find him across the way, sitting in the back of a crowded booth, vacant and blank but still Ty, still wonderfully and remarkably and perfectly Ty. Just as I guessed he would, he finds me even in the dark, those electroshock eyes locking with mine like a key in a car door. As that familiar little jolt rushes over me I point down at my shirt, the tie-dye Pride one he’d left at my house all those weeks ago, and sort of shrug. At first he is impassive, but slowly a smile breaks through and takes over, his whole face lighting on fire. I smile back and start for the booth.

  THE END

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Coming out of “the closet” was harder than I ever thought it would be. It was February of this year, and I released a novel called Honesty about two terrified teenaged boys who find love one summer in Florida. I was petrified of the initial reaction and the initial whispers and raised eyebrows, but that was it – I assumed it would end there. I thought our world was moving forward, and honestly speaking, I thought hatred and homophobia were things I would only ever read about in history books.

  I was wrong.

  Since publishing Honesty and making my queerness known, I’ve watched the world explode. I’ve faced death threats and received files full of online harassment. On the street I’ve been called a faggot and been told I need to be kept away from children. My immediate family members have mailed me brochures for conversion courses. At Thanksgiving I was told by a guest that gays shouldn’t be in the military and don’t deserve marriage rights. This is worse than I ever guessed it would be, and I am shocked.

  When I wrote the first words of this book, I was still holding onto my initial hope. The gay young people inside the pages of this book feel free to go throughout the world as exactly the people they are, loving and living openly, even though they reside in the Deep South. Because during my writing process, I assumed our culture was moving forward – we weren’t perfect, but we were getting there, step by step.

  But as things started getting worse, I became afraid this book would no longer reflect reality. Why would I show gay young people going to gay bars and Pride parades when many of my friends were anxious about their own personal safety? Soon I felt like a sailboat on a windless day, and sometimes I even wanted to start over.

  But eventually I decided I would not change the tone of this book, no matter what was happening out there. I wasn’t going to let this darkness seep into my art. Unequivocal freedom didn’t just exist in the recent past, it will exist in our future, too. It has to. We will get back to the days and attitudes I believed in, and I simply must hold that hope in my mind. In an era when powerful Washington figures suddenly have pasts that include advocating for the arrest of gay couples who try to get married, the message of unconditional equality and acceptance is more important than ever. Life-or-death, even.

  Many people told me not to write this book. Many people told me I would alienate mainstream readers, and pointed out the fact that gay romance is a much smaller segment of the marketplace than heterosexual. But I had to. This is the fight I was born into, and I’m ready. Even if it hurts my career.

  I never thought this could happen. I never thought I would watch us slide backwards into time. I never thought I would turn on the television and listen to the talking heads casually discuss which of my human rights may be about to be repealed. But it did happen, and we’re here. So more than ever, this is a time to be loud.

  I hope you make some beautiful noise.

  Dedicated to the 49 victims of the Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida, who died for love and will therefore linger forever in the legacy of it

  Stanley Almodovar III, 23

  Amanda Alvear, 25

  Oscar Aracena-Montero, 26

  Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33

  Antonio Davon Brown, 29

  Darryl Roman Burt II, 29

  Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28

  Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25

  Luis Daniel Conde, 39

  Cory James Connell, 21

  Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25

  Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32

  Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31

  Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25

  Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26

  Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22

  Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22

  Paul Terrell Henry, 41

  Frank Hernandez, 27

  Miguel Angel Honorato, 30

  Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40

  Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19

  Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30

  Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25

  Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32

  Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21

  Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49

  Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25

  Kimberly Morris, 37

  Akyra Monet Murray, 18

  Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20

  Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25

  Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36

  Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32

  Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35

  Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25

  Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27

  Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35

  Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24

  Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24

  Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34

  Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33

  Martin Benitez Torres, 33

  Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24

  Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37

  Luis S. Vielma, 22

  Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50

  Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37

  Jerald Arthur Wright, 31