Jon From High School

by Jeremy Jenkins

  My music? That was just the fruit it bore.

  But Jon was in there; tangled throughout my life, throughout my memory.

  After my shows, I often longed for the life I could have lived.

  If Martin never threw him in that closet. If he eventually came out of it, and then we were together…

  Would I be who I was today, without all the pain of loss I used to fuel my music career.

  I laid on my couch, pondering these questions. They felt heavy.

  It was storming outside. I could see the rain lashing at the windows, blurring the outside world.

  I wanted to talk to Jon. I wanted to catch up.

  I searched his Instagram, but he never posted anything.

  Months had passed since that night we hooked up in the hotel room, when we’d reconnected in every sense of the word. And all he had since then were two pictures:

  One was a picture of him with those same four douches from high school—Kyle, Terry, and Phil, standing all dude-bro like on a mountain trail. The other was of him with a backpack on, turning and smiling at the camera.

  He’d taken a trip with them.

  I could guess that since he was still friends with them, he hadn’t come out of the closet like he said. They didn’t seem like the most accepting crowd.

  I scrolled through his Instagram, peering into this checkerboard of windows into his life.

  Almost every single picture was of him and his friends, all standing in a line with their arms over each other’s shoulders, all donning that empty jock grin.

  His account felt fake. It felt like his identity was rooted in who he was to his friends.

  When would he take a stand? When would he come up for air?

  Because I remembered that look in his eyes when he told me essentially to go on without him; that he would handle things with his life.

  When he promised to come out of the closet.

  He was not a happy man.

  And I had to resist the urge to try to make him a happy man.

  Horse to water and everything.

  I had to let Jon take care of Jon.

  Even though I thought about him every day.

  Even though I knew I we were missing an opportunity for something beautiful…

  But dammit, I needed my pain, too.

  It was the source of the beauty in my music.

  I laid back on the couch with my phone on my stomach, thinking about whether or not you could have anything beautiful without pain.

  My phone buzzed.

  I peered at it.

  It was Jon.

  My heart thundered against my chest. Three words illuminated the dark room:

  I did it.

  Did what? I typed back frantically, but I already knew the answer.

  I came out. I told Kyle.

  A weight felt like it had been lifted from my shoulders. I could only imagine what Jon felt.

  I called him immediately.

  “Hello?”

  His voice sounded different on the phone.

  Clear. Loud. Fresh. More sure of itself.

  Though I didn’t know if that was an effect of the digitization of his voice, or if he actually felt like a different person.

  He sounded like a different person.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “Better than expected,” he said. “Damn, it’s good to hear your voice—”

  “Tell me how it went,” I demanded.

  I wasn’t going to let him wiggle out of this one.

  He sighed. “Straight to the point, eh?”

  “There’s nothing straight about me, that’s your department,” I said with a grin.

  There was a pause. Had I crossed a line? Then,

  “…I deserved that. But not anymore. I’m out.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “I saw that you were just on a camping trip—”

  “I told them on the trip,” he said.

  I couldn’t see him, but I could hear from the tone of his voice that he was probably sweeping his hand over his face, tangling his fingers in his hair.

  “And? And?! Come on Jon, you can’t just leave me hanging—”

  “We almost died,” he said.

  I paused. “What? What do you mean you almost died?!”

  “We were setting up camp for the night, and we forgot to use the bear bag to stash all our food. Anyway, we were all talking around the campfire, bullshitting around and everything. And then we heard this shuffling sound.”

  “Was it a bear?”

  “It was,” Jon said, his voice cold as stone.

  It was like a doctor giving a diagnosis.

  “What—how did you guys get away?”

  “What do you think, Victor? We ran. We ran as fast as we could to get away from it.”

  “Did it chase you?”

  “Thankfully, no. But it got our food. We spent the next few days starving our way through the wilderness.”

  I blinked a few times, trying my hardest to wrap my head around what he was telling me. “So… but the picture you posted on Instagram… you look like you’re having a great time!”

  “Yeah, that was at the base camp, before the hike. Before the bear. You know, it’s a funny thing, too. Because when we were driving up to the parking lot, we had to stop while a bear crossed the road. It gave the car this look like, who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are-in-the-face-of-mother-nature?”

  I could picture it. That I-don’t-give-a-fuck look.

  I smiled at that, then quickly hid it. Then I had to remind myself that Jon couldn’t see me through the phone.

  “So all of us were up on a mountain, miles in the woods, with no fucking clue of what the fuck to do.”

  “Please tell me you ate Kyle,” I said.

  He chuckled. “We joked about that shit. But that shit starts getting old when you’re stranded up on a mountain for a few days, you know?”

  I pictured Jon all alone in the wilderness. No food, not knowing if he was going to survive.

  I felt a pang in my chest for him.

  Because I cared about him, dammit.

  I cared.

  “Yeah, I can’t even imagine what that’s like,” I said, turning over on the couch.

  “It’s scary as shit,” he said. “And we all thought we were gonna die. Things were getting really tense up there, and it made me think about a lot of stuff. About what I really wanted.”

  I stayed quiet, my heart in my throat.

  When he spoke again, his voice was lower, more serious than before. “And all I could see every time I closed my eyes was your face.”

  Hot tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and ran down my face. “R-really?”

  “Really,” Jon said. “I’ve been running from you my whole life, Victor. But in that moment, I realized I wasn’t running from you. I wasn’t even running from the Bear. I was running from myself.”

  I stayed quiet. More tears rolled down my face.

  “I knew it was time. Hell, it’s been time. I’ve wasted so much time, running. Those dudes were being total assholes the hungrier they got. Just taking swipes at me and each other, you know? Gay this, faggot that. Finally, I got sick of it. I turned around and said, ‘You know we all might die out here, right?’”

  I held my breath, hanging on his every word.

  “They stopped and nodded. And that’s when I told them I was gay.”

  “How did they react?”

  “About as awkwardly as you’d expect. None of them said anything.”

  “Really? Nothing?”

  “Not for a while. So we started walking again,” Jon said. “Eventually, Kyle said, ‘Fuck it, I’m gay too!’”

  “No!”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. Almost shit my pants,” he said.

  I could hardly believe it. The biggest homophobe of our high school—turned out to be gay this whole time?! I was surprised, but I when I really dug deep, I had to admit that I wasn’t really that surprised.
r />   “Then Phil told him to shut his mouth.”

  I could feel what was coming, and I couldn’t stop the smile from blooming on my face. As my lips stretched over my teeth, I tasted the salt of my tears.

  “Turns out Phil’s gay too. Phil and Kyle have been hooking up in secret for all these years.”

  “What!”

  “Yeah, I thought I was in a weird dream or something. And then—”

  “Don’t tell me!”

  “Yeah. Terry came out, too.”

  “What!”

  Jon chuckled. “Remember how in high school he was staring at his phone all senior year? It was like he wasn’t even there. Turns out, the rumors were true. He was hooking up with a teacher—a male teacher.”

  “Fuck!” I cried. “Dude, you’re blowing my mind!”

  “I’m still picking up the pieces from my own blown mind,” he said. “Anyway, I had to tell you that.”

  When the excitement dissipated, an unease settled over our conversation in the shape of what next?

  “So, where does that leave us?” I said.

  “Where do you want it to be?” he answered.

  “I need to know where you stand on all this.”

  “I’ve made my intentions clear,” he said. “I told you. I’ve never had anyone but you. I’ve never wanted anyone but you. I told you on the couch in the hotel room, and it still holds true. Shit, I think I’ll only ever want you. But I get it if you don’t want me. I have been horrible to you—horrible—and I’d be completely off my rocker if I thought you’d ever give me a chance. Plus, now you’re a rockstar and everything. You can have any hot piece of ass you wanted.”

  Tears were rolling down my face again as the emotions swirled and twisted within me.

  Vinegar. It felt like vinegar.

  “I… I need time to think,” I finally said.

  “I thought you might,” Jon said. “That’s all right. Don’t worry about me.”

  “But—”

  “I get it. You’re not waiting around for me. You’ve done enough waiting. And I’ll wait for you, as long as it takes. I’m happy living my life now, outside the closet. But I would be happier with you.”

  Suddenly, the vinegar swished and I recognized it for what it really was:

  Anger.

  “How dare you put me in a position like this!” I roared.

  He stayed quiet.

  “How fucking dare you!” I cried. “You ruin my life, and then you give me this bullshit phone call in the middle of the night saying all this shit about wanting to be together? Fuck you!”

  I hung up.

  It felt good.

  Really good.

  Shit, it made me want to do it again.

  I called him again.

  “Hello?” he answered hopefully.

  “Fuck you!” I shouted again, then hung up.

  I knew it was childish, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I was simultaneously delighting and embarrassing myself.

  I’d become a teenager again.

  Yet, underneath all of my rage was a teenage giddiness.

  That puppy love was still there, goddammit. And it was the thread that connected us, impervious to the sands of time.

  I knew we’d always end up coming back together. I could look across the landscape of my future and see signposts here and there with Jon’s name scrawled across them in thick, black ink.

  But I didn’t have to deal with all this tonight.

  Not tonight.

  This was a problem for tomorrow.

  Tomorrow came and went.

  I didn’t hear a peep from Jon; not that I expected to.

  I told him to fuck off, essentially.

  He deserved it. He more than deserved it, the asshole.

  But still, there was this little kid inside of me, underneath all my layers of pride and vengeance, fighting against the walls of the birdcage, reaching for Jon’s hand.

  I played a show. Had fun. Made music. Released another album.

  Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months.

  I made more music. I made music about pain and loss, and held onto those feelings so I could keep spinning them into silken audio brilliance.

  I watched the way the crowd swayed when I poured my heart out. I saw the looks on their faces.

  My pain touched the lives of other people; knitted them together.

  If I let go of my pain, of all the hurt of the past, I knew my muse would vanish, too. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to create such tortured work. If I let myself be happy, if I let myself chase Jon, that meant admitting I was ordinary.

  And I wasn’t. Even though he came out of the closet and everything, I still didn’t fit into his world; his world of clean lines and suburban illusions.

  I could picture myself waking up next to him every day—that was the easy part. What I couldn’t picture was waking up next to him every day in a cookie-cutter house in the middle of a cul-de-sac.

  I didn’t belong there.

  We would only ever be able to connect in these small moments; these hotel rooms; cocoons from the real world and its cruelty.

  Was there any way to find a happy medium?

  These thoughts spiraled around in my head as I composed more and more. My heart was in so much pain, had so many holes, and the most brilliant work of my career came out of those holes. Therefore, I was more than reluctant to plug them up.

  It had been six months since Jon had called me, and I didn’t feel any happier. Sure, I thought about him less and less, just like after high school, but I could still feel that thread connecting us across time and space. It wasn’t a fabric thread, either. It was more like a live wire, transmitting electricity. The more I tried to cut it with scissors, the more it wore on the scissors and stayed strong.

  The worst part was, I had no idea how thick that wire was. It felt like a thick cable, from how many times I’d tried to cut it and failed. How many scissors I’d wasted, trying to cut him from my life; from my mind.

  One night, I was sitting at my desk in my Seattle house, watching the rain paint the windows.

  Everything outside was blurred; again.

  That was the thing about Seattle; why it made so many people depressed, I think. Sure, it was always rainy and gray, but really, I think it was because it forced people to stay inside all the time.

  Stay trapped in their houses. In their heads.

  And the more I was trapped in mine, the more I thought about Jon.

  There was a certain type of joy in pain, I thought as I scrawled down some lyrics to a new song. I was reluctant to let it go.

  I was reluctant to be happy.

  The thunder rolled outside.

  I wrote another lyric about longing.

  Lightning struck a cloud to punish it for looming overhead.

  My pen scratched the paper.

  Another roll of thunder.

  Wait, was that a knock?

  I whipped my head around to stare at the front door.

  Another knock.

  Shit, it was a knock!

  I left my lyrics at my desk and went to the front door, the emotional words following me in the air instead of on the page.

  When I peered through the peephole, I bit my lip.

  This must have been a dream, because Jon was standing there.

  Somehow, I knew this would happen, deep down.

  I’d always known it was Jon.

  I always knew he’d come back.

  I unbolted and opened the door, feeling like an actor following a script.

  This was the way things had always meant to be.

  I couldn’t escape from him.

  Jon stood there in the rain, giving me an intense, longing look.

  I just stared at him. Then my eyes lowered to his hands.

  He was holding a bundle of black fabric.

  I looked back up at him. “I thought I told you to fuck off.”

  It was a test. It was a dare.

  “I didn’t listen,” he
said. “I couldn’t listen. And then… and then I found this.”

  He extended it toward me.

  I looked in his eyes, lingering on the edge of a decision.

  But I already knew I was fucked.

  I was wasting time, standing here.

  “It’s raining. Come in,” I said.

  He stayed in place. “I’m not here for that.”

  “Then why the fuck are you here, Jon? To show up and fuck up my life again?!” I almost roared. “You know, every time I think I get over your ass, you drop in, and fuck everything up! Do you have any idea what this does to me emotionally? It’s killing me, Jon, it’s just killing me!”

  He was silent for a moment.

  The only sound was the pattering rain, pouring down on his head. But he didn’t seem to care.

  Then, “…I know. I’m sorry.”

  Emotions ran high and hot within me. I felt my anger collapse into sadness in an instant, like pouring water on a hot coal.

  “You’ve been haunting me too, you know,” Jon said, looking up at me with desperation. “A ghost. A black ghost.”

  I crossed my arms. “Whatever. You don’t get to be the victim here, Jon. Not this time. None of this ‘poor me’ bullshit.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Another beat of silence.

  “Then why the hell are you on my doorstep?”

  He extended his hand.

  My eyes went to the ball of black.

  He unfurled it. It was a shirt.

  My mouth dropped open. It was my Metallica shirt, back from all those years ago. From that first night in the band room.

  “I held onto it,” he explained. “I could stand here and give this to you and act like I just found it, but that would be a lie. I’m done lying, Victor. The truth is, I held onto your shirt like a sacred object. I put it under my pillow so I could smell your scent. Even long after your scent left the thing, I kept it. To make sure that the night actually happened. To make sure it was all… it was all real.”

  I was speechless. Again, the tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. I knew I had to stand my ground; stand up to my bully.

  But he wasn’t a bully. Not anymore.

  The man standing in my doorway was just a man.

  Just a man, in love.

  “I… I don’t know what to say,” I said, blinking the tears out of my eyes.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I get it. At least we had this.”