“You don’t do whatever I tell you.”
I give him a look. We both know Chris gets his way more often than not.
“So, Dave is like, Chris 2.0?” He winces as though the thought physically pains him. As if.
“No, he’s not. Dave is just a guy I hang out with. He’s funny and we… get along. You can’t be the only person in my life. You have your surf friends and your family and your girlfriends and I… I just have you.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I hate getting emotional in front of him. Makes me feel like such a baby. Chris stares at me. He no longer looks angry; he looks hurt. His gaze drifts out to the water. His lower lip juts out, tempting me still. What would Chris do if I just leaned over and pulled him in for a big, fat kiss? With tongue. Probably freak out.
“You can drive us home,” Chris says, completely deflated and still not looking at me. He cleans a patch of dust off the dashboard with his finger in a slow spiral. “I’m sorry for giving you shit. You can hang out with whoever you want. I won’t bother you about it again.”
I want to say something to make him feel better, but I don’t know what, so I toss my stuff in the back and take the shortest route home, trying to concentrate on the road and not on Chris, who stares out the window the whole way with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking sad as hell.
The exact thing I wanted to avoid is happening—I’m losing my best friend.
I CAVE and end up going over to Dave’s that same afternoon. I’m too needy, a ping-pong ball being batted back and forth between Dave and Chris. Like my self-esteem is tied to one or the other, and I cling to the one who can provide me with some sense of reassurance. It’s lame on so many levels.
In any case, Dave is happy to see me. Usually we hang out on the couch and play video games, which usually segues into other things. Today it’s different, though. I’m not feeling it. I’m too stressed about Chris and how we left things. I hate that there’s friction between us. I wonder if he’s looking me up on his phone right now. I should take myself off the app, but at the same time, I kind of like that he’s semistalking me, and how messed up is that?
“What’s up?” Dave asks, retreating to his half of the couch, perhaps noticing that I’m only half-present (and half-aroused). The other thing about Dave and me is we never kiss. And our touching seems very focused on getting each other off and not necessarily connection. The things I want to do with Chris, I don’t want to do with Dave. Is it possible to only be gay for one guy?
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tell him. “I’m in a funk.”
Dave grabs his bong and packs it. The couch is small, more the size of a love seat, and Dave sits in the middle of it with his legs spread wide so his knee rests against mine, kind of territorial. Chris does that too, takes up the maximum amount of space, even when he’s sleeping. In some ways they’re a lot alike. Alpha males.
Dave offers me the first hit like always, even though I’ve never taken him up on it. I shake my head. “Hugs not drugs, man.”
Dave lights the bong, sucks up the column of smoke as his cheeks hollow out all the way—it’s very phallic. It sounds like sucking through a straw in a mostly empty glass. His cheeks puff out as he holds it in, then releases a cloud of heady smoke that makes my eyes water a little. Chris went through a pot-smoking phase last year, but he hasn’t done it much lately. He says all it does is give him the munchies and make him lazy. I tried it once when we were in Sebastian on a surf trip, at one of the older surf rats’ shithole apartment, and I ended up holding my knees and rocking in a corner, thinking I was dying because my heart sounded too fast and my breathing too slow. Chris talked me down, and I felt bad for ruining both our nights. Later he said I probably just smoked too much, or the shit was too dank. Still, I haven’t tried it since.
I don’t mind it when other people smoke, though. No one gets violent, just goofy. When Dave smokes he gets a faint smile on his face, laughs at whatever I say, and wants to talk deeply about things that probably don’t deserve that much attention. It’s kind of funny.
“When did you know you were gay?” I ask Dave.
He scratches his head and purses his lips like he’s trying to recall it. His eyes are red and glassy, and I wonder if he’s high already.
“Third grade? I tried to kiss another boy in class. On the lips. Peter Bowers—he had the cutest freckles. He wasn’t down with it, though, and it turned into this whole thing with our parents and the school. Counseling. I went underground after that. Didn’t try it again until middle school.”
“So you’ve always known?”
He nods. “More or less. I don’t think I knew the name for it until middle school. Then it was all ‘fag’ this and ‘fag’ that. Where I’m from isn’t as laid-back about it as it is here. I hid it for a while.” Dave takes another hit, holds it in until his face turns red and his eyes start to water. “How about you?” he asks. The words come out with a cloud of smoke, and I think of that caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Whoooo are yoooou?
“I don’t know when it started.” I’ve always checked out guys, but never for too long. Seems dangerous. I check out girls too, for that matter, in a more scientific way. I like to study people—the way they move and interact with one other. Chris is the first guy I’ve really been able to study up close, the first guy I’ve imagined naked and fantasized about on purpose. Well, that’s not completely true, now that I think about it. I’ve had fleeting thoughts about underwear models and athletes. Or, like, the weatherman on WXTV, Casanova Guerra. Something about his voice. Partly it’s the name, and also how he always seems to know what’s coming. Like, the chance of rain or if hurricane is going to hit us or pass by. He’s so reassuring about it too. So, board up your windows and stock up on sandbags, West Palm. It’s better to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.
I tell Dave about my crush on Casanova Guerra and what it might be like to have sex with a weatherman, how he’d narrate the whole thing in that calming, even-keeled voice. “Ninety percent chance of an orgasm this afternoon, with the possibility of light flooding. Don’t forget to pack your raincoat.”
Dave cracks up at that, and we take turns making weather predictions that sound like a bad porno flick. It’s kind of hot. Then I ask him, “Have you ever had sex with a dude?”
He looks at me with a halfway serious expression. “Anal?” I nod. “No, but I’m game if you are. Might be a good way to see if you really are gay or if you’ve been faking it this whole time.”
At that I sober up instantly. I probably shouldn’t have put it on the table. It was more a survey than a proposition. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.” Not to mention it involves at least one of our assholes getting pounded, which I’ve heard can be painful at first. Something tells me between Dave and I, I’d be the one getting the raw ass.
I’d do it for Chris, though, if that’s what he wanted. I’d pretty much go either way for him. Sigh.
“Saving yourself?” Dave asks.
I narrow my eyes at him, annoyed at how easily it seems he can read my mind. “For what?”
“Not what. Who.”
I know who he means. I fiddle with the controller where it lays abandoned on the couch between us. “Chris is straight,” I say, though I’m having my doubts. Maybe I should just ask him, but what if he is straight? Then I’ve just challenged his masculinity or something. And me asking kind of reveals myself, doesn’t it? Outside of him telling me himself, there’s no easy way to find out.
“We should come out together,” Dave says. “I could ask you out to Homecoming in a really over-the-top way. Spray paint the BOA with a proclamation of gay love. Rainbows and unicorns and centaurs with really big junk. The works.”
I laugh at the thought of it. My rep would be forever ruined among the skater punks. It shouldn’t matter, but they might not take me seriously if they knew I was gay. I also haven’t thought about what it would mean to be out at Sabal Palm High. I
’d just as soon keep it under wraps.
“I don’t think so, Dave.”
“You don’t want people to know you’re gay or that we’ve been messing around?”
“Neither,” I say before realizing how awful it sounds. His face goes slack. “It’s not personal.”
“Feels personal.”
I study him, wondering if I’ve really hurt his feelings or if he’s just using this as a way to manipulate me into giving him a blowjob. Dave’s pretty crafty that way. “You don’t even like me.”
His face screws up and he leans toward me in a slightly aggressive way. “Why would you say that?”
He’s always teasing me about stuff, making fun of the things I do or say, and it seems pretty obvious that we’re using each other for sexual favors. Companionship too, but that comes second.
“Why don’t you think I like you?” he persists.
“I don’t know.” I glance around, feeling super uncomfortable. It’s kind of like the first week of school, when he claimed he was “hitting on me,” and I thought he was just being an asshole. But maybe it’s me who’s not fully invested in the feelings department of our relationship.
“It’s not for the lawn maintenance part of it,” Dave says, “though Becca told me to do whatever it takes to keep you happy.”
His yard does look pretty tight. I even planted some leftover impatiens to make him and his aunt matching garden beds next to their front doors. When I don’t respond, he continues.
“I’d totally be your boyfriend, Theo, if you weren’t so hung up on Mitcham.”
I lean forward and stare at my hands, ashamed of my own impossible desires and how transparent they are. By being silent, I basically just acknowledged I’m using him. Dave wants to be in a committed relationship, like boyfriend-boyfriend, and I just want sex without any complications or responsibility.
Jesus, maybe I am like my father after all.
“I’m trying to get over him,” I tell Dave, which is the honest-to-God truth.
“So let me help.” Dave sets down his bong and lays a proprietary hand on my thigh. He waggles his eyebrows at me. Maybe it’s guilt or maybe it’s my libido, but I totally crumble, and we end up giving each other what we mutually agree are the best blowjobs of our lives, which for me is much higher praise because Dave is something of a blowjob connoisseur.
And that’s why Dave and I work. Because every situation that could potentially end badly turns into another opportunity for Dave to get me to pull my pants down and vice versa.
Somewhere inside me I know it’s not going to last, but I’m willing to ride it out for the time being. And maybe that’s me being selfish, but for the moments when we’re together, Dave makes me forget about Chris and all the things I can’t have with him, and in my situation, that’s really the best I can hope for.
Dinner with Dad
“DID YOU get my text?”
I walk through the door that same afternoon and find my sister standing at the kitchen counter, nursing a Diet Coke and decapitating carrot sticks with her big white teeth.
“No, what?”
“Dad wants to take us out to dinner tonight.”
I groan.
“It’s for our birthday, Theo. He said he has a surprise for us. Maybe it’s… a new car!” She makes her voice sound like a game show host and wiggles her fingers. I smile. She used to be funny like that. We used to crack each other up before she started caring so much about being cool. Now it’s rare for her to risk acting silly.
“I doubt it’s a new car, Tabs.”
She shrugs. “A girl can dream, can’t she?”
“You don’t even drive.”
“It’s not about the car, Theo. It’s the thought that counts.”
“I don’t want him buying us stuff.”
“Well, I do.”
“Just because he buys you stuff doesn’t make up for him being a shitty father,” I say with a rush of anger that takes me by surprise and leaves me with a prickly heat on the back of my neck.
She glares at me, her lower lip jutting out like it used to right before she’d start wailing to our mom to tell on me for being mean or hitting her, usually because she hit me first. I feel bad for saying it, not because it isn’t true but because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. My sister still has some faith left in my dad. I should let her hold on to it as long as she can.
“He’ll be here in forty-five minutes. Don’t be an asshole tonight and screw it up for me,” she says tartly and takes her Diet Coke downstairs with her, slamming the door on her way out. Outside my bedroom window, I see her cross over to Chris’s house. His front door opens and she disappears inside. Before the door shuts, Chris pops his head out and glances up to my window. I feel caught and slowly back away, pretending I wasn’t already looking for him.
I quickly shower, then survey my closet to find something to wear because whenever we go out to dinner with my dad, it’s always to some ridiculously fancy place where the servers all fall over themselves to kiss your ass. I’d rather my dad put that money toward helping my mom with the bills, but he likes flaunting his wealth in front of us. At least, that’s how it seems to me.
I pick out the shirt I wore the last time I saw my dad. It was Easter, when my grandmother came down from New York and wanted all her grandchildren in the same place at once. My dad hosted a luncheon at his McMansion in Todesta, this weird Stepford planned community. His wife, Susan, was running around like crazy, trying to make sure everything was up to whatever impossible standard he’d set. I mostly kicked back and chilled with my great-uncle Theo, my namesake, who’d been sprung from the home for the day.
Uncle Theo has dementia, but even before that, he was a salty old bastard. At the party, he kept asking me to bring him more potato salad and whistling at the women when they walked by. Then, when my grandmother said it was time to go, Uncle Theo pitched a fit and called her a cocksucker.
Cocksucker.
He said it with such gusto that a little spittle came out and dotted his chin. I tried to persuade him to go quietly with a tub of potato salad, and he turned on me too. Called me a cocksucker. Like, in his eighty-plus years of living, that was the worst insult he could come up with. Chris cracked up when I told him that story, and we each took turns saying it like my Uncle Theo. Cocksucker.
I really should go visit Uncle Theo in the home, take him some of that potato salad he likes. Talk about being lonely. I hope they just take me out back and shoot me when I get too old. I don’t ever want to end up in a home, alone, slowly losing my mind and forgetting the names of the people I once loved.
I button up the one nice collared shirt I own. It’s way too small, tight along the back so I can’t pull my arms forward all the way. The cuffs only make it halfway down my forearms, but I don’t have time to go somewhere to get another one. I roll up the sleeves, grab my tie, and head out to the kitchen to see if my mom can knot it for me.
My mom sees me and tries to hide a smile behind her dainty little hand. My mom and sister are cute little things, and I take after my dad—tall and gangly and slightly awkward, though I’m pretty slim, whereas my dad has been packing a little extra poundage around the middle lately.
“Theo, you can’t wear that,” she says, shaking her head with sympathy. She feels sorry for me, either because I’m growing faster than she can keep me in clothes or because I’m the idiot who didn’t realize it.
I glance down. “Is it really that noticeable?”
“You look like you’re twelve years old. Lift up your arms.” I do, and the shirt comes up above my navel.
“Go put on something else.”
I go back to my room and ransack my closet, but all I come up with is a faded striped shirt that looks like it’s been worn about a million times before. I come out with it on. This time it’s my sister who gives me shit.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says all snottily. She’s wearing this slinky black number that makes her look about thir
ty-five years old. Makeup, straightened hair. Man, her boobs have really grown too.
“Go borrow something from Chris,” she says dismissively.
“No.” The last thing I want to do is go over there and ask for a favor.
“Dad’s going to be here any minute,” she huffs. “There’s no way he’s going to let you go out with us dressed like that.”
She’s right. I pull off my shirt and throw it on the table, run back to my room for an undershirt and tie, then jog downstairs and over to Chris’s house. Maybe he won’t be home. Then I can say I did everything I could to make it happen. Maybe I can skip dinner with my dad altogether.
I knock twice, and Chris answers the door almost immediately.
“Hey.” He looks me up and down and seems to pick up on my urgency.
“Can I—”
“Yeah, of course.” He opens the door wide and leads me upstairs to his suite of rooms, which includes a bedroom, a game room, a palatial bathroom, and a walk-in closet that’s about the size of my bedroom. I follow him into the closet, and he surveys his collection of menswear. I don’t bother looking. I’ll take whatever he gives me.
He pulls a blue shirt off the hanger and hands it to me. “This one’s a little big on me,” he says. “Matches your eyes.”
It does match my eyes, almost exactly. It’s kind of weird that he noticed, but I appreciate his efficiency. I toss the tie on the bed and pull the shirt on, buttoning it up as fast as I can, including the cuffs. I tuck it into my pants and redo my belt, glance up in the mirror. It fits. Fantástico!
“Damn, Theo,” he says. “When’d you get so handsome?”
That sets off a burning sensation deep in my belly that radiates outward, a telegram to the enemy line. I imagine a block of ice around my crotch, deep-freezing everything within it. I chalk up his comment to him messing with me because it’s dangerous to read into things like that.
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