Honesty

by Seth King

  Show me, he said again. Breathless, I sent the most attractive photo of myself I could find. From my graduation, it was framed in my parents’ living room. My father had once remarked that my head was skewed to the side in it, and that only “gay, feminine” men tilted their heads, as if there were any correlation between head angle and sexual preference. I didn’t care, though, and actually I thought I looked pretty hot in it for once, thanks very much, pops.

  The conversation flat lined. For one minute, and then two, and finally three, he said nothing.

  …? Is there a problem? I asked. His next response came directly after:

  First of all, I’m sorry about today. About everything. I really am. There’s a lot you don’t know about me.

  And suddenly nothing in the world made sense anymore.

  Okay? And? I said, but my message didn’t go through.

  He’d already blocked me and signed off.

  2

  I spent the next day trying not to shit myself about going to FitTrax. Not about the goons – I’d be sure to stay clear out of their sights – but about Nicky. His words – there’s a lot you don’t know about me – would not exit my head. What was I possibly going to do when I saw him? Would he know who I was? If he did, did he think I would “out” him? That’s the last thing I wanted, mostly because it would ruin my chances with him, and I was nothing if not narcissistic and self-motivated. There were so many variables, and soon I decided I had three options: one, walk up to him and talk to him. That was out of the question immediately, since I was such a pussy. Two: try to go about it some sideways way, and allude to the app, but not really. And three: do absolutely nothing and try to pretend the conversation had never happened.

  Soon I got so overwhelmed with all of it. Liking dudes was so rude and frustrating. I couldn’t even manage my own debit account without bouncing it all the time, so how was I supposed to figure all this out? Everything was still so backwards. For all the “progress” society claims to have made, it still only seemed to want to accept gay men who either hated themselves, or were willing and eager to become the butt of the joke, become the monkey dancing for laughs and approval. Gay guys in movies were always either quietly depressed closet cases who moped around for decades before dying alone in a trailer somewhere, or exuberant fashion queens named Nigel with bitchy dispositions and vague European accents who were delegated to lispy sideshow status while Kate Hudson (or whoever) got center stage. Society’s acceptance came with an asterisk: oh, sure, we’ll accept you! But here’s your box we’ve created for you – fit into it, or get thrown back out again. Either be the clown who did tricks for laughs, or the recluse. I wanted neither of those things – I just wanted a normal life. I wanted kids and an SUV and a hot husband, or maybe none of that at all. But I still wanted to choose, for myself. I wanted love, with nobody watching – or worse yet, laughing. I wanted to be a guy, and not just a gay guy. But I didn’t get to choose. Society chose for me. And how was I going to choose to talk to Nicky with the peanut gallery watching?

  Nineteen was already such a confusing age, for so many reasons. I had one year of college under my belt pursuing some vague communications degree, and I had nothing to show for it. I was like a nineteen-year-old toddler. I wanted to do something that came from my soul, but I didn’t know my soul wanted. I was stuck in something I couldn’t even name or describe, wishing for something I couldn’t even pinpoint – nostalgia in reverse. I knew I had to let go, but I didn’t know what I needed to let go of. I knew I needed to move on, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to move on to. I was perpetually in the middle, nobody’s child and nobody’s parent, feeling too much like a kid while thinking too deeply like an adult, wanting to jettison my past and hug it at the same time, wanting to run from the future and embrace it with big open arms all at once.

  Everyone I knew was just as clueless as I was, too. Nobody even had a job, but their social media profiles still read “dreamer/dancer/visionary/consultant/artist” under their work descriptions anyway. Their dream was to do nothing, and they wanted everyone to watch them while they did it. And so they all just danced forward, spinning in circles to avoid the crushing student debts and the blown-out job market and the sense of resigned doom that had messed with us ever since the towers fell on the news and made us stop looking to tomorrow. They drank to forget, they snorted to go numb, they went to sleep and remembered. But I was nothing and nowhere, neither on the outside looking in nor on the inside wanting out. I was perpetually on the bubble, within and without, staring at my reflection in a golden window, alone…

  I did not see Nicky in class that day until I smelled him. His scent jumped right out at me for some reason – it was this crisp, cool thing that invaded my nostrils and made me feel cold. Not chilly, but cold. Downright freezing. I looked up, and there he was – all six feet whatever of him. I knew it was a rule of humanity that being tall made people hotter automatically, but he was almost too tall. And he was looking down at me. He didn’t really look furious or nervous or anything like I’d expected, he just looked…curious again. And it was such a relief. I felt something bloom within me then, something I’d forgotten a long time ago: I think it was hope. I guess I’d never really noticed the point when I’d stopped looking forward to the future – I’d gotten so wrapped up in everything, I’d gone numb, become content with a life in the middle of the road. What a terrible, reckless thing to do. And I’d done it.

  But here he was – new hope. He was back. And he was staring at me like I was burning. Everyone should get to feel like this, I thought as I savored him, and try to hold onto it with everything in them.

  But then I became Cole Furman again. Knocked senseless by the force of his stupid eyes, I sort of staggered backwards like I’d been punched. Something in his face changed, and he pulled his eyes away. But he didn’t say anything, and everything he hadn’t said, and could’ve said, seemed to scream at me as he walked away.

  As class went on I licked him up from across the room as he bro’d out with his friends. You know those people who were just heart-stoppingly beautiful? Those people who made you stop and stare, who made you want to congratulate their parents and high-five the universe for assembling such a well-formed collection of molecules? Yeah, well, Nicky wasn’t really like that. Not at first, at least. But upon further inspection…

  He was magnificent, really. As I pretended to stretch, I admired the curve of his shoulder muscles and his shortish, curly hair, which was medium-brown, but touched by the sun on top. I noticed the thoughtful expression he always took, like he was figuring out a math problem that was just out of reach. I studied his nose, which was just the right amount of strong. The most noticeable thing about him, though, was how he seemed to sparkle in a way that most people our age did not sparkle, not after the realities of this sucky new world had set in. College tuition, rent, electricity bills: that world hadn’t gotten to him yet. Not to mention whatever flopped around under his gym shorts whenever he jumped or ran… (By the way, could we all agree to high-five whoever had invented gym shorts? They were like push-up bras for dudes.)

  I also liked his eyes. As a wannabe photographer, I’d always been into eyes. They really did say so much about a person, and they could always surprise you. And Nicky’s eyes were surprises. They were such a cool color – I was so sick of seeing boring eyes. Brown, blue: so many were the same. But his were different. Most people would probably just call them hazel, actually, but to me they were everything. A strangely vibrant yellow on the inside, a seafoamy green on the outside, with darker green/brown flecks throughout: they were like two galaxies swirling in his face. What must it be like, I wondered, to look out at the world through galaxies every day instead of eyes?

  All my life I’d trained myself not to notice these things. I’d learned very early on that if someone caught you checking out another guy, you were done, instant kryptonite. If you got caught staring too much, the whispers would start and soon you’d be radioactive.
It had happened to boys at school, at church, everywhere. I could even remember this kid, Dinesh, who’d get caught staring at other guys sometimes in freshman year. He even did it to me once, and I noticed that he was hard down there, even though I never said a word about it. But once he stared at the wrong kid, and word got out. Soon there would be a literal gulf in the crowds whenever he passed in the hall. He tried to come to a field party out near the football stadium one night, and he ended up getting his faced kicked in. He needed jaw surgery and stitches in his eyebrow, and yet he never revealed his attackers. Snitching would’ve just made it worse, and everyone knew it. So he withdrew and finished out high school from home. Hatred ruined his life, and in the end he was the one who had to apologize for his own downfall. (I heard his parents got wind of the rumors and sent him to some creepily religious “pray away the gay” type camp in the California desert, but that was a different issue altogether.)

  Taking all this into account, I’d put on the mask and try to blend in. And if I did check anyone out, I’d do it slowly, inconspicuously. I’d track my eyes across a room, pretending to scan for friends, but really lingering on a torso or ass before continuing, my dormant mind twitching with possibilities. If I had a dollar for every time I’d been caught staring at a guy’s ass and had then unconvincingly pretended I was casually in the middle of a yawn, my last name would be Hilton.

  Now that I studied Nicky, though, I guess there were some markers that he was gay, some things I should’ve noticed. It really did take one to know one, and I knew him. His voice was…soft somehow, with maybe a bit of a lisp. It wasn’t effeminate in any way, it was just…gentle, rolling over on itself, maybe a little high-pitched for someone of his height. His walk was delicate, almost bird-like, too, his heels only kissing the floor. And there was a softness in his eyes, a sort of misery that perhaps spoke of a self-hatred that looked suspiciously like mine. Not all gay guys were “girly,” but some were. As for me, my father and my classmates had spent my life mocking me for my rail-thin frame, my not-entirely-deep-voice, my unaggressive body language, and my complete lack of interest in anything sports-related. What if Nicky really was the same as me?

  I knew I needed to slow my roll, but I couldn’t. I could not pull my thoughts away from him. I felt like my mom’s slutty chef friend Karen who would drunkenly attack me at block parties and then try to take me home for the night “to try out this new cookie recipe on me.” I felt my deadly eyes pulling to him all class long, those insidious revealers, betraying me. I had to stop this. For good. So I simply started rubbing my chin whenever I wanted to look at Nicky, to satisfy the tic. But it didn’t take long to let myself slip. I glanced at him while he jump roped, and some spark jumped from me to him. He just made me feel…hot. He looked back, and some mysterious factor told me that he knew – he’d felt it, too. I knew he did. I don’t know how, I just…knew.

  In the end I only tripped twice during the group workout, which was probably some kind of record for me. As I got water towards the end of class, though, I caught Nicky staring at me again. Something in me flipped over and then got all flimsy or something, like when you caught a fish and then tried to hold onto it. My face went white, then red, then numb again. In his presence, what was air? What was life? None of it added up anymore.

  But then I second-guessed myself again. Why was I such a creep? And why was everything I did so weird and awkward? I needed to stop. I was in too deep, and maybe he wasn’t in at all. Nobody felt this much emotion in the world, and I needed to become anybody but me. I’d had a taste for straight guys (or “straight” guys, anyway) all my life, and each time it had ended in slash-and-burn devastation. I’d imagined guys like Nicky being into me a million times, thinking I saw a habit or noticed a little tic that pointed to Gay Town, and then I’d fall desperately in love with them only to come to school the following Monday and watch them make out with a cheerleader named Christine while I stood alone by the Coke machine. Maybe I had to quit this bad religion – I just didn’t know how.

  But then again, if Nicky wasn’t into me, then why did he check me out as I walked out of the gym with a look in his eyes like I was the Hope Diamond?

  “So how are you?” my dad asked me on the phone that night. “What’s going on?” I had zilch in common with my father and had no idea what to tell him, so I said nothing. “What about FitTrax, then?” he asked. “How’s that going?”

  Part of me wanted to tell him the truth: Oh, it’s splendid! I’m getting kicked around by a bunch of dumb jocks because you’re forcing me to go to a gym every day and act like somebody I’m not, and worse than that, I’m actually letting it all happen. How about them Atlanta Braves?

  “Oh, it’s just dandy!” I said instead. “You know me – I’m Mr. Olympia, basically. If I got any better at all this stuff, I’d be walking around with a gold medal and a steroid dependency.”

  “Oh, hush. Stick with it – it’ll do you good to be around some other guys your age, and not just those girls you go around with. Furman men stick things out, that’s what we do.” I tried to keep my shoulders from falling, but they still did. The words still hurt. My dad wasn’t outwardly mean or anything, he was just careless and casual with his comments, which was worse in my eyes. The casual kind of cruelty hurt the worst, as it usually rolled off the lips of the ones we loved most. Sometimes we let our loved ones pick and pick and pick at us until suddenly there was nothing left to save. “Or should I cancel the subscription to the gym?” he asked after a moment. “It’s so expensive, you know…”

  “NO!” I shouted, shocking myself, as galaxy eyes swirled in my mind. “I mean, uh, no, no – I’m fine. I was kidding. I love it.”

  “I knew it! That’s amazing. And what’s going on with Drea?”

  I made a face and rolled my eyes. Drea was my cousin’s roommate who happened to be – and God bless her little heart – uglier than a newborn Rottweiler. “Dad. It’s the same as last time you asked. I don’t even know her. She’s…nice, I guess?”

  “Well she’s looking much better ever since she got that goiter removed, or whatever it was. And she’s really matured and filled out in the chest area, if you know what I mean.”

  I cringed. I didn’t want to talk about boobs at all, but especially not with my own father. I’d always been horrified by this whole thing he did where he tried to be a meat-eating, all-American male with me, and it made me squirm on my couch. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure.”

  I listened to the sea for a minute. The sea didn’t ask you questions. The sea didn’t care about who you loved.

  “Oh, I heard about Naomi and Ruth,” he said, who were the sixty-something ladies who lived in the unit directly under me and were clearly partners, even though they called themselves “roommates.” If I passed them on their porch and saw them holding hands, they’d cough and pull away from each other as quickly as they could. It killed me inside and embarrassed me in equal measure. I didn’t know why they thought I cared, or why they thought they had to hide at this point in their lives. Wasn’t it a little late in the game for the whole “closeted” charade? But deep down I still sort of understood the reflex to hide, and it made me fear for my future with everything in me. “Two old ladies shacking up together?” he said, disgust in his voice. “It’s gross, if you ask me. Nasty. That’s what it is.”

  “Dad, wasn’t your own cousin gay?” I asked him. I froze as soon as it left my mouth, though. What was with me and spitting out highly regrettable statements, anyway? My father’s first cousin had been closeted her whole life, and had only started opening up to my family six months ago – which also happened to have been her last days on Earth. She’d drank herself to death at the age of forty-nine, and this was a subject my family would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

  “Maybe she was,” my dad hissed, “but Kathy’s no longer with us, and I won’t allow you to insult her memory like that.”

  I was silent. I wanted to tell him so man
y things, but I couldn’t.

  “Yeah,” I finally said. Technically he didn’t know a thing about who I was. He didn’t know anything about me at all, really. He’d never asked. “I don’t even…yeah. Whatever.”

  He huffed and puffed with all the power of a Southerner with decades of well-practiced ignorance under his belt. “Well I’ll tell you, the thing with your neighbors is unacceptable. If anyone did that kind of business under my roof, they wouldn’t be under my roof for very long, if you know what I’m saying. Might have to talk to someone who knows someone, and see what that someone could do about it, if you catch my drift. It’s just not natural.”

  I inhaled. “Oh, so that Juvederm you get injected into your face every six months is natural?” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Hmm?” he asked, and I slapped a hand over my mouth. “What was that? I was flipping channels.”

  “Nothing!” I said, so relieved I could die. “Yeah, let’s get back to what you were saying. Guns! Religion! Birth control! Jesus! Yay!”

  “That’s the ticket,” he said proudly. “I swear, the world these days…if only we could clone Reagan and make America great again…”

  Suddenly I realized I was biting my nail so hard, it hurt. Make it great by getting back to what, exactly? I wanted to ask him. What are these hallowed treasures of American history you’re always referring to? Slavery? Homophobia? The KKK?

  “Anyway,” he said after a minute, “gotta run. Jodi-” who was his heinous bitch of a wife who hated me for absolutely no reason – “needs some stuff for her tennis tournament tomorrow. I love you, Coley.”