by John Goode
We stopped just before actual intercourse, not from lack of interest but because we both ended up finishing well before things got that far. Normally that wouldn’t have been an issue, but instead of working ourselves into another session of sex, we lay there with each other. He curled himself into my arms and I held him close, just enjoying the feeling of someone sleeping next to me.
And it hit me, right at that moment, at that very second. I was happy. I was truly and completely happy. There was a contentedness in my heart I hadn’t felt in… well, ever.
Which was, of course, the very instant I started to panic.
Matt
“I’LL move? Who the fuck says that?” I whined into my cell phone.
Sophia’s laugh was half Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz and half Maleficent, voiced by the flawless Eleanor Audley in Sleeping Beauty. “Apparently you do, cupcake!” Her cackle was pure evil and chilled me to the bone even though she was thousands of miles away.
I normally hated her more than the Republican Party, Fox News, and those stretch pants that look like jeans combined, but never more so than when she was right. And once again, she was fucking right.
I had been in lust with the boy who lived down the street since I was old enough to know what lust meant but had never done anything about it as a teen. I had built this entire fantasy around who this boy was and what he would be like if I met him, so much so that it had ended up screwing up any actual relationships I’d tried to have. Now we’d ended up spending Christmas and the next few days after together, acting as if we’d been a couple forever and everything was perfect.
Except the ghost of my words, “I’ll move.”
“What am I going to do?” I moaned into the phone, hoping my voice didn’t carry outside my room and wake my parents. It was already midnight in Foster. People who were awake at midnight in Foster were treading into something akin to no-man’s land as far as the general populace was concerned. Since only bad could come from no-man’s land, being awake and doing strange things like making phone calls was considered a mortal sin, even if your body was still on California time.
“You think Obama has a witness relocation program for hopeless gay people?” she asked, far too much satisfaction in her voice.
“I hate you,” I snapped, using the word since it had the distinct honor of simultaneously being both honest and succinct. “Do you think he knows I was joking?” I asked in exactly the tone a blonde bimbo in a B-grade horror flick uses when she calls “Is anyone out there” to a darkened room right after she’s had slutty sex with her rebel boyfriend on a dare. It wasn’t so much a question as it was a declaration of my own mortality, because I knew the truth was out there in the darkness, just waiting to pounce on me.
“I am sure he’s out registering at Bath, Barn and Beyond or whatever hick-ass stores you guys have out there.” Sophia’s mutant ability allowed her to make even the most insulting of comments without enraging her target. “So have you screwed yet?” she asked. I pictured her leaning forward, one of her Lee press-on nails in her teeth as she waited breathlessly for my answer.
“You do know someday a fresh-faced teenager is going to throw a bucket of water on you, right?” I replied somewhat weakly after a few seconds.
“That’s a no!” she howled. I felt what was left of my patience dwindle to zero.
“This is serious!” I exclaimed over her hysterics. Her lack of empathy was seriously frustrating me.
Before she could answer, the wall to my right tried to cave in under the force of my father’s fist. His muffled, but unmistakably angry, voice called out, “Matthew! Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Suddenly I was twelve years old again. “Sorry, Dad!” I called out to the wall.
“This is serious!” I hissed into the phone, while images of my dad bursting into the room to tell me that tomorrow was a school day danced in front of my eyes. “What am I going to do?” I stood by my door and listened for my father’s footsteps.
“Have you, I don’t know, tried talking to him about it?”
“Talking is what got me into this trouble in the first place!” I whispered harshly into the phone, my paranoia making phantom sounds come from under my door.
“Honey, you have to talk to him.” Sophia’s voice lowered into unfamiliar territory, sounding almost sympathetic. “What if he’s freaking out as bad as you are?”
I sighed and slid down the door until I sat listlessly on the floor. “No one can be freaking out more than I am right now,” I said quietly.
Tyler
“I AM seriously freaking out.”
Linda laughed as she signaled the bartender for a couple more beers. “You’ve been saying that for almost a week now, Tyler,” she commented above the music. “Is it that bad?”
I shrugged as Pete slid a cold beer in front of me. “I’m of two minds,” I said, taking a long swallow of Shiner Bock.
We walked back to our table, maneuvering between the small clumps of people dancing to the music from the jukebox. “So one mind says?” she asked once we sat back down.
“He’s awesome and I love spending time with him,” I admitted truthfully.
“Considering this is the first time I’ve seen you guys apart since you hooked up, I would say that’s a no-brainer.”
She was right. Matt had spent every night with me since Christmas and so far, it had been incredible. I felt uncharacteristically domestic, but being domestic had its points.
“But?” she prompted me out of my silence. “The other brain says?”
I tried not to look panicked as I answered. “Who says they’ll move before we even have a date?”
“Maybe it was a joke?” she offered, though the expression on her face made it clear she didn’t believe it either.
“A joke usually has a punch line; this was a statement,” I said, taking an even longer drink of my beer. “What if he’s serious?”
This time she shrugged. “What if he is? Would that be so bad?”
I put my head on the table as I moaned. “I don’t know.”
She put a hand on my shoulder in sympathy. “You know, you can’t be a slut your entire life.” I looked up in shock, and she burst out laughing in response. “I’m kidding!” she added quickly. “Tyler, if you had asked me before Christmas, I would have said you were the one man this side of the Mississippi in most need of a good lay. I think you and Matt are a good thing.”
“We just met,” I protested, wondering when exactly I ended up sounding so whiny.
“And?” she countered. “You’ve known each other since we were kids.”
That was true and false at the same time, and she knew it.
Matt and his brothers were legendary in their day as kings of high school football around Foster. The Wallace brothers were, as I have put it once, sex in sneakers, and most of my teenage life had been spent fantasizing about one or more of them.
“This is just too fast,” I said to the table.
“Can I ask you a question and not get my head bit off?” she asked after a few seconds. I nodded. “He said this before Christmas. Why are you freaking about it now? I mean, has he even brought it up again?”
He hadn’t said a word about it, but I knew it was on his mind as well. It was like an elephant that sat between us on the couch as we watched TV. A giant, uncomfortable elephant that refused to go away but neither one of us wanted to talk about.
Linda said nothing as I sat there with my head down, wondering why this was freaking me out so much. When I didn’t think, which had been most of this week, everything was great. We had enjoyed exploring ourselves as a couple, which was a completely new thing for me, since the longest relationship I had ever been in was a year and a half, and that had been with a woman. Guys had fallen into the hit-and-run category and lately not even that. When I lived in Florida, I had cruised the web for hookups with other closeted guys and had done pretty well, if I do say so myself.
And then my knee e
xploded and I moved back to Foster.
I didn’t so much hit a dry spell as I realized I had moved into a desert. The closest place that even had a gay bar was a drive away and, after Riley, I was terrified to step foot into it again.
Crap, I hadn’t finished explaining that to you, had I?
OKAY, so for a while things were pretty cool, because I had gay friends for the first time in my life. Riley would call me a couple of days a week and ask if I wanted to head up to the Bear’s Den with him and Robbie. Which was an incredible gesture on Riley’s part, because he had to know I would have never gone without them. Robbie never said a word to me, but I had the sense he was just barely tolerating me always going with them. However, for Riley’s sake, he was staying quiet.
That alone should have won him a Nobel peace prize in my book.
They slowly immersed me in gay culture, coaxing the real me out of the closet step-by-step with equal parts of alcohol, music, and promises of sexual encounters with guys that lasted more than one night, which would be one more night than the ones I’d had before. It was a hard sell, but they kept at it; Riley coaxed me with social carrots, and Robbie wielded a pretty sharp verbal stick when I balked.
“You do know you aren’t getting any younger, right?” he’d say to me when I tried to find an excuse for not going. “You’re, like, a couple of years away from your body realizing it’s midnight and then, trust me, you’re going to wish you’d used what you had when you had it.”
I would give him a wry grin. “And what exactly do I have?”
In return I’d get a small pause and a not-small glare and sneer. “Fuck you. I am not feeding that already Godzilla-sized ego you possess. Stay here and get old. We are going out.”
I’d follow him and Riley out to their car. “No, come on, tell me what I have now! I want to hear you say it.”
“I hate this town,” he’d tell Riley before slamming the car door behind him.
In the end, I’d end up going with them and liking it.
I spent long hours talking to Riley about the guys we went to school with who we both had a crush on while Robbie listened in and, as a matter of sheer principle, hated every name we brought up. After a month or so, I was invited over to their house for a dinner party of sorts, a chance for me to mingle with other homosexuals in their natural environment, as Robbie put it. I asked them a dozen times if this was just a lame excuse for them to set me up with one of their friends. Each time they denied it, which made me ask again. The asking and denying got so bad that Robbie just threw his arms up at one point and exclaimed, “Fine! Don’t come, bitch! I’m sure we can feed another dozen people on what you would eat alone.”
I might have said something to defend myself if I hadn’t had my mouth full of crackers at the time.
So the night of the party, I forced myself not to panic or to chicken out and showed up at their door with a bottle of decent wine under my arm. Robbie answered the door. His smile was as evil as anything I had seen before and didn’t get any nicer when he welcomed me in. “Enter of your own free will, and welcome,” he declared, moving aside and taking the wine. “Oh look! Wine without a screw-off cap. See, we are having an effect on you.” I told him to shove it just as I noticed the startling lack of people in attendance.
“Am I that early?” I asked.
Which was when another guy walked out from the hallway, drying his hands. “Hey, you sure this guy is going to show up?” And then he noticed me and paused. He was a decent-looking guy, but not someone you’d turn your head for. He was a little older than me and looked me up and down like I was something in a store window instead of a person.
“Okay, so it’s a lame attempt to set you up with one of our friends. So get over it,” Robbie ordered. I noticed he’d taken a position standing in front of the door.
I was about to turn and push him out of the way when Riley came over. That insanely welcoming smile he had caught me squarely between the eyes. “Hey! You made it,” he said as warmly as could be. “Have you met my friend Jim? He’s the foreman out at my parent’s ranch.”
I forced myself to smile and shake Jim’s hand as if I had been expecting him to be there. “Pleased to meet you,” I said robotically.
“Hey there,” he said, gripping my hand firmly. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Same,” I replied, completely on autopilot.
“Great, so we’re all here,” Robbie added, walking toward the kitchen and staying out of my reach the entire time, I noticed. “How about we pop this baby open and get the night started?” He grabbed a corkscrew and deftly pulled the cork out of my wine bottle with one smooth movement.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Jim added as we walked toward the breakfast nook where Robbie was pouring the wine.
“Oh really?” I said, giving Robbie the deadliest glare I had. He ignored it, of course, and smiled innocently as a baby as he handed me a glass of wine.
“Yeah, these two won’t shut up about you,” Jim explained over a sip of his wine.
“Oh yeah, they can be like that,” I said, downing half the glass in one swallow. “Always full of surprises.”
“Is there a surprise coming?” Jim asked, confused.
“Count on it,” I said, snarling at Robbie before finishing the glass. “Hit me again.” I slid the glass back toward him.
“Someone likes cheap wine,” he muttered under his breath. Nevertheless, he filled my glass again.
“So, Tyler runs the sporting goods store over on First Street,” Riley said in an attempt to break the tension
“Oh? Is that fun?” Jim asked, doing a good job at faking interest. Well, except for the word “fun,” which he hadn’t meant to say, I think. His face pinked up a little when he realized how he sounded.
“It pays the bills,” I said, desperately trying to find a way to get out of this without being a complete asshole.
There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence before Jim offered, “I handle the steers over on the ranch.”
“Oh, is that fun?” I asked him, looking for an escape hatch nearby.
“It pays the bills.”
It took me a couple of seconds to process he had given me my own answer back. I tried to laugh, but it sounded so mangled I just stopped. “I’m sorry. Robbie, can I talk to you for a moment?” He paused in the kitchen and pointed at himself questioningly. “Yes, you,” I growled, striding down the hall to get away from the living room.
We ducked back into one of the spare rooms. “What in the hell is this?” I demanded.
“Oh no, ma’am,” he countered, taking a step back from me. “Do not come at me like I owe you money or something. You want to have a conversation? That’s fine, but you best check yourself before you wreck yourself.”
His attitude made me want to scream even louder, but I took a deep breath and tried again. “What exactly do you think you’re doing out there?”
He arched one eyebrow. “Well, I was making sure the chicken didn’t get burnt, but I have a feeling you aren’t talking about my culinary skills.” I was about to start yelling again, but he held up a finger and paused me. “What I think I am doing is trying to get you to meet another living, breathing gay man who you can date. You know, in some cultures that might be looked on as a good thing, but leave it to Foster to fuck up even a blind date.”
“I didn’t ask you to set me up.”
He shrugged. “No one asks to be set up. Well, I guess some do, but those are just pathetic losers who aren’t going to get laid anyway, so they don’t count.” I was about to go off again, but he just kept talking. “Yes, we tried to set you up and yes, we lied to you because you are basically a twelve-year-old girl when it comes to anything resembling relationships, and if we told you anything you would have just ran screaming into the night.”
I opened my mouth but he just kept going. “And yes, I know it isn’t cool to just jump out with a guy you don’t know, but that is the price you pay for being emotionally stunted w
hen it comes to the whole dating thing. No one is expecting you and Jim to get married! Hell, I thought he was too old for you, but Riley thought it would be easier to start you out with a pony before you tried to ride a real horse; and no, that isn’t a dick joke.”
I opened my mouth to answer him but he just kept on talking. “It might as well be, since all you know are one-night stands. So just go out there and pretend to like him for tonight, and then we can regroup and grade you on how well you did.”
I opened my mouth again to respond and then closed it again as I realized I had forgotten what I was going to say.
“Good,” Robbie said, grabbing my arm and turning me around. “So let’s head out and learn to play nice with others okay?”
I let him lead me back to the living room in a daze as I wondered when exactly I had lost control of the night.
“SO THEN dump him,” Linda said once she realized I had stopped talking.
I looked up at her and shook the past out of my head. “I hope you don’t give Kyle that kind of advice!” I exclaimed.
She waved her finger at me. “No, do not bring my son and his boyfriend into it. So far, they know more about gay dating than you seem to, so keep them out of it. If you are that bent out of shape, tell him he’s moving too fast and break up with him.”
“I don’t want to,” I answered, sounding like I had regressed to the age of six and two thirds.
“Then there’s your answer, isn’t it?” She smiled back at me.
“But I’m freaking out!” I screamed as the music stopped. Everyone in the bar looked over at us, and I felt my face turning six shades of red.
“Drama queen,” she called to them, grinning. “What can I do?”
“You suck,” I said as everyone laughed and the music started back up.
“And you are a chickenshit,” she fired back. “If you like Matt, then like him. He was joking, you know it, and you’re busy creating an excuse to run.” She finished her beer and slammed the bottle down on the table hard, the only indication of how much she’d drunk. “Now, I promised Kyle that I was going to try to fly straight, so I’m calling a cab and going home.”