by John Goode
Kelly slept in the top bunk, and I had claimed the one on the bottom as mine.
Thirty minutes after lights out, the whole camp became no-man’s land because no one was going to check on you unless someone raised holy hell or turned on a light. Kelly and I had no plans on doing either. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. He’d slip down and crawl into my bunk. Our excuse was that we could talk and not have to raise our voices, but the truth was that the bed was small, and we were almost lying in each other’s arms. Both of us wore only boxers, and just moving around, skin on skin, was pretty much the most erotic thing either one of us had done up to that point. I mean, sure I’d been under the shirt, above the bra with Melissa Carver, and Britney whatshername had gotten me off the night of the Sadie Hawkins Dance, but skin on skin like we were during those nights was farther than any girl would have allowed at that age.
Kelly rubbed himself against me like a dog. We went like that for the first few nights we had the cabin alone. Him lying with me, us talking about the day and the plays we’d run, and then lapsing into silence as we ground against each other. I remember him laying his head on my pillow, his lips on my shoulder, his tongue barely touching my skin. I’d move his hand over me, using him like the object I considered him to be. This was good to get off for the first four days, shooting in silence and him climbing up to his bunk as I drifted off with a sigh.
The fifth day, I moved his face to my chest. He complied, nibbling on me as he thought he understood what I wanted. As he moved lower, I pushed him farther and farther down. I slipped my boxers off so he knew what I wanted. The rest of the summer went a lot like that. I never reciprocated, of course. The only way I could assert to myself that I was straight was because I never touched him back. That was stupid and petty, but it was nothing compared to what I did to him next.
Kelly was a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t the most personable of types. I am sure a lot of the demons that plagued him have a place in my head as well, but at the time I didn’t care. As the summer went on, most of the guys began questioning his closeness to me. Of course, I was golden, so I never got any looks. They all wondered what was wrong with Kelly and one day brought it up to me.
I remember my heart freezing in place as I stopped breathing altogether.
I don’t recall much of what they said. All I knew was that Kelly was suspect and that meant I was by association. That same night, when he climbed down into my bunk, I pretended to freak out, asking him what he was doing. He had no answer, since it was the same thing we’d been doing the entire summer. The huge difference was that he had done things to me the entire time, and I had done nothing to him. It was stupid, but I can assure you that in thirteen-year-old-boy logic it made perfect sense. The next morning I shunned him pretty hard. That afternoon I moved out of the cabin and moved into the last bed in the huge cabin, where in the night I sat in the dark and told stories about him with the other guys.
Kelly never knew what he did wrong, and I never explained it to him. When I got back home, I went to my mom and told her that I didn’t want to play football anymore, that I liked baseball, but I was afraid to tell Dad. Just as I had figured, my mom used the information as a weapon against my dad, blaming him for forcing his own ideals on me against my will. I felt lousy, but I didn’t say anything to anyone. I moved into junior varsity and never played football again. Another two years passed before I saw Kelly in high school. My knowledge of what he had done allowed me to keep him under my thumb with just a look.
This was the little spiral of guilt and doubt that never allowed me to think I was as good a person as the people around me thought I was. I was living a lie, but the lie was so much better than the truth in my head. They had no idea who the fuck I was, and I never wanted them to know. I began dating girls aggressively after that summer with Kelly. I liked sex, and girls liked me, so it was never a stretch for me to date a girl for a while with relative ease. I made sure I was never really into any one girl; most believed I was another player, as most jocks were. I talked a good game, and again, most people wanted to like me, so it was easy to hide in the role. The first two years of high school, I got lost in the role a little. I’d hang with the older guys on the team, get smashed at the lake, and let some girl take advantage of me under the stars. I earned a reputation and used the reputation to my own needs. By the time Jennifer set her sights on dating me and stalked me, she knew that, at best, I was going to be indifferent toward her. I honestly didn’t think she was dating me; she was dating my letterman jacket. That was fine since she was one of the hottest girls in school.
We traded popularity, and no one was the wiser.
“You okay?” Kyle asked after a few minutes.
I looked up, not realizing I had drifted off in the middle of what we were doing. The crushing weight of everything I’d done to hide who I was and the realization I might do worse to Kyle pounded into me, and I began to tear up. “No,” was all I could say before I began to cry.
He hugged me tight, though he had no idea what was wrong. Him hugging me was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. My life was spinning out of control, and all I could think about was running away from it. I didn’t want to hurt Kyle, but I knew what I had done before. If I followed suit, I would hurt him the same way I’d hurt Kelly and Cody. And I so didn’t want to do that to Kyle.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, moving me around until he was leaning back, and I was being pulled against him. No one had ever done that for me before. My parents were not the expressive kind of people; as an only child, I was left on my own more times than not. As I grew up, people assumed I was going to be that guy, the one that people listened to, the one that they followed. No leader shows their weakness to those around them, and the more people I seemed to collect, the farther and farther away I hid. I couldn’t just break down in front of someone. Jennifer would have been mortified to see me cry like such a bitch. No one gains any popularity points for going out with a crybaby.
“I just—” I choked out, not even sure I was willing to say. After a second I shook my head and just gave up. “I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” he said, holding me close. “It’s gonna be okay.”
I wasn’t sure he knew what was upsetting me, but it sounded like he was talking about what I was freaking out about. Was it going to be okay? How was I supposed to go back to school and not be that guy? “How do you know?” I asked, hating myself for sounding so weak
He smiled at me, and I could see his eyes tearing up as well. “Because we have each other.”
I looked away and hated myself even more.
“I’m sorry I ruined the mood,” I said, sniffling.
“Hey, that was the first time I’ve ever gotten close to that mood,” he said with a toothy grin. “So that’s cool.”
I laughed and lay my head against his chest. His heart was pounding, and it was reassuring because I knew it was beating partly for me. We lay like that for a few minutes, and then his stomach grumbled loudly under my ear.
“Sorry,” he said as I burst out laughing.
“You hungry?” I asked, sitting up.
He looked at me sheepishly. “I was going to have breakfast before I got dressed.”
I rolled my eyes as I got up and grabbed his shirt from the front seat. “Then let’s go get some food.”
“What if someone sees us?” he asked, like we had just robbed a bank.
I climbed into the front seat. “Trust me, Kyle. You’re with me.” I turned around and gave him my thousand-watt smile. “You’re untouchable.”
YOU have to understand that I was never a person but instead a well-groomed bargaining chip.
My parents were high school sweethearts, which is a term that means “too stupid to use a condom.” When my dad went to college, my mom was already pregnant with me. That translated to “no matter how far my dad thought he was going, it wasn’t going to be far enough.” He had earned a scholarship playing football. Unf
ortunately, he also had operated under the delusion that since someone was paying his tuition because he could hit people hard, it was okay if he continued to hit people hard off the field.
It turned out when he hit people at a local bar and sent someone to the hospital, no one paid for his bail. It turned out when he was arraigned for assault and battery, no one paid for his lawyer, either. And it turned out when he was put on probation and missed three practices in a row, people stopped paying for his tuition. My dad had escaped Foster for exactly five and a half months. I know, because he screamed that at my mother every time they argued about nearly anything.
He married my mom and went to community college, managed to come out with an associate’s in business. From what I gathered, there wasn’t an actual shotgun involved, but my grandfather on my mom’s side had never been shy about sharing the fact I had a father because of what he had said when my dad started backpedaling before the wedding.
Growing up in a fucked-up family was a lot like living with a pack of tigers.
I did my best not to get anyone’s attention, and if they were calm, I made sure they stayed that way. Early on I understood that conversation in our house was what other people considered yelling in theirs. My mother took candy that made her happy and made her sad. The candies made her fall asleep, and they made her wake up. My dad, on the other hand, drank grown-up stuff that made him even angrier some nights. When I was younger, I didn’t get quite why they took what they did, but I also understood that if they stopped, things got worse.
It was assumed by both of them that I was going to grow up being the all-American boy.
I was going to play sports, be well-mannered and expected to be the kid from the happy family no matter how much bullshit the whole “happy family” thing was. Everything was about outside impressions; the fact that we were miserable human beings didn’t matter. If we had a nice car, then everything was all right. My dad loathed my mom’s ever-breathing guts, but that didn’t count. If she had real pearls and people knew they were real, then she was happily married to a great man. And the fact that my father had no patience for a young child and never missed an opportunity to tell me that while berating me as a burden didn’t matter as long as he sponsored whatever sports team I was on at the time. I had a great dad who was engaged in his son’s life, and I should be grateful for that.
I hated everything about my life.
As I grew up, I learned that complaining resulted in nothing but misery. Mom and Dad both knew that we were all caught in some kind of domestic purgatory until I graduated high school. Bitching about it was only going to exacerbate the situation. Instead of love and compassion, we substituted (or traded in) emotion for money. My dad ended up using what little local celebrity he had in Foster to sell cars and sell a lot of them. He ended up being made a partner in the dealership, which meant even more money, which meant even more status to maintain.
We moved to a bigger house, which meant better furnishings and better cars. The result: the more money became not enough money, and that meant more fights. I heard some weird saying once: “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Now I have no idea who the fuck the Joneses were, but we were in a race to keep up with the Greymarks, with the fictional versions of ourselves. Let me tell you, the fictional us were kicking the real us’s ass.
I always had the newest bike, the best clothes, and the most elaborate backyard setups in the neighborhood. We had a pool, a huge tree house structure that my dad had made for me by three contractors, and equipment for half a dozen different sports back there. Every kid within six blocks came to my house to hang out during summer. When I was young, it was awesome, because I was stupid enough to think they were there to hang with me. As I got older I figured out I was just the kid whose parents were buying him popularity in spades.
After that it became pretty shitty to be me.
There is nothing worse than a ten-year-old kid who knew that no one liked him for who he was. Every laugh was hollow, every smile just my lips going through the motion. I started to be a dick. Knowing that they were there to use my shit, I made it cost them to do it. I was a little asshole, turning guys against each other so that they’d fight to come over and be my friend. People wanted things, and if you had the things, then people wanted you.
The bad part was that everyone I knew was just like me.
All of my friends were rich kids, and they had come to the same realization I had around the same time. We became the stuck-up little bastards of the town, living up to every crappy stereotype about privileged kids ever dreamed up. We drank in junior high; we stole stuff we knew we had money for; we trashed shit because we hated the town.
I think it was when I realized that I stared at the other guys longer than was necessary while we dressed in the locker room and that I was doing more than just comparing when we showered that I was nothing like the other guys. After Cody, I knew I was nothing like these people, and once I realized that, I was disgusted—in myself, in them, in the entire lifestyle we were living. I would begin to get nervous changing out, shaking before games as I feared that any little thing would give me away. I was so scared of it that I just walled it off, built a facade around me of the guy everyone already thought I was. There was a small part of me that wanted to scream out the truth, but much like my parents, I literally had no idea how to live any other way. I had always had a ton of friends, even though they didn’t really know me. I had never been disliked by a majority of the people, even though they didn’t like me but the image I projected. I had never been considered anything but attractive, although, if those people were to look inside me they’d know I how ugly I was inside. I was stuck with no choice but to conform and hating myself for conforming.
I had been miserable for so long I’d grown numb inside.
Kelly had been a mistake, and I knew it. There was something inside of me I didn’t want to face. I discovered that staying completely still and drinking a lot didn’t help the pain go away, but it made me less aware it was there. At the same time, I felt trapped in my own life. When I made varsity, I could feel the noose tightening around my neck. I was running out of options. Varsity meant the next year and a half would be spent playing my ass out for scouts. If I was very good, I’d get a pass out of Foster, either into college ball or onto a farm team playing for next to nothing but swinging at the chance for the pros. I also knew as much as I felt restricted playing ball in high school, in college or on a professional team, it would get much worse.
I didn’t live with the illusion I was good enough for pro ball, but a free ride to college would be the only thing that could get me out of Foster. The only problem would be that I’d either have to become an incredible slut, fucking every girl who threw herself at me to prove I was a guy, or marry Jennifer. If the assumption in high school was that all jocks, including me, needed to have a girl, in college it would only multiply tenfold.
Every time my thoughts started to spiral toward the future, I could feel my heart begin to race and my stomach contract as if I was going to throw up. There wasn’t a night I didn’t fall asleep wishing I was just like everyone else, a mindless high school jock wandering the halls like a sheep grazing in the field. I promise you the only thing worse than being a rat trapped in a maze is being aware that you were that rat.
“And you, honey?”
My head snapped up, and I blinked, surprised. I wondered how long the waitress at Nancy’s had been waiting for my order. “Four-egg-white omelet with cheddar, onions, and a side of hash browns.” I saw Kyle’s eyes widen at my order, and I shrugged as I handed her the menu. “I’m a growing boy.”
He looked over the selections a few times and then opted for some pancakes.
The waitress smiled and took the menu as she asked me, “Who’s your friend, Brad? He on the team?”
“A friend,” I said way too quickly. “Just a friend.” That was no better. “I mean a friend who….” I realized there was no way for me to get out of this with my d
ignity intact, so I just gave up and said. “No, he’s not on the team.”
She gave me a long look, the same look she’d shoot me if I was being held against my will and needed her to call 911 or something. I smiled and looked away, knowing I had fumbled that pass in just about every way possible.
A few seconds later, Kyle said quietly, “Well that wasn’t awkward at all.”
I tried to give him a big smile, but I knew my heart wasn’t in it. “I’m sorry. First time I had to do that.”
“You’ve never brought anyone to eat here?” he asked. We both knew he wasn’t talking about that at all.
“First time I ever brought a guy I had just been making out with in my back seat.” I saw him blush, and I knew my grin had won the day. “We’ll get better at this,” I said, knowing the second I opened my mouth I was committing myself further into something I was in no way comfortable with, since it meant the inevitable destruction of this carefully crafted snow globe I called a life.
“We kinda have to, right?” His voice was hopeful, and that hope was like a tiny stab in my chest.
I sighed and took a drink of my orange juice, looking across the street at the Vine. It was barely ten in the morning. I don’t think anyone was even there yet. They had a noon matinee double feature that the guys and I had used more than once to skip the after-lunch classes. People didn’t usually go to the matinee, so the Vine was a good place to take a girl and fool around or maybe catch a buzz before heading back for practice. Nothing was funnier than watching five half-wasted guys struggling to run laps around the backfield without throwing up everywhere.
The rest of them took their cues from me, and with me gone, no one would have the guts to actually speak something and suggest skipping and heading over after lunch. No one would be there since I wasn’t at lunch to bring the idea up.
Kyle’s fingers snapped in front of my face.
“You okay?” he asked when I looked back at him. I nodded, trying to focus my attention on him, but I couldn’t dam off the rest of the voices in my head. “I was asking you what you wanted to do with the rest of the day.” I’d seen that look before from other people. He was asking me what to do, and suddenly, I couldn’t fake an answer.