Raise Your Glass

by John Goode

  His gaze got stern as he realized I wasn’t just going away. “There are over a thousand students in this school, Mr. Stilleno, and I can assure you a majority of them will not agree with your ‘lifestyle choice’.” Again with the air quotes. “If you were expecting special treatment, you were wrong.”

  “Special?” I sputtered, wondering if I had hit my head and woken up in the fifties.

  “As long as there is no physical threat, there is nothing we can do,” he informed me with all the emotion of a fish. “We can’t make people like what you are.”

  I knew this would be bad, but I never imagined it would be this bad.

  The bell rang and he looked up at the clock. “You’re going to be late,” he said in a casual tone, as if we had just been talking about what was for lunch.

  I turned around and walked out, knowing if I opened my mouth again I was going to scream.

  And probably not stop.

  The next period was about the same: whispers that stopped when I walked in, giggles as I went by, a couple of rude suggestions from behind my chair, and a long line of nothing from the teacher. I thought maybe Mrs. Jackson didn’t know what was going on, but that thought was dashed when Mr. Raymond walked in halfway through class. He pulled her aside and whispered something while they both glanced over at me. That’s the moment I realized: everything that had occurred so far was just a prelude to the fuckery that was about to follow.

  Or, in other words, my bad day had just begun.

  Brad

  THIS day could not get any worse.

  Bad enough that I was getting the Elephant Man treatment as I walked down the halls, but as I walked by I could hear the creeping whisper follow me all the way to class. The Creeping Whisper is a virus that moves from person to person as Patient Zero walks down the hall. I steadily ignored the buzz the best I could, but I could hear what they were saying when they thought I was out of earshot and none of it was surprising.

  “There he is; I heard he turned gay.”

  “Kelly Aimes is saying that he tried to make a pass at him during football camp.”

  “I heard Jennifer say he kept trying to get her to sleep with him and his boyfriend; that was why she broke up with him.”

  It’s nice to know that, no matter how long and well you may think you know someone, the human instinct to cover the crack of the ass supersedes everything, and when the chips are down, it’s every man for himself. I expected Kelly to lie like a dog, but Jennifer was surprising, even if I couldn’t blame her. She had been broadsided by this, and if I had possessed even a tenth of the feelings I previously had stated out loud for her, I would have given her a heads-up before my declaration. I wish I could say that I wanted to hurt her, even a little, but the truth of the matter was she didn’t even cross my mind when I kissed Kyle.

  So I couldn’t fault her for bashing me.

  My first class was English, a class I always found slightly confusing, since most of what the teacher bitched about had frighteningly little to do with actual English. We learned some kind of weird, formal version of English that I’ve never heard one person in my entire life use. Worse, every year we were forced to rehash what we’d learned before and then soak up some more odd rules about things like subjunctives.

  As with all my classes, I sat with whatever members of the team were there with me. We usually commandeered a corner in the back and spent most of the class busting each other up while waiting for the bell to ring. So I headed to the back, where Sam and Oscar were already sitting, and tossed my backpack on my desk.

  They both got up at the same time and moved to a couple of seats on the other side of the room.

  I spent the rest of the class sitting in the back with no one sitting by me. I was so depressed I couldn’t even be pissed. I’m not sure what I had thought people’s reactions would be, but that one move alone kind of floored me into stunned silence. I spent the whole hour just wondering if this was how the rest of my senior year was going to be. When the bell rang, I ignored everything and just focused on what was in front of me and nothing more. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that what I was doing was how Kyle had spent the past four years of high school and who knew how many years before that.

  I eased up on my pity party a little and realized it was tough all over.

  I had gym second period and I’d been looking forward to letting off some of the pent-up aggression that had been building since last Thursday. I tossed my backpack into my locker and had begun to strip my shirt off when I heard a voice ask from behind me, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  I yanked my shirt off and tossed it aside as I turned around and found Cory, Tony, and Josh standing there with their arms folded, looking very pissed. “What the hell?” I asked, already fed up with this day and it was only second period.

  Tony said, “I asked, what do you think you’re doing?” He was obviously the ringleader, because I could see Cory and Josh just hanging back, letting him do all the talking.

  Obviously they weren’t going to go away until they had their fun, so I just played along. “I’m dressing out for gym, the same as I’ve done for the last four years; can I help you?” Tony was in shape, but we both knew he wasn’t in my league. I was curious how far he was going to push his shit.

  “This is the boys’ locker room,” he said with a sneer. “Not a fag hangout.”

  I am going to be honest with you, I assume he was trying to say “hangout,” but I’m not sure because he never finished the word. My fist made contact with his jaw half a second after “fag.”

  He went down hard. Maybe he thought I was going to have a little more patience than that and I’d caught him off guard. Blood gushed from his nose, and I’m sure he had discovered he’d read that one wrong. I moved to follow up, hoping to end things once and for all. I thought if I rearranged Tony’s face now it might quiet the rest of these assholes before things got out of hand. But as I descended on him I suddenly realized why exactly Josh and Cory had tagged along.

  They each grabbed one of my arms and pulled me off Tony, holding me in place while he scrambled to his feet. Now, I might have been in better shape than Josh, Cory, and Tony individually, but all three of them together were more than strong enough to keep me down. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye: other guys were watching silently, but not one of them made a move to help me. Who could blame them? This wasn’t some four-eyed geek getting bullied by a couple of jocks, or a freshman getting hazed by seniors who had a hair up their ass, this was one of the most popular guys in school being beat down by three other guys who one week earlier might have taken a bullet for him.

  This was Darwinism at its finest, a pretty good representation of how the dinosaurs fell into extinction.

  Tony’s first punch into my gut didn’t hurt that much. The second not so much, either. By the fifth I found my abs were burning from the impact and it was getting harder to breathe, a fact that was evidenced by the dots starting to form in front of my eyes. My head fell forward, and I could taste blood in my mouth by the eighth punch.

  Someone shouted across the locker room, and they let me go instantly. I fell to the cement floor like a sack of potatoes, my limbs refusing to answer as I screamed for them to get me upright again. Coach Nuess ran up to us. I’m sure he was speaking English of some kind, but the sound of blood rushing in my ears made him sound more like a Peanuts teacher than an actual human being. The three musketeers had, of course, fled already; they were by their lockers changing out while I spit up blood onto the floor as air entered my lungs again.

  “Greymark, what the hell is going on?” he asked, no doubt shocked to find me lying on the ground doing a pretty fair impression of a cartoon damsel. “What happened?” he asked, seeing the blood pooling up under me.

  I scanned the locker room and no one would meet my eyes.

  Everybody was intently studying either the ceiling or the floor as I struggled to find something to say to him. My instinc
t was of course to name as many names as I could. It’s human nature to point fingers, to bring down retribution on those who have wronged you, but human nature and common sense were two creatures that rarely met in a teenage boy’s mind. So instead of sounding like a little bitch and pointing a finger at them I simply said, “I slipped, coach. My bad.”

  Of course he didn’t believe me. I was shirtless and my stomach was bright red in a way that only physical contact with another human being could produce. There was more blood under me than was contained in my whole body (at least the way I saw it). The only way that happened was a fight, and we both knew it. Also, we both knew that there wasn’t much he could do about it unless I said something.

  Which I wouldn’t.

  “Brad, come on,” he said in a low voice. “What’s going on?”

  Rationally I knew he was trying to help, that the concern in his voice came from that place, but that wasn’t how I took it. Every single syllable just dripped with pity to me, and I couldn’t stop myself from reacting to it. “I said I slipped,” I said a little too loudly. “Can I change out now?”

  He looked at my stomach and then at the blood. “No,” he answered bluntly. “Go to the nurse. You’re not in any shape to work out.” He was pissed, and I guess in his shoes I would have been too; I mean, it was his ass if something did happen to me, and I wasn’t even trying to help him.

  I put my shirt back on and grabbed my backpack before turning to leave. I saw Tony and Cody standing by their lockers, both of them with shit-eating grins on their face. They didn’t look human to me: they looked like hyenas leering at wounded prey, biding their time.

  Before I got out the door, someone shouted. “And stay out, fag!”

  I had never been so pissed in my life.

  Since I had turned seven, locker rooms had been my safe haven. They were a place to prepare for battle, to goof around with friends, and to literally strip down to nothing before building myself up again. I know to most guys a locker room is just a smelly place where you’re forced to change clothes every day, but to me it was so much more. And now it was gone.

  I stormed off across campus. My stomach was killing me, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of betrayal that swamped and fogged every breath. Why did being gay matter? How was I different? Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed. I hated the contradictory logic of it with every fiber of my being. I wanted to hit someone, I wanted to cry, and I wanted things to go back to the way they were.

  By the time I made it to the nurse’s office, I was a mess.

  The bleeding in my mouth had stopped, but it was obvious I wasn’t going to be doing crunches anytime soon. I must have looked worse than I felt because when I walked into the room, the nurse got up and ran toward me. “Brad? What happened?” she asked in a worried voice.

  “Tripped,” I answered as the emotions came rushing up inside of me. I felt one racking sob escape from my mouth, and it was like a dam somewhere broke and everything came rushing out. I just began to cry helplessly, my ability to actually articulate words finally deserting me.

  I don’t know if she understood me or, because she’d been a high school nurse for a long time, she understood my tone more than the words, but she led me over to one of the three narrow cots and sat me down. “Just relax here for a minute.” Her voice was soft, her kindness triggering all kinds of emotional explosions in me. “Do you want me to call your parents?”

  I stared up at her, wide-eyed. Talking was still beyond my ability, but I shook my head with what I assumed was a pleading look on my face. It must have been enough, because she tried to calm me by saying slowly, “Okay, okay. You just want to rest here for a second?” I nodded, hating this feeling of weakness that had descended on me. This wasn’t me, this wasn’t who I was.

  At least it wasn’t who I used to be.

  I lay down on the bed, resting my head on the pillow for a moment, hoping if I closed my eyes for a while maybe I’d wake up to find all this was merely a nightmare. That my life hadn’t come crashing off its tracks and wasn’t headed toward a head-on collision with everyone—except one person—in school. Two periods. Less than two hours into my day and I was already nursing my wounds in the nurse’s office like a little bitch. How could I handle this for the rest of the year? Screw that—how could I handle the rest of the day?

  I just didn’t have any answers.

  Kyle

  WHEN I walked into History, I instantly knew something was wrong.

  There was a pack of jocks sitting over where Brad usually sat, laughing their asses off. There wasn’t anything new about that; it seemed like all they did was sit off to the side and laugh at their own jokes. What made my spider sense tingle was the way they stopped when I walked in, watching me for a second before bursting out into a new round of guffaws. I looked around to see if Brad was with them, but when there was no sign of him, I began to worry.

  I sat down at my desk, still not sure what was so funny.

  Tony pantomimed punching someone. A couple of his other friends were almost crying from laughing so hard. I wasn’t sure where Brad was, but it was getting pretty late; we had made an agreement not to push things by walking into class together like we were a couple. After all, Foster, Texas, could only handle so much before it broke, so we had decided on trying to keep it as normal as possible. Still, I would have assumed he would have been in class by now since he was dangerously close to being tardy and he didn’t need any more points against him in addition to his academic performance, or lack thereof.

  Mr. Gunn walked in and everyone settled pretty quickly. There were few teachers on campus who attracted the kind of respect Coach Gunn did. It wasn’t just the fact he looked like he could bench-press a dump truck, though it helped. He was just a very no-nonsense kind of man, and no one ever dared to see if they could push him even a little bit. The jocks quieted down because they knew he could end their little jock lives in seconds. Everyone else went quiet because Mr. Gunn always looked like there was an even chance he would slug you if you pissed him off.

  The tardy bell rang and still no Brad. Worry stood up and began to wave a hand for attention.

  Coach Gunn had begun to go over the homework we were supposed to have done over the weekend when Nurse Wilder walked in with a note. Everyone stopped, wondering who she had come for since she rarely left her office unless she was pulling someone out of class. Coach Gunn paused as she whispered something to him and handed him the folded paper. He glanced at it and both of them looked over to where Brad usually sat. Tony and his pack of idiots burst out laughing but tried to cover it when Coach Gunn shot them a look.

  That was when I knew something had happened.

  It was like sitting on a hot plate knowing something was wrong with Brad and not being able to do anything about it. Nurse Wilder walked out, and Tony and his idiots went through another round of chuckles, which just pissed me off even more. Coach Gunn cleared his throat, which was the equivalent of DEFCON 2 for him. The room quieted down some, but being quiet didn’t mean squat to me. They obviously knew something, and the fact that I didn’t was torture.

  Time ceased to have meaning; my mind kept narrowing in on what had happened to Brad. I knew Coach Gunn was talking about something, but my entire focus was on Tony and the way he whispered to his friends when he thought the coach wasn’t paying attention. I wished I had some kind of super hearing or could read lips like a spy so I could decode what Tony was saying. I must have been staring like a freak because one of his friends noticed and pointed it out to him.

  He turned and looked at me angrily.

  Obviously homophobia outweighed common sense, because he interrupted Coach Gunn out of nowhere and screamed at me. “See something you like, fruitcake?”

  Last week I would have looked away quickly. The Kyle I was last week would have been intimidated by his attack and would want nothing more than for people to forget I existed. Seven days ago, Tony would have been able to do that with im
punity.

  Unfortunately for both of us, it wasn’t last week.

  “No,” I answered him from across the room. “I’m into guys.”

  Obviously most of the class had been just waiting for some sort of action: we had everyone’s attention almost instantly.

  “What the fuck did you just say, faggot?” Tony jumped out of his seat.

  I stood up as well. “I said I’m not into ugly girls!”

  As with most high school conflicts, the atmosphere automatically turned toward the gladiatorial. The “fight, fight” chant began somewhere in the back of the class, and the effect of the word on Tony and me was almost chemical. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do to him, but I did know I wasn’t backing down. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and we both knew he wasn’t backing down, either. His fists were clenched, and it was painfully obvious that he intended to take a swing at me. I’m sure this was an intimidating concept to most guys my age since nine out of ten “fights” in high school ended up like Kelly and me: some shouting followed up by chest bumping and snarling with an occasional shove or two. Throwing an actual punch was as rare as it was surprising, so I am sure Tony thought the threat of a punch would be all he needed to do.

  What Tony didn’t know was that I had been punched before.

  In fact, I had been punched by guys much older and much bigger than he was, so the thought of having him swinging at me was not that scary. It was simply an annoyance. There had been times when my mom hadn’t wanted to discipline me, for whatever reason. At those times, she sent her boyfriend du jour into my room to take care of the problem.

  Tony started to swing and I ducked under his reach easily. Coach Gunn grabbed me from behind but instead of my shirt, all he had was a handful of my backpack. I jumped at Tony’s stomach as I shucked the pack off my shoulders. I connected with him and we both went flying backward. His desk was knocked to the side as we fell; he grabbed the front of my shirt before we hit the floor.