Cupid Painted Blind

by Marcus Herzig

  I lunge in his direction, but I don’t get far because Alfonso and Sandy both hold me back, which is probably a good thing because I’m panting and drooling like an attack dog in kill mode.

  “Come on Matt,” Alfonso murmurs while Sandy yells at the sophomore, “He’s not a retard! He’s got a cleft lip, you … you retard!”

  While I throw death stares at the sophomore who walks on with his pals, sneering and laughing, Alfonso raises his eyebrows at Sandy’s unprecedented outburst. She notices his look.

  “What?” she snaps, and for a moment it looks as if she’s going to pounce on him.

  “Nothing,” Alfonso says, trying hard to conceal his smirk. “We should go before somebody gets hurt.”

  “All right,” Sandy says, and fighting the forces that still make me gravitate toward that sophomore jerk, they push me through the classroom door. It turns out, the situation in here is not much different. People are staring, smirking, sneering. The only person with a more or less neutral expression on his face is Jack, of all people. As I take my seat right in front of Jack, I hear Steve next to him make smooching noises. I look at Alfonso to assure him that I’m ready to ignore this provocation, when I suddenly hear Jack say, “Shut up, asshole!”

  “Dude,” Steve says, “since when did you become a fag-apologist?”

  There is no reply. Instead, just as Mr. Singh enters the room, there’s the crashing sound of a chair toppling over and a loud thud as a body hits the floor. I turn around and see Jack towering over Steve, fists clenched. Steve looks up at Jack, a bewildered look on his face. “What the fuck, dude?”

  “Mr. Antonelli,” Mr. Singh says, throwing his briefcase on his desk, “principal’s office. Now.”

  “But Mr. Singh—” Sandy intervenes, jumping up from her chair. She’s in a feisty mood today, but she doesn’t get far.

  “Would you like to accompany him, Miss Lauper?” Mr. Singh interrupts her.

  “No, sir, but—”

  “Good. Then sit down and be quiet.” He flicks his head at the door. “Off you go, Mr. Antonelli.”

  With an angry grunt, Jack grabs his backpack and stomps off, briefly putting his hand on my shoulder as he passes me. I’m still trying to come to terms with the total transformation of his attitude toward me. Not that I’m complaining or anything. It seems that I currently need all the moral support I can get.

  As Jack slams the door shut behind him, Mr. Singh turns to the class. His gaze rests on me a tad too long for comfort, and I’m imagining the thigh-slapping laughter in the teacher’s lounge as they watch the Vine of me and Phil loop after loop.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Singh says, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket and looking at it as he continues, “for some reason I’m being told to remind you that the use of cellphones during school hours is strictly prohibited. You all know this of course, and I’m sure you abide by this policy religiously, so I’m not sure why you need to be reminded of it, but here we are.”

  As he crumples up the note and throws it into the wastebasket, I sink deeper and deeper into my chair, trying to escape the furtive, nosy, oh-look-a-train-wreck glances of my classmates.

  * * *

  After Math, Zoey is waiting outside my classroom, holding her phone in her hand, but when she sees my face she can tell I’m already aware of what happened, so she quickly puts it away.

  “I can’t believe he did that,” she says.

  “Can’t you? It’s Greg, so what did you expect?”

  “So what are you gonna do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Kill Greg and take it from there, I guess.”

  Sandy and Alfonso cast Zoey helpless looks.

  “Hey, Dunstan!” somebody calls out to me, and when I look I see a group of four or five boys, all blowing me kisses.

  “Fuck off!” Zoey yells at them, causing them to burst out laughing. She turns back to me. “Has Phil seen it yet?”

  “Oh my God, Phil!” I say. “I have to talk to him.”

  I start moving toward the cafeteria, Zoey, Sandy and Alfonso surrounding me like bodyguards to shield me from the vicious mob that keeps taunting me. When we pass the restroom I stop dead in my tracks, causing Alfonso who’s walking behind me to bump into me.

  “Dude! What the—”

  “Guys,” I say, “maybe I shouldn’t be talking to Phil in the middle of the cafeteria with hundreds of people watching, so can you go and tell him to see me in the restroom?”

  “Good thinking,” Zoey says. “You want me to wait here with you?”

  I shake my head. “Nah, it’s okay. I’ll just lock myself in a stall.”

  Another random guy comes walking by, talking in a louder-than-necessary voice to his friend. “Dude, if I were that guy I’d totally kill myself. Like, totally.”

  “Dude!” Sandy yells after him, “If I were you I’d have totally killed myself a long time ago. Like, totally!”

  “All right,” Alfonso says, putting one arm around Sandy and pushing me into the restroom with the other, “I think we better go and find Phil. Don’t do anything stupid, Matt.”

  “Oh please,” I say with a wry smile. “Me, stupid? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  The restroom is empty. I walk into the stall closest to the window and lock the door. Sitting down on the edge of the broken toilet seat I pull my phone out and look at the Vine again, reading the comments and watching the loop count go up and up, each comment, each new loop a small jab at my self-confidence. After two or three minutes I hear the door to the hallway open and a pair of feet shuffling inside. I open the door of my stall and step outside.

  “Hello,” Phil says. By the blank look on his face I can tell he has no idea what’s been happening.

  “We have a problem,” I say, handing him my phone. As he looks at the Vine, I add, “I’m really sorry.”

  “Oh, so that’s what’s different today.”

  I put my hands in my pockets. “I’ve been getting stupid remarks by random strangers all morning. I guess you have too, huh?”

  “I’m getting stupid remarks from random strangers every day,” he says with stoic indifference, still looking at the Vine. “But today people are also blowing me kisses. That usually doesn’t happen, so I thought that was strange.”

  “Right,” I say, letting out a deep sigh. “So what are we gonna do?”

  He shrugs. “Nothing?”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “What do you want to do?” he says, his eyes still glued to the screen. “It’s out there. Even if you make your brother delete the video, it won’t go away because people have already copied and shared it.”

  “Yeah, but even so, shouldn’t we have some strategy for dealing with it or something?”

  Shrugging again, he says, “Ignore it or own it.”

  “Goddamnit!” I kick a wastebasket across the room.

  Startled, Phil briefly looks at me, then he looks back at the phone.

  “You can hardly see my cleft,” he says, almost sounding pleased. “Do you think I should wear lipstick more often?”

  “Give me that!” I snatch the phone from his hand and switch it off. “Not everything is about your stupid lip, okay?”

  He stares at me with a hurt look in his eyes. “Maybe for you it’s not.”

  His words hit me like a blow to the stomach, and a well deserved one. Phil is not the enemy here. I hate that I dragged him into this, but what I hate even more is that he doesn’t even seem to care. Anyway, the way he wants to deal with it isn’t working for me. I don’t want to shun him, but maybe it’s best if we’re not seen together until the dust has settled.

  “All right, you know what?” I say, sliding my phone into my pocket. “If you want to own it, go ahead and own it. Because I sure as hell don’t want it.”

  I turn on my heel and stomp out of the restroom, feeling miserable.

  More miserable and lonely than ever before.

 
* * *

  I step out into the hallway, and for a moment I have no idea which way to turn—right toward the cafeteria where a bloodthirsty mob is waiting for me so they can point their fingers at me and laugh and feed on my misery, or left toward the exit. Part of me just wants to run, run, run away, leave it all behind, leave this school behind, this city, this country, this life, and settle in Guatemala or Belize and grow yams or something. Another part of me wants to entertain a more sensible approach.

  Walk, not run.

  Go home, not to Belize.

  Ambush Greg before he can flee the country and become a yams farmer. Make him feel miserable, so maybe I can feel less miserable myself.

  But then my growling stomach reminds me that I have track practice later and that I better eat something so I don’t get hypoglycemic and pass out before I pass the baton to Chris.

  Speak of the devil, I turn the corner and the last person I want to see right now is walking straight toward me, hands in his pockets, wearing an annoyingly smug T-shirt reading #fabulous. Maybe I should have run to Belize after all, but it’s too late for that now.

  “Oh, hi,” he says, stopping in front of me. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  He looks at me with his piercing blue eyes, smiling, but it’s not his usual boisterous, cheeky, easy-going smile. It’s more subtle and sympathetic and even a little sad.

  “You seem to be having quite a day, huh?”

  I feel a lump in my throat and I avert my gaze, looking at the floor, at the ceiling, at the message board to the left and the endless row of classroom doors to the right because I don’t want him to see my eyes glazing over.

  “Come here,” he says, and without giving me enough time to comply he makes a step forward, wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a tight hug. The warmth of his body, the gentle force of his arms, and his deep, soothing breaths allow me to finally let go and burst into tears. As the world around me sways, my shaky legs give way and I collapse. Chris’s grip around my trembling, convulsing body tightens and he keeps me from sinking to the floor and sliding into the abyss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Hugging my knees, I wipe my nose on the sleeve of my sweater. The big, wet spot on the sleeve keeps getting bigger and looks disgusting, but a less than immaculate wardrobe is probably the least of my problems today. While occasional sobs still rock my body, my tears are finally subsiding.

  “Want one?” Chris asks, holding a pack of cigarettes under my runny nose. When I shake my head, he shrugs and pulls a cigarette out for himself.

  We’re sitting in the bushes behind the gym, the secret spot where Chris and Jack and Steve go to smoke cigarettes between classes. Lunch break is already over and we should be sitting in class, but Chris convinced me to skip the last two periods to get me out of the firing line and give me a chance to calm down while the dust settles.

  “Why?” I say. “Why does shit keep happening to me?”

  “Because that’s life, and you’re alive?”

  “But what have I done? Why can’t I just live my life and be left alone? Why can’t I just be happy?”

  Chris lights his cigarette and exhales the smoke away from me because he’s considerate like that. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” he says.

  I look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The universe doesn’t owe you happiness or justice or a good life. These are all things you have to fight for. We all do. And not just once or twice but all the time, for the rest of your life. It’s like food and drink, you know? No matter how much you eat today, you’re gonna have to eat again tomorrow and the day after and so on, or you will die.”

  “But in the end we all have to die anyway,” I say, tapping into the darkest corners of my soul. “So why even bother?”

  “Don’t be stupid now, Matthew.”

  “Seriously, though. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. If there’s a point to all fighting, all the struggle. All the death and disease and destruction in the world.”

  There is no immediate reply. Chris takes a couple of drags from his cigarette and picks a scab on his elbow, the only blemish on his otherwise immaculate body. I wipe my nose again, and he finally asks me, “Have you ever felt happy? I mean, genuinely happy?”

  I snort. “I guess. But that was a long time ago, when I was a little kid.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah, why were you happy as a little kid?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know,” I say. “Because I was young and free I didn’t care about all the crap that’s happening in the world?”

  Chris nods. “See? You didn’t care, and I put it to you that you didn’t care because you didn’t know. The world wasn’t any better when you were young. You were simply ignorant about it. Ignorance is not a bad thing, you know? I think in a crazy world, ignorance might be the only thing that’ll keep you sane.”

  I look at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying brave adversity by embracing ignorance. Forget about what all these people out there think about you. Most of them are jerks anyway, so why would you even care about what they think? It’s the people you matter to that should matter to you.”

  Resting my head on my knees, I mull over his words. He makes it sound so reasonable, so simple, like it’s such an easy solution to shrug it all off and laugh those bullies and homophobes in the face. But it’s an easy thing to say for a boy of his stature, for someone with his unnatural level of self-confidence, and it probably helps a lot if you’re handsome and popular and everybody’s darling and not an awkward, mousy wallflower like me. And if that strategy of wanton ignorance that seems to be working so well for Chris isn’t bound to work nearly half as well for me, then how is it supposed to work for someone like Phil? Maybe Phil doesn’t care about anyone because nobody seems to care about him, but I very much doubt that this kind of arrangement is making him happy. It might help him deal with life, but at what cost?

  We sit in silence for a few minutes while Chris finishes his cigarette and I keep wiping my nose on my sleeve. The first period we’re skipping is almost half over, and a shadow of guilt is rising in the back of my mind. It’s probably a good sign, because it means my emotions are slowly simmering down to normal levels, yet at the same time I feel a great sense of relief because it’s been—I look at my watch—more than half an hour since the last person laughed at me and blew me a kiss.

  “So,” Chris finally says, stretching out his sun-tanned legs beside me. “You and Phil, huh?”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug, unsure what to say.

  “It’s okay,” Chris says with a wide grin and nudging me with his knee. “No need to be embarrassed.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I mean, you were just messing around, right?”

  I look at him, making sure to remove the last trace of a smile from my lips. “Is that your excuse for everything?”

  He frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “Just messing around. That’s what you said after you made out with me and looked on while I was basically sexually assaulted by Jack.”

  He shrugs it off, his grin returning. “Hey, we’re hormone-driven sexually active gay teenagers. It’s what we do.”

  “You’re also a cliché, apparently. And speak for yourself. I hope by we you mean yourself and Jack, and not me.”

  “Dude, why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not angry,” I say, trying not to sound angry. “It’s just difficult to keep the emotion out of my voice when I’m being … emotional.”

  He chuckles. “See, that’s exactly what your problem is, Matt. You’re too emotional, and you worry too much. Loosen up! You’re a teenager. Try to be young and wild and free.”

  “I’m a teenager all right, but I’m not like you, and not everything that works for you will also work for me. And I’m sure as hell not just messing around when it comes to these things.”

  He looks at me
with a big, wide grin, and it annoys the hell out of me because I don’t know what it means.

  “What?” I say.

  “You have a crush on Phil, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Of course you do,” he says and ruffles my hair. “Because you’re not messing around when it comes to these things, right?”

  I swat his hand away. “Stop that!”

  “That is so cute,” he says, his grin widening. “So tell me, is he a good kisser?”

  “He’s a great kisser. And his mouth doesn’t reek of nicotine, so that’s a plus.”

  For a brief moment he looks stunned and I fear he’s going to blow up in my face, but then he laughs out loud, gently punches my arm and says, “Touché, Matthew.”

  “Sorry, but you had that one coming.”

  He nods. “I sure did. So, next stop second base, yeah?”

  “What?”

  “You and Phil.”

  I sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s … complicated.”

  “More complicated than us?” He winks at me.

  “Hell yeah. He’s carrying around his very own flavor of emotional baggage, you know? And it’s very special.”

  “Just like he is.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guys will figure it out,” Chris says. “And maybe you guys are meant to be together. I’ve been watching you, you know.” When I frown at him, he explains, “In most classes I’m sitting right behind you guys, remember? You had a thing for him from day one.”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “You did, too. And it’s okay. You’re a sweet couple, so go for it.”

  I snort, not quite sure what to make of this assessment. Sure, it’s always nice to have someone—especially someone you like—encourage you and support you in what you’re doing. Then again, ‘You and that really ugly person are really a great fit’ is not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear, especially not from the person who’s been making out with you less than a week ago. He’s probably just trying to be nice, but the sneaking suspicion that Chris can’t retire me as his love interest soon enough puts a sting in my heart. How can a person be so sweet and kind and cruel and inconsiderate at the same time? I’m grateful that he’s sitting here with me, listening to me, shielding me from more classroom cruelty by having talked me into skipping class, yet at the same time he’s so talented at riling me up with his rash, imprudent remarks and his just-messing-around attitude as if everything is just fun and games and nothing really means anything.