by Melanie Rawn
Not that he’d been virginal back then. Not quite, anyway. The “not quite” was due to Holly’s fixing him up with a guy she knew from grad school at UCLA. He and Mac had lasted from July to the end of August, that summer before Yale, while Mac learned the horse-farm business from Lulah and Cam learned the finer points of the apothecary’s art from Cousin Clary Sage, as was traditional in the family. He’d studied what every Witch should know about herbs and spices and flowers and trees—though he was principally interested in anything that would help him get through four years of college and three of law school, which made Clarissa grin and give him the appropriate recipe book. Once Mac entered the picture, Cam had played around with a few other kinds of spells, but being too scared to use them had actually been a good thing. Mac liked him without magic. A long moonlit chat with Holly on the Fourth of July clued him in to the value of being wanted for what you were rather than what you could do. But if, as a going-away present, Cam had secretly spelled Mac’s favorite riding boots to keep his feet warm when it was snowing and dry when it was raining, nobody ever knew it but Cam. And Holly, who had contributed a few drops of blood. It was the only magic he could give Mac in exchange for teaching him the magic of skin on skin.
Since then there had been few lovers. He was like Holly that way: neither of them could simply fall into bed with someone. He supposed it had to do with trust; a Witch out in the wider world learned wariness, like it or not. Holly’s opinion was that the two of them were just fastidious—or, to put it less delicately, damned difficult to please. Whatever. Cam knew who and what he was, and how he wanted his life to evolve, and his plans didn’t include sleeping with anybody who would out him.
Not that Jamey ever would. It was just that Jamey was too young and too innocent and too in love with the idea of being in love to think it all through. So Cam would have to do the thinking for him.
They reached the coffee bar without saying a word to each other. Cam ordered Sumatran, black. He’d go back to sugaring up his caffeine fixes during finals, but for now he was trying to lose a couple of pounds. Jamey indulged himself with a combination of coffee, chocolate, coconut syrup, and whipped cream that should have sent him into insulin shock.
“They should call that the Giant Rat,” Jamey said as they chose a table near the back. When Cam gave him a puzzled frown, he explained, “Your coffee. Sherlock Holmes, the Giant Rat of Sumatra.”
“You’d get along fine with my cousin Holly—a constant barrage of obscure references nobody but Lit. majors ever understand.”
For a moment Cam thought Jamey was going to argue against any reference to Sherlock Holmes being obscure. Cam was wrong. What Jamey said was: “Morgan came out to his parents, didn’t he?”
Cam blinked, swallowed a gulp of coffee, and coughed.
“Sorry. I just thought I’d try to shock you into admitting it. I mean, not that anybody ever thought the guy was straight—or that you and Gary and Keith are anything but perfectly straight—it’s just that he—and you and Gary and Keith aren’t—and since he didn’t flunk out or get sick or anything, it was only logical to assume—”
“Jamey,” he asked grimly, “do you have any idea what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Um—no, I guess not.”
“Then maybe you’d better shut up, okay?” Cam sighed, settling back in his chair. Jazz from a soprano sax seeped from the house speakers, just loud enough to cover conversation. Cam often brought Jamey here: they could talk without being disturbed, while fully aware that any inept reaction would disturb others. Nobody paid any attention to anybody else unless voices were raised above the music. At that point, arching eyebrows and meaningful stares exiled the nuisance. This unspoken etiquette had kept Jamey from coming on to him too obviously. It had also kept Cam honest.
And honesty, he realized, was something he owed the kid.
“Okay, here it comes,” he said suddenly. “Yeah, Morgan told his folks. Just the Christmas present they wanted, as you can imagine. I don’t know how many people there are in that flyspeck town he comes from, but if any of ’em are gay they don’t admit it. Ever. Morgan did. So now he’s in a treatment program.”
“Excuse me?” Cloud-gray eyes went impossibly wider.
“Morgan’s parents sent him to queer rehab. They want to fix him.”
“Was he broken?”
Cam chose to ignore the peculiar juxtaposition of innocent inquiry and cynical commentary. “From their point of view, yeah. From what I understand, the claim is that these people can turn gays into ex-gays.”
Jamey was silent for a moment. Then: “Does it work?”
Cam stared at him, bewildered anew. “Huh?”
“It would seem unlikely,” Jamey mused, stirring whipped cream down into his coffee. “More evidence is found every year that sexuality isn’t a choice, it’s an orientation. The way a person’s brain is wired. I wonder when they’ll find a combination of genes that will clinch the deal and shut these people up.”
“Even if they did find proof, it wouldn’t matter,” Cam replied. “It’s right there in the Bible, folks. God says no, so even if God made you the way you are, you can’t be the way you are without God getting pissed off and sending you straight to hell.”
“And Morgan’s parents believe in the Bible.”
“Oh, yeah.” He swallowed more coffee, missing the sugar rush, needing the caffeine. “I got an e-mail from his father. Pack up all his stuff, please, we’ll send you a check for the shipping costs.” He sighed and shook his head. “I wrote back and asked if Morgan was okay. His father then apologized for his son, said he hoped Gary and Keith and I hadn’t been tainted, and that he was sure we hadn’t suspected Morgan was mentally diseased because, of course if we had, we would’ve ratted him out.”
“ ‘Mentally diseased’? That’s what he called it? What did you write back?”
“I haven’t yet. I just got that e-mail last weekend and I’ve been so mad I can’t get my hands to stop shaking long enough to type. Spellcheck can only get you so far,” he added sardonically. “But I did start packing Morgan’s things. He had a couple of pamphlets about how to tell your parents you’re gay. One of them said to be sure to have a place to go the night you tell your family, because it’s a mortal lock that they’ll throw you out of the house. If you don’t set up somewhere to go in advance, you end up sleeping on the street.”
Jamey said nothing for a moment, then took a long swallow of coffee, put the cup down, and met Cam’s gaze. “Is that how it was for you?”
He was twenty-six years and four months old and he was convinced he was having a heart attack. Or a stroke. Or a convulsion or a conniption or a seizure or something not immediately fatal but dangerous all the same.
“Cam, breathe.”
Maybe he’d just pass out. Yeah, that sounded good. Give in to the whirring and buzzing and black-speckled haze in front of his eyes, fall face-first onto the table, and not have to deal with this.
Except that the little chunk of amber on its gold chain around his neck felt a bit warmer next to his heart, gift of the eldest son to the eldest son in the Griffen family for over two hundred years. Amber for confidence and mental clarity; a strong memory and power of decision; protection, defense—“And it even cures hay fever!” He remembered his father telling him that, and giving him one of his big, light-the-world grins. He missed those grins. He took a deep breath, and felt the amber shift against his skin.
“I’m not gonna ask how you knew.” His voice sounded almost normal. He’d put a lot of time and effort into presenting an outward image that was so normal he even bored himself. He dated enough women to make suspicion ridiculous; he slept with enough of them to make his sexuality a non-issue; he went to sports bars with the guys to watch big-screen TV baseball in the spring and football in the autumn; he snickered at the jokes and innuendos just the way a straight guy should. So he wasn’t going to ask how Jamey knew. He just knew; there was nothing Cam could do about it.
Jamey said, “You don’t fit any of the stereotypes—whatever those are anymore. I just—I suppose I was kind of hoping. If you were, then maybe someday I might be able to—”
“Oh, no. No way. Never. Not in a million years.”
Downcast eyes, bitten lip, shamed whisper: “You don’t—I’m not your type—”
“Not my—oh, shit.” Cam sprang to his feet, his chair tipping over behind him with a discourteous clatter. He could feel the stares. “We gotta get outta here,” he said fiercely. “Come on, Jamey. Let’s go.”
“Cam—”
Everyone was being forced to notice them now. And that was the last thing either of them needed. “Let’s go!”
A minute later they were back outside. The cold scraped at the skin of Cam’s face and hands, scoured his throat and lungs with every breath. Jamey hurried along at his elbow. Cam didn’t look at him.
It was colder, and there were fewer people on the street. No one passed close enough to hear Cam as he said, “I know what you want to do with your life—and you’re gonna be great. Governor, Congressman, Senator—you can be anything you want, Jamey, but you can’t be this. You can’t fuck it all up by fucking other men.”
A hand locked around his arm. He couldn’t shake it off, so he stopped walking, turned, and glared down the three inches that separated them in height.
“Shut up,” Jamey ordered, scornfully unintimidated. “Just shut up. Do I look that stupid? I know everything you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it from you the way I’ve heard it from myself ever since I met you!”
Cam considered those furious gray eyes for a moment, then asked mildly, “Well, whoever was talking, were you actually listening?”
Jamey shoved both hands into his pockets. “No.”
“Didn’t think so.” With a shrug, as if none of this mattered, he lengthened his strides—hoping Jamey would get the idea and just go home or something.
Instead, a soft, wet, freezing load of snow hit the back of his head.
“Hey!” As he swung around, another snowball struck him in the shoulder. Jamey was grinning as if he’d just pitched a no-hitter at Dodger Stadium.
“You really want to bring that to the party, Pretty Boy?” Cam taunted.
“You really want to call me that, Grandpa?”
He sternly reminded himself that he was, in fact, twenty-six, not a hundred-and-twelve; twenty-six, damn it, not eight-and-a-half—
He scooped, packed, and let fly twice before Jamey recovered from astonishment and started retaliatory fire.
When they were breathless and soaked and splattered in white, Cam shook his hair free of snow and glared as fiercely as he could. Jamey’s carefree laughter warmed him more thoroughly than one of his own spells set into his socks.
“You were way too serious,” Jamey explained before Cam could even ask. “Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem: dulce est desipere in loco.”
Rolling his eyes, he fought a grin. Every law student knew enough Latin to get by; Jamey had taken four years of it in high school and another four at William and Mary. “Okay, who is it this time? Virgil? Livy? Emperor Augustus?”
“Horace. ‘Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it’s lovely to be silly at the right moment.’ I had to do it, Cam. You looked like all the Brothers Grimm rolled into one.”
“There were only two of them. And are you calling me a fairy tale?”
“One more ‘Pretty Boy’ in my direction, and you’ll be—” Jamey broke off the threat, shaking his head. “I was going to say you’d be singing soprano for the Whiffenpoofs, but that wouldn’t suit my plans for you at all.”
Before Cam could point out that whatever those plans were, they would require him to be at least marginally cooperative and that absolutely wasn’t going to happen, he saw that Jamey was shivering. “Let’s get to my place before we both catch pneumonia,” he said gruffly. And the whole walk back, he wondered why he didn’t just spell Jamey’s coat and sweater and shoes for warmth—as a good-bye present before telling him to go away and never come back.
They sat on the sofa in Cam’s fourth-floor walk-up, right back where they’d started, except that the geophysics had shifted and the laws of gravity—shared or not—no longer applied. Cam sprawled, and Jamey sat straight-spined, and thirty-six inches of upholstery sagged between them—just like earlier, just as if nothing had changed. But there was no balance, no equilibrium between attraction and resistance. It was all wobbly and fluctuating and it scared the shit out of him. Jamey knew, had known forever; it was all out in the open now.
“I went on-line,” Cam said abruptly, “and looked into programs like the one Morgan’s parents checked him into. It’s called ‘reparative therapy’ or ‘conversion therapy.’ One place is kind of an Onward Christian Soldiers thing, waging spiritual warfare against homosexuality. Another of them says that it’s akin to the whole experience of being ‘born again’—that you have to die before you can be reborn as a heterosexual. What they do—nine times out often they’re not even licensed medical or psychological practitioners, they’ve had no training except in religion, and it’s not just the Evangelicals and the Mormons, it’s Catholics and Jews and—”
Jamey was shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about Morgan. I’m sorry for him, and I hope his parents decide they love him more than they’re scared of him, but he’s not me. My parents know—they knew practically before I did. It took a while, yeah, but they’re okay with it. They didn’t disown me or tell me I’m going to hell, and they sure as shit would never send me to rehab—”
“All hail the Great American Liberal,” Cam snapped. “Your parents, my dad, almost all my relatives—”
“Almost?”
“A few of them are kind of hysterically religious, and we don’t have much to do with them anyway except when somebody gets married or buried—but that’s not the point,” he interrupted himself impatiently. “Our families aren’t society at large, Jamey. With all the talking you did with yourself, did you ever ask if it’d be worth it to you?”
“With you, it would be,” Jamey replied quietly.
“You can’t say stuff like that,” he admonished, feeling dizzy as the gravitational constant of the universe shifted again. “You really can’t.”
“I really can,” he answered with a tiny smile.
“Yeah? So I’m worth your whole life being about being gay? Because that’s what happens. You become the token queer, the faggot in the corner office that shows how enlightened the partners are—hell, maybe even you become the Gay Congressman. And anything else you are gets subsumed and you get defined by one thing only.”
“It has to be that way, does it?”
“Two choices.” Two only: give in to the attraction and smash into each other to their mutual destruction, or continue to resist and somehow survive this. “Come out, live openly, maybe find somebody and maybe even be happy. And everything else you want to do with your life, you can kiss it all good-bye. The only thing anybody will see about you is that you’re gay.”
“And the second choice is to live a lie.”
He nodded slowly. “And if you find somebody you can love, you both have to be careful every minute of every day.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped between them so they wouldn’t shake too much. “But, Jamey, that way you still get to do all the rest of it! You get to live the other parts of your life, do the work you were meant to do, have people look at you and see a man, a human being, instead of—”
“I don’t have to ask which decision you made.”
“Yeah. And for now, I’m gonna make the decision for you.”
“How noble. How generous.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “For now, during law school and while you figure out your future, you have to keep your mouth shut. Because once you’re out, that’s it. All other choices and all other definitions vanish.” He hunched forward, feeling his finger bones grind together. “Dammit—you’re sm
art, good-looking, articulate—”—with the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen and a mind that works at hyperdrive—“—you’ve got charm to burn, but you’ve also got something better than that—charisma. You’re funny, you think fast on your feet—”—you’re proud and honorable and your smile ought to be declared a National Treasure—“—you’ve got so much going for you it’s scary. You’re Luke fucking Skywalker, only you wouldn’t know the Dark Side of the Force if it introduced itself and bought you a beer. I’m not gonna let you screw up. Especially not over somebody like me.”
“Like you? What do you mean, like you? Goddammit, Cam, don’t you know? You think I’ve been hanging around because I want a head start on my third year when I haven’t even finished my first? What’s wrong with you? If I’m gonna screw up—and may I remind you here that it’s my life and if I want to screw it up, I can goddammed well screw it up however I want and with whomever I want and I don’t completely accept your premise anyway, but what we’re talking about here is—is—”
He’d gotten lost in his own sentence. Cam felt a tiny grin tug one corner of his mouth. “You want to start that one over?”
“Fuck you!”
“You have no idea how much I wish you would. But it’s not gonna happen. Not with me. I’d never be able to live with myself.”
“So your answer is no.”
“I’m not even gonna let you ask the question.”
Jamey stared for a moment—and then lunged across the threadbare sofa cushions and kissed him.
Nothing imploded. Nothing smashed into a million pieces. He wondered why he had thought they’d crush each other with the force of this thing between them. Whatever had happened at the beginning, the impulse that had started a spin of matter and energy and spirit that had coalesced into their two separate beings, they had found their center of gravity. It felt entirely natural, completely right.