by Mark Roeder
* * *
Practice was nearly over when I looked up and noticed Casper sitting quietly in the stands. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. He was watching me
82 A Better Place and my eyes met his. I smiled cautiously. He smiled back, but I couldn’t tell what kind of smile it was. I couldn’t tell if it was real, or just a polite smile, like you give to strangers sometimes.
As soon as practice was finished, I walked over to Casper. I walked slowly. I didn’t know what was going to happen.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“So what do you think?”
“About what?” asked Casper.
“About the team.”
“Oh, they look good.”
There was a pause, an uncomfortable silence. I don’t think either of us knew quite what to say.
“Uh, listen…” said Casper. “I thought about what you said. I thought about it a lot. I don’t know how comfortable I am with this whole gay thing, but I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I thought…Well, I thought you were going to do something really, really horrible to me, but I know I was wrong.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “I’m so sorry that I scared you. I didn’t think it would freak you out like that. I guess I was just stupid, but…I don’t know how to approach another guy you know? Well, maybe you don’t, but you know what I mean. I’m just sorry I scared you, and I’m even sorrier it almost ruined our friendship. We are still friends…aren’t we?”
I looked into Casper’s eyes. I was afraid, afraid he’d tell me “no.”
“Yeah, we’re still friends. I’ve missed doing things with you. Not many people are nice to me, but you were. I liked that.”
“Everyone should be nice to you, Casper. You’re a great guy.”
Casper shrugged with his eyebrows.
“I like spending time with you, Casper. I can be real with you. I don’t have to be something I’m not. I don’t have to act. I can just be me.” Saying those words brought me back to my problem.
“You think you can handle me being gay?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. He looked down at the ground, then back up at me.
“I’m pretty confused about the whole gay thing. I’ve always thought gay guys were…well, not nice. But you’re nice. So…I don’t know. It makes me kind of uncomfortable you know, but I still want to be friends. I mean, you’ve never said one thing about how poor I am, or the clothes I wear. You don’t put me down like a lot of others. You see the same things, but you don’t put me down because of it. You do that for me, so I can try to do the same about you being gay. At least I’ll try.”
“That’s all I could ask, Casper,” I said, and smiled. The smile faded from my lips. “Just one thing, Casper—please don’t ever, ever tell anyone what you know. And tell Stacey not to tell either okay? If people found out I was gay, I don’t know what would happen, but I think it would be pretty bad.”
“Don’t worry, Brendan. I’ll never tell. Stacey won’t either.”
“So are you hungry? I’m starving. Want to go to Phil’s and get something? I’m buying.”
“Yeah,” said Casper. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” He smiled at me. I smiled back.
Casper
Brendan dropped me off in front of the house. We’d gorged ourselves at Phil’s. We’d laughed and talked and everything seemed like it did before the incident in the park. Well, things weren’t quite the same. Brendan was gay—knowing that made things different and difficult.
“See you at school,” said Brendan.
“Yeah, bye,” I said.
Brendan drove off in his fancy convertible. I felt mildly ashamed of letting
him see where I lived. He was a rich boy. I was dirt poor. I’d never let him take me home before. I never let anyone know where I lived, except Stacey. When he asked if he could drive me home, I said “yes” because we were friends. I knew Brendan was gay and I accepted him anyway. Being gay was just part of him. Being poor was just part of me. I let him take me home so he could better know the real me, just like I knew the real him.
He didn’t say anything about the overgrown yard, or the dilapidated house. I knew he wouldn’t. He was too polite. I knew what he must be thinking, but even that was okay. I knew Brendan would still like me. It made me feel good inside.
In the coming days, things went back to normal. Brendan and I hung out a lot. He was busy a lot of the time with football practice and games, but we still found time to do stuff together. I started going to the football games. It usually cost students $1.50, but Brendan got me a season pass for free. Knowing the quarterback had a few perks.
I liked to watched Brendan play. He was so strong and powerful, and yet graceful too. I marveled at the way he ran through the guys on the other team. He could weave in and out, just nicking past them as they all tried to take him down. Sometimes they did of course and I wondered how he could survive
84 getting knocked around like that. Getting hit like that would have killed me. I was also amazed at how cool he could be passing the ball. I mean, there were all these guys just waiting to pounce on him. He knew he had only seconds to pick out a receiver and pass the ball, and yet he looked so calm and focused. He even looked like that when the guys from the other team were flinging themselves at him. There he would be, calmly passing the ball as if no one else was around, when three or four guys were a half second away from colliding with him. Brendan was amazing.
One Saturday, Brendan brought a picnic lunch and we ate in the park at a table. I’d been thinking a lot about Brendan and his secret. I’d been thinking a lot about me too.
“Brendan, what made you gay?” I asked him as we sat and ate. I knew my question wouldn’t anger him and I was eager to hear his answer.
“Well,” he said, chewing slowly, “nothing made me gay, at least nothing like you are thinking. At first, I wondered what made me gay too, so I did a lot of reading on it. Guys like me aren’t made gay, we are born that way. It’s genetic. My genes made me gay. It’s something I got from my parents.”
“You mean your parents are gay?” I asked. “How could they be? I mean, they had to have sex to have you.”
Brendan laughed for a moment.
“My parents aren’t gay. They could have been and still had me, but they aren’t. When I say I got it from my parents, I mean I got it the same way I got my eye color, my hair color, and all that. There’s some gene somewhere that made me gay. Just like there’s some gene that made my eyes brown. Me being gay doesn’t mean my parents are too. Just like me having brown eyes doesn’t have to mean my parents both have brown eyes. In fact, neither of my parents does. My dad has green eyes, my mom blue, and yet mine are brown. It’s in the genes, like me being gay.”
It was all news to me. I always assumed something made boys gay, like what my brother did to me. It seemed there was another way.
“But most gay guys are made gay aren’t they?”
“No, nothing can make someone gay, Casper. You either are, or you’re not. Saying something made someone gay is like saying that someone is tall because they got bullied in grade school. It doesn’t work that way.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
86 A Better Place “But what if, what if a boy forced another boy to do something, couldn’t that make him gay?”
“What boy are you talking about, the one forcing, or the one being forced?”
“Okay, let’s say that a boy forced you to do something, like something sexual. Maybe he did it a few times. Wouldn’t that make you gay?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Brendan. He looked at me concerned. “Casper, are you trying to tell me something? You can tell me anything you know.”
“No, no, I’m just sayin’. I was just trying to understand. I’d heard that stuff could make you gay, especially stuff like being forced into doing something with another boy, that’s all. I just wanted to know what made you gay,” I
lied coolly. I gave no outward sign, but inside my heart was racing. I knew I shouldn’t have been so direct, but I had to know and who else could I ask? I’d been giving certain things a lot of thought and I was realizing that I’d been wrong about practically everything.
I steered the conversation away from gay issues. Brendan didn’t usually like to talk about stuff like that anyway. He was always afraid someone would hear. Sometimes he did talk to me about it, but he always seemed afraid that I’d get mad, or that someone would find out. I started talking about football, and that got him going. I hardly listened; however, too much was running through my mind.
Brendan
I knew I should have been happy that things were back to normal with Casper, especially after how bad things had been, but I wasn’t. Hanging out with Casper was great, but it was also a constant reminder of what I really wanted from him. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop loving him. We were once again good friends, and that was cool, but it only served to make my problems worse. The more time I spent with Casper, the more fun I had with him, the more it made me want him as my boyfriend.
I tried to be happy with what I had, and not be unhappy about what I didn’t have. I couldn’t help but want more. Casper was a lonely boy. He needed a friend. He desperately needed someone to love him. I did love him, but he couldn’t take the love I had for him. He couldn’t accept it, because I was another boy. The world was so unfair. Why was I made to love someone that couldn’t love me back? It shouldn’t have been like that. If you loved someone, they should love you back, period.
Spending time with Casper was almost too painful to bear. I treasured every moment with him, and yet each of those moments tormented me. I began to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be better if we weren’t friends. Maybe it would be better if we didn’t see each other at all. The thought of that made a sob rise in my throat, however. The thought of not being with Casper was more than I could bear. I was trapped, cursed to have what I wanted always before me, but never being able to reach it.
Casper
I walked alone in the moonlight. My brother was prowling the house with that look in his eyes, so it wasn’t safe there. I’d walk until he left, or finally went to sleep. I had a lot to think about anyway. Brendan and I had been spending a lot of time together. I loved being with Brendan. He made every moment special. It didn’t even seem to matter what we did together, we just had fun. We’d only known each other for a few short weeks, but I felt like we’d been best friends forever.
I’d always dreamed about having a friend like that—all those years when I was alone. I hoped and prayed for someone like Brendan, and there he was. My friendship with him was causing me problems, however. I didn’t even want to admit to myself what those problems were, but if what Brendan said was true, and I had no reason to doubt him, then maybe what I was feeling inside wasn’t so bad after all.
I’d always heard the other boys at school say bad things about homosexuals. Being called a “fag” was about the worst insult ever. Guys like that were prissy and girl-like. They did disgusting things with each other. They were pillow-biters. Brendan was gay, however, and he was about as far from prissy and girl-like as anyone could get. He was tough, tough as nails, and he was strong. Brendan had muscles bulging out everywhere.
I’d seen him take pain too. I remembered last fall, when he broke his leg during a game. It was the only game I went to that year and I’d seen it. Not only that, I’d heard it. I was standing down close to the field because I felt uncomfortable sitting in the stands. I was there by myself and I blended in better standing around with everyone near the field. I was right there when he got tackled by practically the entire opposing team. I saw his leg bend back the wrong way, and I heard it snap. Brendan yelled when his leg broke, but after that, he didn’t make a sound. I could see the pain in his face. I knew it had to hurt worse than anything, but he didn’t let on. He just took the pain.
Brendan was nothing like what I’d heard about gay boys. He was strong and brave and tough. If he was gay, then maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe a lot of the stuff I’d heard wasn’t true. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being gay.
I’d always believed what I’d heard because of my brother. He wasn’t prissy or girl-like either, but he did things to me, things the other boys said fags do with each other. My brother was mean. He liked to hurt me. He liked to make me do things I didn’t want to do. He used me, sexually, and so I’d thought that what I’d heard about gay guys was true. I thought all of them were sick bastards, when the truth was; it was just my brother that was sick. The more I thought about it, the more I doubted he was even gay. I’d seen him with girls. I’d found his girlie magazines. If he was gay, he wouldn’t have been having sex with girls, or looking at magazines like that. My brother wasn’t gay. He was just a bastard.
I had so many things to sort through, so many thoughts about Brendan, and me, and me and Brendan. I had a lot of feelings inside to sort out. It was a big job. In a way, I was faced with an entirely new world, a world where a lot of things I’d thought were true weren’t, and a lot of things I didn’t think were true were. I had to rethink everything.
It wasn’t so bad, however, having to rethink everything that is. My newfound understanding put a lot of things in place. It changed a lot of things for the better. I’d been getting more and more worried about some parts of myself, about some things that I’d been feeling. I was beginning to realize that maybe I didn’t need to worry about those things at all. What I’d thought was so bad wasn’t really bad. I’d just thought it was because I didn’t understand. Now that my eyes were opened, a whole new world was before me.
Brendan
Casper met me in the park on Saturday morning. I knew right from the beginning that it was going to be a great day. We hopped into my convertible and sped away. It was fall, but the day was bright and hot, Indian Summer my grandfather had called it. I looked beside me at Casper’s blond hair flying in the wind. He was standing up, catching the breeze as he held tightly onto the windshield. He turned and smiled at me, then sat back down.
“The only thing I don’t like about doin’ that is getting bugs in my teeth,” he said.
“I don’t see any,” I told him.
“Didn’t happen this time, but I think I swallowed one.” He laughed. “This sure is a nice car.”
“Yeah, but it’s not really mine. Well, it is, but my dad paid for it.”
“Wow, I can’t even imagine my dad giving me a car, even if we had money like that. Yours must love you a whole lot.”
“Well, I guess he does. Yeah, he does, I just don’t get to see him as much as I’d like. He’s always working or something.”
“At least he’s nice to you when he is there.”
“Your dad isn’t?” It was a question, but I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“Not really. I mean, he’s usually not too mean. It’s just that he really doesn’t want me around, me or my brother.”
“You never talk about your brother much.”
“No, I don’t like him.”
“Why not? I think it would be cool to have a brother.”
“It isn’t, believe me, at least not with a brother like mine.”
I could tell that Casper didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t press him. It was too fine a day to ruin.
“Here we are,” I said.
I pulled off into an abandoned drive at the edge of a large forest. There had been a house there once, but there was nothing left but the foundation. I wondered for a moment about who had lived there.
“So where are we going anyway?” asked Casper.
“I’m going to show you the old Highland farm. It’s a long hike into the woods. Rumor is it’s haunted.”
“You’re foolin’ me,” said Casper.
“No, I’m not really, but I’ve never seen a ghost there. I think you’ll like it, it’s cool.”
I hefted a backpack out of the convertible and slipped a st
rap over my shoulder. We started walking toward the trees and were soon surrounded by them. The sounds of insects were everywhere and frogs croaked out their songs in the distance. I loved the forest.
It only took a few minutes to get hot and sweaty. I stopped, pulled off my shirt, and stuffed it through a loop in my backpack. Casper looked very hot, but he didn’t take his shirt off. I was a little disappointed because I was curious to see what he looked like shirtless. I would have doffed my shirt if I was him. We’d barely started and he was already so sweaty that his shirt was clinging to his slim torso. It stuck to him so closely that it was almost like he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Casper was painfully thin, as if he didn’t get enough to eat. That made me wonder if maybe he didn’t get enough sometimes. It put a knot in my throat. I didn’t like the thought of anyone doing without.
Despite being terribly thin, Casper was very good looking. His small body was firm and well proportioned. He was beautiful. I had to fight myself to keep from looking at him too much. Having him so near brought to the surface the same problem I experienced every time we were together. Casper and I had quickly become the best of friends, but I couldn’t help but want more. Even after what had happened, I couldn’t make myself not love him. I knew he couldn’t love me back like I wanted. I tried not to feel as I did for him, but I couldn’t help it. It was something in me and I couldn’t get it out. It made my time with Casper a bittersweet pleasure. The more fun we had together, the more of a reminder it was that I could never have the boy of my dreams.
I thought that things would grow easier, that I’d get used to the idea that Casper could be my friend, but not my boyfriend. It was getting harder instead. The pain inside me increased with each passing day, and it was at its worst when I was with Casper. I wasn’t about to avoid seeing him, however. He brought me my greatest pain, but also my greatest joy. I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than being with him.
“Hey, look at that!” said Casper, pointing off to the side.