Openly Straight

by Konigsberg, Bill

  I didn’t know what to say. A lot of sarcastic comments occurred to me. Non sequitur much, Clay? Guess what, Clay? I’m having reservations about how much chemistry we have. That sort of thing. Luckily, I kept my stupid mouth shut.

  “When my dad died last year, I decided I have to be an engineer. He was one. Worked for Ball Aerospace. He designed instruments for the Hubble space telescope. He died of skin cancer. My dad always wanted me to be an engineer, but I’m not really very good at science. I’m good at English and history mostly.”

  I instantly felt so bad about his dad and terrible for doubting him. I rolled my chair over and put my hand on his knee. Clay looked down like there was a tarantula on his leg. I started to take my hand off.

  “No,” he said, not taking his surprised eyes off his knee. “You can keep your hand there.”

  So I left it there and Clay stared at my hand as he told me more about his father. Clay could say amazing things, surprising things, for a guy who at first seemed to be about as exciting as our chemistry textbook. He told me about how his dad used to take him out to his work area in the garage. He would show Clay blueprints for different machines he was creating. One was meant to change lenses on the telescope so quickly that you could take two distinct images of the earth just about simultaneously.

  “My dad was my best friend,” Clay said, his eyes still on my hand, and I squeezed his knee, and I could almost — almost — see a reaction in him.

  And I felt radiant, which I know is weird. Because Clay, he was not exactly captain of the football team or even some major thespian. He was just this random guy. But something about feeling like I was getting through to him, breaking through that big wall he had built around himself, made me feel good about myself.

  This was becoming something. The more Clay talked, the more I was sure of it. Clay. My boyfriend.

  As I listened to his monologue about his dad, and then about his mom and her painting, I realized: Here’s this incredible person, and I would never have even guessed that based on his exterior. Clay was sensitive and interesting and somehow getting cuter by the second. And the thing with the finger on my leg, that was his only way to let me know that he was interested. In me! This was not how I expected to find a boyfriend, but this, this will work, I thought.

  We talked for a long, long time. Maybe a full hour, nonstop. And not a single word of it was about me.

  But I was okay with that. Because Clay, he seemed to need it. And isn’t that what boyfriends do? They listen.

  Rafe,

  Bravo! Such a nice improvement here. One of my concerns earlier this semester was about you being “all over the place.” This feels much more focused. At the same time, I still wonder how much of this is, as Doctorow would say, “an exploration”? Are you really starting with nothing? What does “starting with nothing” mean? How open is Rafe, as an author, to learning new things about Rafe? One other thought: Have you reflected at all about how you had labeled Clay before you knew him? How correct was that label?

  — Mr. Scarborough

  “So tell us about you,” my mother asked Ben. The four of us were sitting in Peace o’ Pie in Boston, on Friday night of Parents’ Weekend. “Rafe doesn’t tell us anything. Before tonight, I’d pictured you as a leprechaun.”

  Ben and I looked at each other. I liked how he immediately understood that my parents were not to be taken too seriously, that it was okay to share a look with me in front of them. And I could tell that my parents liked that he wasn’t a bullshit artist.

  “Well, I used to be a leprechaun,” Ben said. “My parents are, actually. But I decided to change. You know the saying: A leopard can’t change his spots, but a leprechaun can.”

  My mom cackled. Her laugh is always extra loud, and I looked around the restaurant, totally embarrassed. But the half dozen other aging hippies feasting on gluten-free crust and lactose-free mozzarella pizzas didn’t even notice her. I’d apologized in advance to Ben, both for my postprime hippie parents and everything embarrassing they were going to say, and also for the food, which was going to make our cafeteria’s “Natick meat-loaf special” seem downright tasty.

  The one comment everyone always makes when they see my mom is that she looks happy. I guess that’s a compliment, and I know she’d take it that way. Mom has red hair that she wears long, sometimes in a ponytail, sometimes not. She’s also big into suspenders and tie-dye, and I hadn’t seen her in a dress maybe ever. Tonight, she was wearing a T-shirt that said IMPEACH BUSH, which she’d been wearing since I was in fifth grade.

  “And you’re from New Hampshire?” my dad asked.

  “Yessir,” Ben responded.

  “Live free or die,” my dad said, as if it were a command.

  “I didn’t realize how far Natick was from Boston,” my mother said. “I rather pictured you taking the T all the time, hanging out in the city.”

  “I hadn’t even been in Boston before tonight,” I said.

  “It’s pretty much special occasions only,” Ben explained. “I guess last year I went in, like, twice. Beacon Street is pretty cool.”

  “We’ve been,” my mother said, beaming. I could tell she liked Ben, and I felt a flutter somewhere in my diaphragm. “Gavin and I, after we graduated from Oberlin, we lived in Somerville for two years. They were wonderful years too!”

  “That was nineteen thirty-what?” I asked.

  “Be nice to your parents,” Ben admonished me. “You have no idea how much cooler they are than mine.”

  “Thank you!” my father said. “We’ve been telling him that for ages, and he doesn’t listen.”

  We’d ordered a large pie with zucchini, garlic, and apple sage sausage. Apple sage sausage tastes sort of like meat, if you think that an apple is a type of animal. Otherwise, it’s just an imposter, and I hate imposter foods. My parents tried to sell me on a tofu turkey last Thanksgiving. I went hungry that night. Kill the beast, I say.

  “Mmm,” I said, chomping down my whole wheat crust with a bit of lactose-free cheese and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Sausage! “Compost.”

  “What a brat,” my mother said. “Isn’t he a brat, darling?” she asked my father, who nodded vehemently.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m a terrible son. I know,” I said.

  “No. Just a brat,” my dad said, winking at me.

  My parents kept on enthusing over Ben, which would have embarrassed me to pieces if it were me, but Ben didn’t seem to mind. He got the self-effacing aspect of their humor, and the gentleness too, and he seemed to like it.

  “So what’s this Claire Olivia like?” Ben asked my mom, smirking. “I want to know about this girlfriend of Rafe’s.”

  Mom’s eyes opened wide, and she glanced over at my dad, who had a pained expression suddenly. It was like, Act much? I’d asked them for one tiny little favor, and they appeared to be caving at the first innocent mention of a girl.

  “She’s … artsy, I’d say,” my mom said tentatively. “Unique.”

  “Alternative,” my dad added. “They have been inseparable from the time they were about twelve. Sleepovers, you name it.”

  I knew Dad was goading me. He wasn’t a big fan of being told what to do.

  “Wow,” Ben said. “I was dating this girl Cindy, on and off, for the last couple years, but no early-life sleepovers for us. She’s from home. Alton is the town I grew up in. Up north.”

  “Ah,” my mother said, unsure what to do in this role. “That’s nice.”

  “We broke up,” Ben added, choking down a piece of crust. “It was just too hard, long distance and all.”

  “I’m sure that was tough,” my mother said.

  “How’s the distance been for you, Rafe?” my dad asked me.

  “Fine,” I said. “It’s been fine.”

  “I figured, as close as you two always have been …”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Touchy,” my dad teased, and I wanted to hit him with something
large and heavy.

  Ben had mentioned Cindy before, so I knew his history. Yet I couldn’t help but think: If Ben were gay, and he knew I was gay, would he pick me? The only guy who had ever picked me was Clay, and ever since I’d written about him, I’d been wondering what he even saw in me. Had he even picked me? Was I just an easy target for him because he was in the closet and I was openly gay?

  For dessert, Mom ordered us carob-chip cookies sweetened with fruit juice, which were about as delectable as that sounds. After we finished eating, we made sure to give the waitress all our food and dirty napkins so they could be composted.

  “This is interesting,” Ben said.

  My mother’s eyes lit up. “It’s wonderful! In Boulder we are so far ahead of other places in terms of sustainability. I’m thrilled that the rest of the world seems to be catching up.”

  “That’s cool,” Ben said. “I’d love to see Boulder.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to come anytime,” Mom said, and I felt a strange combination of thrill and panic, imagining Ben in my Boulder world.

  We drove through Boston, which is a really cool place. Lots of brick sidewalks and narrow cobblestone one-way streets, beautiful brownstones, and gas-lit streetlamps. It was the kind of place I could imagine living one day, a city that still had an old-fashioned feel to it. Ben asked if we could find a bathroom, and we pulled up to a Ben & Jerry’s so he could use the facilities.

  He was hardly out of the car for two seconds before they both started in.

  “You love him,” my mother said, her eyes wide and her smile mischievous.

  “No, I don’t,” I said, blushing. “Stop it. Cease. Desist.”

  “Sure you do,” my dad said, turning around to goose my cheek. I looked around, horrified. “It’s as clear as the smile on that goofy face of yours, Rafe.”

  “Seriously. Stop,” I said, wishing I’d gone in with Ben. “Really.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad. You love a boy,” my mom said. “You’re still our Rafe, underneath this hideous straight disguise….”

  “It’s not a disguise,” I yelled, surprising even myself. “I know you don’t get this, but there’s a part of me that this truly is, okay? I know, I’m gay. I’m your gay son. But could you just give me a fucking break for two minutes so I can be just me too? God.” I pounded the seat next to me.

  It was dead quiet in the car. My parents stared at me, their mouths open. I don’t think I’d ever yelled at them. I immediately felt horrible, and I lowered my head.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry,” I said. “Please. That was so off-the-charts wrong. I’m sorry. I love you guys. I just, I know you don’t get this. But please. Trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

  Mom put her hand on my arm and rubbed it.

  “I’m not sure that you do, Rafe. But, sure, sweetheart, we’ll give you space. And I’m sorry. We’re sorry, right, Gavin?”

  Dad seemed less sure.

  “I just don’t know,” he said. “I’m flabbergasted. I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore, and that makes me feel like curling up in a corner somewhere and crying.”

  Dad’s eyes watered, and I had to look away because I couldn’t watch my dad cry without my eyes tearing up too. Then Dad started out-and-out crying, and I was like, Please don’t do this, but I was choked up and couldn’t say it, and I hugged him around the seat and soon he was sobbing.

  And of course, that’s when Ben came back from the restroom.

  “Should be condemned,” he said before he saw that something had happened in the car while he was gone. And in classic Ben style, he just took it in. He allowed it to be, and he didn’t make a big deal about finding out what was up or why my dad was crying like a baby while he was driving the car. And I have to say, that only made me like Ben more, if that was possible.

  Mom and Dad had a meeting with Mr. Scarborough the next day, and I was freaking out, wondering what he was saying and what they were saying too. Ben wasn’t around; his parents had driven down for the day, and he was with them. His dad looked kind of like a cowboy — tall and skinny with a pointy, grizzled face and a mustache. It was hard for me to see the resemblance, even though Ben had told me a couple of times that he looked just like his dad, that there were pictures of his dad as a teenager that looked exactly like Ben. Spooky, he’d called it. And it was spooky, because I couldn’t imagine how Ben could ever metamorphose into that.

  I liked his folks fine when I met them on Saturday morning. They didn’t try to get to know me the way my folks did with Ben, but I think that’s the difference between Boulder hippies and repressed New Hampshire farm people. We visited, sitting across Ben’s dorm room, talking about how it might snow soon. And that was plenty for me.

  While my parents were talking to some of my other teachers in the afternoon, Steve started up a touch football game. I’d played a few times now, and I really liked it. I wasn’t the best at catching the ball, but I was fast enough that I could score when I did.

  About halfway through the game, the parents started spilling out of Academy Hall. It was like I could feel my mom and dad watching me as I was chasing and catching this kid who’d just caught a long pass, and when I turned around after the play, there they were. My dad had his iPhone in his outstretched left hand, filming me, of course, and my mom was smiling, like real joyfully. She wasn’t humoring me; something had made her feel good.

  The game ended, and I rushed over to them. Dad was busy re-watching whatever he caught of me on video, and she was enthused about meeting my teachers. Well, some of them, anyway.

  “That Scarborough! What a sharp one he is!” she gushed. “He truly gets it, the value of self-expression. I just loved him. Loved him!”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty cool. What about Mr. Sacks?” I asked, goading her.

  “History? Eh,” she said, dismissing him. “Just another right-wing zealot, hoping to get you kids hooked on lies. The fifties were a time of great joy and prosperity, my foot. For whom?”

  She was getting worked up, and I didn’t want the mostly conservative parents all around us to hear, so I took her hand. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “I’ll show you around campus.”

  We went across the quad and down to Dug Pond, where we sat at the only empty picnic table. For my part, I was trying to figure out how to leave things on better terms. I didn’t want them hating me, going back home thinking I was this monster who didn’t appreciate their love and acceptance and now wanted to be straight.

  “I know this is weird to you,” I said.

  My mother gazed at me, a warm smile on her face, her flower-print blouse flowing with the soft, mid-autumn breeze.

  “It is, but I get it too,” she said. “I didn’t before, but, now … I think I do.”

  “I don’t,” my father said. “But I’m all ears. Edify us please, Opal.”

  “Watching you play football there, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. You really were enjoying that, weren’t you?” my mother said, scratching my back through my sweaty shirt with her fingernails.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I hadn’t understood that desire in you, the desire to do those sorts of boy things. I don’t know how I missed that.”

  I put my mouth on her shoulder and kissed it. “You missed it because I missed it, Mom,” I said. “I would never have said I needed that back home, because I didn’t know how much I liked being a part of a group of guys. But I knew I needed something, you know?”

  “I do,” Mom said.

  “Now it just feels like this barrier that was up between me and these other guys is no longer up. And I love that,” I said.

  My dad put his arm around me. “I just don’t understand why you can’t be honest and still be friends with a bunch of other boys. Here. Anywhere. What precludes you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think that’s self-limiting,” he said. “Who says there’s a barrier? Maybe you put it up.”

  “I don’t think I did, Dad
. And I like this. I like it here.”

  My mother sighed. “This isn’t what we’d expected you’d do, sweetheart. We didn’t see this phase coming.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “But I will absolutely, one hundred percent support you,” Mom said. “And I promise. No more jokes about you being in love with Ben. You’re not, are you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, a little bit too quickly. “He’s like … there’s like this incredibly close bond. I can’t explain. I love him, I think, but not like in love, you know?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I understand that.”

  My dad stood up and paced in front of us just a bit.

  “I still think that you’re overlooking something,” he said. “You say you have this great bond. But how can you, if he doesn’t know you?”

  “Come on, Dad,” I said. “He knows me.”

  “He does?” he asked.

  I could see he didn’t understand that knowing a person is about more than knowing whom they fantasize about. That’s the small stuff, actually. Not the big stuff. The big stuff is lying next to a guy on the floor and locking eyes and having deep conversations about philosophy. The big stuff is letting a friend know your hopes and your fears and not having to make a joke about it. That’s what matters.

  Despite him still not quite getting it, I was feeling a million times better as we walked back to the car.

  “Is it homophobic here?” my mom asked. “Could you be openly gay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so. My roommate? You met Albie. Did you meet Toby?”

  “His friend?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “We thought so. And you’re nice to him?”

  “He’s, like, one of my best friends here,” I said. “Ben likes him too. He’s cool. This is cool. I promise.”

  “Well. That’s something, anyway,” Dad said.

  They kissed me good-bye, and as I watched their rental car drive off, I had the strong sensation that I’d underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they’d be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were.