by Todd Gregory
He blows out the smoke and smiles at me. “Mission accomplished,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows and swallow a mouthful of food. “Dylan?”
“No, but progress made on that front.” He dumps French fries all over his burger wrapper. “Ricky.” He frowns at the food. “You wanna hit the gym later? I’m gonna need to work off all this fat.”
“Ricky? Do tell. And we’re allowed a cheat day every week.”
“Cheat day was last night with all that beer.”
“Beer doesn’t count.”
He rubs his stomach. “Beer does count. I feel bloated.”
I wave my hand. “Sure, I’ll go later. So tell me about Ricky already.” God, the food is amazing even if it is homophobic.
“Well, you were right about one thing. He definitely likes sex now that he’s tried it.” He grins at me, a blob of ketchup on his chin. “I fucked him, he fucked me, I taught him how to suck a cock properly.” He wipes his chin with a napkin. “I really could teach a sex class.”
“And he didn’t feel guilty?”
“He didn’t at the time. I’m sure when he wakes up today he’s going to want to light a candle and say a novena.” He laughs. “He’s gorgeous, though, I will give him that. What about you? Any luck?”
I shake my head. “Kenny passed out in here around midnight. He was in a fine rage and was upset he couldn’t find Ricky—thanks for solving that little mystery—so I got him nice and stoned and he passed out.”
“You didn’t take advantage of him?”
“Not my type.” I put the last of the cheeseburger in my mouth and wash it down with a swig of Coke. I reach over and take the pipe from him, taking a hit. The residual nausea is gone thanks to the food, and I already feel better, but getting high never hurts. “Don’t you want to know why Kenny was so upset?”
“Not really.”
“Trust me, you want to know.” I fill him in on the dynamic between Kenny and his sister, who just happens to be Dylan’s best friend, and Brandon just laughs.
I hate when he does that.
“Yeah, Kenny’s sister is a cock-blocker all right,” and he tells me about how he sent Joey in after the one girl, and he could tell Dylan wasn’t happy about how his best friend was acting, “so I’m getting closer and closer, and once Dylan is mine, you know what you have to do.”
“Nothing, because you aren’t going to fuck Dylan,” I reply. I crumple up the wrappers and toss them into the bag. “Come on, now, we’ve got to get the house cleaned.”
DYLAN Hangovers suck.
I don’t even want to get out of bed. I just want to lie here until I die, which hopefully will be soon. I just want someone to come into my room and shoot me in the head.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.
I don’t think I’ve ever been as drunk as I was last night. After the fight with Joni I kept drinking and wound up in someone’s room whose name I can’t remember playing drinking games until about three in the morning when I finally staggered out of there and up the stairs and somehow made it back to my room. I’m still wearing my clothes from last night and I can smell my armpits and my legs are sticky because someone spilled beer on me at some point and it seemed funny at the time and I need to get out of bed and shower but I’d rather just lie here and die.
Ugh, I’m going to have to deal with Joni fallout today, too.
Seriously, I wish someone would just come in and shoot me.
Then again, fuck her. Why is it my responsibility to make peace?
I don’t need someone to guard my chastity.
It’s my life.
And I don’t need someone to tell me I shouldn’t cheat on Marc.
The whole idea behind it is totally offensive. Because I’m not strong enough to resist some guy who wants to sleep with me? I’m too stupid to know when I’m being played?
THANK YOU JONI PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO BECAUSE I’M TOO STUPID TO FIGURE IT OUT ON MY OWN.
I mean, really.
If I treated her the way she treats me…it’s just a shame it took me this long to figure it all out.
We’ve always been close, ever since we were kids. We’ve always had fun together, but at some point as we got older, our friendship changed. I’ll always be grateful to her for not caring that I was gay when I came out to her, but even now, thinking back on when I did, her response was kind of…
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve finally accepted it!” was what she said. At the time, and ever since, I saw it as meaning she knew me better than I thought she did and she loved me so much that it didn’t matter…but it shouldn’t have mattered, should it?
Why was I grateful that me being gay didn’t change anything?
Why was I grateful that my best friend was a decent human being?
My head hurts.
It’s funny how conditioned we are to not see the systemic homophobia, to be grateful for the crumbs the straight people let us catch from the table we’re still not allowed to sit at. If someone would have told me that just a week ago, I would have laughed at them and said my friends weren’t homophobic, they were good allies…my best friend who doesn’t think I’m smart enough to figure out my own life, who doesn’t want me to have a boyfriend and fall in love and be happy…
I wonder if she would be so happy about me and Marc if he hadn’t been shipping out.
Maybe I can write another essay for Out about this kind of thing.
Some of the comments on my essay about monogamy said that as gay men we shouldn’t automatically default to the heteronormativity of monogamy and marriage; that we as gays and lesbians were actually in a position from the outside to come up with an entire new way of thinking about relationships that weren’t tied to outmoded old religious models that actually came out of relationships as business contracts. At the time, I was defensive about my piece and my relationship.
Maybe I should go back and reread those comments, think about it some more.
My head hurts.
But it’s worth thinking about, isn’t it? And shouldn’t I be grateful to Brandon for making me see things from a different perspective?
You just want to fuck Brandon.
“Go fuck yourself, Joni,” I say out loud and reach for my phone where it sits on the windowsill to check it for emails and texts and things. I shut the ringer off at some point last night because I was tired of getting text messages from Joni, all of them angry, all of them nasty, and really, if I’m such an awful friend why does she want to be friends with me in the first place?
The message icon has the number 25 next to it.
Really?
Twenty-five texts.
Obsess much?
And I bet not one of them is an apology or anything reasonable, an “I’m sorry you feel that way and I’m sorry I reacted the way I did and can we at least talk about this” non-apology which would go a long way. I mean, I’m willing to sit down and listen to her, but I refuse to be bullied anymore.
I’m sorry I hurt her feelings, but I’m not sorry I finally stood up to her.
My head aching, I start scrolling through the messages:
I can’t believe you would talk to me like that after everything we’ve been through
I’ve never been so hurt and betrayed in my life how could you do this to me
Stop ignoring my texts! You’re a terrible person
You’re such an asshole! Where are me and Madison supposed to sleep?
The rest were more of the same, how horrible I am and I should be ashamed of myself and what were she and Madison supposed to do and I need to come let them into my room and I’m an awful person and how dare I treat her that way after everything she’s done for me…
Everything she’s done for me.
I sit there, staring at the messages for a while.
If I’m so awful, why bother?
I start typing out a response—no wonder your brother hates you—but don’t send it. Responding is the worst thing I
can do, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sink down to her level.
Fuck her. Have a nice life, Joni. I wish you all the happiness you deserve.
Seriously.
I get out of bed carefully, trying not to move my aching head too much, and have to stop and sit back as a wave of nausea almost makes me throw up and I sit there breathing in slowly to try to get it under control, swearing I am never going to get drunk again, and just the thought of beer makes me gag and there’s a red cup sitting there on my nightstand about half full of beer and I can smell it and I open the window and dump it out and close the window as the heat hits me in the face and I grab my bathroom caddy and stagger outside to the bathroom. The hallway reeks of stale weed and sour alcohol and sweat. Someone got sick in the bathroom and someone’s in the shower and I almost throw up myself but I manage to wash my face and brush my teeth and get back to my room without anything bad happening.
I try to remember the rest of the party after my fight with Joni. She’d stormed off and I’d gone looking for Brandon, wasn’t able to find him anywhere. I knocked on his door because I could see the light was on but he didn’t answer, and that was how I wound up wandering around and getting involved in the drinking games.
Oh, God, never again. I think there may have been tequila shots involved.
I need to eat something.
I start to text Brandon but stop.
What am I doing? But he’s the only person I know in the house besides Kenny, and I don’t know Kenny that well, and Joni and Madison probably ended up sleeping in his room and he’s never liked me that much and he won’t exactly be happy they wound up in his room instead of mine and I just can’t deal.
But maybe if Joni and I aren’t friends anymore, maybe Kenny and I can be now.
I put on some clothes. No, I’m just going to walk over to Togo’s by myself and get something to eat. I need to be alone, the last thing I need right now is to have to make conversation.
But I can’t help wondering what happened to Brandon last night, where did he go?
Did he sleep with someone? Was he in his room and not alone and that’s why he didn’t answer when I knocked?
I know I shouldn’t care but I do.
What does that say about me?
I put on my clothes and grab my keys and check my phone. It’s about 50 percent charged, and I check for messages again and none of them are from Brandon. All of them are from Joni. I start to delete them but screen cap them all first in case I need reminding of why she needs to apologize to me for everything, and then they’re all gone and I slip it into my pocket and then think about Facebook and pull it back out again and check his Facebook page, but there’s nothing there, he hasn’t updated it since before the party last night, and I walk down the back stairs and out into the parking lot and I see Joni’s car is gone. I hope she and Madison made it back to LA safely.
I start walking.
Christ, it’s hot out here. The house is silent and there are smashed and broken red cups all over the parking lot and all kinds of other trash and empty liquor bottles and someone got sick by the basketball hoop and I look away and head for the sidewalk and wish that I had a car here and remember I was supposed to ride back to LA with Joni to get my car and now that’s out and maybe I’ll take the train, I don’t know, but I need to get my car and maybe my mother will come back up here and I wonder where Brandon was last night and my phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out to see if Brandon texted me and it’s not, it’s from my editor and—
I have feelings for Brandon.
It hits me. Joni was right. She was still a bitch, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t right, even if wasn’t any of her business.
I’m attracted to him, but it’s more than that. I can deal with an attraction.
I have feelings for him.
I start walking again.
Why does everything have to be so complicated?
RICKY I feel—strange.
As the sun was coming up I woke up in Brandon’s bed, with his arm around me and cuddled into his body. I didn’t dream, but I thought when I opened my eyes that maybe the whole night had been a dream—but his big hand over my shoulder in my line of sight was evidence I hadn’t imagined or dreamed it all. I was no longer a virgin. I had gotten drunk and smoked pot and had sex for hours.
His warm body felt amazing next to mine. I was on my side and my head was resting on his arm and his other arm was loosely draped over my chest, his torso pressed into my back. His dick was resting against my butt, limp.
Would I have done this if I hadn’t been drunk? If I hadn’t been stoned?
I slipped out from under his arm, couldn’t find my underwear, pulled on my shorts and my T-shirt and grabbed my shoes and socks and slipped out in the gray light, worried I was going to run into someone in the hallway, someone was going to see me.
I’ve heard about walks of shame before, but never knew what it meant.
Now I do.
I managed to slip into my room not seen by anyone. I undressed, got a fresh pair of underwear and slipped it on, climbed into my bed and stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep again.
Now I am awake again and not sure what to think, what to do.
I feel like I’ve betrayed Kenny. Should I tell him?
Or would that just hurt him for no reason?
I remember Brandon’s words to me last night about that, and I wonder if I believed him or if it was me not being in my right mind and wanting to give in to lust and fornication…it sounds so silly now, lust and fornication, fornication and lust.
My rosary glitters in the late morning sun on my nightstand.
I start to reach for it but I stop.
Lust and fornication, drunkenness and intoxication.
The words seem so…so old-fashioned and out of touch to me now.
Have I sinned? Is God angry with me, disappointed with my fall from grace?
And yet it was inevitable. Once I left the seminary, after deciding to live my life honestly and openly (to everyone but my parents, no sense in lying to myself) as a gay man it was only a matter of time before I committed these sins. None of us are without sin. If the intent is just as big a sin as the act, I have been sinning for years.
Should I pray to the Holy Mother to intercede for me?
Should I go to confession?
Was it really a sin?
Confession without remorse is meaningless, the penance merely a formality, a ritual. I may fool the priest but I won’t fool God.
I don’t feel like I sinned. I didn’t know it was possible to feel the way Brandon made me feel. Just remembering how he felt inside me, how it felt to be inside him, how he tasted, the feel of his body pressed against mine is making my dick hard again, even though it is sore and achy from everything it did last night.
Why would God make such pleasure possible and make it a sin?
I wish there were some priest I could speak to who wouldn’t judge me, who would understand how I feel, who could discuss all of this with me instead of telling me I’m going to hell and I can never do any of these things again if I want to be right with God.
I am unrepentant and convinced now more than ever that leaving the priesthood behind was the right thing for me to do.
Maybe someday I will be called back to Mother Church, and I will be more understanding and compassionate, a better servant of God for having sinned.
But it’s not a sin, it can’t be a sin.
I touch the rosary, almost expecting it to burn my fingers, but the beads feel slightly warm from sitting in the sunlight.
I sit up in the bed. My head hurts, and although my body feel strangely worn, it feels right somehow, like this is how it’s supposed to feel.
My balls hurt and my dick is sore and I’m not sure I will be able to walk normally when I get out of my bed, but it’s right somehow.
This is right somehow.
I feel like people will know when they look at me, that I’ve changed and
will never be the same person again, like Eve eating from the apple that was original sin.
I don’t feel guilty for betraying Kenny. I know I should but I don’t. I love Kenny, but this is different.
I am not the same person I was when I woke up yesterday.
I feel like I’ve finally become a man.
Brandon has made me a man.
I wrap my arms around myself and lick my lips. I know I should get up, take a shower, and maybe walk to the coffee shop, get a start on my day, on my new life. Because that’s how I feel—maybe it’s silly and childish, but I feel as though my life is different now, that I am a different person, that I am now, finally, an adult, and everything I do from here on out will be the pattern for the rest of my life, and what I do, like everything that happened before to me, the decisions made and how I felt about things, no longer matter. They all led me here to San Felice, where I was meant to meet Kenny and fall in love with him and be introduced to sex, to my own sexuality and sensuality, by Brandon.
The old me, the virgin I was, was ashamed of my desires, ashamed of my erections and attractions and desires and wants. My faith did that to me, drove who I was deep underground, wrapping who I am and my potential in shame and sin. I reject those teachings. I still love my faith, I still love my Lord, I still love God and the Holy Trinity and believe that is my only path to salvation, but I cannot believe that loving someone is sin, I cannot believe that enjoying the pleasures of the flesh condemns me to an eternity of hell and misery.
I cannot believe that a loving God would do this to His creation.
I get out of my bed and stand up. I slip out of my underwear, toss it into the laundry basket, and stand naked in front of the mirror. I’m not ashamed I left my underwear in Brandon’s room, but for now I am looking at myself in the mirror. I don’t look different, even if I feel different; my nipples are sore and sensitive and there are places on my chest that are purplish-yellow where he bit and sucked on my skin and it felt very good, but he left marks that I’ll have to hide…but why do I have to hide them? Why be ashamed to let other people see that I was loved? I stand there, looking in the mirror into my bloodshot eyes, remembering that I drank and smoked weed for the first time—Sergio and Lupe both smoke weed, but I never had before last night, it was one of the things Brandon showed me to make me a man—and that’s probably why my mouth tastes so sour and dry and my throat aches and my lungs are a bit sore. I need to eat something, my body needs nourishment, but first before I do anything I have to get clean, so I reach for my robe and drape it over my body, slip my feet into my rubber thongs, grab my things, and walk to the bathroom. I can hear the water, someone is showering already, and I push through the swinging saloon doors. The bathroom’s stench almost knocks me down and turns my stomach, the stench of piss and shit and vomit and sour everything, but I breathe through my mouth and go around the half-wall to the communal shower, and someone I don’t recognize has his back to me and his head under the steady spray of the water. He is tall and muscular and strong and his broad back is muscular but covered with angry red pimples, and I’m not used to this yet, this community of showers where everyone is exposed to anyone who walks in, not even in high school—at Sacred Heart there were stalls for us to have privacy—but I put my towel down and shake off my robe and turn on the water.