Drag Teen

by Jeffery Self

  “My dad and I used to come down here on Saturdays after Little League ball games and get either ice cream or pizza, or ice cream and pizza if my team had won,” he said to me now. “Those were the best days.”

  A seagull flew overhead, pooping on the boardwalk, so close that the disgusting blob almost landed in my hair. I jumped, and both Heather and Seth burst into laughter.

  “Shut up or I’m throwing one of you over the edge,” I warned them.

  A strong breeze blowing off the water had left the whole boardwalk uncrowded. Heather spotted a booth selling purses made out of recycled license plates—the kind that no one has carried since 2001—and she reacted like someone currently living in 2001. She walked over to check them out while Seth and I wandered toward the railing overlooking the water.

  “Is it like you remember?” I asked.

  “Sure. Sorta. There used to be more arcades and stuff, I think, but maybe it just seemed like there were a bunch because I was little.”

  “It’s a pretty town.”

  Seth nodded, distracted by something.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Uh-huh.” He paused with a slight frown. “Well, actually … you sorta hurt my feelings the other day.”

  “What? Really? I apologized for freaking out about that guy. I really believe that you weren’t flirting with him and have fully let it go.”

  “No, not that. It was when you said everything was perfect for me. That I’ve never had anything to worry about or whatever.” He was avoiding eye contact, focusing on a boat or barge way out in the foggy distance.

  “Seth, you know I didn’t mean that to upset you. I just meant you have your stuff together. You’re not a constant ball of nerves like me. People like you fit in. Everybody likes you.”

  He snapped his focus toward me. “Just because I fit in doesn’t mean I have my stuff together, JT. I know you think you know me, but you only know the part of me I show, okay?”

  His eyes were weighted with hurt. They didn’t twinkle the way they usually did—they were muted, gray, like mine. This was not the Seth I knew.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me?”

  “Everyone has stuff they can’t seem to shake no matter how hard they try. Everybody has stuff they’re afraid of. Everybody has stuff that breaks their hearts.”

  His voice was so thin and strained. And I couldn’t tell: Did he want me to ask what he meant … or was he saying that there was a private part of him that I didn’t have access to yet, and that I’d just have to take his word for the pain that was kept inside? Also, I was wrestling with the knee-jerk reaction to be pissed off at him that he had the audacity to withhold anything he was afraid of.

  “I really didn’t mean to upset you like this,” I told him. Then, delicately, I asked, “Do you want to talk about it?” This was the door I was opening for him. But hopefully my tone told him I wouldn’t be hurt if he decided he didn’t want to walk through it right now.

  In response, he took my hand and pulled me behind him down the boardwalk.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  The school Seth had grown up going to was situated across the street from the pier, which felt like really strange planning on the school’s part. Looking up at Seth’s old school’s windows overlooking the ocean, I couldn’t help but imagine the countless hours its students must have spent not listening to a thing their teachers said.

  It was late afternoon during spring break, so the school was mostly empty and strangely still, spooky in the way schools can be when they aren’t full of kids attempting to learn and blend in. Seth let us into the school’s main hallway through the front door. A long glass case lined the entire expanse of the walls, filled with trophies, heavily posed group photos, and the kind of pointless high school knickknacks people hold on to under the notion that they’ll matter to them after they’re adults. I mean, really, who has ever said, “Wow. Thank God I held on to this plastic button that says Homecoming Planning Committee 2003!”

  “So you went here for elementary school?” I asked, faking interest, the way one has to when being shown photos of something that seem to matter to the person who’s showing the photos.

  “And middle school. It’s the only school I went to until we moved.” Seth’s attention was fixed on a photo of three nerdy-looking kids crowded around a chessboard; they looked thirteen or so, all three in the most awkward and most sudden of pubescent growth spurts. I leaned down to get a closer look, and saw the caption: CHESS CLUB. The photo might as well have been a photo ad for an organization called Dorks United. The three kids’ names were printed under the caption: Carolyn Hedden, Ed Robson, and Steve Coulson.

  Coulson. Like Seth Coulson. As I started at the photo longer, the pimply kid in the middle of the photo looked like he could be related to Seth somehow. That’s when Seth spoke up.

  “Recognize me?” He arched his eyebrows, nervously.

  “What do you mean? That’s not you. It says Steve Coulson. Wait … you have a brother?”

  Seth shook his head and sighed.

  “My name is Steve, not Seth. Or … it was a long time ago. And by a long time ago, I mean middle school.”

  It was my turn to arch my own eyebrows—not nervously, but in confusion. Seth went on.

  “JT, I’ve never told anyone this before in my life … but when I was growing up here, I was like the biggest loser in school. My idea of a good time was playing chess and second-guessing every single aspect of my personality until I’d get a headache and go back to playing chess to distract myself.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “Are you saying you changed your name because you were ashamed of playing chess? I mean, yeah, as far as board games go, it’s boring as shit, but I don’t think that warrants a name change.”

  Seth stared down at the peeling linoleum of the hallway. “Once my dad got his job in Florida and I was sure we were moving, I made the decision to start over. All my life I’d been the loser kid who didn’t fit in. I didn’t know how to dress, how to talk to people without sounding like a borderline psychopath. I just didn’t know how to blend into the groove of things.” He shrugged. “Then we had to move during my eighth-grade year and most people probably would’ve been so upset, but I was so excited. I knew it was my chance to start over. To hit refresh like I used to do on the computer games I’d spend my nights playing as a way to distract myself from having zero friends. Wow, did that sound as depressing as I think it did?”

  This whole “coming out” monologue was coming out of left field in every possible way. So much so that I thought he was pulling my leg.

  However, from the anxious look on Seth’s face, I could tell this was no joke.

  “I’m confused. You changed your name?”

  “Do I seem like a Steven to you? With a V, no less.”

  I couldn’t imagine Seth named anything but Seth. Especially not Steven.

  “My parents were a little weird about it at first, Steven being a family name, but they knew how hard a time I’d had over the years and they finally gave in. I legally changed it and everything. It was really freeing. Plus, I didn’t want the people who’d spent all of middle and elementary school making fun of me to be able to find me on Facebook. I basically counter-catfished myself.”

  This was a lot of information to take in. Seth was Seth, not Steven into Seth. My immediate reaction was to be angry with him for never telling me until this moment. However, there was something in Seth’s eyes that I couldn’t help but understand. Something that could sometimes feel like it only lived in me.

  He went on. “I’ve never told anyone. Ever. Because I vowed that I’d leave Steven in my past and that Seth would always fit in and be liked. And you know what? He has.” He spoke these words so honestly that one could ignore what might have normally seemed incredibly egocentric. “You find the person inside of you that makes you feel like yourself, or makes you feel whole, and that’s who you have to take into the worl
d.”

  I glanced back at the photo of Steven Coulson. Within his shy, sad eyes I saw the beginnings of Seth. The beginnings of the most special boy I’d ever met. And I wanted to ask a million questions, but all I could do was grab him, hold him as tight as possible, push my lips against his nervously sweaty forehead, and whisper:

  “I love you, Seth or Steven or whoever the hell you want to be next. You’re you, you’ve always been you, and I’m so lucky to love you.”

  He kissed me back.

  “This is so weird. You. Here,” he said. “Do you mind if I look around a little?”

  “Not at all.” I sensed this was something he had to do alone. “I’ll go find Heather.”

  Perhaps he was hoping to heal whatever wounds were left behind by Steven, by experiencing the place as Seth this time around, or maybe he just wanted to binge out on his old chess set. I left him to do his thing and went back out to the pier. I found Heather attempting to avoid a conversation with a crazy man who had an actual cat on his head and was begging people to pay him for a photo. Heather was carrying a large shopping bag full of recent purchases: the license plate purse, a T-shirt, a stupid-looking hat, and a bunch of other crap she didn’t need.

  “Hey! Where’s Seth?”

  “In there.” I pointed toward the school.

  “He’s inside a school on his spring break? What’s he trying to prove?”

  I explained the whole story to Heather as she stood there captivated. I couldn’t believe it myself, even upon hearing it all a second time from my own mouth. I also couldn’t shake the increasingly selfish feeling of being hurt because Seth had kept me out of his full life and truth. I wondered how different things would have been if I’d known Seth had been just as much of an outsider as me, once upon a time.

  “So, literally nobody is perfect, huh?” Heather asked, with an air of surprise and slight trace of disappointment. “Y’know, it actually makes me feel a little bit better knowing that even Seth—gorgeous, smart, beloved Seth—has had something to cry about. Is that horrible?”

  “Naw,” I said. “At the end of the day, we’re all just a bunch of freaks trying to pass for normal. And I reckon, it turns out, there is no such thing.”

  “I can’t believe he’s never told you. I mean, after all this time together,” she said, slightly throwing the statement away, as if she hadn’t wanted to point out the place where she knew my mind had already set up camp and was roasting marshmallows.

  Seth walked out, his head held high, and joined us. We walked away from the school, all three of us holding hands and silent for a while.

  “Are you okay?” I said. His hand was a trace sweatier than usual.

  “Yeah. I am. I walked around, and just sorta pretended the last few years had never happened. I imagined that I’d never moved away or changed my name or whatever. I just came to terms with the fact that you can run, you can reinvent yourself, but you’ll always be you. You know? And while that’s a little scary, I guess it’s also a little comforting too.”

  We embraced before walking for a ways, back toward the car, but before we left the boardwalk, I stopped.

  “How would you feel about going to get pizza and ice cream?” I asked.

  Heather and Seth ran along ahead, toward the pizza place with a crooked neon sign that appeared to have been broken since long before I was born. I watched them for a moment. Seth had flipped like a switch, immediately his confident and upbeat self again, filling Heather in on what had just happened. Heather did a good job of pretending to hear this story for the first time. I wanted to feel happy for him, for his facing his issue head-on, and allowing himself to come up for air immediately after. However, I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d kept it all to himself while I poured out every insecurity and issue I’d ever felt in the past four years, why he was able to (in the words of Taylor Swift) “shake it off” so easily and why I’d never been able to shake anything off in my entire life. Perhaps I should take this as a lesson for my own self, to allow myself to be okay with my mistakes and the voices in my head who had nothing but cruel things to say about me. I’d always thought of Seth as strong, but to find the ability to shut up those voices? Well, that deserved some kind of medal. Or at least a giant hug, which for now would have to do.

  SEEING THE SIGN THAT READ NEW YORK CITY—50 MILES gave me legitimate goose bumps. We’d been driving all day and into the night, and here we were. New York City was the most special place on earth and I didn’t mind saying that, even as someone who had, up until that moment, never been there. It was where, if you had even the tiniest inkling to visit, you’d never be whole until you did. I didn’t think New York City created interesting people—but I believed it told them it was okay to be interesting. Then, inevitably, paid them for it.

  “Fifty miles,” I said out loud, without realizing it. “Wow.”

  “I cannot believe this is really happening!” Heather screamed from the backseat. Seth was beaming; he’d been the image of contentment ever since we left Ocean City. As we approached, we put on the New York playlist Heather had created for this special occasion, containing every song about New York you could think of: that Alicia Keys song, the Liza one, the Sinatra one, even the Taylor Swift one.

  None of us had been to New York before except for Seth, and even then he’d been two and didn’t remember it. It felt like every story I’d ever heard of people entering New York City for the first time compared it to The Wizard of Oz—and at first I was like, Okay, we get it, you’re gay, have you seen any other movie? But when I actually got there, I thought, Gee, someone walking into the Emerald City is the closest thing to the magic of arriving in New York City as you’ll ever find, so the comparison is necessary. If I was frustrated at Seth for slipping back into his New Shiny Self, not talking about what had happened in Maryland, it subsided as the immaculate towering skyline got closer and closer.

  Before I knew it, we were in the Holland Tunnel, underwater, on our way into the city itself. To enter New York City, you literally have to go above or under water, leaving the rest of the country as you know it, to enter that special kingdom. At that point all I wanted was to be there, to be out of the car and in the streets like a real New Yorker. As we exited the tunnel, I rolled down my window. I wanted to smell the New York air.

  “Ahhhh! We’re here!” I cried out. “We’re here! Let’s take in the beauty of it all!”

  Heather winced. “It smells like dog pee.”

  She was right. In unison, we all rolled our windows back up.

  We were greeted with insane traffic, bumper to bumper, honking, people screaming in languages I’d never even heard before. Everyone seemed so pissed off—it was everything I’d ever dreamed of. Glowing billboards for Broadway shows and fancy clothing stores shone high above our car as we inched our way into this tiny island I’d always dreamed of stepping foot on.

  I had made it. I had actually made it.

  It wasn’t until we were on our way down Eighth Avenue, past taxis and hordes of people coming out of Broadway shows, that Seth asked where we were headed.

  “I mean, I know there are lots of hotels … but do we have one? I didn’t think about that. I just sorta assumed we’d show up and stay somewhere.”

  I shushed him, turning down Judy Garland as she sang “I like New York in June, how about you?”

  “You name it, we can stay there!” I announced with immense excitement.

  “Huh?” Heather asked.

  “Tina gave me some money—a lot of money—and she told me to put us up somewhere really nice.” I pulled out the wad of cash from Tina and showed it to them. Both Heather’s and Seth’s eyes widened so much they looked like they might fall out.

  “Holy crap,” Heather whispered, almost religiously. “We’re totally ordering room service.”

  Heather and Seth did a quick search, Googling fancy New York hotels. There were plenty of them, but none of the fanciest ones had available rooms for the night.

 
“Look up where Jennifer Aniston stays,” I said.

  “Why?” Heather asked, looking up at me in a beam of blue light from her phone.

  “I don’t know. I just think she has nice taste.”

  Heather couldn’t argue—you could accuse Jennifer Aniston of a lot of things, but bad taste wasn’t one of them.

  Seth was already on it. “Apparently, somewhere called the Gramercy Hotel? Jesus! These rooms are six hundred bucks a night! How much money does Jennifer Aniston have?!”

  “A lot!” I turned onto Thirty-Fourth Street just because I’d heard of it. “Fine, try someone a little less classy.”

  “Jessica Simpson?” Heather offered from the backseat.

  “Perfect!”

  Jessica Simpson’s go-to hotel was booked, and by the time half an hour had passed, we’d checked the favorite New York hotels of Jennifer Hudson, Emma Stone, Kerry Washington, and, in one moment of desperation, Ariana Grande. Finally, we settled on a place where Seth’s web results insisted Justin Bieber had gotten into a fight with Orlando Bloom. We figured that was fancy enough for us.

  The farther downtown we got, the more confusing New York became. The streets, once simply named Thirty-First, Thirty-Second, Thirty-Third, etc., suddenly turned into names like Crosby, Houston, Mulberry. We finally found the hotel, and as we pulled up to the front, a fancy-looking man in a uniform came out, asking us if we were guests of the hotel and offering to park our car. I’d never seen anything like this in my life, just driving up to a door and handing your keys over to someone in a vest that’s supposed to indicate they work there. Heather, trying really hard to seem unfazed by the whole situation, claimed the man was called a valet—which we later learned you don’t pronounce the t in.

  This was a whole new world.

  Inside the hotel, it was dark and moody—a little too dark, to be honest. I didn’t know how more people weren’t bumping into things. I wondered what the whole point of making a room look nice was, if you were going to make it so dark you could barely see it. Everyone in the lobby, whether at the front desk or at the bar to the side, looked like an extra from a present-day version of Sex and the City. With its subtle hints of burning woods and the fancy soap I was inevitably going to steal from the hotel room, the place even smelled cool. There was a DJ elaborately set up in the corner who didn’t even appear to be DJ-ing. Next to him was a really stunning supermodel reading a book inside a glass tank as if she were a really pretty fish.