Then I put down that I’d accidentally spoken aloud to myself in my room during Contemplation.
I was about to write something about how I understood why all these things were wrong and that I would repent, change my ways, but I decided to let her say that. It should make her feel like she was having some effect on me. Besides, there was enough untruth in the thing already. And I’d always prided myself in the past on telling the truth as much as possible.
But pride is a sin, no? I’d have written that down, but then I’d have had to say why I wasn’t proud anymore, and that would’ve meant confessing that I had lied in my MI, and—man, what a freakin’ complicated thing this is! And then I remembered one reason I’d always tried to stick to the truth. I wouldn’t have to remember what I’d lied about, or what I’d said when I’d lied.
Thanks to my concentration on this ethical dilemma, I was barely aware of someone passing in the hall. Only after I couldn’t hear footsteps anymore did my brain register that they had slowed a little as they passed my partly open door. And when I realized this, it made me angry. It seemed like they were spying on me. Some anonymous “they.”
More on impulse than anything else I wrote: “I hate that writing this thing makes me want to lie. Lying is wrong. But I didn’t mean to hum something forbidden. I just wanted to pass the time and I liked the melody. So I hated being reprimanded for it, and I wanted to lie by omission and not put it in. I don’t blame Sean, or whoever turned me in, because they couldn’t understand. And I couldn’t help them understand, because I couldn’t talk to them. So SafeZone makes things worse because I can’t explain myself, and this ‘exercise’ (Mrs. Harnett’s word) makes me want to lie about it.”
I was kind of hoping this would confuse her. At least it would give her something relatively harmless to sink her teeth into, and maybe she wouldn’t bug me for more.
So then I was done, the half-truth/half-lies sealed in the manila envelope Mrs. Harnett had given me, and I still had over an hour until dinner. I could read the Bible, I could pray, I could contemplate my sins. Or I could just sit here and feel alone.
I decided to contemplate my sins. Specific sins. Which was to say, times with Will. I’d made a pact with myself that I’d spend at least half an hour every day, even if it wasn’t all thirty minutes together, thinking about him. And not just in passing. I hadn’t really done that today, so maybe this would be a good time. Of course, there are certain dangers involved in thinking about Will. At least, in this place they’re dangers. I glanced at the half-open door. Then I went and stood in it.
From the doorway, there were certain spots in the room I couldn’t see. One spot, of course, was behind the door, but that was on Charles’s side of the room. The other place that I couldn’t really see, not very well at least, was the near corner to the left of the door. The room was just big enough that I had to step into it before I could see into that corner. Plus my desk was in the way.
I took the folded blanket from the foot of my bed and set it on the floor almost in the corner. I grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on my desk. Then I put my desk chair right into the corner, and I knelt on the blanket with my elbows on the seat of the chair. It was the position Charles had assumed when he was going to pray last night, and I’d done it, too. So I knelt there, facing the corner like some naughty kid doing time-out, thinking of Will.
Will.
I closed my eyes. I must have looked very penitent with my brow going into knots as I imagined running my fingers down the side of his naked body, seeing the wicked grin on his face that turned slowly into something else, his mouth and eyes half-open as my hand explored other parts of him. With my other hand, the one not touching Will, I undid my belt—only not just in my imagination. I stopped and listened carefully, then undid the button. Oh so slowly I pushed the zipper down, tooth by anxious tooth, until I was touching both of us—me and Will, at least in my mind—one hand for each.
My ears strained for anything like a quiet footfall, a voice in the distance, the creak of a door. Nothing. I bent my head. And I pulled.
Fortunately I’d gotten very good at keeping quiet doing this at home. It’s true my breathing was a little—well, raspy. But other than that, the only thing I heard was in my mind, when Will came, that rich “ah” sound he makes at the very end. And a little grunt of my own. I gritted my teeth and clamped my lips shut so I would be as silent as possible.
I got the tissues into position just in time.
That had hardly taken half an hour, so I had the luxury of kneeling there for a while longer, eyes still closed, picturing Will’s sleepy eyes, his smile languid with satisfaction and affection. For me.
Elbows on the chair seat again, head bent against my hands, I resumed a prayerful attitude. “Please, Will,” I begged in a whisper, “don’t forget me. Don’t give up on me. I’ll be with you again.” I swear I felt something on my lips. Like he had kissed me.
Kissing Will. I thought of the first time we’d kissed. Now, don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t give up my first kiss with Will—or what happened afterward—for anything. But once we got back to school, we had to act like nothing had happened. Straight couples have this whole scene they can get to know each other in. Dates, dances, mixers, parties—it goes on and on. They get to have their first kisses in as romantic a situation as they want, and then they get to talk about it. Not us.
My friend Nina Stern came running to me every time she had a new boyfriend, or any time she thought maybe she was going to. But do you think for one minute I could go running to her with stories about Will? And all over school you could tell when some new couple was forming. The kids who went to my church were a little more reserved about it, but even with them you could tell. Between the googly eyes and sitting as close together as possible in the cafeteria, the hetero couples were all over the place. So sweet. So cute. So infuriating.
I didn’t begrudge them their happiness. Well, maybe just a little, because after all, weren’t they begrudging me mine?
Will was brave. He smiled at me, at least, whenever he saw me. But you didn’t catch us holding hands as we walked down the hallway. Hell, you didn’t even see us walk down the hallway together.
All that next day in school, after that first kiss, I could barely pay attention to what was going on in my classes. I kept wondering what gay couples do to arrange their next nondate. Should I call Will? Would he call me? If he didn’t call me in a few days, was that a bad sign, or was he just being cautious? We’d exchanged cell phone numbers before he left my bedroom the night before, so calling was an option. But would it be a reality?
The test in World History, of course, was the hardest part of a difficult day, because Will was right there. I could almost feel his tongue in my mouth.
The teacher asked Will to collect all the papers at the end, and as he was coming down my row I looked up at his face. He was smiling at me. Something welled up in my chest, and I couldn’t trust myself not to do something really stupid, so I closed my eyes until he was past. After that, the challenge was to catch my breath and adjust my jeans.
I was on the bus on the way home when my cell rang. Will’s number! “Hello?” My hand was shaking, and it wasn’t just the bouncing from the bus’s lousy suspension.
“Hey! Where are you?”
“On the bus.”
“Why?”
“What?”
Silence. I checked my signal; still okay. Then, “Didn’t you get my note?”
My silence now. Note? “What note?”
“You goof. I dropped it onto your desk when I picked up your paper in History. I was gonna try and sneak it to you after class, but then I got that opportunity.”
“I didn’t see it. What did it say?”
“I asked if you wanted to go and watch the football team practice. More homoerotic subtexts out on the field than in Ben Hur and Lord of the Rings put together. I’m here at school, waiting for you.”
“Oh…”
He laughed. “Look, never mind. Next time. Call me after dinner. Say, nine-ish?”
I tore into my messenger bag for any sign of the note, irritating the hell out of the guy next to me in that cramped space. Finally, toward the bottom of the bag, I saw it.
Meet me by the bulletin board EOD and come watch boys being boys. CUL.
—W
Green ink. CUL. See you Later.
Repacking my bag, I forced myself to stay calm. It wasn’t like I’d missed another make-out session, after all. We would have been no freer to make moony eyes or hold hands on the bleachers than inside the school. But I would have been with Will. God, but I was pissed.
I called him that night, and we talked. And talked. We went over the test, and it seemed I hadn’t done too badly after all. And then we talked about us.
I told him how upsetting it was that we couldn’t be ourselves. That we had to hide who we really are, what we really are to each other, from everyone.
“Well,” he said, “not everyone.”
“Yeah? Like who? Who can we be honest with?”
His voice took on a funny edge. Like he was teasing me or something. “What about your friend Nina?”
“What about her?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t told her you’re gay.”
“Will, I haven’t told anyone I’m gay.” With a shock, I realized that was true; I’d never said the words out loud before. “And why would I tell her?”
“Isn’t she a good friend?”
“Yeah, so…”
“She knows I am.”
“What?”
“Calm down. I didn’t say anything about you, silly. I’d never out someone else. But she doesn’t go to our church. And she’s cool. She’s got no problem with my being gay.”
Well, no, she didn’t go to our church. She’s Jewish. “How did you…When did you…I didn’t even know you knew her!”
“We live next door to each other.”
Holy crap. Will lives right next door to Nina? It wasn’t like I’d been to her house a lot. We didn’t want her kid brother to start thinking we were an item and making a pest of himself. But still…
I took a shaky breath. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“Ty? I just want you to know I loved being with you last night. I hope you’re still feeling good about it, too.”
“I loved being with you, too. And I still feel frigging wonderful.”
“So, we could do it again sometime?”
“Sure. Wanna come over now?”
I loved the sound of his laugh. “I wish. Tell you what. Can you hold the phone in one hand?”
It took me a nanosecond to figure out what he was headed for. “Let me lock my door.”
Phone sex. I’d never had phone sex. Hell, I’d never had any sex, really, before last night. This guy was opening my world. And I have to say that although I preferred his hand on me, when his “ah” sounded right in my ear it was still great.
Before we hung up, I asked, “What’s with the green ink?”
“My signature color. It helps me to remember to take chances. To keep going forward, like a green light. To try new things and open myself to new ideas. And always to do it my way. You like?”
“I love. Yeah.”
“Good night, Ty.”
“‘Night.”
It had felt like he’d kissed me that night, too.
Once or twice as I knelt there—after my ministrations, that is—I heard someone walking by in the hall. When I finally got up, there was no sign of anyone, and of course I couldn’t know if anyone looked in on me. But if they had, all they’d have seen was my back bent over the chair.
The wastebasket next to my desk seemed the best place for the used tissues, so I dropped them in. Blanket back on the bed, chair back at the desk, I sat down and opened my Bible. But the words just blurred in front of me, running together, no meaning to them. I sat there staring at nothing for a minute before I realized I had to take a leak. Was I allowed to do that during Contemplation? I couldn’t remember seeing any rules about that, so I left the Bible on my desk and went down the hall.
I couldn’t have been gone more than three or four minutes tops, but when I got back to the room, there was Charles. He stood there, his face a weird combination of anger, pain, and something that looked like betrayal. He was holding my wastebasket.
Shit.
I stopped in the doorway and waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, I acted like I didn’t know already what he’d found. I shrugged like I was asking, “What’s your problem?”
Anger won. “Don’t pretend with me,” he said, nearly snarling. “You know very well what I found in here.” He held the wastebasket at arm’s length in my direction and shook it.
Jesus. He must have held the tissues to his face and smelled them; how else would he know what was on them? And he obviously knew what was on them. I shrugged again. This time it said, “Whatever.” I walked toward my desk while he rotated in place to follow me, the basket still held out. I picked up a pad and pen and scrawled, “Enjoy yourself?”
Even as I held it up to him I knew it was a stupid thing to do. I should have apologized, cried even, anything to make him feel I understood the need for contrition. He looked as though he wanted to throw the wastebasket, but instead he walked back to where it had stood before he snooped into it and set it firmly down onto the floor.
He said, “I see you’ve already sealed your MI. Did you include this—this episode—in it?”
I just stared at him. No answer. No head motions.
“You must open it again. You must confess this infraction.”
His eyes and mine entered into this battle of wills. Then I reached for the pen again and I wrote, “This is my Contemplation time. You’re supposed to leave me alone. So leave me alone. Go away.”
This was true enough, and Charles knew it. He shouldn’t even have been in the room. Come to think of it, why had he come here, anyway? Sure, it was his room, too, but the resident in SafeZone has two hours of solitary Contemplation in his or her room that are not supposed to be interrupted except by someone in Leadership. (See? I’m getting the hang of this.) Strictly speaking, Charles was just another resident.
His eyes shot darts at me before he turned on his heel and left. From over his shoulder I could barely hear the words, “Don’t forget to bring your Bible to Prayer Meeting tonight.”
That’s it, Charles. Stay on message, whatever you do. However angry you are.
I went back to my Bible, looking up in the concordance section things like spy (Galatians 2:4: “This was because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who stole in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage”) and observe (Isaiah 42:20: “You see many things, but don’t observe”), and betray (Proverbs 11:13: “One who brings gossip betrays a confidence, but one who is of a trustworthy spirit is one who keeps a secret”).
This was amusing but not terribly instructive. I’ve had to admit in the past, and again now, that using the concordance at times like this may lead me to something really true and painful, something that stabs directly at a sin and sears into me like a hot poker, but mostly it’s just a way for me—or anyone, really—to find what I want to find, to prove my own point. It takes things out of context and lets me apply my own interpretation.
So I gave that up and, feeling a little sinful and self-indulgent, I turned to the Song of Songs and imagined myself with Will again. No tissues this time; it was just love.
Chapter 3
Yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul, that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.
—Luke 2:35
At around five minutes of six, I left the room and headed toward Mrs. Harnett’s office. The basket was there, as were several other MIs from other residents. I added mine and went to the dining hall.
Again—and I almost could have predicted this—Charles stood there at the entrance, watching f
or me. It was as though he was saying, “This isn’t over. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Fine. Whatever.
Dinner was silent. Charles led us to a table where two guys in SafeZone were already seated. I wanted to ask them, my tongue in my cheek, “Where are your escorts? You see I’ve brought mine.”
No trouble finding my way to Fellowship tonight, since Charles wasn’t letting me out of his sight. Fellowship was in the huge open room that Charles had shown me yesterday. No furniture. No chairs. Everyone just milled around, talking, and the din was unbelievable. After listening to a few conversations as Charles dragged me around from clutch to clutch of intensely chattering residents, it dawned on me why it was so loud. And it wasn’t an acoustical phenomenon due to architecture. It was that everyone was talking loudly. What I noticed was that the more inane, forced, and desperate the conversation, the louder it was.
So there was one guy who was going on at fever pitch about this verse he’d discovered new meaning in, and I was so overwhelmed by his enthusiasm that I missed what the verse actually was. But I got that he considered the revelation to have been one of life-altering proportions for him. One girl wanted everyone to know that another resident had chastised her for some miniscule infraction of behavior, or attitude, or something, and how humbled she was, and how much she had learned as a result of the other girl’s courage and insight.
I began to wonder what I would find to say in this crowd once I was out of SafeZone. Then I realized that maybe I wouldn’t have to say anything, that everyone else would be so focused on getting their own story out that I wouldn’t have to “Fellowship” in an active way. Just listen. Passive. A pair of understanding, compassionate ears. Probably I’d be able to carry that off indefinitely. At one point I nearly started to giggle, most inappropriately, as some guy was describing something unutterably wonderful and enlightening that he’d just realized this morning, when I speculated that if I wore a yellow sticker on my shoulder and stuck to corners of the Fellowship room where I wasn’t known, I could get away with doing precious little at all. I stowed the idea away for future consideration. Of course, they might take my sheet of yellow labels away from me.
Thinking Straight Page 7