Looking for Group

by Alexis Hall

  Drew made no such attempt. “I’m really not.”

  “Okay,” Tinuviel went on. “And you don’t fancy me either.”

  “Jesus, just because I don’t fancy every girl I meet, that doesn’t make me gay.”

  She looked smug. “And, by the same argument, not fancying every boy you meet doesn’t make you straight.”

  There was a really long silence.

  “Holy shit,” gasped Sanee. “That’s a really scary thought.”

  “I can imagine it would be to a lot of people, but actually there’s nothing scary about rejecting heteronormative notions of binary sexuality.”

  “So you’re saying,” said Drew slowly, “I could be gay and not know it? Because that sort of sounds like bollocks.”

  Tinuviel pushed her hair out of her eyes. “No, I’m not saying that, Andrew. I’m saying that, for many people, sexuality is more fluid and less clear-cut than they’re taught to assume. You might, in fact, be completely straight, but it’s also possible that you’re not. And, even if you aren’t, you might have gone your whole life completely happy and not caring and not knowing. And that’s fine. But it seems to me that right now you have an opportunity to have something with somebody, and it might work or it might not, but if your only reason for not trying is that you’re scared of the idea of being gay, then that’s probably quite silly and a little bit sad.”

  Drew frowned. “Is this your idea of cheering me up?”

  “Dude.” Sanee spread his hands in a beats me sort of way. “She’s got a point. I think. Somewhere in there. If you still like this guy, even though he’s a guy, then you should probably at least talk to him. I mean, dude, you drew him fanart. And you’ve kind of been all happy and annoying for the last week.”

  “Okay.” Drew pulled his duvet back over his head. “This has been very helpful. Now will you please go away? I want to continue freaking out, and I’d like to do it in private.”

  He felt Tinuviel uncurl. “I’m just down the hall if you want anything.”

  Sanee slapped him somewhere in the region of his arm. “It’s all right, mate. We’ll still be friends. Even if you do get a taste for dick.”

  “Thanks,” mumbled Drew.

  And then he heard the door swing closed behind them.

  Once he was sure they’d gone, he made a futile attempt to get back into Hawkeye, but it was no good. He had too much stuff in his brain. The one thing he was pretty sure he didn’t want to do was lie here trying to work out if he was gay or not. If that was even possible. So he tried to break the whole mess down into manageable chunks, like he’d do with a design project or a maths problem. Chunk one was “Am I gay or what?” but there was nothing he could do with that on his own. Tinuviel might have been all sexuality is fluid blah, but that didn’t really mean anything if he couldn’t hold hands with a boy or kiss a boy or fall in love with a boy. Even if the boy was Solace.

  Chunk two was being lied to, or if not lied to, then misled. Or whatever it was that made him feel bad about everything. Thinking back, and trying to be as objective as possible given the circumstances, he could sort of see that he hadn’t really given Solace a chance. It had been hard enough psyching himself up to ask someone out on the internet. He had no idea how you’d slip, “Hey, you know I’m not a girl, right?” into the conversation. But while some part of Drew understood that side of it, it didn’t stop him feeling shitty and hurt.

  He wondered briefly how Solace was feeling. If he was sad as well, or angry, or confused. Or maybe he was hurt because he’d thought Drew knew, and he hadn’t, and that what he’d said after was right: Drew had only been nice because he thought Solace was a girl. Or maybe Solace didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, and was just weirded out that Drew had thrown a wobbly.

  Which got him onto chunk three, which was, well, Solace himself. And it occurred to Drew that it was really odd to be thinking so hard about this guy when he didn’t even know what his name was.

  And he wanted to know. He wanted to know all that stuff.

  What he was called, and what he was feeling, and what he was thinking.

  Except even that was weird now, because every time Solace came into his head, he’d do a kind of mental stammer and have to switch the she for a he. And that meant he couldn’t tell if it was really Solace he was missing or this imaginary girl who’d never even existed.

  And that brought him back to “Am I gay or what?” Which was not where he wanted to be. He wasn’t Tinuviel. He couldn’t just be straight for nineteen years and then decide that everything was an arbitrary social construct so he might as well date dudes. It would have been different if he’d met a guy and been into him. Well, it would still have been pretty confusing, but at least it would’ve been clear-cut.

  Except wasn’t that exactly what had happened? He had, in fact, met a guy. And he was, in fact, into him. And, okay, he’d thought the guy was a girl, but he’d also known he might not be. And charged . . . or stumbled . . . ahead regardless. Which either meant he’d been wildly optimistic, or some part of him (even if it wasn’t something he’d ever noticed or admitted) hadn’t minded.

  So maybe he was—as Sanee would surely put it—a gay.

  Or at any rate: a bi. Since he was pretty sure he was still into girls.

  Although maybe he wasn’t. Because he hadn’t had that many relationships and part of the reason Tinuviel hung out with him and Sanee was that they were basically the only men on the course who hadn’t tried to get into her pants. So maybe he’d just been pretending all this time. Maybe getting a girlfriend had been kind of like getting your A levels—just sort of something you were expected to do in your late teens.

  He gave a little whimper and stuck his head back under the covers. Right now, he had no idea who he was or what he was or where he was going or what he was doing or what he wanted. Tinuviel would probably tell him placidly that This is all very fluid and complicated, Andrew, and that labels were meaningless.

  But, honestly, this felt like a time in Drew’s life when a label would be really comforting. It was one of the things he enjoyed about trad MMOs. Everybody had a role and name and you knew what you were supposed to be doing and how you were supposed to be doing it.

  He hid for a bit longer. He really needed to talk to someone. Someone who wasn’t going to laugh or express their bewilderment at the way he clung to bourgeois conventions of blah blah blah.

  Basically he needed to talk to Solace. And not just because there was no one else, but because he was starting to realise that the only thing he wasn’t confused about was that he really missed her. Um. Him.

  Drew crawled out of bed, booted up his PC, and signed into the game. He was greeted by a stream of cheery hellos in the guild, but Solace wasn’t online.

  He stared blankly at the screen. He had nothing in particular to do in-game, but logging in and then logging straight out again would look kind of pissy and odd. Also, having spent the best part of a day thinking in circles to get to this point, it was really frustrating not being able to see it through.

  Sod it. He was bloody well going to start that World Explorer achievement.

  Whipping out El’ir Reborn, he took to the skies.

  He started by filling in the blanks around the City of the Stars and Arandiel’s Vale. He wasn’t quite up to doing it on foot, but he took his time and watched the scenery unfurling beneath him. He hadn’t spent very long in this area at all, because he’d never rolled an elf. It was very sub-Tolkien: all trees and stars and dwindling. He found a narrow path that spiralled to the crest of a hill and under a pretty impressive waterfall. It tumbled between the rocks in silver-crested streams and down into a pool that shimmered, blue and green, with the reflected images of the surrounding forest.

  He paused to admire the ray tracing. Obviously, the game was getting on a bit and it wasn’t much by modern standards, but someone had clearly put a lot of effort into getting the scene just right. He’d already got credit for exploring Arandi
el’s Vale, but since there seemed to be a cave behind the waterfall, he thought it’d be nice to poke his head in.

  It turned out to be the standard cave model, and it was full of level fifteen bullywugs who were probably some kind of bandits or cultists or something. When you were new to the game and at an appropriate level, this cave was probably a complete nightmare, but Ella was high enough level that the mobs basically ignored her except when she actually ran through them. In the end, Drew dragged a bunch of them into a corner and massacred them wholesale with a single Circle of Corruption. There was a certain base satisfaction in one-shotting a bunch of low-level creatures.

  Solace has come online.

  [Guild][Morag]: Hey

  [Guild][Heurodis]: yo

  [Guild][Mordant]: Hi :)

  [Guild][Solace]: Hello everyone

  [Guild][Solace]: How was the date, Tiff?

  [Guild][Morag]: Nfc

  [Guild][Morag]: I really liked her. She was hot and wrote poetry.

  [Guild][Morag]: But I have literally no idea if she was into me.

  [Guild][Heurodis]: you should have told her your gearscore

  [Guild][Morag]: And this is why you’re single, Bjorn.

  [Guild][Heurodis]: I am single because nobody is awesome enough for me.

  [Guild][Jargogle]: Keep telling yourself that.

  To [Solace]: can we like talk

  [Solace] whispers: thought you didn’t want to

  To [Solace]: sorry i was freaked out

  To [Solace]: and i really want to talk about this

  To [Solace]: if you still want to

  [Solace] whispers: okay

  Solace has invited you to join a group: y/n

  Solace is now group leader.

  Shit. Drew suddenly realised there was a massive difference between wanting to talk to someone and having any idea what you were going to say to them. And it seemed really weird to be having this kind of a conversation in a chat window in a video game.

  [Group][Orcarella]: um can we kind of go somewhere

  [Group][Orcarella]: if that’s not weird

  [Group][Solace]: I’m in Alarion

  [Group][Orcarella]: kk omw

  The journey had never seemed quite so long, even though he wasn’t more than three minutes’ flight from the City of Stars. And just like the first time he’d gone to meet Solace, he found himself worrying pointlessly about which mount to use. El’ir seemed wanky suddenly. But he wasn’t sure he had a mount that said, Hi, I’m kind of cross with you, and I don’t think I’m gay, but I still kind of fancy you. Maybe. Even though I’ve never met you.

  Finally, he dug out his bog-standard Orcish Wyvern and flapped gracelessly over to Alarion. Solace was perched on their usual rock, still in full raiding getup, fishing line trailing in the water. Ella landed, dismounted, and hunkered down.

  Shit, this was difficult.

  [Group][Orcarella]: um hi

  [Group][Solace]: Hey

  [Group][Orcarella]: you know, i don’t even know what your name is

  [Group][Solace]: It’s Christopher

  [Group][Solace]: But everyone calls me Kit

  Kit. Drew rolled the name around in his head, trying to make it connect with something.

  Good healing, Kit.

  Me and Kit rolled some medusas to see what the starting area was like.

  I really like you, Kit.

  [Group][Solace]: Look, I’m really sorry

  [Group][Solace]: I didn’t mean to . . .

  [Group][Solace]: Mislead you or anything.

  [Group][Solace]: I know I kind of did

  [Group][Solace]: And I’m sorry.

  [Group][Orcarella]: I get its a weird situation

  [Group][Orcarella]: and i get i made a bunch of assumptions

  [Group][Orcarella]: but I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me

  There was no typing for a very long time.

  [Group][Solace]: I made assumptions too.

  [Group][Solace]: At first I assumed you knew or maybe I convinced myself you did

  [Group][Solace]: And by the time I was sure you didn’t . . . God, this is going to sound so pathetic . . . but I kind of liked it.

  [Group][Solace]: More than kind of.

  [Group][Solace]: I liked the way you were with me.

  [Group][Solace]: Kind, and funny, and interested. And a bit flirty.

  [Group][Solace]: I’ve never had that before.

  [Group][Solace]: And I didn’t want to lose it.

  And now Drew didn’t know what to say.

  And then he did.

  [Group][Orcarella]: I don’t want to lose it either.

  [Group][Solace]: Even though I’m not a girl?

  Having sort of committed, Drew felt a bit panicky. What if he was actually completely ungay? What if, after all this, Solace (Kit) turned out to be a munter just like Tinuviel had said? What if this was completely unworkable in every possible way?

  [Group][Orcarella]: I dont know.

  [Group][Orcarella]: I’m sorry i just

  [Group][Orcarella]: it’s always been girls before.

  [Group][Orcarella]: like only three of them

  [Group][Orcarella]: but still

  [Group][Solace]: Okay.

  [Group][Solace]: Look. It’s pretty simple for me.

  [Group][Solace]: I’ve always known I liked boys.

  [Group][Solace]: In principle at least.

  [Group][Solace]: I’m still looking for one to like in practice :)

  [Group][Solace]: And I know I could just go out to a club or something and find one.

  [Group][Solace]: But that’s not what I’m looking for.

  [Group][Solace]: But I don’t think it would be good for me if the first boy I had this connection with was just . . . well . . . trying me on.

  [Group][Orcarella]: :(

  [Group][Orcarella]: i’m not trying you on

  [Group][Orcarella]: i just want you to know where i’m coming from

  [Group][Orcarella]: i’ve never thought about this stuff before

  [Group][Orcarella]: and i’ve no idea if i’m gay or bi or straight or what

  [Group][Orcarella]: I just know i like

  [Group][Orcarella]: you

  [Group][Solace]: I like you too. I really like you.

  [Group][Solace]: But I can’t talk you into being bisexual

  [Group][Orcarella]: i’m not asking you to

  [Group][Orcarella]: i’m just really messed up right now

  [Group][Solace]: Sorry Drew

  [Group][Solace]: Is there anything I can do to make this better

  [Group][Orcarella]: nfc

  [Group][Orcarella]: i guess i just need some time

  [Group][Orcarella]: is that okay

  [Group][Solace]: Of course

  [Group][Solace]: I’d still like to hang out with you

  [Group][Solace]: Even if you don’t

  [Group][Solace]: I mean you know

  [Group][Solace]: Just as friends

  [Group][Solace]: I mean if you still want to

  [Group][Solace]: But I get it if you don’t

  Part of Drew—a big part of Drew—wanted to say, No way, you made me look like a prick and now I’m having a total crisis and it’s all your fault. Except then he realised it wouldn’t be particularly satisfying. And also it wasn’t true. Well, he was having a crisis and it was sort of Kit’s fault, but none of this would have happened if he hadn’t genuinely liked the guy. Or liked Solace. And probably that was the same thing. On the other hand, he didn’t want to be all like, Oh, it’s fine, no probs, because that wasn’t true either.

  Time was passing and the chat window was empty. And an empty chat window could be one of the scariest things on the internet sometimes. However mixed up he felt about Kit right now, he didn’t want to just leave him hanging. If it had been the other way round, he wasn’t sure he’d have the balls to put himself out there like that and risk getting shot down by a guy he knew was pissed off at him.


  [Group][Orcarella]: let me think about it

  [Group][Orcarella]: sorry that sounds shit

  [Group][Orcarella]: it just

  [Group][Orcarella]: i just

  [Group][Orcarella]: i think id better go

  Drew’s heart was beating way too fast as he logged off. He couldn’t tell whether that had gone fine or terribly. Nor had it miraculously cleared up the “Do I fancy guys or this guy?” question.

  It was late, but he’d spent most of the day in bed, so he didn’t really feel like going back there. Normally, this would be when he’d log into HoL. Except he’d just logged out of HoL.

  He booted up Steam and browsed his library listlessly.

  Then it occurred to him he could roll an alt, so he logged into HoL again. Unfortunately the second name on his character list was the medusa he’d rolled to play with Kit.

  He shut the game down in an attack of feels.

  Which brought him back to his Steam library. He didn’t have masses of spare cash, but there’d been enough flash sales and Humble Bundles that he managed to rack up a collection of just over a hundred games. And he basically didn’t want to play any of them.

  In the end he settled for X-Com. He’d stalled out on his Ironman Enemy Within playthrough about eighteen months ago. Loading it up, it was incredibly disorientating to realise he’d named his squad after a bunch of his mates from school—people he basically hadn’t thought about, bar the occasional Facebook message, for the best part of a year.

  It would’ve been too weird to go back, so he started a new game. He honestly wasn’t all that enthusiastic, but he just wanted something to take his mind off . . . everything. It worked for a little while, letting him fall into a comfortable strategy rhythm of move, overwatch, move, flank, shoot.

  Then Sergeant Sanee “Hazard” Kumar got jumped on and eaten by a giant killer-insect thing while attempting to the save the life of a civilian during Operation Broken Hymn. Then he came back as an infected alien zombie and had to be put down by his former squad mates. Sanee would have been so pissed the South Asian guy was the first to go. Drew almost felt too guilty to continue.

  It didn’t, however, stop him relating the story to his course mates the next day.

  One of the annoying things about small personal crises was not only did everything carry on in the background, but you didn’t even have an excuse not to carry on with it. His project still needed finishing, his UF team still needed him at practice, the guild still needed him to MT raids. It didn’t seem fair to say, Sorry, I can’t do all that stuff, I’m a bit sad and confused right now. Even worse, it wasn’t like anything could change or be fixed. Not unless he randomly met a girl who was so overwhelmingly perfect for him that he stopped thinking about Kit completely. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about Kit completely.