by Seth King
I started scrolling through my pictures of my subjects, praying I wouldn’t come across any porn-y ones in the mix. There were old women sitting beside dumpsters, little babies in fancy strollers, teenaged girls on bicycles. His eyes turned into bigger and bigger planets as he watched. “What is it? What’s with the face?”
“These are just amazing,” he said. “You can really see people in these pictures, as dumb as that sounds.”
“Nah,” I said.
“Yes!”
As he spoke, he reached over and sort of clutched my shoulder, like a teacher did when they explained something to you. It made me feel like the government had raised the terrorism threat level. “Look at their eyes – you can see what they want, what they need, and the fight between the two. This is amazing, Coley. What you’re doing, it’s brave.”
I felt like I was floating, but still, I frowned. I’d never understood the argument that artists were “brave.” Soldiers were brave. Firefighters were brave. The dudes and dudettes in Doctors Without Borders were brave. I wasn’t brave, sitting on my phone, doing my job. What was courageous about trying to pay my rent?
“Stop,” I said. “It’s just…it’s nothing.”
He looked at me, and I felt like I was disintegrating. “Coley. Really. I admire this. You’re telling stories for people who are too afraid to tell their own. Lots of people can’t express themselves-” he paused for a moment, but only for a moment- “be it because they’re scared, they’re inarticulate, whatever. You’re doing it for them. Nobody says what they feel anymore, but you do. What’s braver than honesty?”
I had to look away then. He was the sun, and I was burning up.
“How do you do this? How do you…read people so well?”
“I’ve gotten it down to a science, I guess,” I said. “It’s not easy. Especially with some people…”
“Well, Mr. Artiste, I want the juicy stuff. What’s your technique?”
“I don’t know. I never talk about this.”
“Tell me!”
“Well, for one, I like finding either very young people or very old people.”
“Why?”
“Well, little kids speak truth, because the world hasn’t taught them to lie yet. And old people – they’ve lived more and seen more and had their hearts broken, and part of me doesn’t care about the opinions of any adult who has never known devastation.” I swallowed. “And crazy people, too. They give great quotes. The best people usually have something not-quite-right shining in their eyes.”
He was silent.
“Enough about this,” I said. “Don’t you have a special talent? There must be something you can do?”
His face turned into a bomb. He licked his lip and it made my stomach feel like it wasn’t a stomach anymore. “I can tie a cherry stem together with my tongue.”
Something that won’t make me spontaneously combust, I thought to myself. I didn’t even know how to touch that one, so I pushed through.
“Well, back to my pictures – one thing is, I watch people. You have to get to know them first sometimes. I study them before I ask them for their secrets, to see if anything is behind their eyes, I guess.”
The air went from tense to electric to aflame. “Do you watch me?” he asked soon, sounding afraid of the answer. I swallowed. I usually saw the world in muted tones, but the colors exploded around him. The room filled with blues and greens and oranges, all neon. How could I possibly admit any of this?
“No. Not really. Not for Honesty, anyway. But I’ve seen your house,” I whispered, but of course I didn’t tell him I knew he lived at 22053 First Street North. “Or, I mean, before you’d ever invited me over, I knew where it was.”
He inhaled. “Okay. How?”
“A check-in on an Instagram map. And Google Maps.”
I waited for him to hit me, to run away, because I was crazy. We were two kids running from the world, and this wasn’t supposed to happen. We were friends. Just friends.
“Is it crazy that I’m flattered?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes. But I’m still crazy.”
He turned, and I followed. And together we walked, into an even more deserted row of books.
“When did you first know?” I asked him, tossing it out like a fishing line. I’d been skipping closer and closer to the gay subject, but he hadn’t taken the bait yet. Would today be the day?
“Know what?”
“You know what.” He looked off at something, but I persisted, my voice barely a whisper. “Come on, Nicky. You can talk about this now. Nobody cares. Okay, fine, some people care, but…you know what I mean. You don’t have to pretend when we’re alone.”
He looked at me. The silence crackled, fizzed, burned with everything we couldn’t say. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’ve never had anyone to talk about this stuff with.”
“Well, then.” He gulped some air with what looked like some difficulty, and even this was beautiful. Everything he did was beautiful. Too beautiful for me to hold, probably. “It was the day the towers fell, actually,” he whispered, and I perked up. Here they were: the parts of him he’d been hiding. “Our teacher gathered us up by the TV, and then everyone’s parents started coming to pick up their kids, one by one. My friend Tyler and I were the last ones left in class, and obviously we were little and we had no idea what any of it meant. When our teacher stepped out, Tyler found a doll in the toy box and dared me to kiss her on the boobs. It grossed me out, but I did it anyway, and I didn’t really feel much. But God, did I try to feel something. Because that’s what little boys were supposed to do, right? Love girls. Kiss girls. Date girls. Never was there a Disney movie or Nickelodeon show that showed anything different. Anyway, yeah, I just remember sensing that something about me was…different.” He looked over at me. “What about you?”
I bit my lip. I’d never been asked that before. The truth was, I’d always known, I’d just never been able to admit it. In the beginning I’d lied to myself, told myself I was just different from the other children because I was unusually smart. And so the games began. If I was watching a movie with friends or family and someone onscreen cracked a gay joke, I’d kill myself trying to laugh the exactly appropriate amount, not howling like a try-hard and looking suspicious, and not staying too quiet and looking suspect, either. If a girl ever liked me, I would tell everyone, as if it was proof that I liked the correct gender. If I was good at something on the sporting field, or I ever beat another guy at a game, I’d never let it die. Although I was very interested in fashion, I was careful not to dress too well – I’d buy a Polo shirt instead of a tight European top, watering myself down so nobody would know. But I knew. Who I loved was as much a part of me as my hair color or the fact that I was right-handed at everything except taking photos. Boys were in my DNA.
“I remember when I was in first grade, my mom got this chandelier installed in my living room,” I said as my eyes filled with sparkling lights and my ears with the faraway sound of crystals clinking together. “My dad didn’t give two shits, but I remember sitting there and staring up at the lights and the crystals for hours, totally obsessed, and that’s the first time I remember being…different. My friends and cousins built forts and played football and watched war movies, but all I cared about were pretty things. I wanted everything to be beautiful, and I didn’t care about anything else. For a while I thought I could stop it, change myself, quit thinking about boys and style and chandeliers, like some people just stopped smoking or drinking or something…obviously that didn’t work out very well.” I glanced at his biceps and laughed to myself.
“Well just for the record, I support your obsession,” he smiled. “There’s nothing wrong with chandeliers.”
I laughed. “Thanks. That’s also when I redecorated my room with antiques from my grandparents’ storage facility, and let me tell you – it was like Richard Simmons had vomited all over my bedroom. Nate Berkus would’ve blushe
d at the seating areas I arranged in that room with my grandma’s fancy little lamps and side tables. I don’t think anyone in my family had a doubt about me after that – but my parents still swept it under the rug, as usual. But at least it was a designer rug.” I laughed.
“Who in your family knows?” he asked. “Dad?”
“Nah. We’ve never spoken about it. Ever. But I think he knows something. I mean, I was a boy who had a set of Barbies. How could you not know? And he heard the rumors. It was sort of this unspoken thing, the biggest, ugliest, pinkest elephant in the corner. He doesn’t like me, and I can only imagine that’s the reason, since I’ve never done anything bad in my life.” I sighed, then paused. “But it’s still so messed up, though. Even if I was…what he suspects I am, it’s like, what kind of messed up garbage human doesn’t like their own kids, regardless of who they are, you know? I’ve seen mothers of convicted murderers sit under oath and testify about their kids and talk about them with more love than my dad talks about me. That’s kind of part of the deal: you pop out a kid, and then you love it through thick and thin, and maybe even through gay and gayer. But my dad just…disengaged, wiped his hands of me. He didn’t even know about my new job for six months, because he never talks to me. The last time he came to see me, I could see my breath in the air – it was that cold outside.”
I stopped. I was starting to fear I was being a huge Debbie Downer, so I switched it up. “But whatever – I don’t care much, anyway. I’m not surprised that he sucks. I mean, my dad went to segregated elementary school, for shit’s sake. He remembers the busing, the riots, everything. That’s what I’m dealing with here – these people are from different worlds, different cultures, different everything. Gay marriage is suddenly legal? Well, great, my uncles in South Carolina are sixty and don’t give a shit. You cannot change people, and minds, as quickly as the world is trying to change them, you know?”
“Ain’t that the truth,” he laughed. “Guess we’ll just have to wait for everyone to die, then.”
“Honestly, it doesn’t sound half bad.” My lack of remorse horrified me.
I sighed. The truth was, I didn’t even like thinking about my family issues, much less talking about it. I didn’t want to believe that someone’s past defined them. I wanted to believe that we were not what happened to us, we were what we did about it. Because where would my life leave me? Two disastrous parents, a crippling sense of inferiority…by those standards, I was dead in the water. The past shaded everything I did – every time I tried to make a big decision, strike out on my own, I was pulled backwards into the nightmares. When would I bloom into the adult I’d always imagined? When would none of this matter anymore?
He stared down at his hand, which was fidgeting. “Preaching to the choir, Coley. I could write ten thousand books about people who won’t leave. And people who do leave when you don’t want them to, and people who were never really there at all…”
He tracked his eyes to me. “Coley?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever wonder why you never became the person you thought you’d become? Why you won’t just wake up one day and be…fixed?”
“Every day,” I sort of laughed, really quietly, getting lost in his galaxy eyes. “If my life had a story, that would be the title.”
He met my eyes as something seemed to bloom within my chest. This time, though, he didn’t look away.
“Geez!” I finally said, looking at the time on my phone. What was it about him that made want to unlock all my gates? “It’s getting late, and I’ve done ninety percent of the talking.”
“So?”
“So, tell me something I’d be surprised to hear about you. Just one thing, before we leave. Friends do that. Friends get to know each other.” Please. So I won’t go home feel like such an over-sharing psycho.
His lips smiled, but his eyes smiled harder. “Okay. You know your hobby is taking pictures? Mine is writing. Only letters, though. I write breakup letters to everyone I’ve ever dated. With my hand.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I like the idea of leaving before I am left, so I dump the person prematurely. When things get deep, I usually leave. But there will always be a note on their doorstep.”
Gee, thanks, I wanted to say. But I let it slide.
“Have you ever had a boyfriend before?” I whispered.
He looked around. Nobody was remotely within earshot, but he was still terrified. “Hell no. I’ve never dated a guy. Well, I had a hookup buddy before, but it was nothing. We’d just do stuff.”
I sat up. “What kind of stuff?”
“Well, we’d…make out. Jack off. Mostly those sorts of` things.”
“Mostly?”
“We tried something else, but he was awful, so we stopped.”
“Who?” I wanted to kill this person immediately, but I didn’t say that. He looked away again. “Okay, you gotta tell me now – you’re the one who mentioned it.”
“Dave Saul,” he said, and I felt my jaw fall open – David Saul was one of Ryan’s best friends, a card-carrying member of the goon squad. He’d never really actively participated in their life-ruining nonsense, but he always laughed and pointed just like the rest of them.
“No!” I said, and he laughed.
“I know. He’s very…macho. But he came onto me one night at a party after everybody else had taken bong rips and passed out, and next thing I knew, he was on his knees, and I couldn’t say no.”
I wish I didn’t find this so delicious. But I did. It didn’t surprise me at all, either. In high school, the popular straight guys had been flirtier with each other in the locker room than they ever were with any girl. I also found it infuriating, too, though. “Screw that!” I said. “And screw him.”
“Why?”
“You know why. He’s awful! Once, when I was at the water fountain and he was behind me, he told someone I had a ‘gay voice.’ As if there was one voice all gays were allowed to have, and they all had to fight over it or something.” I pictured a bunch of lisping men feuding over a voice while wearing halter tops. I laughed, and he looked at me funny. “Do the other guys know?”
“Are you kidding me? Hell no, and if they ever do find out, Davey would run me over with his truck. He would pay someone to kill me and dump my body in some ditch somewhere. Literally.”
“Did you ever like him?”
“No. Never. I only liked…what we did. It was just a hookup thing. He was a douchebag. No amount of dimple smiles can make up for a shitty soul, unfortunately.”
I balled up my fists and balled them into my pockets. “Oh, that hypocrite…I should just-”
“You won’t do or say anything,” he told me. “It’s none of your business, and I shouldn’t have even said anything.”
“Well, still – that kid and his friends gave me hell. And all while he was doing the same thing!”
He shrugged. “Whatever. And why are you giggling? What could be funny right now?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just that…Dave’s a fag! I am never letting this go.”
He blew out some air. His mouth was a little too small for him to as mad as he was trying to act. “It’s not funny, Cole. It’s not. It’s sad. His dad was a crazy alcoholic who beat the shit out of him in middle school after he got caught with an issue of Playgirl behind the shed. He told me. Dave is just part of a cycle – that’s all he is. Someone made him hate himself, and then he saw himself in you. So he hated you.”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Totally sad. Big gay bully who tortures local closeted kids turns out to be a homo. A homo you hooked up with. Not ironic, nor hilarious, at all. And I should’ve known he was gay – why else would he have been so fixated on hating me? Jesus, I’m dumb.”
Finally I lost it and started cackling into the silence. After a few minutes, I heard his voice again, and he was trying so hard not to laugh.
“Okay. Fine. It’s kinda funny.”
When I’d finally stopp
ed giggling, he smiled at me. “Come over after this,” he murmured, and I lost it.
“…To do what?”
He inhaled, and I got so overwhelmed I had to look away. “Whatever’s clever.”
“You didn’t even have to ask,” I whispered. “But Nicky? Promise me I’ll never get any breakup letters?”
He didn’t say anything, just laughed quietly.
“Oh,” he said, turning to the shelves, “and before we go, I’m actually looking for a book.”
“Which book?”
“Oh, you know – white girl meets white boy, white couple overcomes white people problems to finally pose together on a beach at sunset, inspiring the book cover chronicling their very white love affair. I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times. It’s actually for my mom for when she comes in town, I just figure this’ll be a lot cheaper than having to buy it.”
He shuffled through the shelves to find a book for his mother. As I watched him, something dropped in me, sank in my chest like a stone plummeting through the water of a cold lake, and that’s when I knew the million different times I’d told myself I didn’t love this boy had simply been a million different lies.
7
We didn’t leave the library until eight, when the librarians started passive-aggressively ushering everyone out with their stage whispers and waving arms. He said he wanted to eat at home before he drove me to my house, but I almost sensed he wasn’t done with me yet. Which was good, because I’d never be done with him. As we headed to his house, a huge black mass of clouds loomed on one side of the road, but I didn’t care. My life was becoming something it had never been before: exciting.
I looked over at him, his faraway galaxy eyes, his body that was angled as far away from mine as possible, and it really got me thinking. You know, maybe forever wasn’t in the cards for us. Maybe hiding in the library would have to do. But with the way his eyes were drilling into mine, the library would be enough. And maybe it wasn’t going to work out. Maybe we just weren’t in the stars, or even in the same galaxy, and this was going to be another letdown, another disappointment, another case of me retreating to my room for a week and telling myself I wasn’t lonely, I wasn’t heartbroken, I wasn’t doomed to sleep in a cold empty bed forever. But I was starting to sense that getting to our ending, whatever it held, had the potential to be the adventure of my small and boring life.