Then Josh leaned into Patrick and pressed his hand to Patrick’s thigh, a friendly gesture that made Patrick shake.
“So—not to be totally nosy, but that guy, Eric?” Josh said. “You really like him?”
Patrick tensed.
I really like you, he thought, and then: This is unfair.
“I do,” Patrick said. “I mean—I don’t know him that well yet. But I’d like to know him better.”
“Cool,” Josh said. He fiddled with a loose thread in his sweater, biting his lip, then glanced up at Patrick. “He seemed…cool.”
“You literally saw him for like two minutes,” Patrick said.
“Jesus, you’re a hardass,” Josh said. “I mean…he must be cool if he got to make out with you.”
Patrick felt the flush creep into his cheeks, and he could see Josh backpedaling the second the words left his mouth.
“I—you like X-Men, right?”
The question was so out of left field that Patrick snorted out a laugh. “That was an amazing segue.”
Josh smiled, his eyes flickering back and forth across Patrick’s face. “Sorry. Too much coffee.”
“Yeah, I like the X-Men,” Patrick said. “I like lots of comics—X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman…”
“Hunger Games?” Josh asked.
“Not a comic, but yes,” Patrick said. “Of course.”
“How many times have you read them?”
“What is this, the extra-special nerd version of the Spanish inquisition?” Patrick asked.
Josh smirked at him. “Totally. I promise not to use any medieval torture devices on you if you’re not nerdy enough, though.”
“Well, that’s good,” Patrick said, “because I was worried.”
He was enjoying this, talking to Josh, but he was so close. It made it hard to focus.
“I’ve read each of the Hunger Games books at least four times,” Josh said.
“Congratulations,” Patrick said.
“How cool would it be if there were a Hunger Games musical, though?” Josh said.
“I feel like that would get so dark so quickly,” Patrick said.
“You’re right,” Josh said. “You’re totally right.”
Josh was nervous. Patrick had never seen this side of him, and it was super-endearing.
“I’m excited for Comic-Con this summer. Have you been?”
“No,” Patrick said. “My parents wouldn’t let me go by myself, and they didn’t want to go, so…”
“None of your friends wanted to—”
“No,” Patrick interrupted him. “I didn’t…really have any friends. To go with.”
Josh stared at him for a moment, lips parted. He looked down at his hands. The tips of his fingers poked out of his gray gloves. “Well,” he said, “we can go this year for sure. Last year we couldn’t get a room, so we camped out in a hotel parking lot and slept there for four nights. It was nuts.”
“Wow,” Patrick said. “That’s commitment.”
“Dude,” Josh said, “never underestimate my level of nerditude, okay.”
“Apparently,” Patrick said.
Josh grinned wide and bumped their shoulders together.
Patrick thought: I can do this. I can.
The train came to a sudden stop, throwing Patrick off-balance and into Josh. Josh pressed his hands into Patrick’s shoulders, holding him up.
“Hey,” Josh said softly, “this is us.”
It took Patrick a moment to register that Josh meant this was their stop.
* * *
The fog lifted, leaving the sky clear and blue and the air crisp and sharp. The sun was so bright, nothing to filter it or protect them from its intensity.
“This is the beach,” Patrick observed as Josh led him across the Great Highway and up a path that cut between the dunes.
“Nothing gets past you,” Josh said.
The wind whipped around them, carrying his words away.
“Why are we at the beach?” Patrick asked.
Josh reached out and pulled Patrick forward by his sleeve when he hesitated. They went stumbling down a hill and onto the sand, the water stretching out in front of them, endless and impossible and churning.
“Ocean Beach,” Josh said, flinging his arms wide and nearly clocking Patrick in the face. He ducked and dodged, only barely keeping his balance. He felt giddy and crazy and confused and weirdly happy.
“We live here, Patrick,” Josh said. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“It is amazing,” Patrick said.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat. Josh’s curls were alive with the wind, and he spun in place, churning up sand with his boots.
“Is this why you—” Patrick started to say.
Josh grabbed Patrick by both his arms, a gesture that made Patrick feel both anchored and unsteady.
“So this is the thing,” Josh said. “I was a dick, before. You don’t need my advice. I know I’m not—I know I’m no model for how to do relationships. I kind of suck at them, and I’ve had plenty of Eric-like hookups, probably with people way less awesome than Eric. You know that. I know you know that. But what I’m trying to say is—” He stopped, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. When he opened them, there was a fierce intensity there, a burning.
“We live here, Patrick,” Josh repeated, flicking his wrist out toward the ocean. “Anything is possible. Anything.”
Patrick was strung up so tight, he felt like he might explode at any second, scatter like confetti and disappear on the breeze.
“You don’t have to settle,” Josh said. “That is all I was trying to say.”
Josh’s hands tightened on Patrick’s arms. Patrick knew he would have bruises there tomorrow, a path to trace with his fingertips.
“I know,” Patrick whispered.
He couldn’t help the way his breath caught when Josh let go.
12
On the ride home on the Muni Josh and Patrick sat next to each other in comfortable silence.
Josh hadn’t meant to tell Patrick about Benny. It had kind of poured out of him, fueled by being in Harvey’s and then by talking to that waiter who’d known Benny too. He hadn’t been in Harvey’s since Benny died, but today, something had drawn him there, back to this place so heavy with memories.
Josh wanted Patrick to know he’d been that little kid at the theater once, a tiny, curly-haired sponge, devoted to his “craft,” hanging on to every word of every story the older actors told. He’d probably been a bit young for some of what he’d heard, like Ron’s talk of his conquests in days of yore. Benny always said those stories were half-fictional anyway. Had Ron really slept with Gore Vidal in Tuscaloosa when he was seventeen? Unlikely. Could he have made out with James Dean at some industry party in LA while trying to sell his screenplay? Probably not.
After rehearsals Josh went home and googled Gore Vidal and read everything he found. Then he’d read The Burning Library and four books about Stonewall and a mammoth biography of Harvey Milk. He’d read The Gay Metropolis and all the Allen Ginsberg poems he could find. He’d watched Rocky Horror Picture Show and My Own Private Idaho and Spartacus. He hadn’t known these were classics of queer culture, per se, but only that they were some of Benny’s favorites. Josh had wanted to know everything Benny knew.
Benny’s classics were the foundation of Josh’s queer education, a jumping off point for exploration. Harvey Milk had led him to Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, Ginsberg to Audre Lorde and Alice Waker, Gore Vidal to James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. After he’d read these things, he and Benny would sit for hours in Harvey’s while Benny drank his virgin Bloody Mary (Benny had given up drinking twenty years ago) and talk about them. There was no question that was too embarrassing, no topic too bizarre. Josh always knew he could talk to Benny about anything.
When Josh had told Benny he might have feelings for another boy, Benny had said: You know, Josh, there are worse things.
It had taken a minute for Josh to
figure out what he meant. At age twelve, this was the scariest thing he’d ever done. He felt exposed and raw and terrified. But the thing was, Josh was a rich Jewish kid who lived in San Francisco. None of his friends or family were going to care if he was bi. He could walk the streets without the fear of being harassed. He could hold another man’s hand and not worry someone might try to kick his ass. He could wear whatever he wanted and put rainbow buttons all over his backpack and nobody would say anything. Here, in the queerest city in the world, he never needed to be scared.
There are worse things, Benny had said.
Josh didn’t know it then, but in the years that followed, he’d come to understand that he was able to do all this—to come out at twelve years old, to ask these questions, to read these books out in the open, to talk about them in public—because of people like Harvey Milk, like Edmund White and James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, all of Benny’s heroes. Benny loved their stories because they were tales of revolution and oppression and understanding and acceptance, of what it meant to be isolated and abandoned and to have to make your way in a society that didn’t yet have a place for you.
Josh was in this place because of people like Benny.
Josh, you do whatever you want, Benny had said. And—pardon my language—fuck anybody who tells you no.
God, I miss you, Benny, he thought. I miss you so much.
Maybe by taking Patrick to Harvey’s, he’d hoped to show him that Josh was more than the guy his friends sometimes made him out to be. More than the dude who hooked up with the first tipsy girl or guy that locked eyes with him at the club. More than a person who gave him unsolicited dating advice after stumbling into Patrick’s bedroom while drunk. More than someone who was hopeless at relationships and even worse at knowing when to shut up.
Josh wished that Benny could be here now to meet Patrick. Benny had come from a small town in the Central Valley too. His parents kicked him out when he was sixteen because they found him kissing another boy in his grade.
I ran and ran and ran, Benny had said. I ran until nothing could touch me.
Patrick had listened so carefully to Josh, his face more open and vulnerable than Josh had seen before. And then, on that beach—God. The way Patrick looked at him. He’d looked at him the same way he’d looked at the ocean. As if he’d never seen any two things more beautiful.
Josh knew Patrick didn’t need a tour guide. He was finding his own way. That was half the fun of being in a new place, after all: the thousands of little acts of discovery.
Josh wanted to discover Patrick, he realized. He wanted to know his story. He wanted Patrick to let him in.
As they walked back from the Muni, Josh watched Patrick—the way he walked, fluid and graceful, the forward curve of his shoulders, his hands pushed into his pockets when they stopped to wait on corners for the lights to change and cars to pass.
But how am I going to fuck this up? Josh wondered.
* * *
They’d gotten home and were hanging up their coats when Patrick turned to Josh and said, “Hey, I totally spaced on this, but…do you want to come with me to see Taneisha sing tonight at the Make-Out Room? She invited me and told me to bring friends.”
“I’d love that,” Josh said.
Josh’s phone buzzed with a text from Artemis: Hope you weren’t an asshole.
He gave his phone a wry smile he knew she couldn’t see.
Josh texted back: I apologized today. At the beach.
Well, okay then, Romeo. I don’t know if ‘apologize’ is code for something else, Artemis wrote, but God speed.
* * *
The Make-Out Room was packed by the time they got there, people pressed against the walls and huddled around bar stools, talking and shouting and dancing to the soul music blasting from the speakers. Josh got that tingly thrill he always did before any live performance. There was something about seeing people perform right in front of you, sharing your space and reaching out into it and pulling you in. Josh had never found anything else quite like it.
They quickly spotted Taneisha over by the bar, chatting with Alexis.
“I want to talk to Taneisha,” Patrick said, “but I’m afraid of Alexis.”
“Don’t be afraid of her,” Josh said. “It’s far too early for her to be wasted. She’ll be a tame tiger.”
“Will she, though?” Patrick asked.
Alexis turned then and spotted them.
“Oh my God, it’s Fresno!” Alexis shouted, launching herself at them and throwing her arms around Patrick’s neck. Even from a foot away, Josh could tell she smelled like some kind of strong fruit-and-alcohol mixture. “You are my very favorite gay boy. You are not as hot as my favorite lesbian, but you are still awesome.”
“Ooookay then,” Patrick said, disentangling himself from her embrace.
“I wanted to say good luck,” he told Taneisha, “not that you need it.”
“Luck don’t have nothin’ to do with it,” Taneisha said, and grinned at him, “but thank you, sweetie.”
The house lights flickered then, and a deep, rumbly voice came over the speakers.
“We have a lovely young woman here tonight, Miss Taneisha,” the man said. “I know many of you have seen her here before and that’s why you’re back, ‘cause we know we can’t get enough of her. Give Taneisha a warm welcome, y’all.”
The place exploded with applause, and Taneisha handed Patrick her drink. She gave him a kiss on the cheek before climbing up on the small stage.
“There’s no better way to start off a show than with a little Aretha,” Taneisha drawled into the mic, and there was a chorus of affirmative shouts and cheers.
The band launched in with familiar chords, but the second Taneisha began to sing the beginning notes of “Ain’t No Way” with her clear, strong voice, Josh felt his heart sink.
God, she’s amazing, he thought, and this song is going to kill me.
Josh felt people moving around him, and suddenly he was pressed against Patrick. He grasped his shoulders, trying to retain his balance, and he felt Patrick tense.
He carefully removed his hands, and Patrick exhaled.
“I’ve never heard her sing,” Josh said. “Alexis said, but I had no idea—”
“Yeah,” Patrick murmured. “Yeah, she’s—”
Perfect. Perfect.
Josh could smell Patrick, he was so close. He still smelled like the ocean. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then Taneisha hit a particularly devastating note, and Josh grabbed Patrick’s arm. Patrick gasped.
Josh dropped his hand the second he realized what he was doing.
“I’m sorry,” Josh said.
Patrick was pink in the cheeks. Josh could see him curl his hand into a fist at his side.
I want to touch you, Josh thought.
He tried to breathe through the wave of frustration. He nearly went under.
13
“So,” Freddy addressed him, as Patrick attempted to inhale a piece of toast, clearly already late for class. “What are you going to be?”
Patrick froze. “Like…in life?”
“For Halloween,” Freddy said. “Come on, dude. Get with the program.”
“Patrick is new here, Freddy,” Kai said, flipping through a copy of Vanity Fair as he sipped his most recently acquired brand of espresso, a Guatemalan fair trade blend. “Chill.”
“Okay, so, this is the most important thing in your life right now,” Freddy said, placing his hands on Patrick’s shoulders. “We are having the most epic party of all parties, because it has to be better than last year’s party, and that was super-epic—”
“That was the one where Josh got it on with those siblings, wasn’t it?” Mike said.
Patrick felt nauseous, and Josh looked like he wanted to punch Mike in the face.
“They were not siblings,” Josh clarified. “They were cousins. And I only hooked up with one of them.”
“The lady or the dude?”
“
Jesus, Mike. It was Halloween,” Josh said, feeling tired. “I was wearing vinyl, I—it was the dude, okay. He was hotter.”
“Can we focus, please?” Freddy said. “It’s four days until Halloween. Patrick needs a costume. We need snack food and decorations and a shit ton of booze.”
“I can help Patrick with his costume,” Josh said. “I have a lot of stuff he can probably fit, plus access to the theater department’s costumes.”
“Does my costume have to involve vinyl?” Patrick asked.
Josh wiggled his eyebrows. “Only if you’re lucky.”
A few minutes later, Patrick watched as Josh tossed seemingly random pieces of clothing onto his bed.
“Cop,” Josh suggested. “Robber. Cowboy. Prince.”
“Am I picking a Halloween costume or trying out for the Village People?” Patrick asked.
Josh wiggled his eyebrows. “Now that’s an idea. We could—”
“No,” Patrick said firmly.
“Come on, it would be hilarious,” Josh said. “I bet you’d look awesome in that leather outfit.”
“Why does everyone keep telling me that?” Patrick queried the universe.
“What do you want to be, though?” Josh said. “You’re creative, I’m sure you have ideas.”
Patrick shrugged.
“You could be a superhero,” Josh said. “I know a guy who could get you a kick-ass Spider-Man suit, totally authentic—”
“Too much spandex,” Patrick said.
“This is for a Halloween party in the Castro in San Francisco, Patrick,” Josh deadpanned. “There is no such thing as too much spandex.”
“What’s your costume?” Patrick said. “Is there spandex involved?”
Josh considered this. “Mmm…not really.”
“Not really?”
“I can’t disclose that information,” Josh said. “My costume is a secret.”
“That’s not fair,” Patrick said.
“My costume is always a secret,” Josh said, which was the gospel truth.
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