The Coming Storm

by Paul Russell

  Noah had gone all hollow inside; the blood had rushed from his head. Why are you doing this? he’d wanted to ask, but hadn’t; had only found himself nodding, unable to speak, as the edges of his vision dimmed for a single scary moment in which he was just stupid Noah Lathrop who was going to die. Expendable. But then the results had come back. The Fatwa had been there with him when he went to get them. Despite the swagger of his tattoo, he’d tested negative. He wasn’t the boy with AIDS after all.

  “Thank God,” had been Chris’s reaction—but Noah had wondered, fleetingly, if it was possible his friend felt somehow abandoned by the good news. That had been a fine moment, after all, the afternoon they’d ventured into that Chelsea tattoo parlor.

  Against all odds they were still friends. Who could have foretold, that night back in the fall when he’d run into Tracy and Betsy on this very path, that half a year later he’d be walking with, of all people, the Fatwa? As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Chris linked their arms together, the way he’d done when they marched into the tattoo parlor. For only an instant Noah flinched with the old fear. This was the Forge. What if someone saw them? It was the same fear Tracy must have felt all the time, even in his own house. But then the dread thought came to Noah: soon enough, everybody would see them. For this was a momentous day. Was that why he’d been allowed a glimpse of Betsy? Was she meant to signal him that he was allowed to go on wishing, and that everything would be fine?

  Leaving the lake behind them, he and Chris walked arm in arm up the path toward the cafeteria.

  “Do you feel ready?” Chris asked. Like the tattoos that afternoon, this had been his idea. He was very charismatic that way.

  “Frankly, I feel ill,” Noah said bravely, “but I’ll be okay. The question is, are they ready?”

  “As ready as they’ll ever be,” Chris said. He sounded positively jubilant, a boy who had nothing to lose. Noah quailed, then girded himself. He likewise, he told himself, had nothing to lose. Or at the very least he could act as if he had nothing to lose.

  Taking a deep breath, he flung open the double doors of the cafeteria. The familiar, depressing odor of ammonia-mopped floors assailed him, and beyond that the greasy smell of meat.

  Tables had been set up in the foyer. Every third Friday of the month was Club Day, a pointless event, he’d always thought, at which the various clubs vied for attention and recruits. Today the usual suspects were out in number: David Valentine at the Chess Club table, Mike Choi with the Cyber Club, Brad Delson and Ben Cannon manning the elaborate setup of the Miniature Railroad Club, by dint of Mr. Brill’s patronage by far the most popular club at the school.

  His heart drummed nervously. He scanned the room. It was now or never, he thought, though never, at the moment, had quite an appealing ring to it. He clutched at his knapsack, which held, carefully folded, along with several rubber-banded stacks of flyers Chris had brought up from the city, the banner the two of them, sequestered in the Fatwa lair, had painted on a bedsheet the night before.

  “Okay,” he said as he set the knapsack on an empty table. “Here goes nothing.” Like a magician producing scarves, he unfurled the brightly colored banner. With masking tape they affixed it to the front of the table, and Chris stepped back to check out the effect. “Fabulous,” he said, tossing a lemonyellow lock of hair out of his eye. Then Noah himself dared take a look. The lettering was bold, irrevocable, clearly visible to anyone who walked by.

  QUEER FORGE.

  Gay/Bisexual/???ing.

  Strength in Solidarity. Join Our Coalition.

  He’d never done anything even remotely requiring the fortitude it took to calmly, even nonchalantly, seat himself behind that table, a target for all the world. See who I am? his mute presence proclaimed as loudly as if he’d banged on a drum and shouted.

  As Chris arranged and rearranged the various pamphlets—AIDS education, Youth Services in New York City, Twenty Questions You May Have about Coming Out—Noah dared himself to flee. In spite of his tattoo, which he took pains to hide, he wasn’t marked the way Chris Tyler was marked; his camouflage was still intact. But then he remembered the pigeon that had hung from Chris’s door.

  They settled down to wait. For several minutes nothing at all happened. Preoccupied with setting up their own tables, none of the other boys paid them any attention. Then the double doors burst open and in marched Mr. Brill and his family. They arrived, as always, like pioneers ready to settle a new land, full of an unstoppable confidence he both envied and despised. And count them: four children, and the fecund Mrs. with another on the way; surely a serious war crime against the planet, as Tracy Parker would have said. Even before he knew Tracy, he’d hated the Brill, ever since those days in study hall when that mutant hybrid (one part drill sergeant, two parts lizard) used to humiliate any boy whose mind he suspected of wandering. Well, the Brill would never guess in a million lizard years how far Noah’s mind had managed to roam.

  As wife and children descended like locusts on the cafeteria line, the object of Noah’s scorn paused to survey the tables, especially the Miniature Railroad Club, where an engine and three boxcars traveled around and around a figure-eight of track to nowhere. “Looking good,” he told his minions. “Looking real good.”

  At last he took notice of the newcomers.

  “What’s this,” he said, as if prepared to be pleasantly surprised. But his look quickly darkened.

  “We’re announcing the formation of a new club,” Chris said brightly, teasingly. “Want to join?”

  The Brill scrutinized the banner carefully—unable, it seemed, to decipher exactly what its words meant.

  “This your idea of a prank, boys?” he asked warily. “Pretty funny, I’d say.” He picked up a flyer and, still frowning, perused it as well.

  “Nope,” Chris said. “It’s the real thing. Scary, isn’t it?”

  “You seem to think you’re clever,” the Brill told him. “But you’re not. You’ve got no idea what you’re dabbling with here. Do you even know what gay stands for? Well, let me tell you. G-A-Y. Got Aids Yet? Get it? I’m confiscating these.” He scooped up the stack of flyers in his hirsute paw. “This club isn’t authorized. You’ve got to take this stuff down. Pronto.”

  “I believe you’ll find that Dr. Tremper authorized it,” Chris improvised smoothly.

  “Uh-uh,” the Brill said. “If I believe that I’ll believe pigs can fly.”

  “Just yesterday,” Chris said.

  Noah watched with admiration, then chimed in. “We’ve got as much right to be here as you do, Mr. Brill. So get used to it.”

  The Brill looked at him the way his dad used to look at him: that mix of contempt, disbelief, plain incomprehension. “You,” he warned. “Watch the lip. I’ve had my eye on you. And you’re both in mongo trouble if I walk over to Dr. Tremper’s office and find out you’ve just told me a lie. Do you understand that?”

  “We understand,” Noah said. “We’ll accept the consequences.”

  The Brill glared at him, then shook his head disgustedly. He was the one Tracy had been most afraid of. And he knew everything. Noah hadn’t quite understood at the time. But this was the man who’d caused it all to unravel, the one who’d gotten Tracy—fired—he was sure of it. He should hate him, but he only felt a blank dread as he watched that compact, muscular frame push its way out the door. In the end it was the Brills of the world, Noah understood too well, who had everything on their side.

  “Okay,” he told Chris. “Now we’re cooked.”

  “Maybe,” Chris said helpfully, but then Chris didn’t mind being cooked. He was the Fatwa. He was beyond all that. “Look on the bright side. At least they’ve noticed us,” he said.

  That attention manifested itself, however, as its opposite: the other club boys desperately pretended to arrange the chess pieces or check the battery on a laptop, or follow the train in its pointless journey, all the while casting furtive and titillated glances in the direction of the two self-
proclaimed queers who had appeared in their midst. The air in the room was suddenly sultry with expectation. But of what? With a crash the double doors were flung wide and in loped the Goethe Hall Gang—Kevin, Patrick, Gary, Tim. They must have been horsing around: their faces were flushed, their school uniforms in disarray. Kevin sported a grass stain on his left knee. There was a time not long ago when Noah would have been with them. With them but not of them, he reminded himself, regretting only for a bittersweet moment this betrayal of his friends. He faced the fact coldly: they had not known him; they had not ever been his friends.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” Gary said broadly, pausing to scrutinize the banner while Noah held his breath. “Oh my God. You’re shitting me.” He looked from Noah to Chris and back again, genuinely stunned, Noah was gratified to note. He met Gary’s stare without flinching. “Queer Forge,” Gary read aloud in high, hysterical disbelief.

  “Gary,” Tim told him. “Don’t get so uptight. It’s a joke.”

  “Uh, guys,” said Kevin Motes. “I don’t think it is a joke.”

  “No,” affirmed Noah. He stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. “It most definitely is not a joke. Sorry.”

  “I knew it,” Gary said. His whole body twisted away from the table in a slow pantomime of revulsion as he waved his open palms, fingers spread wide, in front of his face to ward off the spectacle. “I knew I smelled something fruity about you all along.”

  “Knock it off,” Tim told him.

  “Your roommate’s a queer,” Gary pointed out. “Did you know that?”

  “Grow up,” Tim said. Then, to Noah: “So. I guess you and I need to talk. It’s not like I didn’t sort of know.”

  “Yeah, we should talk,” Noah agreed. He’d known all along Tim was the decent one; his roommate had probably even known about the bed-wetting and never used that knowledge.

  “What do you mean, grow up?” Gary protested. “Your roommate’s gone over to the freaking Fatwa.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Chris said. He had remained seated the whole time, making the best of his immense capacity to look bored. “The what?”

  “You heard me, Fatwa.” Gary shot the word out with the force of a bullet.

  Chris just shook his head and smiled. “Are you having a nervous breakdown?” he asked mildly.

  A sudden inspiration flashed in Noah. “Come on, Gary,” he said. “Join us.” For one supersatisfying instant, he caught the glimmer of pure terror that flickered in Gary’s eyes.

  Smelling blood, Patrick couldn’t resist flinging his own taunt. “You know you want to, Gary,” he simpered. Noah had always suspected that Patrick, given half a chance, was basically a shark.

  “Shut up, you little faggot,” Gary instructed his friend. He clenched his fists as if about to lash out.

  “Why don’t you make me?” Patrick suggested. “Faggot. Takes one to know one.”

  It was all so dreary, Noah thought. And obvious. And, for once, oddly thrilling, the way a girl must feel to have boys fighting over her. He waited for the inevitable shoving match, the thrown punch, all hell to break loose. But it didn’t. The front doors opened again and in strode the Brill with Dr. Tremper in tow. Cowards when push came to shove, the Goethe Hall Gang dispersed to the cafeteria with such practiced alacrity that Noah was sure neither the animated Brill, in whose voice the note of agitation sounded clearly even if the individual words were inaudible, nor the headmaster, who was saying nothing, only nodding now and again with a grim expression on his face, had noticed a thing.

  “See?” the Brill said, gesturing to the banner—as if Dr. Tremper had for some reason been disinclined to believe him without physical evidence.

  Slowly, deliberately, the headmaster took off the sunglasses he always wore when venturing out of doors. Secret Agent Man, some of the students called him. “Christian. Noah,” he addressed them. “Good morning.”

  Chris spoke up cheerfully—“Good morning, sir”—and Noah mumbled the same. Dr. Tremper’s unshielded gaze seemed to take in everything at once. He did not look particularly surprised, or even dismayed. Unreadable, he fascinated Noah. He took up a pamphlet and examined it, then laid it carefully back on the table. “AIDS education,” he said in that formal way he had. “Certainly a worthy cause.”

  The Brill gave a snort of disapproval. Dr. Tremper cast a sidelong glance his way. “You disagree?” he said. Noah registered the gesture with a sense of shock. The Brill might have everything on his side—God, decency, a family—but Dr. Tremper despised the Brill.

  “I don’t really think, here at the Forge School, for our students, I mean, I don’t think…” said the Brill before spluttering to a halt before that acid stare. Dr. Tremper had a similar way of looking at you in class when he thought you were embarrassing yourself.

  “Your world is very small, Mr. Brill. There are many things you do not know.”

  “There’re a lot of things I don’t want to know,” the Brill replied.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Dr. Tremper told him. He paused, and wearily wiped his eyes. Then, looking straight at Noah, he announced, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the foyer to hear, “This club has my authorization. Furthermore, it has my support. I do not want to see these students harassed in any way. They are under my protection. You, Mr. Brill, in particular, I entrust with seeing that that is the case. Do I make myself clear?”

  The Brill worked hard to master his annoyance. His face contorted its way through various ugly spasms. “I understand,” he said. “Though under protest.”

  “Your protest is noted,” Dr. Tremper said icily, and turned away. “Now good day, Christian. Noah.” He nodded briskly at them both—but his eyes, Noah could have sworn, glittered with the ironic suggestion of a smile.

  So it’s true, Noah thought. You had to listen carefully, as he’d done during the six weeks since the headmaster had taken over their English class, but if you did listen you could catch, carefully concealed beneath that dry shell of formality, all that careful diction and arid wit, the shocking soul of a complete anarchist. It was a feeling he’d had, just a suspicion—Tracy Parker had liked Dr. Tremper, after all—but now Noah saw it clearly. He wanted to laugh, but instead exulted to Chris, as the adults moved out of range, “I can’t believe it.”

  “See? I told you,” Chris said, as if he’d been in on the secret all along. “He’s on our side. He may not be one of us, but in his own way Dr. Tremper’s definitely on our side.”

  It was as if a future opened inside him, wild and radiant and hopeful. He no longer felt angry—not even with Tracy Parker. Why should he be angry? He’d achieved what he’d sought. He’d made somebody want him—only momentarily, it was true, but that was enough. It was his first success in life.

  Reaching out his thin arm, the arm with the tattoo, he flexed his muscle—a comic book gesture, he knew, but still. Maybe, just maybe, out of the exhilaration and mess of the last few months, a monster had been created.

  Unfettered, inextinguishable, the monster found himself on the verge of everything. This was the dream he dreamed, suddenly, as clearly as if it were real. He clung to a great crag of rock. Below him yawned the dark chasm. From here anything was possible. He could fall; he could soar. He could burst into flame and astonish them all.

  “Come on,” Noah urged his classmates as they drifted past. “Join up with us. What are you waiting for? The future’s here, and it’s queer, a whole new way of living. This old earth’s sick, it’s tired, it wants things to change; besides, the animals are on our side. The forests are on our side, the oceans too. Aren’t you fed up with being so loud and stupid and mean? Come dream our dream with us. What I mean is—stop eating meat, stop putting junk in your bodies. That goes for your heads too. Stop sleepwalking. Live for a change.” He spoke whatever inspired sentences streamed into his head; if charisma was a spirit that could fill you up, then he overflowed. All his long conversations with Tracy Parker, their feasts of lentils and root vegetabl
es, the Franz Schubert and the candlelight and most of all the love, not just the touch of flesh but that too, penetration’s sacred pain and profane joy, the sheer shout of it. “Where the cities are now,” he said, “huge forests will grow up. The dams are going to burst and the floodwaters’ll wash away the superhighways. Rainbow trout, salmon, catfish—they’ll swim upstream. These fabulous beasts you can’t even imagine will be roaming right here, where the campus used to be. And all because of love, love, love. Just a few of us at the beginning. So what are you afraid of? We’re all gonna die sooner or later.”

  Beside him, still seated, Chris stirred languidly. He tugged at Noah’s sleeve. “Um, you’ve got an interesting notion of queer,” he pointed out.

  Noah didn’t mind. “I’ve had the benefit of an excellent teacher,” he told his friend and comrade. He had his vision; he would make it come true. Then he did what he would never have dreamed. He bent down and, on impulse, out of a love as pure as spring, he kissed the Fatwa on the lips.

  The other boys passing through the foyer respectfully averted their eyes. Word had spread quickly about the table’s existence, and the headmaster’s strange protection that shielded it from harm. No smirks, no taunts, no jokes came their way. No one so much as dared cast a look in their direction for the whole of the lunch period, so that in the end it was as if the two young queers were not even there at all.

  Also by Paul Russell

  Fiction

  Sea of Tranquillity

  Boys of Life

  The Salt Point

  Nonfiction

  The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential

  Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their various and invaluable contributions, I wish to thank Harvey Klinger, my agent; Keith Kahla, my editor; Ralph Sassone, Christopher Bram, Jill Rosenberg, Daisy, Sugar Baby in the sweet hereafter; Robert Tatum, Lawrence Schimel, Eric Brown, Darra Goldstein, Dean Crawford, Mark Valentine, Karen Robertson, the late James Lewton-Brain.