by Rachel Kane
“Yeah, knowing there’s food available, I’m not quite as hungry. I can hold out better knowing I don’t have to hold out forever.”
He set the package up on the shelf. “See, not everything ends in disaster. But I’m sorry we didn’t find your book.”
I nodded. Then shook my head. “I am too. It was really important to me.”
When he returned to the cot, another crash of thunder made us both wince, but then he asked, “So what’s in this book? Why is it so important?”
So there it was. The question I had been hoping he would ask. Go ahead, I thought, here’s what you’ve been waiting for, a chance to talk to a neutral stranger about all the problems in your life lately.
It felt like all my words had shut down. The minute he’d asked, my tongue had frozen, as had my mind, and nothing was coming out.
Was it because he was the one asking? Because he wasn’t so much a stranger after all, but rather someone who had been through not one but two near-death experiences with me? That moment at the stream where I’d seen him undressed seemed like a lifetime ago, yet it too informed my silence. How would a cute straight guy understand any of this? He’d never had to fear, the way I had feared. He’d never been shunned by his family.
That’s fucked up, I told myself. If you can’t trust the man who pulled you from a burning plane, the man you saved from falling off a cliff, then who the fuck can you trust? What are you waiting for, Eli? Who is going to judge you less, than this man in front of you?
I closed my eyes for a minute. This was going to be hard.
“Remember how I said I wrote a book?”
Jake nodded. “Robots.”
“Nano— Okay, yes, robots. But in the book, there are these two boy robots—”
“Robots can be boys?”
“I mean, gender is a function of a lot of different kinds of programming anyway, right? It’s biology, it’s social, it’s psychological, it’s— Anyway, not the point. The point is, the robots fall in love. And before you ask, yes, these robots felt emotion. They felt everything that humans feel. Even more, really. They were programmed to try to copy us, and to do that they had to understand us, understand how we feel, how our neurons connect and make emotion and decisions and thought. And they fell in love, and I guess had lots of robot sex.”
“I’m not going to ask how they managed that,” said Jake. He looked pretty damned uncomfortable, shifting on the cot. “So…gay robots.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Gay robots. And I gave a copy to my mom. I’m not even sure why. It’s not that I was in the closet, exactly? I mean I had just tried to skirt the subject for as long as possible. I don’t bring boyfriends home, I don’t talk about clubs, I don’t… I hide everything, so they’ll be comfortable. I didn’t want to bother them with this. But like a good mom, she read my book, but was shocked, and she showed it to my dad, and they both… It was pretty bad.”
Jake scratched his head. I noticed he wasn’t looking at me. Damn it, now things are going to be weird between us. Did he not know I was gay already? A lot of time straight guys don’t realize.
“What did they do?” he asked.
“At first my dad was just furious. He called me. How dare I show my mother such filth. Did I want her thinking I was one of those people? What did I think I was doing, spending my time writing stories like this, he hadn’t spent all that tuition money on me so that I could write pornography. Just on and on like that. After a while it was like being punched in the head. He ranted for fifteen minutes straight, didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”
“You didn’t hang up on him?”
I blinked. “You know, it didn’t occur to me. It’s my dad, you know? It would feel disrespectful to hang up.”
I expected him to scoff, but instead he nodded. That was strange.
“Anyway, I figured I should talk to them face-to-face, but that didn’t go any better. You’re a gay? How do you know? You’re too young to know anything about it! It’s weird, I’d always had this picture in my head of the day I told them. I’d explain how I feel, and they would hug me for being so brave, and they’d tell me nothing I could do would ever cause them to love me any less, and…and…”
Oh, fuck, my eyes were tearing up.
Not in front of Jake. Come on. Don’t do this. You don’t burst into tears in front of a guy like this, it just confirms everything they already think about you, that you’re weak, that you’re overly emotional, that there’s something wrong with you.
Yeah, but that was bullshit. There wasn’t anything wrong with me, but I’d been cut off from my fucking family, and if I couldn’t be emotional about that, what could I be emotional about? I was never going to be the strong silent type, not like Jake, but why was that the only way to handle emotions? Who decided that?
“That’s fucked up,” said Jake. “I’m sorry they were shitty to you.”
“I couldn’t believe it when it happened. It went so differently in my head, you know?”
I noticed he still wasn’t looking at me. I guess the subject made him uncomfortable. That’s okay, I wasn’t feeling very comfortable either. At least he was listening.
“I don’t want to pry,” he said, “but why didn’t you tell them before that? I don’t know how this stuff works.”
I shrugged. It was a good point. “I’m going to sound like I’m a hundred years old when I say this, but you know, I see kids these days coming out to their folks in their teens, and I don’t understand how they do it. My parents were always pretty old-fashioned. Very big on appearances. They tolerated my interest in science fiction, but they didn’t want me to talk about it. They didn’t want anyone to know their son was a nerd. Not that it was something I could hide. But gay? Gay, I could hide. Nobody ever said I had to hide it, but you grow up knowing. You can feel it, when the topic comes up, the way the air gets tense.”
“Your uncle,” he said.
“Right. Uncle Ron. I’m not sure, when I was young, that people really used the word gay for him. He was a confirmed bachelor. He didn’t want to settle down. You know, all the euphemisms people use, and if you’re a kid, you have no idea what they’re talking about. But eventually I got the picture. Our kind aren’t welcome in the family. But I figured…” My voice trailed off. This was surprisingly hard to talk about.
He let me stay silent for a while, then prompted, “You figured?”
“I figured after Uncle Ron died, they’d come to their senses. How do you let your own brother die all alone over something like that? But that’s my real question. That’s why I’m here, sitting in a hut in the middle of a storm, absolutely lost.”
“His book.”
“Uncle Ron is—was—the only other person like me in the whole family. He’s the one who inspired me to be a writer. I thought if I found his book, if I read it, I’d understand my family. He was so wise, you know? I would read it, and I’d know what I needed to say to my dad. Look, you already lost one of us. Do you want to lose your son as well as your brother? That’s how I pictured saying it. I’d wave the book around. I’d read passages I highlighted, to show my dad how much his homophobia had hurt us.”
“You didn’t need the book for that,” said Jake. “You could have just told him.”
I stood up and walked to the door. I nudged it open and looked outside. Dark as night, the wind whipping the tops of the trees. More thunder. It felt like a night for ghost stories.
But that’s what I was telling, wasn’t I? The story of my ghost, the thing that haunted me.
“In my family, you never just ask for what you want,” I said. “It’s all so indirect. You go through intermediaries, you say things that point to what you mean, but aren’t exactly what you mean. Hell, we can’t discuss anything. It’s all hints and nuance.”
“Your dad wasn’t hinting to you. Sounds like he was pretty direct.”
The spray of rain was cool against my face. “That was the shocking part. For the first time in my life, someone said something plainly. I c
ould’ve handled pussy-footing around it. Little frowns and disappointed noises and changing the subject. I expected that. I didn’t expect the onslaught.”
He came and joined me at the door, and we both looked out at the darkness. “When we make it back, I bet he’ll listen to you. Book or no book. Nothing like a plane crash to make everything clear and simple, right?”
I felt a pang then, a longing.
I wish things were simple. I wish I had someone by my side, someone who talked sense like Jake. He doesn’t think I’m being overly dramatic. He just takes everything in stride.
Glancing over at him, watching him stare into the clouded dusk, I felt something I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t lust, not like earlier. It was something stranger, something sadder. A loneliness. A realization that I was never going to meet a guy like this. Someone so different than me, yet who understood me.
Men like him didn’t exist in my world. And that just made my world seem so empty, so pointless.
13
Jacob
All I wanted was to hold Eli.
It was the one thing I could not do.
The impression I’d first had of Eli, the pampered city boy, was long gone. As the day wore on, he revealed there was something inside him harder, angrier than I would have guessed. And below that hardness was vulnerability and pain.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t move an inch.
There have not been a lot of times in my life where I could test out this question of who I am. I’m not talking about looking at slicked-up men kissing each other with rough violence on the internet, though there has been more of that since Marcia left. In real life, in the life I spend in this body, out in this world, there has been no one. Never brave enough to cross that border from imagination to reality, I have kept these things to myself.
Do you want to talk about it? Marcia had asked me towards the end.
I really don’t, I told her.
You have to talk about it sometime, to someone.
Now, staring out at the storm with Eli by my side, I wondered if today was that time. But I knew it couldn’t be.
There’s never going to be a more perfect time, said this voice in my head. You’re alone, you’re a million miles from anyone who would ever judge you for this. There’s a storm crashing overhead, and your instinct is to be close to someone, although whether that’s so you can keep them safe, or so they can keep you safe, it’s hard to say.
The storm had forced us here, had swept us up as surely as if it had blown us into the cabin.
Unbidden there came more lines of Coleridge, as though I had my mother’s book here in my hand:
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
In the dim light I saw Eli’s throat move, a swallow. Was it fear of the storm? Fear of what disaster could strike us next? Fear of…me?
I was just as afraid.
This might be the perfect time to tell him about myself, but it was also completely, utterly wrong to do it.
What a selfish thing. So obvious.
Someone bares their soul to you, and the only thing you can think to do is talk about yourself—and let’s not lie to ourselves either, I know exactly what you’re hoping will happen if you tell him. His arms around you, his lips on you, you know how badly you want it, but you can’t take advantage of his pain like that. It would be wrong.
But what about my pain?
Christ, that sounded melodramatic.
Maybe I was overthinking it. What had I just said to Eli, nothing like a plane crash to make everything clear and simple.
“I am like that too,” I said, before I could second-guess myself again.
The look of confusion on Eli’s face let me know that he couldn’t read my mind, that he had no idea what I was talking about.
Fuck, well at least you can take it back. Say you were talking about something else. Say you just like things clear and simple too. Make him think you were talking about his fight with his parents. Make him think—
“What are you like?” he asked, his voice quiet against the storm.
“I…” I pressed my lips together and shook my head. A battle raged within me. Voices that had merely been questioning my motives before, now screamed in my skull. Do not tell. You’re not ready to tell. There’s nothing to tell. You’re making it up, you’re straight, you can’t do this to him, he’s hurt, you’re manipulative, you’re taking advantage, you’re straight, you’re straight, you’re straight.
“I think I might be gay.”
Before Eli could say a word—while he was staring at me open-mouthed in surprise—I rushed to fill the silence.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how anyone would know that about themselves. There’s a trick to it, a knack other people have of knowing what’s going on inside themselves, and I never learned that. I don’t even like the word. I hate the word. But—”
His hand was on my arm. Just above my wrist. Light but firm.
“Jake, it’s okay.”
“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, I’m not coming on to you, that’s not what this is about—”
I couldn’t bear the sympathy in his eyes. I wanted to run outside into the rain. Or at least to turn away. Don’t look at me.
Jesus, if Pop could see me now. He’d just shake his head. No son of mine.
“Do you want to sit down?” Eli asked.
I somehow heard him through the competing voices in my head, and I nodded. He walked me to the cot and I sat.
“This is a big deal,” Eli said.
“It’s not. I don’t even know if it’s true.” Now that I’d said it, all I wanted to do was take it back.
“You seem a little unsettled.”
“Hell yes I’m unsettled. This isn’t me. I don’t fucking worry, Eli. I don’t sit around moping and thinking. I’m not scared of anything.”
He gave me a wry look. “Except of anyone finding out you’re gay. That, you’re scared of.”
“Nah,” I said, “that’s not… Well, yeah. But I’m not gay. I mean…”
“So look,” he said, and his voice had changed from the tense, defeated tone of a few minutes ago. I had given him a project. I had given him something to distract himself from his own sorrow.
I glanced over at him, then quickly looked away. I couldn’t stand the look of sympathy.
“It’s okay to be confused, because it’s confusing,” he said.
“Why is it confusing? How long have you known it about yourself?”
“Me?” he asked. “Oh god, forever. But that doesn’t mean everybody is born knowing. Sometimes you just kind of figure it out.”
“I started suspecting when I was dating my ex,” I said. “Things had gotten really intense between us. We were talking about marriage, kids. But something didn’t feel right. I loved her—hell, I still love her—but not like that. She’s my best friend, but she’s more like a sister. I don’t know how to describe it. It all felt wrong.
“I was watching a lot of porn then. A lot. Like trying to fill up whatever I wasn’t getting from the relationship. And I noticed, when I was watching people on the screen, that I was spending a lot of time watching the guys. I mean, the girls were fine too, but the guys. I got kind of curious. I told myself it was just idle curiosity, I wonder what the gays get up to, so I searched for some videos.
“I knew it was wrong. I knew something was going on that I was eventually going to have to tell Marcia, but I couldn’t stop. I’d watch two guys, three guys, a whole pile of men, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.”
“And did you tell her?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Hardest fucking conversation I’ve ever had. She knew. She’d seen. At first I tried to make excuses, but she said, I can’t make a life with someone who lies to himself. That shocked me. She wasn’t mad that I was gay. She was mad tha
t I would lie about it—to myself, to her. We had a painful couple of months after that, working through the breakup, figuring out whether our friendship was strong enough to keep going.”
He laughed then, and I didn’t understand why. I felt a moment’s fear, a moment’s hostility. Was he laughing at me? I stiffened up. “What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“God, I shouldn’t laugh. But this is so typical. I get wrapped up in my own problems, and I don’t even realize the person next to me is going through some shit. I’ve been feeling like not finding my uncle’s book is the most tragic thing in life, like my family’s disapproval has shaken the entire world. Meanwhile you’re living in hiding, listening to me go on. I’m fucking selfish. I’m sorry.”
“How were you supposed to know? I think I’ve gotten good at hiding how I feel about it.”
“Yeah, that big tough-guy routine hides it pretty well. At least until you strip down to your little undies and take a dip in the stream.”
“You were watching!” I laughed at the same time I felt a new, more frightening tension coiling inside me.
“Dude, of course I was watching. But it’s okay. You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to try to overwhelm your defenses and take advantage of the situation or anything.”
“That’s charitable of you, considering I could snap you in half.”
“See? You always retreat into the tough-guy thing when you get scared. I thought you were going to fucking yell at me when I tried to save your life at the cliff.”
I shrugged. “I thought about it. But then I would have died, and it didn’t seem worth yelling at you about.”
“Yeah, I think you made the right decision there.”
I didn’t understand Eli. I didn’t understand how quickly our conversation changed, how one minute we were deep in pain, and the next we were joking with one another. It was like a leaf caught in that little brook, speeding from one spot to the next, carried along.
It was like there was more of me than I’d ever realized, and it was all rushing to come out at once.
I had more words when Eli was around. My head filled with words, ideas, snippets of conversation. Like my normal life was so covered up that I couldn’t even talk.
