Cupid Painted Blind

by Marcus Herzig

  And somehow, I’m finding myself in bed on a Sunday morning, cuddling with someone who only a few weeks ago was just a random stranger I’ve met on the freaking Internet.

  Don’t try this at home.

  I just got lucky.

  But lucky I got.

  I have no idea how this is supposed to work and how things will pan out in the next couple of days and weeks, but right now I don’t want to be anywhere else or do anything else but hold Phil in my arms, and I wish this moment would never end.

  Then, of course, it ends.

  Abruptly.

  I’m on the verge of dozing off again when a knock on the door startles me out of my dreamy thoughts. Before I even know what’s happening, I’m on my feet, shedding the sheets and scrambling toward my own bed that’s pristinely untouched apart from its missing pillow. As I jump into it and pull the sheets over my body, I flounder and wriggle like a fish out of water to mess up my bed and make it look like I actually slept in it. Phil is sitting up, staring at me with his eyes wide open, looking terrified and guilty as he messes down his bed and hurls my pillow at me. I catch it, hug it, and press my face into it as I assume my typical sleeping position.

  There is another knock on the door, a little louder this time.

  “Matthew?” I hear Mom say.

  Trying to sound as if I’ve only just woken up, I reply with a groan.

  The door opens and Mom steps inside. As I put on my best I’m-so-tired act, blinking and moaning, she looks at me, she looks at Phil, and she’s smiling like sunshine.

  “Good morning, sleepyheads.”

  “Mornin’,” I mumble back, and Phil twangs, “Good morning, Mrs. Dunstan.”

  “Did you sleep well?” she asks him.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Good.” She looks at me. “Anyway, breakfast is ready. Surely you don’t want to spend all day in bed, so I’ll see you guys downstairs in a few minutes, okay?”

  It’s not a question, it’s a request, so I dutifully say, “Yes, Mom.”

  Satisfied, she is about to leave when my phone chimes to notify me of an incoming text message. Turning her head to look where the sound came from, Mom sees my phone lying on the floor next to Phil’s makeshift bed where I put it last night, just before he fell asleep in my arms. Mom looks at me, then at Phil, then back at me. She knows he doesn’t have a phone.

  Trying to act casual, although my ears must be glowing bright red, I reach out my arm in Phil’s direction.

  “Can you hand me that?”

  He rolls over, grabs my phone, and hands it to me.

  “Thanks.”

  Mom glares at me for an excruciatingly long moment. She knows what’s going on. What she doesn’t know is if she should say something. Before she makes up her mind, I look at her and say, “We’ll be right down, Mom.”

  “All right.” She casts me one last suspicious look and leaves.

  Once Mom has closed the door behind her, I look at my phone.

  Zoey:

  Pull up your undies, Mom’s on her way up.

  I get up, make my way back to Phil and slide under his sheets. I hold the phone in front of his face so he can read the message. He looks at me, and after a moment of awkward silence we both burst into silly schoolboy giggles.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I spend the rest of my weekend skipping from cloud seven to cloud nine and back, happy like a first grader on her way to school, silly giggles and bouncing pigtails and all. I keep talking on the phone with Sandy and El Niño, freely answering all their unasked questions about my new and improved relationship status. Sandy is thrilled for me. I know it because she tells me so.

  “I’m thrilled for you, Matt!”

  “Thanks, Sandy.”

  Alfonso is thrilled for me too.

  “So, are you a top or a bottom?” he asks unabashedly.

  “To quote a president,” I say, “I did not. Have. Sexual. Relations with that boy. We made it to third base, no further, so technically I’m still a virgin.”

  “You’re not one of those no-sex-before-marriage guys, are you, Guapo?”

  “No, but I’m not one of those sex-with-anyone-at-any-time guys either. I don’t know that I’m even ready for sex yet.”

  He chuckles. “You’re such a prude.”

  “You’re just jealous because I never came on to you when we had sleepovers.”

  “About that,” he says. “Why did you never come on to me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, you’re really nice and all, but you’re just so ugly.”

  Alfonso laughs, because he knows me well enough to know when I’m trolling him, and I love him for it. How could I not?

  I love Zoey, too, and the way she admires my audacity to make out with Phil in our parents’ house with Mom and Dad peacefully sleeping in the room below.

  Speaking of Mom and Dad, they’ve been acting all weird recently. They whisper to each other when they think nobody’s looking, and they stop talking whenever they see me coming. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to guess that they’re probably talking about their homosexual son and how he’s turned their once honorable home into a bottomless pit of lecherous debauchery, but I don’t care. For once I choose not to care, because for the first time in ages I’m seriously, genuinely happy.

  Of course it isn’t meant to last.

  I’m starting to feel nervous when on Monday morning Mrs. Spelczik enters the room and Phil’s desk is still empty. He’s never late. He’s often aloof in class, drawing sketches in his sketchbook, or simply zoning out instead of paying attention, but he’s never late. Maybe he overslept. Of course. He must have overslept, because why else wouldn’t he be here? That’s what I keep telling myself for the entire first period.

  When he doesn’t show for our next class, I’m seriously freaking out because I know something terrible must have happened.

  “I’m scared,” I say to Alfonso as we’re standing out in the hall and I’m scanning the crowds for any signs of Phil.

  He nudges me with his elbow. “Don’t be stupid. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “If he were fine, he would be here, Alfonso!”

  “Maybe he caught a sexually transmitted disease over the weekend. You should get yourself checked.”

  I glare at him.

  “Dude,” he says, “you need to chillax.”

  “What if he’s had an accident? What if he got hit by a car on his way to school?”

  Alfonso nods emphatically. “Yeah. Or what if he joined a cult? Sweet Jesus, Matt, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s not helping. Stop torturing yourself. Make it through the day somehow, and after school you drop by his place and check in on him. Everything’s gonna be okay, you’ll see.”

  “I have Track after school,” I say. “I won’t be able to make it to his place until, I don’t know, five or something.”

  Alfonso sighs. “You want me to do it?”

  “Nah,” I say, shaking my head. Then I look at him with puppy eyes. “Would you?”

  “Aw, shoot, I was so looking forward to watching you stare at Chris’s butt and drool while you chase him down the track, but I guess I’m gonna have to heed a higher calling now, huh? All right, I’ll do it, but only if you pull yourself together and snap out of that mother goose mode. Like, right now.”

  That’s easy for him to say, but I’m not gonna argue with him. “Fine,” I say like a sulky little child.

  The next two periods I try not to imagine any of the horrendous things that might have prevented Phil from coming to school, but of course I fail, and come lunchtime I feel the way the mashed potatoes look that the lunch lady slops on my plate.

  “Matt,” Alfonso says, standing behind me, and when I turn to look at him he flicks his head at the outcast table under the stairs across the room. I follow his gaze, and my heart skips a beat when I see Phil sitting there, sucking on a juice box, his shoulders slumped forward. My initial relief to see him ali
ve and unscathed quickly gives way to a rush of anxiety and panic, because if he’s been at school all morning without coming to class it can only mean something’s terribly, terribly wrong.

  Without taking my eyes off him I pay for my lunch and walk over to his table. He doesn’t notice me until I stand right in front of him.

  “Oh, hello,” he says when he finally sees me.

  His casual voice and demeanor as if nothing’s wrong makes me want to bitch slap his face with my lunch tray, but I just say, “Where have you been all morning?”

  “In class?” he says.

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “I’m not attending regular classes anymore.”

  I hear his words, but their meaning must have gone missing somewhere along the way.

  “What?” I say, sitting down next to him. “I … what?”

  “Mr. Mills called my dad in last week,” he finally explains. “There have been complaints from teachers because I don’t engage enough in class. They think I keep zoning out because I lack the intellectual capacity to follow the curriculum. Also, I don’t speak loud enough, and even when I do they still can’t understand a word I say, apparently. So Mr. Mills and my dad agreed that it’ll be best if I attend special ed classes from here on in. So I can learn, you know, how to do handicraft work without using scissors and things like that, and not slow down everyone else in regular classes.”

  I lean into him, frowning. “That doesn’t even make any sense,” I say, exasperated. “If you’re zoning out in class then only because you’re bored and under-challenged. You’re one of the most intelligent people I know!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Shut up. Of course, you are.”

  “Thank you for saying that. But it’s obviously not what the teachers think.”

  “Well, screw the teachers. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Sucking on his juice box again, Phil shrugs.

  “So,” I say, “what are you gonna do about it?”

  “Nothing?” he says. Of course that’s what he says. He wouldn’t be Phil if he said something like, ‘This gross injustice won’t stand! I will fight for my right to get a proper education!’

  And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.

  “What do you mean, nothing? You don’t belong in special ed, Phil. This is outrageous. They can’t do this to you. It’s not right.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says.

  “I mean, I’m not a lawyer or anything, but I’m pretty sure they can’t do this without your parents’ consent. So what do they make of it?”

  “My parents grew up in communist Laos, remember? They believe in authority. If someone in a position of power tells them what to do, it’s what they’ll do, even if they have no idea what’s actually going on because they don’t understand English properly.”

  Feeling the anger rise in me, I say, “And that’s okay with you?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asks, shrugging.

  “How about not nothing? You can’t let them push you around like that. We should stage some kind of protest or something.”

  “No,” Phil says, shaking his head, but I’m not even listening to him.

  “First we need to talk to your parents.”

  “No!”

  The fierceness in his voice stumps me. Finally there’s some kind of emotional response, a sign of fighting spirit, but it seems to be directed at the wrong person.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Having you talk to my parents would only make things worse.”

  Leaning back in my chair, disappointed and hurt, I say, “Why would you even say that?”

  He sighs, averting his gaze. “My parents know about us.”

  “What? I mean, why? I mean … how?”

  “Your mom. After I got home yesterday, she called my mom and told her.”

  “No. What? No!” I shake my head and cover my face with my hands. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, so don’t worry,” he says. “But my parents aren’t too happy about it, so I don’t think you talking to them would do us any good.”

  I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. Phil is right, me talking to his parents wouldn’t do us any good at this point, and that’s mainly because I’d shout abuse at them for letting their own son down like that. But since we don’t have the resources to fight a two-front war—three fronts, if you count my mom whom I clearly need to have a word with for ratting us out to Phil’s parents—we have to focus on the bigger problem at hand.

  “All right,” I say, “listen to me. You. Do. Not. Belong. In. Special. Edu. Cation. You hear me? I’m not gonna let that happen to you. It’s not right.”

  He looks at me for a long time, his face rigid but his eyes filled with sadness, until he finally says, “Let it go, Matthew. It’s okay.”

  “How can you—” I slam my hand on the table, drawing attention from the people sitting nearby, so I lower my voice. “How can you be such a lemming, for heaven’s sake? How can you let people push you around like that?”

  He shrugs. “People have been pushing me around my whole life. It’s no big deal. Not anymore.”

  “Well, maybe for you it’s not, but it is for me, and I’m not having it. I’m not gonna let you go down without a fight.”

  “Please,” he says, getting slightly annoyed which is something I’ve never seen before, “let it go already. Why do you even care?”

  Am I losing this battle?

  “Because I do,” I say, half-heartedly because I don’t know that I really do.

  With a cold stare, he says, “Don’t.”

  I’m losing this battle.

  I feel a lump in my throat. Having a potential boyfriend reject you is one thing. Being rejected by your actual boyfriend—if that’s really who Phil is—feels a million times worse, and I don’t know if I can deal with it. Or if I even want to.

  “Fine,” I say in a low voice. “Suit yourself then.”

  I grab my lunch tray and start walking away.

  Phil is right: why do I even care? Especially if he clearly doesn’t. I don’t have time for this. I don’t have the energy for this. And it’s probably not even worth it, because everything that happened between me and Phil in the last couple of weeks, all the conversations we’ve had online and off, the awkward moments, the giggles, the bonding over a stupid, childish movie, and the physical intimacy were obviously all worth shit to him. It was all a terrible mistake and a complete waste of time. I hated Phil from the moment he stepped into Mrs. Spelczik’s classroom, and the reason I hate him even more now is because he’s making me think all these silly, superficial, awful things about him as if I’m no better than any other person who’s ever let him down.

  Screw you.

  Screw you, Philip Viengkhone Thongrivong!

  You’re not gonna make me treat you like everyone else has been treating you your entire life because it’s so convenient.

  After a few steps I stop and turn around. “Are you coming?”

  He looks at me, puzzled. “Coming where?”

  “This is not your table,” I say. Then I flick my head at our regular table where the others are sitting and pretending they haven’t been staring in our direction the whole time. “That’s your table over there.”

  He hesitates, probably trying to come up with some silly reason why he should just stay there at his table under the stairs like some petulant little child, but no such reason exists, so he finally gets up and follows me.

  “You’re a nasty piece of work, Philip Thongrivong,” I say as we make our way across the cafeteria to our table.

  “I know.”

  Well, it’s a start.

  * * *

  “So how did it go?” Chris asks, lighting his pre-training cigarette. He’s wearing a T-shirt depicting two unicorns engaging in explicit sexual conduct under a rainbow. We’re standing behind the gym in the secret smokers’ retreat, just the two of
us, which is rare, because Jack and Steve are picking up litter in the schoolyard, which is their punishment for creating a mess in the cafeteria during lunch that involved hurling dollops of mashed potato at each other or something. I don’t even know—or care—because I haven’t been paying much attention to whatever’s been going on around me since I’ve had that conversation with Phil. I’m so out of it, I don’t even know what Chris is talking about, although that might be because there have been so many its happening in my life recently that I can’t be entirely sure which it Chris is referring to.

  “Hm?”

  “Your sleepover,” he says.

  “Oh, that,” I say. “Yeah, good.”

  He looks at me with a subtle, inquisitive smile, obviously waiting for me to elaborate and share some raunchy details, and when I don’t, he asks, “Good?”

  “Yeah,” I say. It’s not that thinking about that night I spent with Phil no longer sends thrilling shivers down my spine and that I don’t want to tell the whole world about it, but Chris … I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem appropriate to tell him how Phil is so much more pure and authentic and honest than he is. But I don’t want to lie to him either, so I don’t say anything at all.

  “Good,” he says, getting the message and not prying any further. He takes a drag from his cigarette and exhales the smoke through his nose. “So listen, I’ve been thinking about what happened last week. I mean with the video of you and Phil, and especially Phil getting roughed up by those bullies and whatnot. It’s a shame that this kind of stuff still happens in this day and age. It makes me angry and sad. Mostly angry, though. So I was thinking we should probably do something about it. You know, do something to raise awareness.”

  “Uh,” I say, having no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Do you know what Spirit Day is?”

  It sounds vaguely familiar. Something to do with LGBTQ rights or something, but I’m not sure, so before he asks me to explain what it is and I make a fool of myself, I shake my head and say, “Not exactly.”

  “On Spirit Day people wear purple to show their support for LGBTQ youth who are the victims of bullying. You know, like what happened to you and Phil.”