He didn’t answer right away. Instead he looked out to the horizon, where a low escarpment showed that some long-ago earthquake had transformed the land. He squinted, and my heart sank.
“Thanksgiving,” Kevin said slowly. “I thought you always went to the ranch, to Grant’s.”
My mouth was dry, so I grabbed the water bottle and drank from it. “I usually do, but I don’t have to this time.”
Kevin looked at me directly, steadily, and very seriously. “It won’t make up for the other, you know. Are we going to be fuck buddies on these weekend trips, or are we going to make more of what we’ve got? I want more with you, Tom. And I need more. If you can’t do this….”
What? If I couldn’t, would he just say goodbye, so long, it’s been nice knowing you but I’ve got a life to live, so off I go? “I said I’d think about it, okay? I will. I… maybe I can…. Give me a few days.”
“Okay.” Suddenly he was shaking his head, and a small, wry smile appeared. “God, you drive me crazy, you know that?”
I was beginning to drive myself crazy. “I guess it’s a specialty I never knew I had.”
“Big Bend for Thanksgiving. Yeah, I want to do that with you. That would be fantastic.”
Relief made me weak, but I didn’t let him see. “You mean fabulous, don’t you? Any gay man worth his salt would say fabulous. Haven’t you ever watched Queer Eye?”
THAT NIGHT in the cabin, we pushed the two single beds together and made love. Then we lay pressed against each other in the solid darkness. The temperature had fallen and it was cold. We were warmer together, with our arms around each other and with his breath gusting in my face.
I was drifting toward sleep when Kevin said, his voice low, “If you come over next weekend, I promise you a massage you won’t forget.”
Next weekend. I was trying not to think about that when I’d promised I would. I didn’t need this, him pressing, and the play too. I kept my reply light, disguising my turmoil. “I thought you liked licking.”
“I do. And touching. And all sorts of other things. What do you like, Tom?”
The answer was so clear in my mind that I didn’t even try to stop it from coming out.
“You,” I said roughly.
He moved within my arms, restlessly, as if some charge went through him so that he couldn’t stay still. Then he stopped and whispered, “Perfect. Because I like you too.”
THE CAST and crew seemed determined to bring in each edition of the paper, cut out the letters, and tack them on the Little Theater bulletin board with a nervous, brittle defiance. Kids. One of them had brought in electrical tape and made a black-bordered box around the letters. All in all, they were doing pretty well, handling their anger and worry in healthy ways, I thought, but then it was still three and a half weeks to opening night. We hadn’t heard from the members of the school board yet, which was a small miracle, and I didn’t think they’d stay silent for much longer.
That afternoon my last class was out on a field trip with the biology teacher to count the number of saplings in a local nature preserve, so I got to the Little Theater for rehearsal work early. The room was deserted. George was teaching voice lessons in the choir room, which gave me time that I needed to work on schedules. He and I had worked up a comprehensive listing of what needed to be accomplished when. I agreed with him that it was the only way we could keep track of whether we were on top of getting the play ready for audiences by the first weekend of December.
I settled myself at George’s desk, powered up my Dell, and started going through the list. Costumes, check. Every single one was already hanging in the back wardrobe room. Buy stage makeup, no check. But we had it on order and it should arrive soon. Choreograph “La Vie Boheme,” three-quarters of a check. That was the middle-of-the-show blockbuster song-and-dance scene that ended act one. We were close, but it was a work-in-progress.
I chewed on a hangnail and stared at the screen, seeing what wasn’t there. Decide if you’re willing to just be fuck buddies with Kevin or if you have the courage to reach for something more. Definitely not a check.
If I turned away from him, I was a fool. I knew that. Somebody—a wonderful man—was offering me the kind of intimacy I had always craved and always denied myself, and I desperately wanted that with him. Not anybody else. Him. But if I said yes, then I was begging for the destruction of the small, secure life I’d built so carefully; I couldn’t see how we could keep our relationship a secret. I knew Kevin didn’t want that anyway, him with his invitations to his house.
Here we were, our lives intersecting during an unexpected and magical few months, when my eyes had been opened and my heart touched. But he was aimed right and I was aimed left. While I admired what he was determined to do, and even deep down wanted it for myself, I didn’t have the courage to reach for that golden ring.
I hadn’t slept well the past few days, as I asked myself if I could try with Kevin when my only other attempt at a serious relationship had ended in more pain than I ever wanted to endure again. I had no answer, so alone in bed, I’d let the anger out: Didn’t Kevin get it? What right did he have to demand this of me? I’d already given him more than I had ever imagined I’d give. Forget it. I didn’t need him. If he didn’t understand what I was risking, then it wasn’t worth being with him.
My anger was always short-lived. Kevin had turned my life upside down. Like a dumb teenager struck by an infatuation that he’s convinced is love, I wanted to be with him all the time, wanted to hear his voice on the phone, and I couldn’t imagine saying goodbye. I hurt even considering it and could barely touch the thought. Except I wasn’t a teenager. I was a grown man, and shouldn’t I be past all this emotional rigmarole?
How had I gotten myself into this situation?
The phone on the desk rang. I glared at it, but it kept on ringing, reminding me that I was George’s assistant and I’d promised to help, and that even if this was the paper calling, I could at least take a message. I grabbed the phone and caught myself before I growled into it. “Hello?” I said as moderately as three nights of interrupted sleep and an insolvable problem allowed.
“I want to talk to George Keating.” A man with a deep voice was talking. Middle-aged, solidly middle class.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Keating is not available. May I take a message?” I opened the desk drawer and pulled out a pen.
“Are you involved in the play too?”
I frowned and pushed the drawer closed by rolling the chair forward and shoving it with my belly. “I’m the assistant director, Thomas Smith. Are you one of our parent volunteers?”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead volunteering for that play.”
I looked at my laptop and bit my lip. “Is that the message you want me to write down?”
“No, I…. Listen, I’m sorry for saying that. It’s just… this play has me all riled up.” I imagined him running his hand through his hair. He sounded genuinely upset. “This play is all about drug addicts and faggots, right? The scum of the earth. Why would there be a play about them?”
I’d constructed my life so that nobody would ever call me a faggot to my face again. But he wasn’t calling me that. This man on the phone had no idea he was talking to one of the scum, just like nobody in the school knew it.
“There is drug use in Rent, yes,” I said firmly, putting on my teacher voice to cover up my anger and a sense of injustice that was suddenly brimming over. And a little bit of fear. I didn’t think I’d ever get rid of that; it was buried in me, along with the metal rod in my arm. “Though of course the drug use is simulated on stage. And there are homosexual relationships among the characters. But that’s not what Rent is about.”
“How could it be about anything else?” he challenged.
“It’s about how these young people have learned to make their own community. They live with each other, they fight with each other, they make bad choices, but ultimately they learn to support each other.”
“That’s not
what Pastor Hunnicutt said.”
We had three Baptist churches in town, and Hunnicutt led the flock of the most conservative member of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Has he seen the play?”
“I guess. Sure, he must have.”
“Then I guess we’re involved in a disagreement in interpreting the play, and that’s certainly possible.”
“Not when there are Biblical principles involved.”
There was absolutely nothing I could say in direct response to that. I’d left the Presbyterian church my parents had raised me in the first week of college, and I’d never wanted to go back where I wasn’t accepted and didn’t belong.
“The way the school is presenting Rent is that the characters are all ugly ducklings in one way or the other,” I said, “rejected by society, in part on the outskirts because of some of the choices they’ve made. But they haven’t lost a vision of something better that they’re trying to construct themselves. Do you know what the ending lyrics are for one of the biggest songs? It says ‘Measure your life in love.’ That’s the ultimate message of the show.”
“Love, huh?”
“That’s right.”
He snorted. “Love’s all well and good for storybooks, but I’ve got to deal with the here and now. Look, I’ve got a daughter in this school, and she’s all worked up because we’ve told her she can’t go see the play with her friends. She’s a freshman, just fourteen. Her mother had to sit down and explain to her why homosexuals are perverted. What, you know, what they do. No mother should have to describe those godforsaken acts.”
I could hear the disgust in his every word. Men kissing. Sucking each other off. Ass fucking. What I did with Kevin, what I was driven to do and what I loved doing with him, part of what had made these past weeks so great and what had caused George to notice that I was happy. Any and all of that was so horrible that this man could barely bring himself to talk about it.
He was still talking. “Irene wouldn’t have had to explain all that filth to Janey without this play.”
I couldn’t sit and just take this. I jumped to my feet, pushing the chair back on its rollers, though once standing I had no idea what else to do and simply stood there facing the wall. But I knew what I had to say. Every closeted gay man, I suspected, knew how to dissemble. Or to lie outright, denying what was essential to himself.
“I can understand how speaking about homosexuality with your daughter might be uncomfortable, Mister….”
“I’m Ed Walker.”
“Mr. Walker, you certainly have the right to—”
“But it’s the school’s fault, see? Oh, forget it. I’m talking to the wrong person. You don’t have any say in this, do you?”
“I do support the production of Rent,” I said carefully. Carefully, but not entirely truthfully. Another half-truth.
“I bet you do. Pastor Hunnicutt said you’ll be having boys kissing boys on stage. That’s disgusting. That’s sick. It’s everything a good Christian should be against.”
I wasn’t going to debate theology with this man. “I really can’t comment on the specific directorial choices that will be made about staging the play, Mr. Walker.”
“Which means you’re going to do it. You’ll be run out of town.”
My heart was thumping, and I hated myself for the fight or flight response this well-meaning bigot was drawing from me. I had to change George’s mind about the onstage kissing. A peck on the cheek would do as well, right? With the opposition to the play rising, surely he would see the reasonableness of it.
“I’ll be putting in a call to the principal about all this,” Walker all but snarled, his earlier politeness having dissolved in his frustration. “Keating doesn’t have to call me back because I’m going straight to the top. Goodbye.”
I slammed the phone down. “Damn it!” Self-righteous, arrogant, narrow-minded, poorly informed—
“Tom?”
“Jesus!” I said as I whirled around, startled out of my wits. A large, looming figure stood not ten feet behind me in the doorway, both arms raised as if ready to strike. For a breathtaking moment I thought I’d have to defend myself, that the strength of my own arms would be put to the test and inevitably be found wanting, that once again I’d find myself down on the ground….
But it was just George, all six foot six inches of him. He’d hooked his fingers onto the edge of the overhead doorjamb and was sort of hovering there, an astonished look on his homely face.
“Sorry,” he said right away, swaying, and then he finally pulled his arms down and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his lumpy brown sports coat. “I didn’t mean to…. I thought you knew I was here all the time.”
“I didn’t,” I snapped, and felt ashamed of myself for it. I heaved in a breath and calmed myself. This was embarrassing.
“Another phone call from a concerned citizen?” George asked. “Threatening to talk to Hiram?”
“You’ve had others? You haven’t told me about that.”
He shrugged. “What would be the use? Only two others, though.”
“George—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “It’s just the way it is. There are people who disagree with what we’re trying to do here.”
“What we’re trying…. George, what are you trying to do? I thought you were putting on a school play. Is there more? Is this some crusade you’re on?”
Before answering me, he moved over to the desk, saying “pardon me” as he passed. He picked up a book and then bent over to stuff it into his briefcase on the floor. I stepped back to where he’d been in the doorway.
“Well?”
He straightened and faced me. “Tom. Come on. I think it’s obvious.”
“No, it’s not, at least not to me.”
“People are just people. Folks are folks. Right?”
What was he talking about? Suddenly I wanted to punch him. “What?”
George spread his hands. “I want our students to understand that. To know that we’re all here together, and we’re not all the same. Not everybody lives in Gunning and thinks like the people here. I’ve gotten really tired of the students who come through here not understanding that there’s a world of options and differences out there.”
“We aren’t here to teach—”
He talked right over me. “And I’m sick to death of directing inoffensive, outdated Rogers and Hammerstein when there are so many other musicals we could be putting on that are challenging and thought-provoking. I’ve been wanting to do something new and innovative for a couple of years now. For myself, for the kids, for the community. For you too, because I wanted to work with you again as assistant director. When I saw that Rent was available in a school version, I figured for sure you’d want to be involved with that, so I jumped at the chance.” He shrugged. “I thought we might as well go for broke. Once the community sees Rent, anything else won’t even make them blink.
“So, that’s what I’m after, a double agenda. Better plays for me to direct and teaching what you of all people should know the truth of, that people are just people.”
I was blinking. And terrified. Was George saying…. What was he implying about me? I had to know what I was dealing with. I could barely get it out, but I asked, “What do you mean, me of all people?”
He looked at me hard, as if parsing exactly what I’d said, and a few endless seconds passed during which I could imagine him saying the worst. He finally answered, slowly, drawing it out. “Well…. I guess I mean how well-read you are. How I’ve sort of figured out you have an open mind. You’ve got to be a liberal. Aren’t you?””
Then he didn’t know… of course he didn’t know I was gay. I’d been careful. I was safe. Wasn’t I?
But he’d somehow guessed my politics, and I didn’t know how that had happened. I’d never discussed what I thought of the political scene with anybody in Gunning. The town was a hotbed of conservatism, both politically and socially. There’d been McCain for President signs everywh
ere. Keeping my political views to myself—except when I got to talk about them with Kevin—was common sense and part of the role I’d been playing. So how did George know I was one of the few in town who’d quietly celebrated when Obama had been elected the week before?
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean anything one way or the other when we’ve got to deal with the protest against the show. What are we going to do?”
“Keep on keeping on,” George said, reminding me of what Robbie had said. “Unless the school board closes us down, and I don’t think that will happen.”
I wasn’t so sure, and I couldn’t imagine the kids’ reactions if it did. But oh, how it would simplify my life.
George opened up the desk drawer, pulled out the whistle he used to keep rehearsals in order, and draped it around his neck. I turned around and preceded him into the Little Theater, which in a few minutes would fill up with cast and crewmembers. “So you picked a play about AIDS, heroin, and homosexuality just so you could crash through the barrier and put on… what next year?”
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” he said promptly.
I stopped in my tracks. “You’re kidding. Gunning High School, cannibalism, and slitting throats for fun and jollies? It’ll never happen.”
He clapped his hand on my shoulder, thankfully not too vigorously. “And you never thought the committee would approve Rent. The world is changing, Tom.”
We couldn’t talk anymore because the kids started pouring in, chattering about their day, complaining about homework assignments, dumping their books and backpacks in the corner of the room we’d designated for that. A few of them started drawing on the chalkboard. So long as it wasn’t obscene, I usually let them do that, and right now I wasn’t up to playing disciplinarian. I needed to get my head back together after that phone call, and most especially after the scare that George had given me. I went over to the piano we always had there and sorted through sheets of music, but I barely saw what passed through my hands. Slowly, I calmed down. If I started jumping at every little innocent remark made by a fellow teacher…. I had to get hold of my fears. It was bad enough to have them threaten my time with Kevin. I couldn’t let them expand to fill the school hours too.
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 93