Don't Let Me Go

by J. H. Trumble

  The next couple of songs were fast ones. We migrated toward the drama kids and all danced together. I was reminded what good dancers these kids were. Not so much Danial. But Juliet stepped in and showed him some steps. I glanced at Mike dancing nearby. He watched Juliet with Danial, his eyes narrowed. Juliet was oblivious. When the music switched to a slow song, she slipped her arms around Danial.

  And there went my date, and Mike’s.

  I was heading off the dance floor for a soda when a kid stepped in front of me and asked me to dance. He looked familiar. And then I remembered—he was the kid Danial had pointed out in the hallway right after school started, the one he thought was checking me out.

  His eyes lit up when I said okay. After all, that was the point. He was a guy. I was a guy. The simple fact that this stranger had asked me to dance at a school dance was something of a victory already.

  He was almost exactly the same height I was, but younger by maybe a year, maybe two. I introduced myself, to which he said, “I know who you are. I’m Luke Chesser. I read your blog.”

  It only took an instant to put two and two together and come up with four. “You’re Xyz123?”

  He grinned, obviously pleased that I’d made the connection. “Yeah. And I think you’re amazing.”

  Warning bells went off in my head, but he looked so sincere and hopeful standing there fidgeting with his tie and then awkwardly reaching an arm around my waist that I couldn’t help but smile back. “Wow. This is a big step for you. You’re not out, are you?”

  He shook his head and looked around nervously. “Other guys were dancing together, so I thought ...”

  He thought our little statement would provide sufficient cover for him. He could be gay for a short time without actually copping to being gay, which would have been funny if it weren’t so wrong. I had news for him. The way he was looking at me with such unabashed adoration, adoration that I neither deserved nor wanted, at least not from him, and the way he was digging his fingers into my back as we danced—he wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “Have you told anyone, Luke?”

  “Just you.”

  “Do you have some close friends you could confide in?”

  He shook his head. “They wouldn’t understand.” His face screwed up, and for a moment I thought he might break down.

  Shit. I caught Danial’s eye as he and Juliet danced close by. “What the fuck?” he mouthed.

  I flashed him a panicked look. I didn’t know how to deal with this, but this is exactly what I’d been sticking myself out there for—getting kids out of the closet.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’ve got friends here.” Almost as an afterthought, and really without much thought at all, I added, “I have to work tomorrow until about four. Do you want to get together after that? I could meet you somewhere and we could talk.”

  “That would be awesome!” He smiled and planted his face in my neck.

  For the rest of the evening, Luke was like one of those sucker fishes that cling to whales. I couldn’t shake him. And I didn’t want to hurt him. Here he was on the cusp of embracing his identity but highly vulnerable to any assault on his self-esteem, and I was going to brush him off? I didn’t have the heart.

  When he excused himself to go to the men’s room, I got Danial to go with him, covertly. There were plenty of kids there who were not on board with this boy-on-boy thing, and I was afraid to let Luke go alone. Before he followed Luke, Danial leaned into me. “I think you’re just trying to make me jealous now.”

  “Riiight,” I said, thinking how much more I enjoyed dancing with Danial than with Luke. He did smell amazing.

  Danial grinned and winked at me, then followed Luke to the bathroom, covertly.

  Gaby grabbed me while the boys were away. I was tired, not so much physically tired as emotionally drained, but Gaby was a friend. And a good one, despite our rocky start. She’d been Adam’s leading lady last spring. Juliet hadn’t liked her. Maybe none of the kids had, and that’s why they’d let her make a fool of herself flirting with Adam. It wasn’t until he kissed me in front of her over burgers that the farce ended. She took it well though, distracted by the sudden realization that I was Nate, “Nate Nate,” as she’d put it.

  She had hammered me with questions about the assault, each one more insensitive than the last, not even waiting for me to respond, but supplying her own answers from her cache of hearsay. I was reeling with humiliation and shame when Juliet accidentally on purpose dumped an entire Coke in her lap, shutting her down cold. Despite all that, Gaby had given up a trip to South Padre to be there for me at the trial. She’d been a steady, if sometimes clueless, ally ever since. I could give her a dance, even if she was wearing a dress. “Hey, pretty girl,” I said.

  “Hey, handsome. Does Adam know you’re stepping out with all these good-looking guys?”

  “He knows. Not that he cares much one way or the other.”

  “Wait. Are we talking about the same guy here? Six-two, sexy, black hair, and a major hard-on for you.”

  I huffed. “So, how’re things with you and Warren?”

  “Uh-uh, baby. I know what you’re doing. Spit it out.”

  I furrowed my brow like I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Can we just dance, Gaby?”

  “Talk to me, Nate. What’s going on with that hot boyfriend of yours?”

  He was hot all right, but all that heat, I feared, was warming someone else right now, and I was getting sick of hearing about what a saint he was. I didn’t want to talk about it, but Gaby wouldn’t leave it alone. She needled and prodded me with question after question until I broke down.

  “He’s just a little too okay with this,” I blurted out, angry now.

  “With what?”

  “This,” I said, gesturing around the room. “I mean, I’m on a date with another guy.”

  “Uh, hello. A straight guy.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Still, it makes me wonder, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Oh my God, Nate. Have you lost your ever lovin’ mind? The way he looks at you, like you’re the only two people in the world. He adores you. We all know he’s crazy about you.”

  “Then why doesn’t my hanging out with Danial bother him? And why is he kissing other guys?”

  “He’s kissing other guys? Really? I mean, I figured he’d have to beat off those pretty New York boys with a stick, but you know ...”

  “I know what?”

  She looked uncomfortable. “I mean, you know, he would beat them off. Right?”

  Wrong thing to say. I looked off across the dance floor for some distraction, for someone to rescue me from this unwelcomed question.

  “Come on, Nate,” she continued. “It’s Adam we’re talking about. So what if he has to sow his wild oats in New York. He’ll come back—”

  “Wild oats? Who said anything about sowing his wild oats?” The song was over, and my voice carried over the din.

  “I just meant—”

  I let go and backed away from her. She reached for me, but I held my hands up.

  Danial and Juliet and Luke stared at me from the edge of the crowd. Luke’s eyes were wide as he took a step toward me, but Danial restrained him with a hand on his arm. I turned and hit the door.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but anywhere was better than there, with all their eyes on me. Two of the protestors were still huddled under the streetlamp with their sad little signs. I headed for them.

  “Fuck you, motherfuckers!” I shouted, crossing into the road.

  Danial grabbed my arm from behind. I tried to shake him loose, but his hand was like a vice. A car approached, its high beams blinding me for a second. Danial yanked me back to the shoulder.

  “God will judge you for your sins,” the fat man said.

  “You ignorant excuse for a human being,” I shouted.

  “Come on,” Danial said, practically dragging me back toward the car.

  “He’ll destroy your kind the same
way he did Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “How do you people sleep at night with all that hate inside you?”

  He spat something else at me, but I’d pressed my hands to my ears and didn’t hear a word.

  Danial got me back to the car and shoved me in.

  “What was that?” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot. He left by a back entrance so we didn’t have to pass the homophobes on the corner.

  I was too wound up to answer. And the truth was, I didn’t know what that was.

  He raced through a yellow light, then coasted down to the speed limit on a dark stretch of road before glancing back over at me. “Were you really going to beat up a middle-aged guy wearing black crew socks with sandals in October?”

  “That was the plan.”

  He grinned and looked back at the road ahead, shaking his head. “I’m taking you to my house. I want to show you something.”

  Chapter 33

  Danial’s house backed up to a golf course, and that something he wanted to show me turned out to be an enormous telescope stored in a study in his house. I helped him wheel it to a small deck at the edge of his backyard overlooking the fairway. He set it up and trained it on the near full moon.

  After making some adjustments with the knobs, he stepped back and pulled a joint from his pocket, gesturing toward the eyepiece with his other hand. “I don’t know about you, but I plan to get fucked up and look at some celestial bodies tonight.” He lit the tip with a match he’d fished out of another pocket, then sucked in deeply.

  “Man, I didn’t know you were such a pothead,” I said with more disapproval than I really felt.

  He laughed and coughed out the smoke. “You screw guys, and you’re going to go all Sister Mary Catherine on me for smoking a joint?”

  He had a point, sort of, except for the guys part. Just one guy. My nose burned. I stuffed the thought back down and stepped to the eyepiece.

  The moon was huge. I pulled back and looked at it with my naked eye, then bent to the eyepiece to look again. Amazing. The moon looked just like it did in library books I’d looked through, only it had a luminescence that didn’t translate in photographs.

  “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Danial said in that tight voice that meant he was holding the smoke in his lungs.

  “It’s incredible. I didn’t know you were into astronomy.”

  “This was my brother’s telescope.” He handed me the joint and took my place at the eyepiece.

  I watched him make some more adjustments and thought about the big brother that looked so much like him. Danial hadn’t told me anything about him, but I could tell from his voice every time he mentioned him that his death was still an open wound.

  I rolled the joint between my fingers, then not knowing what else to do with it, I took a drag. The smoke caught in my throat, and I fell into a coughing fit.

  Danial laughed without taking his eyes from the eyepiece. “Inhale more slowly, little bits until you get used to it.”

  I tried again. I wanted to cough the instant the smoke hit my lungs, but I fought the urge and managed to hold it for a few seconds before coughing it out. I handed the joint back.

  He took it and stepped aside. I moved back to the eyepiece. “How did your brother die?”

  “He was murdered.”

  My head snapped to him.

  Danial inhaled deeply. I watched him for a moment before turning back to the telescope, but I wasn’t looking. I was listening.

  “It was a random attack. He shouldn’t have even been there. He should have been at UT, studying for exams, eating ramen noodles, sleeping with his boyfriend.”

  I glanced back at him again and wrapped my hand around the telescope to steady myself. I thought I knew where this was going.

  “My parents didn’t know. When he brought Keenan home one weekend, they totally lost it. Threw him out of the house. Cut off all support. David had to drop out of school. He moved in with some friends in Houston, then one night about six months later, Keenan came down to spend the weekend with him, and some assholes jumped them. They’d just seen a movie. They were just walking down the sidewalk about ten o’clock at night toward Keenan’s car.” He huffed. “David was in a coma for two weeks before he died. Keenan didn’t even make it to the hospital.” He shook his head. “What a waste.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Oh, Danial. Suddenly everything was so clear to me. “Is that why I’ve never met your parents? You’re protecting them from memories.”

  He laughed and drew deeply on the joint. “I’m not protecting them from you, Nate.” He exhaled. “I’m protecting you from them.”

  I stared at him.

  “They blamed his ‘lifestyle’ for what happened to him.” He used little finger quotes when he said the word lifestyle, causing an ash to drop at this feet. He shook his head. “Man, that’s so fucked up. They kicked him out. Then some redneck motherfuckers beat him to a pulp, and they blame him. The night he left ...” He paused and laughed a little without humor. “The night they threw him out, my dad told him, ‘You’re dead to me.’ And now he is.”

  “Just because he was gay?” I was thinking how very fortunate Adam and I had been that our parents had reacted so differently. Adam’s parents had been more amused and relieved than anything, although his mom was kinda freaked out about the sex thing and was the one who insisted on condoms. Mom was getting used to it. She liked Adam. Who didn’t? I think Grandma was just a fag hag. But Dad, he really wasn’t so different, was he? He hadn’t kicked me out. He didn’t have that power anymore. But he had deleted me from his life as surely as I deleted the disgusting comments on my blog.

  Danial went on, “We’re Pakistani ... Muslim. It’s a hard religion, Nate. Sometimes I’m surprised my dad didn’t kill him himself.” He shrugged. “He didn’t want to have a gay son, and now he doesn’t.”

  Our dads had that much in common. The last time I’d seen Dad was right after we’d returned from Key West. He’d invited Adam and me to dinner. I suppose I had to give him points for trying. But in the end, he couldn’t do it.

  Last June 14

  Stood up

  I used my forefinger to twist the rubber bracelet tightly around my wrist. When I realized what I was doing, I forced myself to stop, only to find myself tugging on an earring, or twirling the votives that flickered in a shallow bowl of water in the center of the small table. Dad was late.

  “Nervous?” Adam said.

  “Yeah. A little.”

  “You know, this time yesterday we were eating conch soup on the beach and playing footsies barefoot under the table with sand between our toes.”

  “Me likey conch soup.”

  “Me likey playing footsies.” To prove it, he slipped his foot out of his loafer and wiggled it a couple of inches up my pant leg.

  I laughed. “You’re such a tease.”

  “Not teasing,” he said, taking my hand and pulling it to his lips. A man seated at the bar whispered something to the woman next to him and she laughed loudly. I wondered if the day would come when we could be affectionate with each other in public and not be objects of ridicule or even note. But I had no intention of waiting.

  A movement at the hostess’s desk caught my eye, and I looked over just in time to catch my dad’s back retreating through the oversized restaurant door. Shit. I told Adam I’d be right back and hurried after him.

  “Dad. Dad.” I caught up with him just as he stepped off the curb to cross the street. He stepped back up on the sidewalk and shoved his hands deep in his pockets but didn’t say anything.

  “This was your idea,” I said.

  “I can’t do this, Nate,” he said after a moment, looking everywhere, anywhere, but at me. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “Does it matter?” He shook his head and smirked. “For twenty years I’ve worked my ass off turning boys into men on that football field. All those boys who came to me weak and uncertain
. I pushed them. I took those boys, and I turned them into men. But I couldn’t do that with my own son. I failed you, and for that I am profoundly sorry.”

  “This has nothing to do with me being a man.”

  “You were sitting at that table, earrings in your ears, that stupid amoeba thing hanging around your neck.” He flicked my pendant with his thick fingers. “Your hands all over some—”

  “My hands weren’t all over anybody.”

  “Tell me you’re not shoving your dick up his ass. Tell me.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he gave a disgusted laugh. “You don’t have to tell me. I heard it all in that courtroom.”

  “You’re making me sick.”

  “Yeah? Well, now you know how that feels.”

  With that, he’d stepped into the street. I watched him go with a mixture of anger and despair. The despair was not for myself, I realized, but for a man who had just thrown away his only son.

  We didn’t talk a lot during dinner. Adam seemed to know that I needed to be alone with my thoughts. I hadn’t realized how important this dinner was to me until it was. I’d never been the kid my dad wanted me to be, but I was his kid. I’d hoped that trumped everything. It didn’t. He was who he was, and I was who I was, and who we were prevented us from bridging the chasm that existed between us.

  Adam excused himself while I paid the tab. I tucked some bills into the leather folder and laid it back on the table and got up. The couple was still at the bar, a little drunker, a little louder. The man had his hand on the woman’s thigh. He leaned in and slid his fingers just under the edge of her skirt.

  I rubbed my thumb along the letters stamped on my rubber bracelet—WWND—and glanced around. At another table a young woman whispered in her dinner date’s ear. He laughed and whispered something back. Across the room a man ushered a woman to their table, his hand placed firmly on her ass. And no one paid them any attention. And what’s more, they took no note of anyone around them either. Not one furtive scan of the room. Not one fucking sideways glance.