by Anthony Youn
“Hey, whatever you guys do is your business. I just don’t want to know.”
I don’t answer him because I want this conversation to end. We all know that everything in our suite has forever changed. In silence, we finish getting ready for the party. As we go out the door, Gary tosses the magazine onto Ross’s bed.
Which is how we push Ross out of the closet.
I CAN’T SLEEP in my room. I call my brother and, for the next three nights, crash on his floor in a sleeping bag. When I finally return to my room, I strip my bed and wash the sheets. Ross, outed, starts keeping even weirder hours. He disappears for days at a time, then shows up at four one morning, gathers up his bedding, and leaves. I rarely see him, and when I do, we barely acknowledge each other.
One Saturday night a couple of weeks later, my friends, the science nerds, of which I am one, dateless, hold court at a corner table of our favorite off-campus Burger King. Other than a potential video-game marathon and eating more fast food later, we have no plans. It won’t take another of these Saturday nights to confirm that I have absolutely no life. This night, a bracing February freezer, we chomp our burgers, slurp our drinks, and sit morosely in our booth. A typical fun Saturday night.
In the distance, I hear a familiar voice ordering food. I stop in mid-bite and listen. I recognize that voice. Ross. I turn and verify. I notice that he has grown his hair longer. He dips a knee, flicks a wrist. It seems that he’s making a point to appear more effeminate. Then the jokes start.
“Ross, what are you doing at Burger King? Shouldn’t you be at Dairy Queen?”
“Have it your way, Ross. You know which way I’m talking about. In the butt.”
“I didn’t know you liked burgers. I thought you liked hot dogs!”
Then things get crude.
I want to say that I refuse to participate. I want to say that I come to Ross’s defense, storm out, outraged. I want to say all of this, but I can’t, because it’s not the truth. We crack vulgar, hurtful, stupid jokes.
Ross doesn’t wait for his food. He yanks up his coat collar and runs out of the restaurant.
Most of my friends laugh. I don’t. Almost immediately, I’m filled with shame. I see Ross’s face—stunned, hurt, helpless—and I can’t believe that I have contributed to this act of cruelty. I excuse myself. I go into the bathroom and slap cold water on my face. Then I look into the filthy mirror.
A stranger stares back.
Who is he?
Who am I?
I don’t know anymore.
GREENVILLE, MICHIGAN. POPULATION 7,945. Minus the number of homosexuals—7,945.
No homosexuals live in Greenville. No black people, no Hispanic people, no Jews, no Muslims, and after Kirby and his family move away, five Korean-Americans. Us. My family. People here come in three colors: white, whiter, whitest. The whitest go to my church.
My father, a reluctant and infrequent churchgoer, cedes everything religious to my mother. I attend services presided over by an evangelical preacher, a road-company Jerry Falwell who screams fire-and-brimstone sermons that, on more than one occasion, he peppers with bigotry and hate. One Sunday he attacks gay people.
Gay people destroy families. Gay people ruin our culture. Gay people corrupt us and seduce our children. God blew up Sodom and killed the Sodomites! Gay people are going to hell!
I’m a child. I’m impressionable. I may look different, but I see myself the same as everyone else in the pew around me. I fervently want to be accepted. I guess some would say that I want to be white. By the time I get to high school, I’ve assimilated. I’m known and accepted and included. And like all my friends—like everyone I know in Greenville—I distrust gay people. When a guy in our social circle does something weak or shows signs of sensitivity or displays indifference to manly pursuits such as cars, sports, or war, we call him a “fag.” I grow up believing in the fiery words of that third-rate preacher: gay people have it in for me, gay people want to do unspeakable things to me, gay people want to marry me. Never having met one single gay person, I have an aversion to all of them. But if pressed, I would admit the secret truth: I am afraid of them.
In the weeks following our encounter with Ross at Burger King, I retreat to my brother’s place, where I now essentially live. Between episodes of debilitating self-pity and bouts of loneliness that leave me bedridden, I think about Ross. I think about how he must feel. Before I found out he was gay, I had no problem with him. He was a fine roommate, quiet, respectful, courteous. Now that I know he’s gay, am I supposed to hate him? It doesn’t make sense. Of course, nothing in college makes sense to me except my work ethic. I bust ass in the classroom, study like a convict on death row looking for loopholes. I don’t just learn my textbooks well; I memorize them. My insanity pays off. I score A’s with ease.
It’s only everything else that sucks.
Not only am I second-guessing my choice of college—this was my decision, remember?—I have doubts about my faith. I have doubts about pretty much everything in my life. I have doubts about me. Actually, I have no doubts about that preacher from my childhood when it comes to gay people. I know he is wrong. Most of all, I know I am wrong.
I begin to read. I start with the Bible. I follow that up with scholars’ interpretations of the Bible. I read history. I read philosophy and books about religion. I read books about culture and sociology. I read self-help books. I read memoirs. I read about gay people and their struggles to find acceptance in society. I read how they come to grips with their identity, how they fight to fit in, and how they learn to accept themselves. I start to see myself in them. I begin to reform my faith. I study the teachings of Jesus. I reject my former Bible-thumping, “our way is the only way” brand of Christianity. I find a church in Kalamazoo whose pastor preaches tolerance and acceptance. I think about the nature of sin. Jesus hung out with sinners, spoke to them, embraced them. Everyone has value and everyone sins. No matter who you are or what you have done, I am no better than you. I have committed at least as many sins, maybe more. I am not a better person than Ross. In fact, based on how I acted, I am a worse person.
I have plenty of time to think and read because I spend most of my time alone. I pull away from the friends who seem intolerant and toxic. Sophomore year, I move into an apartment with Mike. It feels safe and familiar, but living off campus isolates me. My social life, if possible, falls even deeper into the void. Occasionally, Mike invites me to join him at a party or a movie, but I feel awkward, a hanger-on, a pity case. I prefer to stay home and wallow.
I use my free time to take up the guitar. I practice for hours and become accomplished enough to copy chords from songs by Poison and Tom Petty. Sometimes friends show up unannounced at my apartment, drag me away from my guitar or my books, and force me to go with them to the latest supposedly hot party. My friends mean well, but without fail, these parties turn out to be loud, raucous, boring, and stag. I inevitably leave early, stop at the local all-night Kmart, and browse the CD aisles. At around two A.M. I treat myself to an A&W root beer on the way home. Life in the Kalamazoo fast lane.
The next two years flick by in a blink—I guess time flies when you’re having no fun—and suddenly, I’m a senior. My scorecard reads like a pitcher’s dream: no runs, no hits, nothing across. “Dateless in Kalamazoo.” That’s how my final chapter in college should read.
And then I meet Gloria.
MY FRIEND FELICE, fellow science nerd and premed, invites me to dinner at her apartment with her boyfriend, Stan, and Gloria, an exchange student from Spain who is living there for three months. I make a thousand lame excuses—I need to practice my guitar, catch up on my reading, do a load of wash, floss—but Felice says if I don’t get right in my car and haul ass to her apartment, she’ll send Stan to take me by force. Stan, a former hockey player who had a tryout with the Boston Bruins, misses checking people into the boards and tearing off their heads. He’d love to stuff me into the trunk of his car and drive me to the dinner party, his c
aptive.
I shower, throw on a fresh shirt, stop at Kroger on the way, and pick up a limp bouquet of flowers. I’m not really up for a social evening—I haven’t been for three years—so I expect nothing except a good meal. Felice, a compact woman with broad shoulders, is a gourmet cook who loves to throw dinner parties with a color theme. She greets me at the door with a hug that would crack the ribs of a wrestler. Tonight, Felice says when she releases me, the theme is green.
“You shouldn’t have,” I say. “I’m fine with a bucket of KFC and a Coke.”
“I went all out for Gloria, not you. Lettuce salad, spinach pasta with peas and broccoli, green tea, and for dessert, homemade peppermint ice cream.”
“I bet it’s not easy being green.”
“Ha-ha. Hey, let me introduce you. Tony, Gloria.”
She moves aside to reveal a young woman with wavy brown hair, mountainous-high cheekbones, snow-white skin, olive-green eyes, and full lips that partially conceal a slight overbite. Gloria sips red wine out of a water glass and uncrosses her dancer’s legs. She extends a long pale arm, tinkles her fingers toward me, and smiles. My knees buckle. I feel as if I’m tumbling down into a warm, bottomless pit.
“Nice to meet you,” Gloria says. Perfect English. Touch of an accent.
“Likewise,” I say, extending to her my fistful of sagging flowers.
“So beautiful,” she says, holds, and laughs. Deeply. Then, the topper, Gloria shakes the flowers lightly, pretending they are my hand.
Has any man fallen in love so quickly, so completely?
“Vase,” Felice says, noticing that my mind has left my body.
“I’ll get it,” Gloria says.
“I’ll help.”
I’m about to vault over the dining room table and hurdle anything else in my way—furniture, Felice, Stan—when Felice clamps her fingers onto my wrist, hard.
“Dial it down, Casanova. P.S., she has a boyfriend.”
I nod like a bobblehead, take a couple of cleansing breaths, and land at Gloria’s side. In the apartment’s galley kitchen, we locate a vase and fill it with water out of the faucet. Well, she does. I stare.
Felice appears with a plate of guacamole encircled by rings of green potato chips. I follow Gloria to Felice’s reupholstered thrift-store couch and sink in. I swig half a beer—yes, green, and not as gross as it sounds—and within a minute I’m able to calm myself down. We talk about Spain and bullfighting and Gloria’s boyfriend and her classes and how Kalamazoo differs slightly from Madrid. Eventually, Felice herds us to the table and brings out our green dinner, which, to nobody’s surprise, is both insane and delicious. We ooh and ahh over every course, dab our green napkins to our lips, linger over our peppermint ice cream and spearmint cookies. I’m tipsy and tripping and, for the first time in literally years, indescribably happy.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Felice says. “I want to take a drive to the lake. Supposed to be a nice day.”
“Great idea,” I say. Silence. I feel everyone’s eyes on me. “What?”
“We don’t have a car.”
“I have a car.”
Big laugh. Followed by applause.
“So that’s why you invited me here. For my car.”
“We all have a purpose, Youn,” Felice says. “Now you know yours.”
“I feel so touched. Used. But touched.”
Of course, I’m overjoyed to chauffeur Gloria, Felice, and Stan to the lake. And Sunday I volunteer to schlep everyone to a nearby park for a picnic. Monday I cut a class and take Gloria to the store. Let me repeat that. I cut a class!
By week’s end, I’m driving Gloria all over Kalamazoo and back—to class, home, the movies, clothes shopping, the Laundromat—everywhere. I know this sounds like high school and my doomed relationship with Janine the sequel, but this is much different. With Janine, I wanted sex. With Gloria, I want something else. Her.
WE QUICKLY BECOME a foursome. It appears that way to everyone we know, and most of all to me. Gloria and I feel like a couple, except for one small detail that prevents us from actually being a couple—the boyfriend back in Spain. Time and again, watching Stan and Felice snuggling in the overstuffed armchair, Gloria invites me to stay overnight.
“There’s really no place for me to sleep.”
“We can find a place, Tony.”
“No, no, no, no. That’s okay. I’ll go back to my apartment. Better that way.”
“You sure? I can make up the couch. It’s really comfortable.”
Stay! The hell with the boyfriend. He’s in freaking SPAIN. Go for it. Go, for, it!
“Nah, I’m good. Well, good night. See you guys tomorrow. Gloria, I’ll pick you up at nine sharp. You can’t be late for history.”
A peck on the cheek. A squeeze of the arm. Her hand landing on my back just below my neck, absently circling, massaging the base of my neck slowly . . . sensuously . . .
AHHHH!
In my room at two A.M. I lie awake, stare at my ceiling, and beg sleep to take me away, to remove Gloria from my mind. I climb out of bed, pace, strum my guitar, turn on the radio, find a sad song, crash back onto my bed, and shout to the dark empty room. “This sucks!”
With pulse-pounding dread, my heart heavy as an anvil, I tick off the days until Gloria will be leaving, returning to Spain and rejoining . . . him. If anything, during these final days, we see more of each other. I arrange my schedule around hers. I remain her sidekick, her driver, her companion, her more than willing wingman. Everything but her lover. It’s not easy to restrain myself. A hundred times I fight the urge to take her in my arms and lock my ravenous lips on her full and—I can only imagine—supple mouth. I remain the poster boy for restraint. The dutiful and lovesick friend. The perfect gentleman. I never disrespect her, never cross a line, never make a move. Every night I go to bed a lovesick mess. But I wake up every morning pure, my honor—and hers—intact.
Gloria has to respect that, right? Although I’m sure I feel her eyes trolling over mine, searching, widening, wondering, What if? What would happen if . . . ? I sure do.
Sadly, I never find out. Two days before she is to leave, I overhear her in loud and angry conversation with Pau, my rival, my nemesis. When she comes out of her room and joins the rest of us in the living room, she swipes at one creamy cheek, sighs, and sniffs.
The bastard made her cry! I ought to get on a plane, fly to Spain, and kick his skinny Spanish ass!
Or—second choice—ask her to stay.
Declare your love, Tony. Tell her right now that the two of you are meant to be. Stop being a wuss! Go for it! Claim her!
Of course, noble gentleman that I am, I say nothing. I reach out my arms and hold her stiffly while she sniffles and tries to compose herself.
“I’m going to miss you, Tony,” she says. Low. Smoky.
I’m trembling.
It’s raining the day I drive her to the airport. Classic heartbreak drop-off weather right out of a movie. Bogart and Bacall in Casablanca. Tony and Gloria in Kalamazoo. We hardly speak on the way. And when I lug her suitcase out of the Tempo’s trunk, I fight back the urge rising up in my throat like a fire to say, “Gloria, don’t go!” Instead I say, “This was really great. I’m so glad we got to hang out.”
She places a hand over her heart. “Oh, Tony, thank you for everything. I’m overwhelmed by your kindness. You are very special. I love you so much.”
A kiss on one cheek, then the other, European-style. The rain picking up, she sweeps her suitcase out of my hand and runs into the terminal, her raincoat slapping against the backs of her bare legs. She stops before the terminal’s revolving doors, whips around, waves, and blows me a kiss. Then she is gone.
I stand still as a rock, the rain pounding, my eyes locked on the revolving terminal doors, knowing that in a matter of seconds Gloria will reappear and run into my arms. I wait, losing all sense of time, watching and listening to the doors whap around.
I stagger back to my car. Tears mixed with ra
in slosh down my cheeks. I fling open the clanking door of the Tempo and squish down into the driver’s seat. I let out a moan. How could I let her go? How could I drive her to the airport without telling her how I feel? With open palms, I punish the steering wheel. I’m exhausted; my head throbs. I turn on the ignition and, with the back of my hand, wipe the mist that covers the inside of the windshield like a fog. I click on the radio. Harry Nilsson’s nasal crooning, “I can’t live if living is without you . . .” floats out of the radio. I lose it. My sobs ransack me.
Leaving me for dead.
. . . .
I WRITE GLORIA a letter. Five pages, longhand. On a legal pad. The words flow out of me hot and urgent. I lay it all out on the page. I tell her how much I love her. I say it’s obvious she feels the same way about me. I know that she probably expected me to make a move, but I couldn’t. I had too much respect for her and her relationship with her boyfriend to step out of bounds. I believed she would think less of me, and if I lost her respect, I could never live with myself. I tell her that what we built in a mere three months was extraordinary and that it is only the beginning. I plan to go to medical school, and even though she will be living in Spain for a few more years, she indicated that she is interested in traveling, pursuing a career as an interpreter. Perfect. I can travel with her during summers and holidays, and she can come here for extended periods. We can make our relationship work long-distance. And when we marry and have kids—
I strike that. Too far.
I tell Gloria that geographical distance is irrelevant when two hearts are as linked as ours. Our hearts beat as one.
I underline that.
I tell her each second will feel like an eternity until I hear from her.
I sign it, Love Always and Forever, Tony.
I mail it at the post office the next day.
I give the letter a week to arrive and another few days for her to respond. Two weeks conservatively.
I don’t hear from her in two weeks.
I rush home every day and practically rip the door off my mailbox in search of her letter.