And no sooner had that thought flown through my head, than Buck put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I’ll kill you if you ever tell anyone I said this, but that’s really sweet. They look so in love.”
As the clock stuck twelve, I looked up to see Kimberly lift her face to J.J.’s for their New Year kiss, and at that very moment I realized our house of cards was due to crumble. Because the look in her eyes was one that I had somehow managed not to ever notice before. She was totally, one hundred percent, and irrevocably in love with him. Just like me. And it was all my fault.
Happy New Year.
CHAPTER 16
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
“We have to tell her!” I shouted at J.J., whom I’d dragged into a guest bathroom as soon as I was able to get him away from all of the congratulations and best wishes of the deceived and unknowing family and friends.
“Tell who? Tell what? Why are you yelling?”
As I opened my mouth to vent my dismay, he suddenly lifted a hand to cover it. “Wait.” He then leaned in, smiling softly and looking at me with the purest adoration imaginable, and said, “Kiss me. It’s a new year.”
I realize a person better, or at least stronger, than myself would have resisted the offer of a kiss to first explain our crimes against humanity, or at least against Kimberly, but when faced with J.J.’s mouth and dark brown eyes, I melted just long enough to meet his lips. But, really, I swear, I kept it short, because I knew what I needed to say was too important to think only of myself, and I pulled away with J.J. craning his neck to chase my lips with expectations of continuing.
“Kimberly.”
‘What about her?”
“We have to tell Kimberly.”
“About what?
“About us.”
“What are you talking about? You know we can’t do that.”
“We have to.”
“Why?
“Because she’s in love with you.”
He paused, doubt briefly fighting to make an appearance, but getting pushed away. “No, she’s not.”
“She is.”
“She’s in love with all of this,” he gestured to the nice bathroom fixtures, but I knew that he meant the whole mansion, and the Kennerly lifestyle and fame that went with it.
“Well, if that’s true, and that’s all she cares about, then telling her the truth won’t keep her from having what really matters to her, will it?”
J.J. sighed, slumping back against the wall and sliding down it into a squat. “Chris, we’ve been through this.”
“And it still hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s just gotten worse. Oh, and thanks for outing me to your dad, by the way.”
“What?”
“Your dad knows I’m gay. That’s part of what he was talking to me about in the library.”
“I’m not the one who told my parents. That was Kimberly.”
“Kimberly?”
“Yeah, and to be honest, I think she’s sort of proud of it in a weird way. It’s like she thinks it trendy to have a gay relative or something. And she thinks you and Duane are adorable together.”
I rolled my eyes. “I keep telling her we’re not a couple.”
“She thinks you’re just afraid of your feelings.”
“Well, see, all the more reason we should tell her. She likes the gays. She’ll understand. And besides, your parents are, like, the most famous liberals in the world. It’s not like they’re going to disown you or anything.”
J.J. dropped his head and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing them. “It’s all so easy to figure out from the outside.”
It didn’t make me happy to know that I was making him miserable, so I lowered myself down to the marble floor next to him and put a hand on his leg. “J.J., if anyone understands how hard it is to come out to your family, it’s me. Really, I suspect it’s just about any gay person.”
He took my hand and moved it to his heart. “If only it were that easy. If I ever come out, it’s not going to be my family I have to worry about. At least, I think they’ll deal with it … eventually. It’s the rest of the world.”
Having spent the last few months on the periphery of the media feeding frenzy that was his life, I had some idea of what he meant. And when I amplified the troubles I had had coming out in my own little world—and to be honest, I’d only just started, and I’d only told a few people—I began to understand what he was facing. But a part of my own little world was Kimberly, and what we were doing to her wasn’t right. I pulled my hand away from J.J. as I said, “I can’t keep doing this to Kimberly. It’s just not fair.”
“And having to deal with any of this just because we were born a certain way is?” he said.
Since there was obviously no good argument for the ugly truth of what he’d said, I kept my mouth shut, but the way I looked into his eyes did not change.
“She could react very badly,” J.J. said.
“Well, we have been lying to her,” I said.
“Chris, I just can’t do it. I can’t risk it.”
Throughout our entire conversation, a part of me had been allowing myself to believe that if I were patient and relied more on logic than emotion, maybe I’d be able to make him understand that we didn’t really have a choice anymore. But then, finally, it hit me like a blow to the gut that in fact we did have a choice. However, the only choice I could continue to live with was at odds with the only one with which J.J. felt he could live. “Well,” I said, beginning to stand, “I can’t keep lying to her. If someone’s heart has to get broken, it’s better if it’s sooner rather than later. Even if that means it’s mine.”
Looking utterly dismayed, J.J. pushed himself up from the floor. “What are you saying?” he asked, fear beginning to fill his confused eyes.
“I’m sorry, loving you has been more amazing than anything I’ve ever known. But you have to decide.” Suddenly, as if the enormity of what I was saying overwhelmed me, and not being able to stand another second in that confining space, three feet away from the only man I might ever love and having to see the look on his face as I told him he had to choose between loving me or continuing to live a lie, I couldn’t take it anymore. I burst out through the door, leaving him behind.
As I moved through the crowd as quickly as I could, keeping my eyes focused on the front door through which I was determined to escape, desperately afraid that I would lose control of my emotions and sob in front of all these strangers, I had the slight good fortune of seeing Duane close by and mumbled into his ear that I was feeling sick and heading home. I had no idea what, if anything, he said in response, because all I cared about was getting away.
I got the first text of my life from J.J. at 4:12 a.m. that morning. Clearly neither of us was getting much sleep. It read: “Meet me at Alice in Wonderland at 8 a.m.?” I didn’t know exactly what it meant that he was actually risking a hacker intercepting the message by sending me a text. Did it mean he was ready to live the truth? Or that he was so distraught with grief that insanity had caused him to forget the danger? Or was it simply that if I were now to only be the brother of his girlfriend, what we texted to each other didn’t matter?
Guessing that in less than four hours I would find out, I texted back, “See you there.”
As I walked through Central Park in the early-ish morning of the first day of the New Year, it was as empty as I’d ever seen it. There were workmen still cleaning up from the midnight run, and some joggers who had presumably not been a part of the night’s festivities, and a few women pushing babies in strollers, but that was about it. So, even from a distance, as I approached the Alice in Wonderland statue, I was pretty sure that the figure leaning against the largest mushroom was J.J. We were both early. The air held a brisk tanginess, and the sun shone through a light cloud cover, but we both kept our hands buried in our pockets as I approached. I chose one of the lower mushrooms and sat down.
After we both sat in silence for at least a minute, J.J. finally spo
ke first. “Do you wish you were straight?”
I shrugged. “Who wouldn’t want their life to be easier?”
“But no one’s life is easy. Life is not easy.”
“I didn’t say easy, I said easier. Besides, are you suddenly advocating that all of this is the most perfect way things could ever be?”
“Hardly.”
“But I’m not complaining,” I said. “Or suggesting we drew the short end of the stick, or whatever. I’m not saying it wouldn’t simplify a lot of things for both of us, for anyone really, but they say we learn from struggle, so something good must come out of it, right?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I know my experience is limited, but gay guys do seem to be more fun.”
“A million fag hags can’t be wrong?”
“I didn’t think that word was okay anymore?”
“I think it’s like using the ‘n’ word if you’re black.” He looked around to make sure no one was close before he whispered, “Fag.”
“Faggot,” I whispered back.
Finally, we shared our first smile of the day.
“What else do you think is good about being gay?” J.J. asked.
I thought about it for a second. “It seems like gay people are more compassionate and less judgmental. I mean, about big stuff. About clothes, and hair styles, and stuff like that, it seems pretty vicious.”
“Duane can be a bit bitchy, can’t he?”
“You should hear him when he’s with the other drag queens. They could probably make war veterans cry.”
“Maybe that’s why it took so long for the military to allow gays in,” J.J. said.
I started laughing. “I suddenly have this picture of Coco Chanel Jones in Iraq telling some woman, ‘Oh, hell no, honey, those shoes are all wrong with that burka! You need to tell your man how things are gonna be, ‘cause you control the punani, hear?”
J.J. joined in my laughter, then said, “If only Coco ruled the world.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that. I don’t want you putting any ideas into her head.”
“Good point.” Then, while not turning serious, he did take on a genuine sincerity. “Why do some guys like to dress up like women? I don’t get it.”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t get it either.”
“I mean, more power to you if you figure out what really makes you happy, but it seems like so much work.”
“And expensive.”
“And you know what tucking is, right?”
“Yeah, Duane explained it to me. Or was he Coco at the time? I forget. Anyway, no thank you on the tucking for me.”
“You know what I really hate?” J.J. asked.
“What?”
“Gay pride. I mean, not the concept, or even the parade, or whatever, and I don’t want to sound like I don’t appreciate the historical importance of it, and that it’s probably more about proving to the world that you’re not ashamed, or whatever. But I was brought up to question feelings of pride, to ask yourself if they’re deserved, and only if you’ve worked really hard for something do you then deserve to feel proud. But saying I’m proud to be gay is like saying I’m proud to have brown hair. It’s just how I am, how I was born, and I did nothing to earn it, so why should I feel proud of it?”
I took my hands out of the pockets of the winter coat that J.J. had given me as a secret gift and rubbed them together as I considered his words. I completely understood what he meant, and yet I also didn’t want to devalue the concept that pride could be a positive thing. “Maybe it’s people being proud about accepting who they were born to be and not trying to hide or deny it anymore?”
After a moment’s pause to consider, J.J. nodded his head. “I like that.”
Feeling encouraged, I dipped a toe into the question that had kept me awake most of the night. “Does that mean you might be ready to show some of that to a person other than me?”
As if the world’s largest cloud had just sailed over him, all evidence of our light conversation disappeared from his face and body. He sighed heavily. “Today’s a holiday. All over the world. Can’t we just pretend for this one day that life is like we want it to be? That no one else matters except the two of us? Just for one day?”
Having spent the last eight hours with a hint of the misery that I knew I was going to feel if J.J. wasn’t ready to tell Kimberly the truth, I, not even that reluctantly, nodded my head in agreement.
Even though I had to sometimes push down worries about what the future might hold once our Day of Denial ended, what followed was one of the best and happiest days of my life. It wasn’t as if we did anything special, really, it was just a day spent sharing the simple pleasures with the man I loved. We walked through the park, we had breakfast at a diner, we watched people skate at Rockefeller Center (although, honestly, the most fun part of that was watching the ones who fell), we had a light lunch before catching a Broadway musical matinee, we went shopping at Macy’s. That was it. And it was bliss. Granted, since J.J. and I rarely had the chance to spend time alone together, especially in public, it also felt wonderfully exotic, but it was still the daily furniture of domestication, and it could not have been better. Obviously since J.J. had been watched his entire life, even with his ball cap pulled low to ensure as little recognition from people as possible, it wasn’t as if we could hold hands, or show any signs of affection, but we kept our eyes out for paparazzi, and it all seemed to go exceptionally well. Or so we thought. But the downside of modern technology is that it can be so unobtrusive, even people who think they are paying attention can be lulled into a false sense of security.
I’m talking, of course, about what happened at Macy’s that day. Although the reality of it was so different than how it got portrayed in the gossip pages.
Earlier, right after we’d decided to spend the day together in denial, J.J. and I separately sent texts to excuse our absences. He texted Kimberly saying that he had unexpectedly been asked to play tour guide to a family friend in town for the previous night’s party, but that he would be over later to take her out to dinner. Meanwhile, I texted Iris that I was out with a friend, but that I would be home in time to prepare dinner for the family as usual. Within a few hours, when each woke up at her own leisure, we received okay messages in response. (Well, mine said, “ok,” from Iris. I think J.J.’s response from Kimberly was longer, and no doubt guilt-inducing, because he kept it far from my eyes. This would have been one of those moments when I had to push away my doubts and just bluster along in my happiness.)
Anyway, so after the musical, J.J. said he should probably pick up a little gift for Kimberly for when he arrived at the house later, and, again choosing to ignore my lurking feelings of doubt and guilt, I agreed.
As we walked through the various departments of the large store, we joked, admired, disapproved—all the usual things while leisurely shopping with a friend—but since we were secretly more than just friends, and indulging in the fantasy of a day spent only focused on each other, and since any couple in love will tend to imagine what their future might be like together … well, we got a little whimsical. The idea, actually, did not come from us, though. It was that damned couple, her with an almost tyrannical need to control every single item that went on their gift registry, and him with his passive-aggressive desire to hold out for the one thing he was going to dig in and defend his right to veto. I’m talking, of course, about china patterns.
As we strolled through the housewares department, veering away from the bickering couple’s combat zone, I said to J.J., “I wonder if that would be us.”
He stopped, eyed the couple and then the display of china patterns, and said, “Well, there’s one way to find out. Pick your favorite, don’t tell me, and I’ll do the same.”
“Really?”
“Why not?”
I know it’s stupid, but the idea of playing this game made me almost deliriously happy. As we went our separate ways, wen
ding through the multitude of choices for every taste, I couldn’t keep a ridiculous grin off my face, whether I was looking at Wedgwood or Lennox, or stealing a giddy glance at J.J.
After several minutes of careful consideration, he said, “Okay, I’ve picked mine.”
“Me, too.”
“We’ll each point to our favorite at the same time?”
“Count of three?”
“Deal. Should we cover our eyes?”
We did so, although I was wishing my hand was over my ears instead as I heard the unhappily betrothed continue their debate. (“No, my mother hates that color.” “Well, then your mother doesn’t have to eat.”)
“One … two …three,” J.J. said.
When I lowered my hand to uncover my eyes, he and I were pointing at the same china set, one with a white face, navy blue lip, and a single ring of gold.
“That’s not a bad sign,” I said.
“That’s a very good sign, I’d say.”
In the next half-hour, we decorated our imaginary home, agreeing easily on the silver, the crystal, linens, wedding invitations, and a double-wide chair with an ottoman. The couch required some negotiating.
Here’s where the downside of modern technology comes into play. While we were keeping our eyes out for paparazzi, we weren’t really thinking about the fact that pretty much everyone with an iPhone or cell phone has a camera, so there are more Big Brothers watching than George Orwell ever could have imagined.
And while I’d thought lying in bed after J.J. and I had our first fight seemed about as bad as things in my life could get, there was evidently more for me to learn. Because you know how they say it’s always darkest before the dawn? Well, that’s bullshit. Sometimes it just keeps getting darker.
CHAPTER 17
YOKO ONO
“What did you do this time?” Buck asked Kimberly as he peeked between the drawn curtains, investigating the source of the not-so-hushed murmur outside our house.
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