Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture

by Chris O'Guinn

  It was in that moment that something very bad and terribly wonderful happened. I could feel it in my heart, and it filled me with a keen sense of dread.

  I fell in love with Austin.

  The irrational desire to run up and hug him once it was over was not easily ignored, but I did manage to control my impulses. The loud cheers and applause he received covered for my inability to even think of a comment. I saw him smile, the first smile he had showed this group of people, and I felt a little flash of smug satisfaction.

  With the truckload of talent my club was packing, I decided we could do a musical and pull it off, and I had just the one in mind. I’m not a dictator, though, so I opened the floor to suggestions. Ideas were tossed around like paper airplanes, but when I made my suggestion, there were several immediate supporters. Slowly, the conversation morphed into questions of how we could pull it off, that it would be too expensive, too long, and so on.

  “Kretchmer would never allow it, anyway,” Franci said.

  That’s when Lundquist, who had been quiet during the debate, cleared his throat. “You let me deal with him. If you all want to do this show, we’ll find a way.”

  I turned to my group of thespians and smiled at them. “What do you say? Shall we shock this town to its core with the first ever local production of ‘Moulin Rouge’?”

  The cheers were answer enough.

  Committees were formed to break the project up into manageable chunks. Nick and Keith and Miles volunteered to handle props and lighting. I drafted Jackie, Franci, Becca and Shawna into assisting me with wardrobe. Austin took up set-design with a bunch of others, which again impressed me. My vice-president, Shelly, said she would handle the music. With Lundquist dealing with Kretchmer for us, we were good to go.

  That very evening, my cell phone rang with a completely unexpected caller ID on the screen. I picked it up, feeling puzzled, unsure what this call would be or could be about.

  “Did you dial the wrong number?” I asked tentatively.

  “I don't think so,” Jen responded seriously. “I wrote the number down that the agency gave me....”

  I started to smile as I realized this was one of her jokes. No one could deadpan like Jen. “Agency?” I played along.

  “The Fag Hag Placement Agency. They assigned me to you.”

  “They did? Huh, they must have forgotten to send over your resume. Are you qualified?” My smile was rapidly taking over my face.

  “Oh yes. I have all the local beauty salons rated according to a five-star system, based on ambience, magazine collections and the hair products they use. I also have Nordstroms and Sachs set up to send me email notices of sales, and when they arrive, I get a ping on my phone so I can immediately alert my gay boy.”

  “High tech,” I approved. “Damn, Nordstroms…. You know how to hurt a guy.”

  “They don't have that in Smallville? However do you survive?”

  “I've had to make my own clothes out of the curtains.”

  “How very von Trapp of you. Your parents have sequin curtains? I can’t imagine you stooping to making them out of anything less.”

  I busted up laughing. “Oh, God, I've missed you.”

  Jen was smiling. I could sense it clear as day. “Yeah, I've missed you too.”

  And thus ended our great spat.

  “Oh my God, you so will not believe what happened today,” she told me.

  “Mike asked you out?”

  “Whoa, freaky. How did you guess?”

  “Wait, he did? Serious? I was kidding. Was the wildest thing I could think of. What did you say?”

  Jen giggled evilly. “I told him I don't date gay boys.”

  I choked on that. “Oh my God, you didn't. No, I know you, of course you did. Jesus…. What did he say?”

  “He laughed it off, but he didn't look happy. Then I told him I wasn't interested in your castoffs. I swear, his head just about popped.”

  I fell back on my bed, exulting in the image of the look on Mike's face. Yes, I had crushed on him something fierce, even loved him, but the way he had treated me had sunk those feelings permanently. Now I could revel in the image of him furious and humiliated.

  “You are my hero.”

  “I know,” she replied modestly. “So, what's the news in Smallville? Been rustled by any cowboys?”

  “No, Jen. Come on, you watch the news. You know they don't have gay people in the Midwest.”

  “Oh right. Wow, no couture, no gay boys…. Your parents might as well have just sent you to military school.”

  “Hey, if the jokes about those schools are true, I might not have minded.”

  “You with a buzz cut? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, maybe not.”

  “You do have some friends, though, right? “ She sounded genuinely worried.

  “Oh yeah,” I told her. “I’m actually verging on the cusp of being popular. It’s weird. I think more people like me here than at that dump you’re stuck in.”

  “Wow,” Jen exclaimed. “And how are your new friends handling the whole ‘gay’ thing?”

  I knew this was her not-so-subtle way of making a point. I gracefully dodged it, however. “They have absolutely no problem with the ‘gay’ thing.”

  “Because you haven’t told them?”

  Drat. Caught. Jen knew me far too well. I can get away with absolutely nothing with her. “Well....”

  “Oh, Collin,” she said reprovingly. “You aren’t a guy who makes the same mistake twice.”

  “See, this is where we disagree. I don’t see choosing not to tell everyone as a mistake. Now, telling Mike I loved him, that was a blunder, I admit.”

  “You’re saying you don’t regret not telling me?”

  “No, I—”

  “You can’t have a friendship based on a lie,” she told me.

  Jen never lets me off the hook. She knows just what to say to make me feel like crap. I sighed mournfully and tried to rally. “It’s not a lie, per se.”

  “It is, Col, and speaking as someone who had it done to her, it really sucks. Look, dude, a person is going to either be okay with it or not. If they are going to hate you, well, what do you want to be friends with them for? But for us cool people, you are saying to us that you assume we’re going to hate you. That really hurts.”

  Put like that, I had no choice but to see her point. My carefully constructed rationale had trouble staying upright in the face of her logic. “You don’t know how hard it is....”

  “No, I don’t, Col. But let me just add this. What you’re doing? You’re taking away a person’s choice. By not telling them who you are, you are basically depriving them of the chance to decide on their own if they want to be friends with you.”

  That was a very troubling perspective. “I don’t want to be alone,” I confessed.

  “If these people are worth hanging with, they’ll accept you. Jesus, Collin, you’re not in the Deep South or anything. Did you know that there is a really strong movement in Iowa to legalize gay marriage?”

  “No way, really?”

  “I did some reading. It’s not as backwards as you think. So, give it some thought, huh?”

  It wasn’t that she didn’t make a lot of sense; I was constantly frustrated by Jen’s irritating habit of being right all the time. It was simply that what she was telling me to do put everything I was building at risk. If the truth about me got out, it could cause me to go from quirky-but-likable new kid to the class pariah in a heartbeat.

  Still, her obnoxiously valid points continued to bother me. I thought about it a lot, in class, at the club meeting, even when hanging out with Austin. I had to wonder what they all would think. Would they be surprised? Would they be upset? Would they shun me?

  “You seem distracted,” Austin commented.

  We were having one of our frequent homework sessions in my room. He had become a regular feature around the Murray household. This did not go over well with Shawn, but since he wasn’t given a vote, it did
n’t matter. Austin had changed so much from the hooded misfit I had met. He smiled more and he spoke more freely. I hadn’t seen his hoodies in weeks.

  “Just, you know, lots of stuff on my mind,” I told him.

  Of anyone, he was the one I had to tell first. That created a problem, though, since he was the one I was the most worried about losing. Optimism warred with Doubt, but since Insecurity was on Doubt’s side, the outcome was inevitable. Those opposing forces created a bottleneck in my brain and paralyzed me from acting in any way on Jen’s words.

  “So, I was figuring we could avoid the Homecoming dance together. Kick back, watch videos over at my house....”

  I blinked and then smiled at him. I had only been to his house once or twice and had yet to see his inner sanctum. “I’d love to, but I’m actually going. Becca asked me.”

  “What now?”

  I glanced over at Austin, puzzled by the confusion and … something … I found there. What was that just at the fringes of his expression? Hurt? What was that doing there? I could not imagine. It wasn’t like I had cancelled plans with him or anything.

  “She asked me back at the Hoedown. I figured, ‘Why not?’ I hardly knew you then. I wouldn’t have expected you to want to hang.”

  Austin drew into himself in a way he had not done for some time. I could tell a storm was brewing in his beautiful eyes, but was at a loss to what I had done wrong. There was some part of me that felt I should know, that I was missing a very obvious piece of the puzzle, but it escaped me.

  I watched as he started putting his things into his backpack. “I need to go.”

  There was definitely bad happening. “Whoa, wait. What’s going on? I can’t apologize correctly if I don’t know what I did.”

  “It’s not you,” Austin muttered. “Apparently, I’m an idiot.”

  “Can I buy a vowel or something?” I pleaded. “I’m totally lost.”

  Austin sighed and looked sullenly at his backpack. “I thought.... I mean, we went to HSM3 together, then the carnival. We’ve spent a lot of time hanging out. I thought you were cool dating me, but you keep going out with Becca. I don’t know what your deal is.... I mean, you know, do whatever, I just....”

  Like a series of tumblers clicking into place, everything suddenly made a whole lot of very awesome sense. “We were dating?” I asked with a growing smile. “And I missed it?”

  Austin gave me a look of disbelief, like he couldn’t imagine anyone being that stupid. He did not know me well enough to know just how dumb I can be when I really put effort into it.

  “I was so busy trying to hide the fact that I was crushing on you, I didn’t even let myself think for a second you could possibly be … that you and I were....”

  A light of hope was kindled in his eyes. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “I’d never kid about being in love.”

  I was so overwhelmed and distracted by the impossible events taking place around me that my feelings snuck out of their cages and ran naked out onto the lawn. There was no way to cover for the slip, no way to take it back and I felt my face flush with embarrassment.

  “Love?” Austin asked with blatant shock.

  “Er....” I looked down at my feet. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

  That was a truly brilliant thing to say. My wits had been distracted by the glittery ball of “Austin likes me” and had wandered off somewhere to play with it. I was thusly severely handicapped in that moment.

  It didn’t matter that Austin was gay or that he liked me. It was a clingy, desperate sort of thing that I had said and it made me look like a stupid kid. I had just discovered I had a boyfriend and lost him in the span of five seconds. Go me.

  “I never.... I didn’t think you would....”

  I looked defiantly up at him, annoyed with him for having sprung this on me without any sort of warning. Granted, there was no warning he really could have given and it was actually my fault for ignoring all of the neon signs he had been holding up, but still....

  “It’s your fault for being so damn cute,” I challenged him. “Then you show you have talent and you’re smart and then you bring the woobie. I was defenseless.”

  Austin blinked, smiling just the slightest bit at my tiger-cub-like ferocity. “Woobie?”

  “Uh, sorry, internet term for tough boys who desperately need love.”

  Austin rolled his eyes. “Well, I didn’t even know I was all … ‘woobie’ … You can’t blame me for that.”

  I gave him a wry little smile. He was not going to kick me to the curb for my unprompted declaration of love. The entire rough patch of my failing to notice his interest in me and my emotional outburst had been smoothed over.

  “How did you know I was, you know … g-gay?”

  Austin’s expression was disbelieving. “You do know that trail of flames you leave behind you is awfully bright, don’t you?”

  I felt myself blushing again. “So, dating me wasn’t about me, it was about finding the only other gay kid in the county?”

  “You’re hardly the only other one, if my guess about Troy is correct.”

  “Troy Henderson? The quarterback?”

  Austin smirked at me. “But no, I didn’t crush on you because you were available. I saw you that first day and I listened to you in class. You were funny and smart and you had the added bonus of not already thinking I was crazy.”

  “That’s why you always seemed to be watching me,” I observed. “I thought you were just trying to think of places to dump my body.”

  Austin laughed at that. “No.... I was thinking of other things to do with your body....”

  “Oh, stop,” I told him uncomfortably. I fidgeted a little. “So … you…. Um, are we, you know—” Did I dare say the word? “—boyfriends?”

  Austin blushed a little and thank God he was finally showing a little awkwardness. I was starting to feel stupid with how far ahead of me he was with this whole thing. “I’d like to be,” he told me.

  I was up so high that I couldn’t even make out the clouds beneath me. I smiled foolishly, amazed that my heart’s desire liked me back. He wasn’t even conflicted about it. I felt my heart racing as I realized that my daydreams about him were coming true, and blushed at the thought of some them that might yet happen.

  To distract myself, I asked, “Is this it, then? The great big secret you are so scared of anyone finding out is that you’re gay? “

  Austin flinched, but not as much as he usually did when I brought up the eight-hundred-pound gorilla he refused to talk about. I didn’t want to use my shiny new status as his boyfriend to immediately pounce on the subject he loved to avoid, but it seemed to me we really needed to talk about it.

  Apparently, he came to the same conclusion. “Look… One of the reasons I don’t really like talking about this is because I don’t want to sound pathetic,” he told me. “But I guess I should tell you. Just … try to not make a big thing out of it.”

  I nodded without hesitation. We sat down on my bed and I took his hand, because I wanted some sort of tangible connection to him. I was still reeling from the fact that I had a boyfriend—that I apparently had been dating for weeks and didn’t know it. Now we were sitting on my bed and that had so many connotations to it I was having trouble focusing.

  “I came out to my parents a couple of years ago. I just didn’t want to lie to them anymore, you know?”

  Since I had not been as brave or honest as him, I really didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  “It didn’t go over well. My dad stopped talking to me altogether, but that was actually easier to handle than my mom.” Austin gazed bitterly at the unoffending floor. “She freaked. I mean, she was always the one who yelled in the family, but this really sent her over the edge. When I refused to talk to our priest about it or see a psychiatrist, she decided to send me to one of those Christian re-education camps to ‘fix me.’”

  “Oh my God.” The color drained from my face.

&
nbsp; “Yeah, well, I told her that wasn’t happening either. There was nothing wrong with me. She came back with her being my mother and I would go because it was that or the street. That’s when my dad stepped in. He and my mom fought about it, and my dad told her he would not agree to send me to one of those places. He told her if I was gay, then that was how God made me and they were just going to have to accept that.”

  I squeezed Austin’s hand. “Good for him.”

  Austin nodded slowly. “He’s a great guy, my dad. Anyway, the fights got worse and worse and finally, my mom just left.” His bitter expression had turned to one of hurt and unspeakable sadness. “I couldn’t believe she hated me enough to leave.”

  I leaned into him, knowing I was powerless to heal the wound that had already scarred over, but wanting him to know I cared. He rested his head against mine, accepting the comfort I offered without commenting on it.

  “It was just after she left that it got out at school. My mom’s friends must have heard about me from her, and they told their kids and soon everyone in town knew. It got really rough at school. My teammates wouldn’t let me in the locker room with them anymore, my friends deserted me. That, on top of feeling like I caused my parents to divorce … well, it pretty much broke me.”

  “Austin…. It would break anyone,” I told him gently.

  “Maybe. Anyway....” He sighed and grimaced. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just spit it out and you can have a fit if you need to. I started coming up with some really scary plans to kill myself.”

  My blood ran cold. It wasn’t that I was surprised. It just hurt so much to hear him actually admit to it. My eyes were stinging with unshed tears, but I did not let them go. “I can’t imagine being that alone.”

  Even at my lowest, I had always known my family loved me. Austin, at that time in his life, had had nothing. His dad had sided with him against his mother, but the burden of thinking he had caused his parents to separate would have made it impossible to turn to him. The very idea of being alone in the world with all that hurt made me shiver.