Openly Straight

by Konigsberg, Bill

  Robinson just stood there and took it. He stood under the water and let it pour over his face and said nothing. I wanted to say: Stand up for yourself! But it wasn’t for me to say.

  Zack continued, “Got a fag goalie who can’t stop a fucking shot if it was kicked right at him….”

  “Hey,” I said, surprising myself. “Cut it out.”

  “Oh, it’s the guy who can’t handle making a wide-open pass. Yeah. You should really be talking right now,” Zack said.

  I stepped toward him. “Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You don’t talk like that about our teammate. And don’t talk like that about my friend Toby.” The vibrato in my chest felt like a tremor. It made my head woozy.

  “Your friend Toby?” Zack laughed. “He sucking your cock too, Colorado?”

  I took another step. Zack took one toward me too. I seized up a bit. I was too skinny for this, but I was also mad, and sometimes when I get mad, I feel bigger than I am.

  “If you say another word, I’m gonna blast your head into that wall,” Ben said from behind me. Zack froze. I turned around and there was Ben, standing tall. He was big, bigger than anyone on the team, including Steve.

  Robinson just went on showering in silence.

  “Cut out the homophobic crap,” Ben said. “Seriously. Grow up.”

  Zack skulked back to his showerhead. I tentatively went back to mine, feeling all sorts of conflicting things at once. I was afraid to look at Ben, because my feelings for him were out of control. He was a beautiful, beautiful guy, inside and out.

  “He’s right,” Steve said, ever the leader. “Let’s put that stuff away.”

  I wanted to say, You started it, asshole. Everyone in the room should remember that Steve wasn’t this perfect guy, but the guy who had started making antigay comments in the shower before someone bigger than him put a stop to it.

  But instead, I went back to soaping and rinsing, allowing the hot water to sting the back of my neck, washing away the pain.

  The last time I almost got into a fight was back in Boulder.

  It was the summer after ninth grade, outside a PFLAG dance in the Methodist church on Spruce Street. Mom was already inside, and I was going to the dance because why not, even though I was not a big “goes to dances” type of guy. And these guys about my age walked by, and one saw the banner for the dance and nudged his friends.

  “Fags,” he said.

  I stopped, turned around, and said, “Gays. We like to be called gays, not fags, just so you know.”

  And the guy stepped forward and said, “You a fag?”

  “No, I’m gay. Like I said. Why?” My heart was pounding in my chest then, and I looked him up and down. He was no bigger than me, but I wasn’t sure what I would even do if a fight happened. I’d never punched someone before. Would I kick him too? But here I was, stepping toward him, my chest getting all puffed out like a tough guy’s.

  “I’ll fuckin’ waste you,” the guy said, and his friends backed off, because they obviously didn’t feel the same way he did. Neither did I, really, but I continued forward, and I felt like what I imagine a heart attack feels like. And just as I was about to go after the guy, not knowing whether he would run or if we were gonna throw down, I heard my dad’s voice.

  “Hey!”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned around.

  “What’s going on here?” Dad hurried out toward us, panic in his eyes. The gay-bashing kid started backing off, and then he turned and ran away.

  “He called me a fag,” I said, my voice cracking, my head buzzing.

  And my dad came and hugged me fiercely. “You’re no fag, okay? You don’t owe those idiots any explanation about who you are. They’d be lucky to be half the man you are, Rafe. Okay? We love you. Don’t fight those idiots. They may never change. You just let them be.”

  Unspoken in those words was the fact that I probably would have lost that fight. Because I’m not a fighter. And who knows what happens when you’re down on the ground, having lost a fight? If my dad hadn’t come out, would the kid have killed me?

  I lay in Bryce’s bed, eyes wide open, the night of the soccer game. Ben slept peacefully on the other side of the room. I thought about the almost-fight with Zack. Something hadn’t felt right ever since. Ben and I had hung out and talked, as usual. Nothing had changed with him. But I felt as if a part of me had disappeared in the altercation in the locker room.

  Who was I? How could I stand up for gay people while at the same time hiding that part of me?

  And I felt so foreign, lying there, the wind howling outside our window. What was I doing here? Who was Rafe, really? Can you just put a part of yourself on hold? And if you do, does it cease to be true?

  Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight.

  Because once, there was something that I was, and it was a difficult thing to be. But at least I was, you know, something. I wasn’t just a guy who stood tall in the shower, standing up for someone else, when really, I should have been standing up for myself.

  And that was something my best friend Ben couldn’t know about me.

  The more I think about it, the more I realize that almost every time I did it, my feelings were actually a little hurt. I wonder if that was true for Claire Olivia too.

  Sometimes my feelings get hurt but I pretend they aren’t hurt.

  Feelings hurt. I don’t like having my feelings hurt.

  I feel —

  Claire Olivia is my friend but sometimes she hurts my feelings and I hurt hers. I feel —

  I don’t know how I feel, maybe? It’s a long time ago. Let me try something more recent:

  The more I think about it, the more I realize that when Steve and Zack started making homophobic comments in the shower, I didn’t feel angry. I felt hurt because that’s how they see me. I hate that they see me as something to make fun of. I hate that I have to hide —

  I HATE THIS! AAARRRGGGHHH!

  Rafe,

  Ha! This may not be the best writing you’ve done this semester, but it certainly feels the most authentic. And I love the last line! Not because it is fantastic writing, but because it is true. Good try on this. Keep trying. You’re a good writer. I want you to think about thinking less, though. You seem pretty set on controlling where your writing goes, and I think the short paragraphs aren’t really your friend. I think you think they are, but for this sort of writing, it’s very hard to think in short, clipped paragraphs. Just write, Rafe. Don’t worry about form. Fast-writing is a really good tool for you. Don’t think so much about how it will read to your audience.

  — Mr. Scarborough

  It was Tuesday night, two days before Thanksgiving. Ben and I were packing and talking about what we were going to do in Colorado the next three days, and there was a knock on the door.

  Ben crossed the room and opened it, and I saw his expression before I saw who was there. His mouth opened wide, and then his eyes got wide, and it was like he came to life in a way that I hadn’t ever seen.

  Standing there at the door was Mr. Donnelly, and by his side, with a sheepish grin on his face, was Bryce.

  “B!” Ben said, and the two of them hugged hard. Mr. Donnelly stood smiling at the reunion, and I looked out in the hallway and saw that other kids were milling around.

  “How are you?” Ben asked.

  Bryce waved the question away, like it didn’t matter. Of course it did, but when someone’s been depressed, I guess you give them a little leeway.

  “You got another roommate?” he asked.

  “Unofficially,” Ben responded, pointing to me. “Bryce, you remember Rafe?”

  “Oh, right. Broken nose guy. What up?”

  “Not much,” I said, feeling awkward. I went and shook his hand.

  “You back to stay?” Ben asked.

  “Nah. I’m here to pack up my things. I’m fine, don’t worry. Just need to be home for a while.”

  “Oh
. Okay …” Ben said, and I couldn’t quite read his emotion.

  “You guys probably have lots to catch up on,” I said.

  Ben nodded. “Just for a bit. But I want the three of us to hang out.”

  Bryce looked at his watch. “My mom’s downstairs in the car. I told her an hour.”

  “See if she’ll go for two, okay?”

  Bryce texted his mom. She answered right away, and Bryce smiled. “Yeah, I can. She said she’d go get coffee.”

  “I’m out of here,” I said. “Back in?”

  “Like an hour,” Ben said, and Bryce nodded.

  I went and hung out with Albie and Toby in my old room, listening to the police scanner and barely drinking a Red Bull. They talked about EMT training, which Albie was thinking of doing over the summer. He thought maybe he’d take a year off before college and try that. Toby said that if he was going to take a year off from school, it would be to become a Rock Cat. And then he started kicking really high, which was weird.

  “What the hell is a Rock Cat?” Albie asked.

  “You know. Radio City Music Hall in New York? Every Christmas? The Rock Cats. Duh.”

  “Did your mom put battery acid in your cereal?” Albie asked. “They’re the Rockettes.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “Uh. Yeah. They are.”

  Toby blushed. “Well, you think that old song is about a ‘Hollow Batgirl.’”

  “Shut up,” Albie said, turning away.

  “What’s a hollow batgirl?” I asked.

  “It’s a ‘Hollaback Girl’ when you have trouble hearing lyrics and all your pop culture references come from Survival Planet,” Toby said.

  I laughed. “Albie. Dude.”

  “Whatever,” Albie said. “I like the image of mine better. A batgirl who is hollow. It’s poetic.”

  “Very. Especially for a song where the singer spells ‘bananas’ for the audience,” Toby said.

  “‘Help Boy Scouts Blind Kids,’” Albie said in a monotone.

  Toby said, “Stop. Shut up.”

  Albie ignored Toby. “We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, ‘Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.’ Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, ‘That’s not right. They need to be stopped.’”

  I cracked up. “Oh no,” I said.

  “When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby’s whole face went white. He said, ‘Forget it. Let’s go.’ But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, ‘I didn’t see the comma.’”

  I turned to Toby. “You thought the Boy Scouts were collecting money so they could actually blind kids?”

  He shrugged. “Well, they’re anti-gay, you know. I guess I didn’t think it was a huge stretch. Besides, I was mostly joking?”

  Albie shook his head. “Yeah. He really wasn’t.”

  “And how were they going to go about blinding kids, in that crazy brain of yours?” I asked.

  Toby was making a careful study of the floor below him, like it was really fascinating.

  “Slingshot,” he finally said.

  I couldn’t wait for the hour to be up. So at fifty-seven minutes, I knocked on Ben’s door.

  “Here’s the guy,” he said, letting me in.

  Bryce was sprawled on his bed, which was now stripped of sheets. “Hey. Sorry, but you just lost your sheets and comforter. Gotta bring ’em home.”

  “I hope it was okay….”

  “Oh, yeah, no worries. I’m just glad you’re here.” Bryce smiled, and I realized why Ben liked him. Bryce was a genuinely nice guy. I saw how Ben’s face lit up in his presence.

  Ben and I had plastic screwdrivers and Bryce drank the Gatorade straight. He couldn’t drink anymore because of his depression medication. We talked and laughed and the time went by like nothing. Bryce really could do amazing impersonations, and he was glad to get caught up on Donnelly’s rants, which he joked was the thing he missed most about Natick.

  I knew Bryce had already told Ben what was going on, but he had no problem telling me too. He was in therapy, like, five times a week. He had to take an antidepressant. His mom was homeschooling him, which was pretty rough, because it meant living with your teacher 24/7.

  I couldn’t imagine being homeschooled. Especially by my mom. I guarantee I’d become homicidal within a week.

  Way too soon, Bryce looked at his watch and said it was time to go.

  “I’ll text you,” he said. “Don’t worry, okay?”

  “Cool,” Ben said. “Just let me know how you’re doing, man. Two months without talking to you at all sucked.”

  “Okay,” Bryce said.

  “I love you, buddy.”

  “I know,” Bryce said. “Love you too.”

  He turned to me then. “Thanks for looking out for Ben,” he said. “The thing I felt most guilty about the last couple of months was thinking that Ben was all alone here at Natick. He’s not, so that’s cool.”

  “Yeah, um, no problem,” I said, my face reddening.

  When Bryce left, Ben flopped down on his bed. I flopped down on the one that was now really mine. We just hung out there in the calm silence of the moment.

  “He’s … a great guy,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “Why do you think he was depressed?” I asked.

  Ben thought about it for a minute. “I think being different is really hard, for one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, he was double different, because he’s a good, sensitive guy, and he’s black. So that’s like two lenses.”

  “Lenses?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Bryce said it’s like lenses that you see the world through. They shift your perspective on everything you see. They create what’s real for you, and unlike glasses, you can never take them off and see what normal is to other people, you know? Bryce had two, and he said it was hard to relate to some of the students here, who seem to have none.”

  “Well, you have one,” I said.

  “I guess so. You do too.”

  “Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes. I imagined lenses. And then I tried to imagine what Ben’s lenses might see. In me. When I opened my eyes, Ben was looking directly at me. I held his gaze and he held mine, and we saw each other. We saw. As clearly as my lenses would allow, I saw who Ben was, and it was good. And I could tell from his expression that he was seeing me too. Really seeing.

  We each had another drink and were pretty tired by midnight. Tomorrow would be a long travel day, with the flight from Boston to Denver in the morning. But other than waking up, there wasn’t that much we needed to do, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus I had a nice buzz on.

  “I should go get my sheets and blanket,” I said, struggling to stand up. I was a little bleary, but for comic effect I pretended to be worse than I was. I pushed down on the mattress and undulated like I couldn’t lift myself, and then I collapsed back onto the bed.

  Ben started cracking up. “Don’t fall.”

  I thrashed around for a few more seconds before finally lifting myself to my feet. I swayed exaggeratedly.

  “You’re gonna fall,” he said, even though I was joking. “C’mon.”

  “C’mon what?”

  He sat up and patted his bed. “C’mere, you doofus.”

  I tentatively sat down on the side of the bed. Ben was lying on his back, his eyes closed, his huge arms over his head. He reached out and put his hand on my arm.

  “Just sleep here.”

  “Okay,” I said, finding it hard to even breathe.

  Silently, he scooted over and pulled up his comforter. He had on his sweatpants and T-shirt. I left mine on too. I settled under the sheets facing away from him, because if I faced him, he would have gotten seriously poked. He turned and put his arm over me
.

  “I’m so glad I know you, Rafe,” he said.

  “Me too,” I whispered, kind of holding my breath.

  He hugged me, and the heat of his torso and stomach against my back made me feel like melting. I could feel and smell his vodka-tinged breath as it blew across my ear and over my cheek. I had to concentrate on my own breathing. I couldn’t move. I had never, ever wanted to do something more than I wanted to push back into him, to feel whether he had a hard-on. I wanted to know, needed to. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “Colorado tomorrow,” I said.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Soon I heard his snores, soft and familiar. The same snores I’d heard and loved from across the room for the past two months. Soon, hard gave way to soft, and I relaxed into Ben. And even though I didn’t sleep a wink all night, it was the best night of rest I’d had my whole life.

  “This is the longest flight I’ve ever taken,” I said, settling into seat 20E. “By a lot.”

  Ben was in 20D, and no one was in 20F, the window seat. It was first-come, first-served seating, so Ben told me that to make sure no one else sat in our row, I should scoot over to the window seat during boarding.

  “Nobody likes a middle seat, especially between two guys, and especially when one of ’em is me,” he said, sitting up straight so his broad shoulders looked even broader.

  Then he instructed me to stare menacingly into the eyes of anyone who glanced my way. It was hard to do, because I kept laughing, but Ben seemed pretty intent on following his own rules. And just as he planned, the doors closed and no one sat between us.

  The plane took off, and we settled in for the four-hour trip. Neither of us said anything about anything when we woke up that morning (well, when he woke up and when I pretended to), or when we finished packing, or when we got in the cab. It was like it was just our sleeping arrangement. Then I wondered if that was what this was, like a Brokeback Mountain thing. We’d sleep in the same bed for a year, and finally we’d do it, but we’d never talk about it, ever, and then Ben would get married and I’d be killed in Texas.