by P. E. Ryan
“He seemed so cool with being in the bookstore with you, so cool with the whole gay thing.”
“He’s not gay, but he’s definitely cool about it.”
“Some straight people just aren’t,” Adam said. “Which is totally Dark Ages thinking. People like my aunt Sadie? When I came out to her, she told me she’d pray for me.”
“What did you say?”
“I just smiled and said, ‘Okay. I’ll pray for you, too.’”
“And do you?”
Adam shook his head no and faked a slightly baffled expression. “I never seem to get around to it.”
This cracked them both up. “Wow,” Garth said. “So are you out to everyone you know?”
“Not everyone. I’m out on a need-to-know basis. And, basically, almost everybody needs to know, if they’re going to know-know me.” He paused. “You know?”
“No.” Garth laughed again. “I mean, yes. But no. It feels so weird—even sitting here talking to you about it. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“No, it makes sense.”
“The way my mom reacted when I told her…” He wasn’t laughing now. “She’s made it pretty much impossible for people to know me, and definitely impossible for me to have any gay friends. I wouldn’t even know how to be around them, or how to act.”
“Just be yourself.” Adam said. “And, hey—guess what?”
“What?”
“You do have a gay friend.”
So we’re friends, Garth concluded. This hasn’t been a date. But what had he been expecting, anyway? Some hot make-out session? Imagining it made him want to kiss Adam on the spot.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Um…” Adam tilted his head slightly to one side. He seemed to be waiting for Garth to say something. “Tonight’s been fun,” he finally said, ending the awkward pause himself.
“It has,” Garth managed.
“Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
“Sure.” Don’t leave it at that, he told himself. ‘Sure’ is just as bad as ‘Whatever.’ “I’d like to do it again. Watch a movie, I mean. A film. With you.” Inwardly, he winced at how stupid he sounded. Why couldn’t he just relax? Adam was being nice. Everything he’d said had been nice. The expression on his face right now? Nice. And those eyes?
Beyond nice.
Who could take a sentence like “You do have a gay friend” and turn it into something negative?
Garth Rudd, that’s who. He cleared his throat as he chose his words. “Well, I don’t know how many gay friends you have—maybe you’re up to your eyeballs in them—but I guess you have one more now.”
“Cool,” Adam said. His eyebrows bounced once as he smiled.
“Only, don’t tell anyone.”
They both laughed again—though it didn’t really feel funny to Garth. To save face, he clarified, “Lisa, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But no one else. For now, anyway.”
“Got it.”
The lock on the front door clicked and Garth’s stomach clenched like a fist; his mom was home early from her concierge job, he thought. But, no, it was Mike—holding on to the door and leaning into the living room as if he might have the wrong house. “How are you guys doing?”
“Great.”
“How was the movie?”
“Really good,” Garth said.
“I was relieved he liked it,” Adam added.
Mike nodded and smiled at the two of them.
“So I guess I’ll head out now,” Adam said. “Thanks again.”
Garth watched Adam stand, and he stood, too, and there were good-byes and handshakes and an unexpected hug (for Garth, not Mike), and for a moment the whole evening felt like some kind of audition that Garth might or might not have passed. That seemed to clash, somehow, with Adam’s advice that he be himself, because how could you be yourself when you were worried about how well someone else wanted to know you? And why would you want to even be that self if it didn’t measure up in their eyes?
9
The following Saturday, he was hurriedly slapping a broom over the worn boards of the porch when his mom opened the door. Without stepping outside, she peeked cautiously into the bottom mailbox. “Thank goodness,” she said. “No bills. What’s your rush?”
“I’m running late,” he said. “I’m meeting Lisa, and she’ll flip if I keep her waiting. I’m already sort of on her bad side.”
“Well, you can always sweep the porch tomorrow. Why are you on Lisa’s bad side?”
He paused, cut her a glance, then resumed his slapdash work. “No reason. She’s just in one of her moods.”
“Happens to all of us, now and then,” she said. “Do you need any spending money, by the way? I know you’re in between pay periods, and, knowing you, you’re probably depositing your whole check into your bank account.”
“I’m fine,” he told her.
“Well, let me know if you need any. For movies or whatever.”
“Thanks.” He kept his head down, his face burning with guilt.
“Do you want anything from the grocery store?”
“I’m not picky,” he said.
“Okay. Remember that the next time I come home with generic Oreos.” She disappeared back inside, closing the door behind her.
He was pushing what little dirt he’d amassed over the sides of the porch and onto the grass when he heard a “Psst” from the front window. When he turned around and squinted through the screen, he saw Mike squatted down on the other side, peeking beneath the bottom of the half-drawn shade.
“The hawk takes flight by moonlight,” Mike said.
“Huh?”
“That’s secret agent talk. I have a question for you.”
Garth waited, still holding the broom.
“I was thinking about that shelter where you volunteer.”
“What about it?”
“Do you think they’d let you borrow a couple of dogs for a day?”
“Borrow?”
“Yeah. You know, round up a couple of them and…borrow them for a day.”
The front door opened again. Garth’s mom stood on the threshold, half in and half out of the house, her purse hanging from her shoulder and her grocery list in hand. She was staring down at Mike.
“Why do you want to ‘borrow’ dogs?” she asked him. “We have Hutch.”
“Hutch is great. But I’m a huge dog lover,” Mike said smoothly. “I’m nuts about them. I shared a Rottweiler with my ex-fiancée, and she got custody when we broke up. I really miss him. I just thought it would be fun to spend some time with some dogs one afternoon. You know, walk them around. Air them out. Take them to one of those dog parks.”
“Oh,” Garth’s mom said. “Why are you crouched down at the window?”
Mike straightened up so that only his knees were visible beneath the shade. Garth imagined him on the other side of the wall, performing some smooth, offhanded shrug. “Just trying to be funny. You making a grocery run? Need some help?”
“No, thank you,” his mom said.
“All right. But I’m chipping in a third of the bill later. No arguments.”
After she’d left, Mike emerged onto the porch and gazed up and down Floyd Avenue. “Nice day,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” Garth squinted at his uncle’s watch and leaned the broom up against the front of the house. “So what’s this about dogs? Tell me fast because I’ve got to run.”
“Don’t let me keep you.”
“No, tell me why you asked. Now I’m curious.”
“Just what I said.” Mike shrugged. “Walk them. Air them out. Give them a little exercise.” He glanced sideways at Garth. “Do you have a Scooby-Doo costume in your closet, or did I imagine that?”
The narrow tip of the Fan District (so named because of its shape) ended at Virginia Commonwealth University. The campus was, according to Lisa, a “cornucopia of weirdoes.” They hung out there from time to time. For photog
raphic subject matter. For the sake of enriching their exposure to the different walks of life. But really, Garth knew, for the sake of scoping out guys.
This had become a much more pleasurable activity for him now that he was out to her. They would weigh in on who was cute, who was hot, who was too much of a nerd to be attractive, who was just nerdy enough. Mostly, they focused on the skater boys—those sneering, sinewy, scruffy guys who never carried books or backpacks, and who seemed oblivious to the world around them (other than the concrete “waves” they surfed). They would offer Lisa a peace sign, sometimes, if they saw her raise her camera. Or that downward thumb/index finger/pinky stab gesture that meant…This rocks? I rock? Chew on my sneaker? Garth had no idea. Now and then one of them would raise his middle finger but, as she had with Mudpie, Lisa only found it hilarious and snapped the picture anyway.
For these little adventures, she sometimes wore props that she hoped might make her look older and blend in. Eyeliner (she never wore makeup otherwise). A fake nose ring. Today, her prop was a T-shirt she’d spray-painted herself: black cotton with dripping red letters that formed the word PAWN. She was almost too pretty to look the part, Garth thought, but he didn’t say anything.
The two of them were sitting side-by-side on a concrete bench, watching a pack of boys glide, jump, and tumble. The noise of their wheels slamming down over and over again echoed against the walls of the surrounding buildings.
“So, yes,” she was saying, “there are scholarships I can apply for—and I will because I have to. But thus begins the whoring process.”
“The what?” Garth asked, laughing.
“I’m serious. The minute you start bowing before the almighty dollar, you become a whore. I don’t care whether you’re an artist or a politician. Make that first bow, and it’s whore, whore, whore.” She lifted her digital camera and took a shot of one of the skate-borders in midair. “And it’s a shame, because I am going to have to claw my way into the laps of those New York scholarship-granters so I don’t end up here, while the raw truth of the matter is that a true artist”—she touched the camera to her collarbone—“doesn’t need to be locked away in some lofty arts school tower; she needs to be around genuine people.”
“Wait,” he said, “I’m confused. Are you saying you do want to go to an exclusive arts school or not?”
“I don’t know!” Suddenly, she sounded more confused than angry. “I mean, put yourself in my shoes. Do you think you’re going to find genuine people at some mondo-competitive school where the student body is made up of whores? No. You’re going to find the genuine people here. But here is where you aren’t going to make the necessary contacts to survive in Art World, U.S.A.—so what do you do? Kiss your integrity good-bye and embrace your inner whore.”
“You’re in a great mood today,” he said.
“I’m not. I’m in a rotten mood. I was right about Stacy, by the way.”
“Pregnant Stacy?”
“She wants the baby, but she doesn’t want my brother. Suddenly, my parents are having second thoughts about paying for the you-know-what.”
“Because they want her to marry Jason, or because they don’t care about the baby if Stacy doesn’t marry him?”
“I think you just answered your own question,” Lisa said.
“That is so screwed up. So the Stacy situation has put you in a bad mood?”
“No,” she said flatly.
He could have asked her to explain but knew she was going to do it sooner or later, with or without an invitation.
Two of the skateboarders, Garth noticed, had rolled away during her diatribe; three remained. Lisa raised her camera at the remaining three and clicked.
She said, “One of them will be a painter, one of them will be a truck driver, and one of them will kill a man.”
“Based on…?”
“I’ve told you, I’m very intuitive. The tricky part is knowing which is which.”
“And how would you ‘know’ that, for sure?” he asked.
“Observe.” Camera in hand, she got up and approached the trio. Zeroing in on the shirtless (and cutest) one, she clicked his picture and began talking to him, but they were too far away for Garth to overhear. The guy started shaking his head almost immediately, moving his oily locks of hair around like seaweed. After a moment, Lisa turned and stomped back to the bench.
“Well, that one,” she said, sitting down, “is definitely the murderer.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“All I did was ask him, ‘If you absolutely had to choose one collection of work to be launched into space and preserved forever, which would it be: Warhol’s or Barney’s?’”
“Who’s Barney?”
“Never mind.”
“What did he say?”
She huffed and mimicked the skateboarder’s voice. “‘Who-o-a-a, it’s Saturday, lady friend. Class is dismissed.’”
Garth started laughing.
Lisa groaned, but then laughed along with him. “‘Lady friend?’ Come on!”
“All right, explain something to me,” Garth said. “Why are you flirting with these guys? You were all psyched about Billy Fillmore the last time I saw you.”
“Billy Fillmore is a whore,” she declared.
“Come again?”
“He’s Mr. I Have a Promising Career in Football and Mr. Worship My Biceps. Hello? No. Could there be a more boring person on Earth? He’s already talking about what professional teams he’d be perfect for, and what huge contracts he has coming to him!”
“Well,” Garth said with a shrug, “a person has to make a living, right?”
She huffed again. “I told him I was a photographer, and he asked me if I had any naked pictures of myself! Can anyone say tacky? Can anyone say stupid?”
“Tacky,” Garth said. “Stupid.”
“And, I swear, he was looking at me like I might have them in my purse, on our date, ready to whip out and show him!”
“But you told him you keep them at home in your dresser, right?”
“I don’t have any nude pictures of myself!”
“I’m kidding. Speaking of dates,” he said, “I had a really good time with Adam the other night.”
Lisa glared at him as if he’d insulted her. Then she opened her mouth, hesitated for a moment, and nailed the real topic like a sledgehammer burying a spike: “Was it a date?”
“I—I don’t know. It sort of was, and sort of wasn’t. We watched a movie—a film—and had a good time. I don’t think either one of us is hung up on the whole ‘date’ thing. It’s sort of trivial, right?”
“Was the ubiquitous ‘Mike’ there?”
“No,” Garth said. “He was supposed to be, but he left at the last minute, and Adam and I watched the film alone. And talked for a while afterward. He said you told him I was strong.”
“I might have,” she said, looking down at the cement. Her mind seemed to have gone somewhere else—back to Billy Fillmore, maybe.
“Did you know his aunt is a Christian homophobe?”
“Can I change the subject for a second, and be totally upfront with you?” she asked.
They’d just gotten on the subject, but Garth yielded. “Sure.”
“I don’t buy it that you and your uncle have been touring all these Confederate haunts. I know you hate that stuff, and I heard what he had to say about the topic that day we drove around together, so I think you’re lying. Which makes me wonder what’s really going on. But I won’t pry.”
Her arms were folded now, her head drooping. Her body was slumped on the concrete bench in the very shape of a crowbar, ready to pry.
“We’ve just been hanging out. What do you care?”
“I care,” she said, “because you’ve stood me up twice since he came to town, and because you’re obviously bullshitting me about how you two spend your time, and even though I think there’s something totally fishy about him, and even though I was the one who put you and Adam in the same place geograp
hically—after your ‘magical meeting’ in the bookstore, that is—you’re giving all the credit to Mike! It really bugs me.”
Obviously bullshitting. Lisa hardly ever swore; she thought it was a sign of simple-mindedness. But had he stood her up twice? He could only think of the one time since Mike had arrived.
“Oh, and by the way,” she added, “when your best friend asks you what’s up or what’s new, you might mention that you quit your job. That might be something major worth sharing.”
“How did you—”
“I went by that skankpit of a department store to say hi since I haven’t been seeing much of you lately, and the lady at the register told me you quit.”
“I was going to tell you,” he stammered. “The thing is, my mom doesn’t know.”
“Mike knows, though, doesn’t he?”
“It’s got nothing to do with Mike,” he lied.
She picked at a fleck of red spray paint on her T-shirt. “I’m tired of wondering what’s going on.” She got up from the bench and, without looking back, said, “You can hang out here with your secrets and your pipe dreams.”
He watched her approach a pair of rough-looking guys who’d just rolled around the corner of the English building. Pipe dreams? he wondered. About Adam, or about Mike? What the hell was she getting at?
I haven’t lied to you, he wanted to call out.
But like so many other things, that wasn’t true.
He was alone with his mom that evening. Mike, claiming Saturday night restlessness, had gone out for a burger and a drive. They sat in the living room with the shoe box of photos he’d given them and the new photo album. “I really like this one,” his mom said, lifting a snapshot from the pile and holding it up for Garth to see. “Too bad it’s damaged.”
Garth looked at the snapshot. In it his dad was maybe fifteen, dressed in brown pants and a light-blue windbreaker, hunched down and holding what looked like a peanut for a blurry little shape at the base of a tree. “Is that a squirrel?”
“It must be. Look at how handsome he was. Just like you.”
“Yeah?” He’d never before thought there was much resemblance between him and his dad, but he was beginning to see a likeness in these photos and was glad to hear his mom thought so, too. “My hair’s so much curlier.”