Hold My Hand

by Michael Barakiva

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Not much to tell.”

  Alek waited for Dustin to launch into his own monologue, but apparently “not much to tell” was all he had to say for himself.

  Asking questions didn’t help the conversation, either.

  “What do you like?”

  “Skateboarding. And rollerblading. And Magic: The Gathering.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  “My dad works for the state. My mom runs her own business from home, I think.”

  “And what do you think you’ll be doing when we’re older?” Alek asked.

  “I dunno—probably get a job. You?”

  Alek put his hands up to his face to hide his mounting frustration. “I’ll probably get a job, too, Dustin.”

  “Cool.” Dustin nodded.

  Alek stared at Dustin, trying to discern what his hidden superpower was. And more importantly, how Becky could possibly be with someone who didn’t have any of her charm or wit or badassery. Was this the destiny of all cool girls, to end up with boring guys unworthy of them? Or were girls just designed to be more interesting than guys, so a degree of disparity was built into the equation?

  The face of his ancient cell phone showed the time and date: Friday, December 27, 3:17 p.m. If he’d had an even slightly up-to-date model, he would’ve flipped the time display to show the seconds passing. But maybe it’s better that he didn’t, because then he’d be even more aware of how slowly time felt stuck in a room with a guy who he had nothing in common with, who didn’t have the most basic idea of how to carry on a conversation. And who, more importantly, was in no way good enough for his best friend.

  15

  Every silence has its own flavor. There is the electric silence of expectation that charges the air around it, like a match point in tennis, or the moment before you receive a test back and see how you’ve done. There is the effortless silence of efficiency, which Alek saw in his parents: wordlessly working together in the kitchen, dicing, whisking, and passing each other ingredients as if they had been choreographed. There is the red silence of anger, the pulsing silence of accusation, the euphoric silence of unspeakable joy. And then there is the stilted silence of awkwardness, which changes the air around it to molasses: thick, oppressive, and, for reasons no one can quite articulate, impossible to overcome.

  “So…” Ethan trailed off.

  “So…” Alek repeated.

  The day was so gloomy and cold and threatening to snow that Alek had almost canceled. But the weather had held, and he’d met Ethan at the diner.

  The ice cubes melted slowly in the amber-tinted, hard plastic glasses of water on the warped Formica table. The uneaten half of Ethan’s grilled cheese sandwich lay next to the pile of room-temperature french fries, separated by a pool of crusting ketchup. The only evidence of the chicken club platter that had been on Alek’s plate was the empty plastic thimble of coleslaw. Alek had considered getting an egg-salad club, but the presence of Señor Huevo, staring at him from his tea-box house, would’ve made him feel like a monster.

  Before Alek had found out that Ethan had cheated on him, their relationship had never known the stilted silence of awkwardness. Their unlikely energies had always balanced each other out, like a seesaw. The conversation flowed naturally, twisting and turning and splitting as it might but always in motion. In the past, their silences had ease.

  Now it felt like they were on opposite sides of a thick, dusty old curtain. Even if Alek had wanted to draw it open, he didn’t know where to find the part.

  “Did I tell you my dad’s going away for a week after New Year’s?” Ethan shuffled the french fries around on his plate aimlessly.

  Alek shook his head.

  “Yeah, he’s got this retreat in San Francisco.” Ethan stopped speaking, and Alek wondered if he was supposed to say something—maybe ask a question about Ethan’s dad’s trip? He was forming the words when Ethan filled the awkward silence. “So what’s going on with you?”

  “I’m almost done rewriting my ‘What Being Armenian Means to Me’ paper to reflect a more accepting, modern, pansexual and transgender perspective.”

  “And you think they’re gonna be into your new version? It sounds—I don’t know—a bit controversial. Especially for church.”

  “It’s just a few paragraphs at the end.”

  “Tell me again why you guys celebrate Christmas later?”

  Even when he was in the best of spirits, Alek hated having to explain this part of his cultural heritage. “Western Christians celebrate Christmas on the twenty-fifth, the alleged date of Jesus’s birth. But the Armenians celebrate the baptism, which just as allegedly happened twelve days later. You know, twelve days of Christmas and all that jazz.”

  Alek thought about telling Ethan about the gyot in Arno’s textbook. But for reasons he couldn’t entirely articulate, he decided not to. “I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see the church for what it really is. Its positions on homosexuality, abortion, gender rights—they’re positively medieval. I mean, the Orthodox Church makes the Catholics look Protestant. I’m looking at this thing that I’ve had all my life, that’s been holy, like, actually holy, and seeing it for what it really is, and it’s depressing, you know? I feel betrayed.” A silent again hung between them.

  There was so much more Alek wanted to say, accusations to hurl, details to gather, defenses to mount, reconciliations to attempt—all things Alek would’ve said if things between them weren’t so weird. The thoughts formed themselves in his brain, traveled down to his heart, where they were tinted with emotions, then shot up to his mouth, becoming words along the way. But they got stuck there, in the space between throat and lips, like stalled traffic. “So what’s your dad’s retreat?”

  “I don’t know—something where you’re not supposed to speak, I think?”

  Ethan continued talking about his dad, his retreat, and Alek nodded or threw in an occasional “mm-hm” to show that he was following along.

  Mostly, he watched Ethan, his boyfriend, those three cubic feet of bone and blood and muscles, wondering who and what he was. “What do you want to do with your life, Ethan?” Alek hadn’t waited for a natural lull in the conversation—he just blurted the words out, as if Ethan hadn’t just been midsentence.

  “Huh?”

  “Like, when you’re all grown up—what do you want to do?” They paused as their waiter with tattoos running up his forearms cleared the plates, trading them for the check.

  “I got this.” Ethan leaned forward, slipping his wallet out of his jeans.

  “Why don’t we split it?” Alek slid a ten-dollar bill over the table to Ethan.

  “Please?” Ethan begged.

  “Dutch. It’s better.” Alek removed his hand from the ten-dollar bill, letting it sit on the table. Ethan reluctantly pocketed it. “So—your life. What do you want to do with it?”

  “I dunno. Something fun.”

  Alek rolled his eyes. “Something fun? That’s it?”

  “Yeah—what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. I just don’t know what kind of answer that is.”

  “All right, Ms. Schmidt. I guess I didn’t adequately prepare for this surprise guidance counselor session on the rest of my life.”

  Alek closed the lid on Señor Huevo’s tea-box house, placed it in a gloved hand, and followed Ethan to the register. “I like images and visual things and stuff, so I thought I could be a web-page designer.” Ethan paid the bill, then popped a mint from the bowl by the register, something Alek’s mom ensured neither of her sons would ever do by forwarding them articles about the fecal matter found in a random sampling of said bowls. “Or maybe one of those guys who comes up with logos—you know, like the eagle for Antihero boards or the smiley face for Roger.” Ethan nodded, sufficiently pleased with his answer. “What about you?”

  “I want to do something that makes the world better.”


  “Uh, could you be more specific?”

  “You know, like work for Doctors Without Borders. Or maybe be a lawyer, but not the kind that works for those evil corporations. The kind that represents poor people. Like Matt Murdoch.”

  “Who?”

  “You know—Daredevil?”

  “Uh-huh.” Another silence descended on them, until Ethan broke it forcibly. “You think your answer is better than mine?”

  “No,” Alek responded, avoiding the fight. But of course, Ethan was right. Alek did believe in the superiority of his answer.

  “You know I’m not, like, a good-grades guy like you. And I think it’s great that you want to make the world a better place, but there are lots of ways to do that.”

  “Sure.”

  They walked out of the main part of the diner, into the lobby. Alek’s hands ached for the beat-up Street Fighter II arcade game that lived next to the three ancient quarter-candy machines.

  “You wanna, I don’t know…” Ethan trailed off. “You wanna come over?”

  “I think I’m going to feed the beast a few quarters, okay?” Alek gestured back to the arcade machine inside the diner.

  “I could wait…”

  “It’s good.”

  “Oh, I just…”

  “What?”

  “I thought we were gonna hang all afternoon.” A breeze blew across them, threatening to take Ethan’s winter hat with it. He yanked it down, tighter, across his head. “It would be nice to spend some QT, you know?”

  “Sorry, Ethan—I gotta finish my Christmas essay.”

  “Okay. Are you doing anything on New Year’s Eve?”

  Alek paused before answering, a pause he would’ve never taken before. “Not really.”

  “You wanna come over?” Ethan asked pitifully. “My dad’s going to be at Lesley’s, and we could just chill.”

  “Yeah.” Alek shifted on his feet, wanting this conversation to be over.

  “Great. Around seven?”

  “We’ll order in?”

  Ethan’s eyes twinkled with their former mischievousness. “Or better yet, I might have a surprise waiting for you.”

  “Really?” Against rational thought, Alek felt the tug of Ethan pulling him, titillating him, exciting him about the unknown.

  “Really.” Ethan leaned in and stole a quick kiss from Alek’s cheek. “I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve.”

  * * *

  Alek had never actually spent time in Reverend Father Stepanian’s inner office before, the small room behind the larger one where he usually met with congregants. The only nod to modernity was the sleek computer in the corner, the Apple icon glowing ominously. An Armenian flag hung limply in the corner, the red and blue and apricot-orange stripes folding over themselves in some kind of defeat, and built-in wooden bookcases lined the room itself, stained that perfect color between mahogany and dark brown that made you feel smarter just by being near it.

  The reverend father’s framed diplomas were prominently displayed, hung behind his desk. And everything was exactly where it was supposed to be: the pencils and pens all neatly protruding from the leather cup on the desk, the encyclopedia set with matching binding lined up alphabetically on the bottommost shelves of the bookcase.

  “I still don’t see why I’m here,” Nik complained.

  “Maybe the reverend father is going to ask Alek to head up the Armenian Youth Group, like you did last year.” Alek’s father adjusted his striped tie. “Your perspective could be valuable.”

  Alek closed his eyes so that his father wouldn’t see him roll them. Whatever reason Father Reverend Stepanian had for asking to see Alek and his family had nothing to do with the Armenian Youth. Of that, Alek was sure. In some ways, he envied Señor Huevo, safely ensconced in his silver tin tea box, perched on the armrest of Alek’s chair.

  “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.” The reverend father entered the room unrushed, radiating the kind of quiet and calm that Alek always admired in him.

  Alek’s parents rose to shake the reverend’s hand when he entered the room. Alek and Nik followed their parents’ lead.

  “What a beautiful sermon today, Reverend.” Mrs. Khederian beamed. “I’d never considered those passages in Luke about our own culpability in original sin that way.”

  “Thank you, Kadarine.” The reverend father sat behind his desk, shuffling and rearranging a few neatly stacked pages. “I’m sorry to have summoned you with such little notice, but there was an item that needed immediate attention.” He smiled. “I believe that last night, Alek accidentally e-mailed my wife the wrong draft of the essay he was supposed to read at the Christmas Eve service, and I wanted to call you in here so that we could clear it up as soon as possible.”

  “What makes you think it was the wrong draft?” Alek’s father asked.

  Father Reverend Stepanian presented the Khederians with two essays. He held up the first. “This was the paper that my wife granted a perfect grade, the one that had been selected to be read at the service.” Then he held up the second one. “And this is the one that Alek sent a few days ago, which is almost identical, with the exception of a different last page that is intentionally provocative and verges on, I hate to say it … obscenity.”

  “‘Obscenity’?” Mr. Khederian wrinkled his eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like Alek.”

  “I agree!” the reverend father exhaled in relief. “Alek’s always been a model boy. That’s why I’m sure there’s some other explanation.”

  “Could you give us an example of … these obscenities?” his father asked.

  Nik snickered just audibly enough for Alek to hear as the reverend father flipped through the second essay, landing on the final page. “Here we go.” He started reading from the paper. “‘In conclusion, although being Armenian is integral to my own sense of identity, it’s a pity that so many aspects of the church are so archaic. Take its position on abortion, for example. The idea that the church would want to take the choice away from someone who was the victim of rape or incest feels hopelessly outdated. Especially since twenty percent of the one million abortions in this country every year are had by teenagers.’ I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the Christmas Eve service hardly feels like the place to discuss abortion and rape and incest.”

  “It is disturbing,” Alek’s father said quickly.

  “And I haven’t reached the paragraph about the church’s position on gender and sexuality.” The reverend father leaned forward.

  “I’m sure Alek would be willing to change those sections,” his mother added.

  “Or just agree to read the original paper,” his father offered.

  “You know, you don’t have to talk about me in the third person since I’m right here!” Alek sat up straight in his chair, startling the adults into silence. “The truth is, what being Armenian means to me has changed since I wrote that original paper, and I don’t feel like it accurately reflects the topic. I updated the paper’s last few paragraphs to make it a more accurate representation.”

  “So sending this draft was not a mistake?” the reverend father asked.

  “Nope,” Alek confirmed.

  The reverend father cleared his throat, flipped to the end of the paper, and started reading. “‘And how are we supposed to reconcile the church’s belief that women can’t be ordained as priests?’” The reverend father continued reading. “‘We would never work for a company that explicitly forbade women from achieving its highest rank, and we wouldn’t belong to an organization that discriminated against women. And yet, because it’s church, we’re supposed to think it’s okay.’ What do you have to say about what I just read, Aleksander?”

  “I wonder if a little rehearsal might improve your delivery,” Alek responded.

  “This is not the time to make jokes,” the reverend father snapped back. “You and I talked about all of this, and we agreed to keep your personal life personal.”

  “If ‘we agreed’ means you told me t
o keep myself as closeted as possible, then yes, I suppose our recollection of that conversation is the same. But if we’ve learned nothing else from the #MeToo movement, it’s that consent needs to be articulated, not just assumed.”

  Nik had been sitting silently for this entire exchange, his eyes bulging out a bit farther with each act of Alek’s impudence.

  “Okay now, Alek, I think we just need to calm down a bit.” Mrs. Khederian’s smile grew even tighter.

  “Reverend Father is being incredibly considerate,” Alek’s dad chimed in. “All you have to do is read the original paper and everything will be fine, is that correct?”

  The reverend father nodded curtly. All the eyes in the room turned to Alek.

  “Since I would never bear false witness against my neighbor, Reverend Father, I don’t think it makes any more sense to bear false witness against myself.” Alek moved Señor Huevo’s tea box off the armrest, to make sure he didn’t accidentally knock it off with his increasingly expressive gesticulating. “I’m not going to lie to you, and I certainly don’t intend to lie to the entire congregation. This new essay reflects, most accurately, what being Armenian means to me.”

  “How dare you try to turn the annual Christmas Eve service into propaganda?” The reverend father’s face turned red. “Did you think we were just going to let this happen? Can you imagine what the members of this congregation would do if you read this essay to them?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d love to find out. I think you’d be surprised how many of them would appreciate something that addressed what being Armenian feels like to them right now.”

  “I guess we will never find out, because these words will never be uttered in this church.” The reverend father gathered up both essays. “Your original essay was selected for this honor. If you choose not to read it, then I have no option but to rescind the honor.” He handed the essays to Alek’s parents. “In addition, I’m suspending his Saturday school privileges. I think it’ll be best for both Alek and the other students.”

  “Reverend Father, please—” Mrs. Khederian protested.