Openly Straight

by Konigsberg, Bill

  “Ah,” he said, as if that made sense, as if people often split their nights between two beds. I looked over at Albie, unassuming, nerdy Albie. Who was funny. Who was my friend. Who didn’t judge. And I felt the overwhelming urge to tell him what was going on.

  He went to the refrigerator and took out a Coke. “Scanner pong?” he said.

  I nodded. I didn’t care whether the scanner was on or not, and Albie knew enough to turn the scanner on but not ask me what my word was.

  “I’m in love,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Like, seriously in love. And it hurts.”

  “Claire Olivia,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Someone else?”

  I nodded. I tried to think about how to explain this all to Albie.

  “So Ben is or isn’t in love back?” he asked.

  I looked out the window. Snow was beginning to fall in big clumps, the kind of snow that was too wet to do anything but evaporate when it hit the ground. Thirty-three-degrees snow.

  “Hard to tell,” I said. “You knew?”

  “You took him home with you for break. You sleep in the same room. Who gives a shit?”

  “Does Toby know?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not something we really talk about. Gee, what is it about me that attracts all the gays? I’m like Lady Gaga or something.”

  “That’s it. That’s exactly who you’re like. We’re drawn to your persona and your frequent outfit changes. Albie Gaga.”

  He nodded. “How about, for your word, we use gay?”

  I scrunched up my face like, what? And then I realized he meant scanner pong, and that made me laugh.

  “And yours is apocalypse,” I said, and we drank to that.

  Ben’s “figuring it out” period lasted the full week, during which time I got comfortable back in my own room, generally avoided the object of my eros/agape, and spent most of my time with Albie and Toby. Albie, to his credit, didn’t tell Toby anything, and I decided that it might be a good idea not to tell him at all. You never knew with Toby when he’d say something unexpected, and I didn’t want my secret to be that something. I had enough problems.

  Albie, Toby, and I were walking across the quad to lunch on Saturday afternoon when we saw Steve and Zack walking the other way. I felt that familiar rumble in my belly, wondering if they were going to say something, and wondering what I’d say back. Ever since that day I’d had breakfast with them, I’d been pretty much cut out of that world of popular jocks. I didn’t care, really. I was happier talking to people who actually had brains. And Toby.

  So Steve and Zack approached, and I held Steve’s eye contact. We stared at each other as we passed, and then he looked away, like he was dismissing me, like he was too good to be wasting his time on me. I was like, Good. If that’s how he felt, I was fine with it, so long as he left me and my friends alone.

  After lunch, Toby told us he had something to show us. He led us halfway across the quad, and then we turned left. There was a small path between two pine trees, and he led us onto it, knocking away branches and holding them so they wouldn’t snap in our faces.

  Finally we reached a clearing, maybe fifteen feet of damp grass and dirt, and clumps of icy snow not yet melted after a snowstorm earlier that week, surrounded by woods. Behind us, I could see a glimpse of frozen Dug Pond.

  “This is where we come,” he said.

  Albie and I looked at each other. “We?”

  “Me and, you know.”

  Albie’s eyes got wide. “I really don’t think I want to know about this,” he said.

  I surprised myself. “I do,” I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie were easily my best friends at Natick.

  Toby looked a little surprised, like he’d just assumed we wouldn’t want to hear the details.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one else came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me.

  “Robinson,” he said.

  “Gorilla Butt,” I said, nodding. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Yup.”

  Toby crossed his arms and then deflated into a fake pout. “You’re stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow.”

  He flipped me off. “He hates that,” Toby said. “But, yeah. It’s hairy.”

  “Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe,” Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing.

  “He’s such a prude,” Toby said, rolling his eyes. “I kind of figured you would be too.”

  I shivered. My gloved hands were cold even though I’d stuck them in my jacket pockets, and the tip of my nose felt icy. But inside I felt a warmth that felt good. I realized it was because of Toby. Letting me in on a secret. That felt good. And it occurred to me that there was more of that warm feeling if I wanted it. It was really up to me.

  “Not so much,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I’m gay, Toby.”

  He pushed me, and my feet slipped against the wet leaves. I barely avoided falling on my butt. “Leave the room.”

  “I’d love to, if by room you mean the woods. It’s freezing.”

  He crossed his skinny arms in front of him. “But you said you weren’t.”

  I sighed. “I said a lot of things. I guess I lied. Sorry.”

  He pursed his lips at me. “Bad boy.”

  “Tell me about it. I have all sorts of shit to tell you. Up for trading war stories?”

  He laughed. “Hells yeah.”

  He plopped right down on his butt, as if the ground weren’t freezing and wet. I started to say something snarky, but then I realized if I didn’t also sit, I’d be standing and looking down at him. He didn’t seem to think getting a frozen ass was such a major big deal, so I sat down too.

  Cold. Like icicles climbing up my spine cold.

  “Me and Ben,” I said, my teeth nearly chattering.

  His eyes lit up. “Are you cereal?”

  “Totally. Totally cereal.”

  “That’s great!” he said.

  I grimaced. “Well, not so great, actually.”

  “He hits you?”

  I did a double take. With Toby, it was hard to tell when he was serious.

  “No. He’s scared.”

  “Ah. The scared thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’ve been there. You just have to, like, wait it out. And sometimes they’re fine, and sometimes they run off and you never see them again.”

  My stomach turned. The idea that I’d never see Ben again hurt like a stabbing. Like a stabbing and then a twisting of the knife. I touched my belly through my down jacket.

  “Well, it’s even worse than that,” I said.

  He waited for me to tell him, and I tried to think of all the reasons not to tell my whole story, and other than the fact I didn’t come off well in it, I couldn’t really think of any. It was better to let it all go.

  So I told him. Toby listened with his mouth open.

  “That’s … wow,” he said. “You need to tell him.”

  “I guess,” I said. “I just don’t want anything more to come between us. I mean, he’s already freaked out. I can’t drop this on him. Can I?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  We talked more, and Toby told me all about Robinson, who was deep in the closet and scared to death that people would find out. Robinson kept saying he couldn’t wait for college — maybe the University of Michigan? — where he could start over and be himself, and avoid assholes who wouldn’t respect him.

  I pictured Robinson. He was about as nonstereotypical a gay person as you could get. His face was strong but covered in that acne. His body strong but covered in fur. There had always bee
n a part of me that thought guys like that were the luckiest because they could pass as straight. But now I realized just the opposite was true; being able to pass for something you’re not is a kind of curse. Especially if you try it.

  “My butt may never thaw,” I said, attempting to stand. I needed to use my arms, because my legs felt brittle, frozen through. But I also felt thankful that I was friends with Toby, who was a truly cool person, other than the parts of him that were entirely uncool. Which actually made him cooler, in my book.

  “Another gay friend. Yay!” Toby said, singsongy. “Are you going to tell people?”

  I cringed at the thought. Another coming out? Why was it all so hard?

  “Eventually,” I said. “Yeah.”

  I chose Sunday morning to talk to Ben. Maybe it was a church thing, like my way of doing the right thing when most folks were out doing their version of the right thing.

  I knocked on his door and he answered it in a black T-shirt and his blue sweatpants. He looked at me and a smile crossed his face, and a strong feeling of relief surged through my temples. I wanted to say, I love you, I’m in love with you, let’s stay in love no matter what after this conversation. But that isn’t how it works, maybe. I guessed I was about to find out.

  He let me in and closed the door, and I sat down on Bryce’s/my old bed. It felt cold, unslept in. Not much mine anymore. He sat down on his bed, and tapped the space next to him.

  “C’mon,” he said. “We need to talk. Come over here.”

  My heartbeat accelerated as I crossed the room and sat down next to him, picking up his usual garlicky, sweaty scent. We were inches from each other. I glanced up at his eyes and was surprised to find them looking soft, kind. Red.

  “I miss you so bad,” he said, and the first tear fell. “This week hasn’t been right. It’s been all wrong. I just … I miss you so bad, but this is hard.”

  “I know,” I said, putting my hand on his leg and rubbing.

  He settled into the touch, breathed into it, relaxed.

  “You see, I do love you, Rafe. But. And I know you love me. I know that. But. I just can’t bear the thought of you being mad at me, and this is fucking tearing me apart.”

  The tears were streaming pretty good now, and I let myself cry too. Here we were, two jocks, crying together.

  “Please don’t hate me. It’s just, I know I love you. But the thing is, I lied to you.”

  I couldn’t swallow.

  “I lied to you when I said I was perfectly okay with being gay or straight. I’m not. I mean, for other people, I am. But for me, I’m not. I have to be straight.”

  My stomach dropped. “I understand,” I said.

  “Here’s the thing, Rafe. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, so please just hear me out before you say anything or walk away.

  “I love you. I really do. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, you’re the person I’m closest to in the whole world.”

  And the tears again, but he didn’t wipe them away and he didn’t stop talking.

  “The thing is, I’m pretty sure you’re gay. I just know it. You never talk about Claire Olivia unless I bring her up. I think you’re gonna figure out over time that you’re gay, and I’m totally okay with that. But the thing is, this, us, is something that’s just not gonna happen, because it can’t.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

  “So even if you tell me you aren’t gay, I think you probably are. And I’m pretty sure I’m not. Because I can’t be. My family just isn’t like yours, and … I’m not ready to give them up. They’re all I have, Rafe. Other than you. So we need to not do that. Okay? Can you still love me as your friend even if we don’t go there?”

  As noisy as my head was, it took me a few moments until I was actually able to speak.

  “Well, you’re right, Ben. I am gay.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “And it’s so good that you know too.”

  I wanted to stand up. I wanted to stand and pace. I wanted to pull my hand off Ben’s leg and pace around the room. But I felt glued down.

  “Well, there’s more. There’s more that I have to say. But promise me if I tell you what I have to tell you, you’ll let me tell the whole thing, and not let this come between us? Not just walk out or walk away?”

  Ben’s expression was pained then, and I felt like my head could explode because of the pressure in there.

  “I promise, Rafe. Just tell me. You’re scaring me.”

  The entire explanation took a little over ten minutes. I told him the truth about what my life had been like in Boulder, and how I wanted things to be different at Natick. I told him that I didn’t mean to fall in love, and that by the time I had it was too late to say anything without risking the friendship. Ben sat quietly for a moment, not looking at me exactly, not really looking anywhere. His eyes, his liquid, beautiful blue eyes, were painfully unfocused, and I just wanted to go envelop him, and tell him again and again how sorry I was for not telling him everything, and especially for not telling him sooner.

  When I finished talking, the room was dead quiet. Ben and me, sitting together. My hand still on his leg, but now awkward, wrong. I took it off.

  And then Ben stood up, walked across the room, grabbed his shoes and coat, and walked out the door.

  I found him in the library. Sundays aren’t a big library day at Natick, at least not in the morning, and he was alone in the carrels, reading. He looked up and saw me, and turned away.

  “Can’t you just leave me alone?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t. We need to talk this out. This isn’t the end, Ben. I mean, it doesn’t have to be. If you can just let me explain …”

  “Really, no,” Ben said, raising his voice a bit, even though we were in public. “This isn’t a friendship anymore. Do you have any idea what you put me through? I can’t believe I thought I fucking loved you.”

  “I did love you. I do,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t have all the facts,” Ben said, lowering his voice again. “I thought we were going through the same thing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Like experimenting,” Ben said. “Two guys figuring stuff out together.”

  “But that’s exactly what it was. What we are.”

  He shook his head. “Apparently you were way ahead of me. You just didn’t tell me.”

  “So you wouldn’t have loved me if you knew I was gay?” I asked him.

  He said, “I guess we’ll never know.”

  I sat on the floor at the foot of his carrel and said, “You know, I get that I screwed up. And I’m so sorry. But what I don’t get is why me not telling you everything about my inner thoughts is worse than you not telling me about yours.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Whatever,” he said.

  That pissed me off. “Because it’s not like you shared everything with me. Fuck agape. That was sex, Ben. And I’m a guy. And don’t even tell me that you never thought about that before, because obviously you did.” I was surprising myself with how bold I was being.

  “It’s totally different,” he said. “It’s normal not to share every inner thought with someone. It’s not normal to actually BE openly gay and not share that little fact.”

  Now I shook my head. “This is about the label, isn’t it? If it’s two straight guys playing around, experimenting, that’s cool. But if one of the guys is gay, it’s not okay. Perfect.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “You can make this about whatever you want to make this about. But the fact is, you made up an entire person who was my best friend. Who I had sex with,” he said, lowering his voice again. “How do you expect me to feel?”

  “Everything else was really me,” I said. “Just the one thing that wasn’t.”

  He cringed. “What does that even mean? How can you turn off such an important part of yourself and expect everything else to stay the same? You lied to me, Ra
fe. That’s who you are. Not gay, not straight. Someone who lied to me and who I can’t trust.”

  “You don’t get it. I didn’t want to lie. It was just, this barrier. There was this barrier between me and so many guys. I couldn’t take it anymore. You have to understand. I was so tired of feeling different. I just wanted to feel like one of the guys for once.”

  He bit his lip so hard I worried it was going to bleed. “So it’s okay you lied because you wanted to feel like, what? One of the guys? What does that even mean? You lied, Rafe. That’s the only thing that matters here. Not why. Just that you lied.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, hiding my face with my hands. “Really I am. Just try to understand. I need you to understand because if you don’t, I won’t have anything or anyone.”

  Ben stood up. He said, “The barrier isn’t straight versus gay; it’s real versus bullshit. I thought you were real and honest and now I think that was nothing but a load of crap. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  “It just snowballed. It’s kind of hard to tell somebody something when you don’t tell them up front,” I said.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t do that,” Ben said. “So that a few months later, your once closest friend doesn’t feel like killing you.”

  I could not have imagined he could get that angry over a simple omission. “What about Robinson? I’m not the only guy who’s ever not told people about being gay.”

  “No,” Ben said, gathering his books. “But you’re the only one who ever did it to me.”

  That one stung. I didn’t know what to say. Ben shook his head, and once again he walked away. Ben leaving a room. That was something I was getting used to. But before he walked off, he said one last thing.

  “I should have gone with what I thought of you that first day. I knew what you were.” His eyes were cold, dead to me.

  “Gay?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, exasperated. “Fundamentally dishonest.”

  “You were quiet all period,” Mr. Scarborough said, when I visited him in his office after class on Monday. “Not a fan of A. M. Homes’s?”

  “She’s fine. Mostly just not a fan of Rafe’s today.” I flopped down in the chair across the desk from him.