Openly Straight

by Konigsberg, Bill

  “He sounds amazing.”

  “He was. You know, he didn’t care what everyone else thought about his life. I admired that because I can’t even …”

  I didn’t ask him to finish the sentence, because I got it. As cool as Ben was, as much as he didn’t get caught up in labels, it was pretty clear that they did matter to him too, underneath. There was a big part of Ben that still bought into his parents’ way of thinking about life. You work hard, you suffer, you die. It was amazing to me that a person could be as smart as Ben but still feel chained in by what his parents thought. I thought about it. Did I buy everything my parents had raised me to believe? No, or else I’d still be living in Boulder. But while I didn’t agree with them on everything, they had taught me that life was an exploration, not a job. That part I definitely liked.

  I turned to face him. “Your parents are proud of you,” I said.

  He didn’t react. He looked out into the snowy distance.

  “They are. They just don’t know how to say it.”

  He wiped his nose with his glove. For a second I felt very alone, but then I settled into the moment, and we shared one of those perfect silences. I focused on this beautiful, solitary tree on the apex of one of the slopes above. It looked like it was perched there, all alone, waiting to be told what to do.

  “So are we okay about last night?” I finally blurted out.

  He looked over at me. I took off my sunglasses and we locked eyes.

  We just looked at each other for a while. I wondered, as we did, what he saw. What I saw was this incredible person who was exactly who he was. I admired the hell out of that. Maybe he was gay, maybe he wasn’t. But he was always Ben.

  “Still processing,” he said.

  I wiped my nose, which was leaking again. “Me too.”

  Ben turned forward, so I did too. I looked at the empty seats coming toward us, heading back down the mountain. I watched the skiers below, carving into the virgin white powder. Then I felt a weight on my gloved hand. I looked down. His gloved hand was on top of mine. I turned to look at Ben and got a stunning view of his profile — that strong Roman nose of his, pink from the thin, frigid air.

  He didn’t turn his head, but I could feel him squeezing his hand around mine. So I squeezed back.

  We allowed the whistling wind to be our sound track for a full minute. As the zenith approached, it was time to raise the bar. Ben tucked his poles on his lap as he adjusted his hat and goggles, and I grabbed his poles. I motioned and he lifted his skis off the footrest. It was all so easy, communicating with Ben.

  The lift reached the plateau, and we raised our ski tips just before they made contact with the crisp snow. Then we stood and let gravity do the work, and we glided down the slope and to the right.

  “What the hell is Hot Spot Teen Dancing?” I asked as we drove down Broadway. Claire Olivia was in the driver’s seat, I was riding shotgun, and big, hulking Ben was pretzeled into the back of Claire Olivia’s ’89 Cutlass Ciera.

  It was about eight o’clock on Saturday, our final night in Colorado, and as we cruised toward Caffè Sole, this cool coffee shop where they sometimes had live music at night, we saw this place that was obviously new, with a glittery sign that read HOT SPOT TEEN DANCING. There was a group of kids outside, skinhead types, mostly.

  “Looks really sketchy,” Claire Olivia said, looking in the rearview mirror to fix her beehive hairdo. Or hairdon’t, depending on how you looked at it. She kept saying she wore it that way special just for me, and I was thinking: Um, thanks?

  “It looks like the kind of place where a kid would get shot,” I said.

  “Well, it’s a good thing they’ve created a safe place for teens to congregate minus alcohol,” Claire Olivia said, and Ben chuckled from the backseat.

  “Do you think preteens try to get into that place like kids are always trying to get into actual, real bars?” he asked, and Claire Olivia shot me a look that said, Nice, he gets it.

  “Sure,” I said. “They probably get fake IDs that say they’re thirteen.”

  “Totally,” Claire Olivia answered. “It’s a huge industry, the fake teen ID business. They should make Hot Spot Teen Dancing open to preteens.”

  “Two to twelve,” I said, and by this point we were way past it, almost at the coffee shop.

  Claire Olivia said, “Fetus to twelve,” and then drew a very vivid word picture of pregnant women dirty dancing with twelve-year-olds. It was downright creepy, and I wondered how Ben would react.

  “That brings up the very interesting legal argument about whether it’s statutory rape if the predator is pregnant,” Ben said. “Perchance it could be said that the twelve-year-old and the fetus were, um, comingling.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s an interesting legal argument so much as a prurient one,” I said.

  Claire Olivia sighed loudly. “Perchance. Comingling. Prurient. Speak English,” she said.

  We found a parking spot out in front of the café and stepped into the cold night air.

  “So what do you think?” I asked no one in particular.

  “This is what I think,” Claire Olivia said, slamming the driver’s side door. “I think anyone who stops at a gas station at night is up to no good. I think that if cops want to stop drunk driving, they should hide out in the bushes at the Taco Bell drive-through. I think if you’re a guy and you pull down your pants and the girl you’re with starts texting, you have a small penis.”

  “No fair. That last one was Chelsea Handler,” I said.

  “Who?” Ben quietly asked me, once Claire Olivia charged ahead of us, anxious for her s’mores cappuccino, which was surely every bit as disgusting as it sounded.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” I said.

  “I guess I won’t. Why do I feel like an alien?”

  “Welcome to my world,” I said.

  The night before, Ben fell asleep early, exhausted from the day of skiing. I sat in the living room with my mom, and I told her everything that had happened. She seemed overjoyed, which was a bit different from what I was feeling. Other than totally in love, what I was mostly feeling was confused. What we were. What was going to happen. I told my mother this, and she waved off my concern.

  “There are so many different kinds of relationships out there, sweetie. The thing that makes one okay and another not is whether it comes from a place of love. Nothing that comes from love could ever be wrong.”

  It was just such a thing my mother would say. Then she started singing “All You Need Is Love,” and I excused myself because there’s a certain level of cheese that’s too goopy even for me.

  Inside, the coffee shop was packed with a mixture of teens and adults. There were some kids from Rangeview — some people Claire Olivia had recently gotten friendly with, I guess, because I didn’t remember them. She gave them hugs, and, anxious that they might say something I didn’t want Ben to hear, I told him to grab an open table in the corner while I ordered him a coffee.

  Once he was gone, Claire Olivia turned to me.

  “He is totally gay for you,” she said, poking me hard in the shoulder.

  I wasn’t even sure if I would tell her what happened when we had a chance to really talk. Would she understand?

  “I don’t know,” I said, rubbing my arm. “You think?”

  “I know. Also, I’m pretty legendary at figuring out if someone is gay.” She scanned the coffee shop. “Shall I?”

  “Behave,” I said. “Please.”

  She clasped her hands under her chin. “Angel,” she said.

  We pushed our way through the crowd to the table where Ben was sitting, facing the wall. I handed him his coffee, sidled into one of the two seats facing the crowd, and put down my bottled water. Claire Olivia sat next to me, which made me feel a little bit like she and I were an interview panel, with Ben as our frightened subject.

  “So what’s Rafe like at Natick?” Claire Olivia asked him. “I’m dying to know.”

  Ben glan
ced at me, a little confused by the question. “He’s just Rafe, I guess.”

  “Whoever that is,” she said, and under the table, I kicked her softly.

  Ben sipped his coffee and changed the subject. “So this is what you guys would do on a Saturday night in Colorado? I guess I thought we’d go to a hoedown. Or country dancing. Or banjoing. Is that a thing? Banjoing?”

  “It could be,” I said.

  “We’re doing all that later,” Claire Olivia said, sipping her s’mores. “We’ll go eat Rocky Mountain oysters.”

  Ben shook his head while I took a swig of water. He said, “I have a long-standing agreement with cows that I won’t eat their balls if they won’t eat mine.”

  Water spewed from my nose, and then I had to wipe the snot away while Claire Olivia shook her head in mock disgust.

  “Drinking problem,” Claire Olivia explained to Ben, who nodded.

  “I believe he also has a peeing problem,” he said, and I cracked up.

  We were enjoying our drinks and people watching when a shock of purple hair across the room caught my attention. A kid with big-time acne was standing in front of whoever’s hair it was, so all I could see was the spiked hair peering out from above the crowd. I was about to make a joke about “Purple Mountain’s Majesty” when the zit-faced kid moved.

  The kid with the purple hair was You-Know-Caleb.

  And of course, because I was staring at him, he turned and saw us too. His mouth opened wide.

  “Whassup, bitches!” he shrieked, sashaying through the crowd over to our table.

  “Caleb!” I said, cursing my decision to bring Ben to Caffè Sole on our final night in Boulder. What was I thinking? Way too popular with Rangeview types.

  Thank God for Claire Olivia, who jumped up and hugged Caleb. She shouted, “Don’t you love my hair?” and while he was busy curling his lip and saying, “No, not really,” she led him away from me and Ben.

  Most. Awesome. Girl. Ever. She’d tell him what was up.

  Ben laughed, sort of awkward. “Interesting friend,” he said.

  “He’s not really my friend,” I said, not feeling so bad about it, because it was true. Caleb and I were acquaintances at best. People always tried to group us together, but it just didn’t work. I thought Caleb was weird, and he probably thought I was superboring.

  Ben and I sat and sipped our coffee and water, and after a while, Claire Olivia came back to the table with You-Know-Caleb, who looked … pissed? Annoyed? Bored? All of the above?

  “Ben,” Claire Olivia said. “This is our friend Caleb. Caleb, Rafe’s friend Ben.”

  Ben stuck out his hand, which Caleb regarded as if it were something on the discount rack at Old Navy. Finally he clasped the hand and curtsied.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” he said, deadpan.

  I looked at Claire Olivia for an explanation, but she was already sending me a message with her eyes. It read something like this: Don’t even think about dissing Caleb as too gay to hang with. I will cut you.

  Caleb sat down next to Ben, and we all looked at one another. It was a weird grouping. Not weird like Albie-Toby-Ben-Rafe weird. More like ominous. I shifted in my seat and looked at my wrist as if I had a watch on it. I didn’t.

  “So how’s life?” I asked Caleb.

  “Tragic,” he said. “I’m seriously pondering running off to Cali to become a porn star.”

  “He’s kidding,” I said to Ben, to which Claire Olivia said, “Duh,” while simultaneously Caleb said, “If you say so.”

  “What’s so tragic?” Ben asked.

  Caleb shrugged. “I couldn’t get a single ticket to the New Kids on the Block reunion tour,” he said. I remembered how much I genuinely disliked having conversations with Caleb. A straight answer, no pun intended, was almost impossible to get. “I am so dejected and depressed, I’m thinking about going to some boring-ass East Coast prep school next year.”

  “Fuck you,” I said to Caleb. Then I turned to Ben and said, “What you need to understand is that Caleb is an asshole.”

  Caleb flipped me off. To Ben, he said, “What you need to understand about Rafe here is that he’s your girlfriend.”

  Everybody got really quiet. Claire Olivia clicked her fingernails. Caleb sipped his fizzy water as if he’d just commented on the weather. I couldn’t look at Ben, but I could feel my face heat up like I was standing over a stove.

  “Fuck you, Caleb,” I said again.

  “As if,” he said.

  Then we all drank our drinks, and watched people walk by, and all the while, my kidneys felt like they were twisting inside me.

  In my head, I was computing and translating. Caleb’s comment plus no reaction equaled awkward. Caleb’s comment plus big reaction equaled more awkward. Caleb’s comment plus major reaction plus Rafe was a straight guy and Ben was a straight guy plus the strange sexual escapade two nights ago equaled superconfusing. How to react as Ben’s friend? How to react as Claire Olivia’s friend? How to react as Rafe?

  Too many combinations and permutations. My head spun.

  “Wow, there are certainly lots of people here, drinking coffee,” Claire Olivia offered.

  “Yes,” Ben said flatly. “People do drink coffee.”

  After what seemed like an eternity, Caleb moved away from our table. But the night was ruined. I had no idea how much damage had been done. I couldn’t look at Ben, and that wasn’t great news.

  Against my better judgment, I didn’t say a word on the ride home. I knew it wasn’t the right way to handle what was basically a stupid comment from a very stupid person. But my gut seized and I turned the CD player up, and we listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I watched the jubilant scene along Walnut, my friends around me but a thick wall of despair and music between us.

  “So what just happened?” Ben asked me when we got up to my room. He said it patiently, nicely, as if he really wasn’t sure of the answer but didn’t want to convey how nervous the whole thing made him. Like a mother might ask her son after he’d come home carrying a dead gerbil.

  I glanced over at him. I’d gotten us two leftover pieces of my mom’s apple pie. We were eating it with vanilla bean gelato. He was on the floor, and I was on the bed.

  “I don’t know. I sort of wigged out, sorry,” I said.

  “You told Claire Olivia, didn’t you?” he asked, taking a bite of pie. “And she told him.”

  I shook my head vehemently. “No. I really, really didn’t. You have to believe me.”

  “Huh,” Ben said as he scooped some ice cream.

  “What’s huh mean?”

  “Well, if you didn’t tell her …” he said, taking a dramatic pause.

  My insides shook. In my mind, I tried to complete the sentence for him. I couldn’t come up with an ending for which a major, difficult conversation wouldn’t follow. Who is best friends with a girl who wears a beehive? Who prematurely ejaculates when kissing another boy?

  A gay boy. Not a kid who is just figuring out that he might be gay, but an actual, real gay boy who has been gay for a long time. That’s who.

  “… Maybe it’s that gay radar thing?” Ben finished.

  I took a deep breath and looked at him. “Huh?”

  “Well, I mean,” he said, crossing his legs and then uncrossing them. “I mean, maybe he can just tell when two guys, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe that’s it.”

  I looked at Ben and could feel myself blushing. I could also feel myself getting a little breathless and excited, and wondered if we were going to kiss again. I could get into that, but didn’t want to push him. He was a little red too.

  “I’ve never had feelings like this for a guy. You know?”

  “Me neither,” I said, which was true.

  “I mean, I don’t even know if I’m having them. It’s you. It’s not like toward a guy.”

  “Thanks.”

  He laughed. “I mean, you’re a guy, obviously. But I can’t … It’s not even like I coul
dn’t handle being gay.” He said gay softer than the other words, as if my parents would beat us, rather than hug us, if they’d heard him say it. “It’s just, it doesn’t feel like me, you know?”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I hear ya. I hear ya.”

  He stood then, his plate empty, and placed it on my dresser. I stood too. We faced each other. The door was closed, and I thought I might have a heart attack or at least some sort of bodily malfunction if anything were to happen. The room felt outrageously small, like neither of us could move without bumping into each other.

  “Early flight,” he said, his eyes averted from mine. “Probably should pack up.”

  “R-r-r-ight,” I stammered.

  And then he came over and gave me a hug, and I held him, tentative, and we stood there, our bodies pressed lightly together like they were fragile. And finally, he pulled back and smiled at me, and then he pecked me on the cheek.

  “Night, Rafe,” he said.

  “Night.”

  And when he left the room, I collapsed on my bed with my arms and legs spread wide, like I was about to do snow angels indoors. I stayed in that exact position and tried to calm my pounding, jittering heart.

  Hours later, when the sun began to rise and my eyes were still wide open, I succumbed to the excruciating truth that some things were going to have to get majorly sorted out if I ever wanted to sleep peacefully again.

  “I want to save the children. I want to celebrate with all the people of the earth. I want to put candles in their hearts.”

  Toby was standing in the middle of our once-again-disastrous dorm room, swaying, holding a pencil for a microphone and wearing a huge pair of yellow-framed sunglasses that engulfed his face. Albie sat at his desk, his head in his hands, trying to study. I couldn’t take my eyes off Toby, who gave new meaning to the phrase train wreck.

  It was Sunday night after Thanksgiving, I’d just gotten back from Colorado, and Toby was being some weird yellow-framed-sunglasses-wearing version of Michael Jackson. He was holding court in front of a make-believe audience, imploring them to give peace a chance.