The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories)

by Jeff Jacobson

  “People like me had a long time to think about all the issues, Charlie. Our parents engrain it in us from the moment we start to learn about our community. All of this has been dumped on you so fast. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to face these facts any less than the rest of us did.”

  Charlie drew his gaze away from the water and looked directly at his aunt.

  “What did Malcolm say to you?”

  Beverly looked down at her hands. When she looked up, she attempted a smile, but her face showed fresh hurt, as if she too had just been ripped open by Malcolm a few hours earlier, not over three decades ago. She blinked several times before she spoke.

  “He said I was too much of a daddy’s girl. That my father had huge shortcomings as our community leader. That he was not infallible. I had to either grow up and learn to think for myself, which included seeing my dad as a human being, not as a god, or live the rest of my life as his little hand puppet, brainwashed, just like my mother.”

  Charlie’s mouth fell open.

  “He couldn’t have been more right. It’s even clearer to me now than it was back when he told me.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out over the water.

  “Ok, it’s officially freezing. We’re going inside, Charlie. Turning blue isn’t going to help you with your decision.”

  As they stepped into the warmth of the kitchen, he could hear Amos’s toenails clicking on the wood floor. The dog rounded a corner and ran to them, pressing into their hands with his back, breathing hard out of his nostrils and quivering as they both bent down and rubbed his fur.

  “That’s right, buddy, that’s right,” Beverly said. She slid the door closed behind them, then placed her hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

  “It’s your decision to make, Charlie. I want you to remember that. Don’t make it for me, or for your mom, not for Randall, not anybody. You’re the one who needs to mull over what Malcolm told you.”

  Her eyes softened, losing their stern gaze.

  “And I trust you to make the right decision.”

  “What decision?” Randall yelled from the living room. “Does it involve dinner? A guy could starve around here!”

  Chapter 42

  Amos pulled at the leash, trying to inch over to the side of the road to investigate a clump of wild ferns.

  “Come on, boy,” Charlie grunted as his arm was yanked nearly out of its socket.

  “That sure is a big dog,” Diego said as they walked farther into the woods.

  “Tell me about it.” Charlie had to pull hard not to be knocked off balance.

  “The first time I came here was in preschool. My mom was the classroom parent for the day, and she and the teacher took us kids for a nature walk here. I remember…hey, did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “It sounded like…” Diego paused, looking around and trying to pinpoint what he heard.

  Chills ran all over Charlie’s skin. What if that dog was back? Or what if the witches were following them?

  Just then a thrashing sound erupted to their right as a large bluejay flew up from the bushes and into the sky.

  “God, that scared me!” Diego exclaimed, laughing. “Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I remember how big the woods seemed then. And how wet and green everything was.”

  Charlie inhaled deeply, trying to let the fresh, piny air calm him down, relieved that it had only been a bird.

  The temperature felt warmer today. Amos stopped yanking on his leash, finally understanding that Charlie wasn’t going to let him pull the boy wherever he wanted to go.

  “Diego, can I…can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, amigo, ask away.”

  “How can you be sure that you’re gay? Don’t you ever wonder if you’re wrong? I mean, how can you really know?”

  “Whoa, that came out of left field.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I mean, I’d rather you ask me about it than just ignore it and hope it goes away. Let’s see. I’ve always liked other boys. Just been attracted to them. I paid way more attention to them than to girls growing up. My uncle told me that when I was little and my mom and I would be visiting him in Yakima, that I’d always want to go talk to the farmhands that helped him in the orchards, never the pretty girls in town, or even my girl cousins, who are really gorgeous.

  “He said he wondered about it when I was little. Even asked my mom about it. She said I was just sensitive. I think she got angry about it all. Didn’t want it to be true.”

  “Your mom didn’t want you to be gay? But I thought you said she was cool with it.”

  “She is now. She wasn’t when I told her. It was really hard at first. We fought a lot. I can be a little opinionated when it comes down to it, and I told her she was being stupid and Catholic and mean. She said, ‘You don’t know what you want. You can’t! You’re only thirteen,’” Diego said in a high-pitched voice, imitating his mother.

  “Well, I just knew, you know? The way you know things? I read stuff about it at the library, and I always had crushes on guy movie stars and stuff. Oh my God, remember Wolverine in X-Men? I think I saw it when I was ten years old, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I told my mom I wanted him to babysit me. What I didn’t tell her was that I wanted him to kiss me. A lot!”

  Diego laughed as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  Charlie frowned. Their conversation wasn’t helping things much.

  He’d never talked to his mom about this stuff, let alone fought with her. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe it was just…

  But he felt a chill in his chest, the same one he’d felt yesterday, when Malcolm confronted him in the living room. That, and a growing concern that maybe all his life he, too, had thought about boys more than girls.

  “I used to play Diego’s Kissing Class with the kids in my neighborhood when I was like five or six,” Diego continued. “I’d line up the kids in a row in the hallway outside my bedroom, then make them come inside the ‘teacher’s office,’ one at a time, and ‘teach’ them how to kiss. I got in trouble because one of the girls told her mom that I kept her in the waiting room too long while her brother got longer ‘lessons.’ So embarrassing, but it’s true. The girl’s parents talked to my mom, and my mom tried to explain to me that I shouldn’t be teaching kissing other boys. She said I could kiss girls only after I grew up. I didn’t really get it. I thought we were all having a lot of fun.”

  They came around the corner of the small path, and there in front of them was the bridge, spanning a good forty feet in the air, both ends marked by giant pine trees.

  “I forgot about this place!” said Diego. He ran forward, then plopped himself down on the same bench where Charlie and Beverly had sat just before she’d leapt across the creek bed. Charlie tied Amos to the bench then sat next to Diego.

  Charlie felt some relief. He’d never kissed other boys when he was little. Diego had. And he’d never really thought about Wolverine before. So maybe he wasn’t necessarily…

  “When did you and your mom stop fighting about it?” he asked.

  “After she talked to her priest. Here I was, telling her she was too Catholic, but it was Father Heneghan who really helped her. She told him she prayed and prayed for me to like girls, and wanted him to help her pray harder, or to learn a better way to ask God for help. But he just asked her if she thought I was going to change. I guess she started crying, and told him she didn’t think I would. So he said that it was her job to love me fully, even if she didn’t like all of me, and let the rest be between God and me. Can you believe that? Pretty cool for a priest.”

  “But don’t you think you could be wrong? Maybe you just didn’t, I don’t know, try, or something?”

  “I did. I totally tried to like girls. I used to pray for the same thing my mom did. I thought I had a crush on Tawny for the longest time, because she was nice, and fun, and we really got along so well.

  “
But I never felt the things for her that I did for other guys. There was this kid in Tawny’s and my seventh grade class, Ken Nishimura. He was tall, and quiet, kind of the brainiac type, but good in sports too. I had such a huge crush on him. I couldn’t even think straight when he was around. It was Tawny who told me that I should just get over it and admit to myself that I was attracted to guys.

  “She said to me, ‘It’s ‘Ken’ this and ‘Ken’ that. When are you gonna face the fact that you’re in love with him?’”

  “She did? She just said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t talk to her for like three days. As you can see, I’ve really gotten a lot more mature in my old age.” Diego laughed. “But then I talked to her about it. I cried, she cried, we both cried, and then well, that was that.

  “I told my mom, and she went a little nutty on me. That’s when we started fighting. I got in her face about it, like any snotty thirteen-year-old would do, and she pushed back. But a couple of weeks later she talked to Father Heneghan.

  “She sat me down one night. At first I was ready for another fight, but instead she told me to be quiet, that she had something important to say. She said that she would love me no matter what, even if she didn’t understand it or like it.

  “Oh my god! I cried so hard, and then she cried, and then we both cried. You can see the pattern here.” He smiled and shook his head. “Anyway, after that it got a lot easier. Well, that’s not true. It got easier between my mom and me. I started coming out to people at school, and that’s when things started to get really hard. Kids began teasing me. Some of the eighth graders beat me up a few times.

  Charlie shivered. It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to beat up Diego, who just seemed so nice and friendly. Who would do that? But he remembered the three upperclassmen taunting him and Diego near the soccer field, and how mean they’d looked. And of course, there was always Ted Jones

  “My mom talked to the school principal. He was a total tool about it. The school didn’t have a policy on bullying, and he kept saying that if I just stopped telling everyone, there wouldn’t be any trouble.

  “She tried to push it at the school, getting all lawyer-like with them, but they got really nasty with her, telling her she’d need to document the bullying, she couldn’t prove who had beat me up, blah blah blah. So she pulled me outta there. I went to three different private schools that year and the next. But once freshman year rolled around, I started at PA and have been there ever since.

  “I know what you saw the other day, with Julio and Dave and Randy, was kinda bad. But believe me, it’s way better than middle school. Plus, Principal Wang really does enforce the no-tolerance policy. I’ve never had trouble with any of the teachers. They’ve all gone through a diversity training program, so it works pretty well.”

  “I thought you said it was hard at school sometimes. That people treated you special, like being extra positive or something,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, but it’s still way better than getting beaten up. And really, I was kind of upset yesterday when I told you all of that. I feel like there’s good support for me at school, with the GSA and the policies and stuff.

  “Besides, we have to start somewhere. Yeah, there are gay talk-show hosts, and TV characters. Even movies . But sometimes that doesn’t trickle down into the everyday, walking-down-the-hall-people-looking-at-you kind of thing. But if I don’t do it, then who is going to? If I wait for someone else to be brave and come out to make it safe for me, then it might not ever happen.

  “You know that Gandhi quote, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’? I think it’s true,” Diego said, shrugging his shoulders.

  He stopped talking after that, then bent down and grabbed a stick near the bench. He dragged it around in the dirt for a while and threw it into the creek. Amos hopped up from where he was lying on the ground and pulled at his leash.

  “Oops, I forgot about you. You wanted to go get that, boy, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” Diego teased, scratching Amos behind the ears. The dog whined and shivered, caught between Diego’s attention and the stick.

  “My turn for a question?” Diego said, looking at Charlie, who had been staring down at the water in the creek, lost in thought.

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “Why are you asking me all of this? You seem kind of different about it today than you did Tuesday night. Or even yesterday. I don’t know. Like you’re trying to figure something out,” Diego said, glancing into Charlie’s eyes for a brief moment before looking away.

  Charlie didn’t answer for a long time. He listened to the cars driving across the bridge overhead, sending rumbles into the dirt beneath their feet. He watched a leaf swirl and spin in an eddy near the creek bank.

  He thought about what Malcolm had said, about telling lies, about how he couldn’t be a witch and hide this part from himself. Or others. He was scared. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  “I think I might be gay too,” Charlie said, his voice abrupt and clear, as if he were announcing something normal, something easy, like a test score in Geometry. But he hadn’t really meant to say it. Had he?

  He began to feel light-headed. He remembered the first time he ever jumped off the high dive at the Clarkston Community Pool. He stood at the end of the board for a long time. He knew it was twelve feet high when he was on the pool deck looking up at it. But from the top of the board, the water’s surface looked miles away. He almost jumped off the board in the first thirty seconds or so of standing there. But he stopped at the last minute, grabbed on to the railings and tried to catch his breath. He became light-headed, contemplating that he’d almost jumped.

  He felt the same now, except that this time he really had jumped, he’d opened his mouth and said the thing he was most afraid to say, to himself or to anyone. His face felt fuzzy, as if there were insects crawling all over it. He scratched at his chin.

  He could tell Diego was looking at him, but he couldn’t turn to face the boy. He looked down at his feet, then up at the sky, wondering if something in the clouds would help him know what to do.

  “Whoa. I mean, well…whoa. Just like that?” he heard Diego ask.

  Charlie turned and looked at him. And nodded.

  He didn’t expect what Diego said next.

  “You may be, you may not be. I think it’s just important to talk about it.” The boy’s voice had lost its excitement. He sounded like he was trying to be a serious adult.

  “Don’t you want me to be gay? Don’t you want there to be others? Wouldn’t it make it easier for you?” Charlie asked, finally looking into Diego’s face.

  The boy smiled. “Of course it would make it easier for me. But only if it’s true. And making it easier for me isn’t the only reason it would be great for me if you were gay. But it’s a big deal, Charlie. Can’t we just talk about it a bit? I mean really, there’s no rush.”

  “Yes there is! You don’t understand! I have to figure this out before…”

  Charlie stopped himself. He’d almost spilled the beans about Malcolm, about the community. What was he doing, flapping his lips like this? If he wasn’t careful…

  “No, you don’t have to rush it. Not at all. Let’s just talk about it.”

  Chapter 43

  And so they did. They sat there on the bench, talking about everything, about the boys Diego thought were hot at school (Charlie didn’t know who he thought was hot at school. He never let himself think those thoughts, so he wasn’t sure. Or at least, he wasn’t sure if he was sure…), about what it was like to tell family members, about the cool programs and groups there were that offered support.

  “Really, it’s a great time to be gay,” Diego said. “So many things have changed in the last five or ten years. And they keep changing. You can now even get married in Washington State. And more states will follow, I just know they will.”

  They talked about everything…everything, that is, except the part a
bout them, about their friendship, about how things were….

  Charlie just couldn’t bring it up. Diego was too close, too near. He didn’t even know what he thought, did he? Or what he wanted? I want to sit closer to Diego, his own body seemed to be saying to him. I want to touch his skin, I want to…

  What if he did say something? Then what? What if Diego laughed at him? The boy hadn’t named Charlie on his list of hot guys at school. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe Charlie didn’t want to be on that list.

  But maybe he did.

  What if Diego wasn’t attracted to Charlie at all?

  Or worse: what if he was?

  Would he have to do something about it? Would that mean they were going out? Would everyone at school see them together? Would they have to hold hands in between classes? Would Diego try to kiss him? That would be so gross, that would be…

  Charlie thought about it. He thought about the other boy’s lips, darker than his own, full, the way they moved fast when he talked. He’d wondered what it would be like to kiss someone before. But he’d always thought about kissing a girl. He mostly worried what her lipstick would taste like. But a boy? This boy, who spoke Spanish and Chinese, who used to teach kissing lessons as a kid, sitting here on the bench next to him, this boy who was handsome and popular and tall and seemed to know everything? What would it be like to kiss him?

  I want to know, Charlie heard that same voice say inside of him.

  He stood up. This was too much. He started pacing back and forth in front of the park bench.

  So that was true too, was it? He, what? Liked Diego? Loved him? He didn’t think he loved him. But then again, how did you know if you loved somebody? You let them kiss you? You wanted to listen to them talk all day, even if they talked too much, even if they were silly? You felt shy and excited and worried and ready, each and every time you saw them?

  Maybe he was just attracted to the boy. Maybe that was it. He didn’t love him. He was just attracted to him.

  What did that mean? Did it have to mean anything? Couldn’t he be attracted to other boys too? And other girls?