by Jason June
A huge gust of wind blew, immediately followed by something wet and slimy smacking me right in the face.
“Oh, frack!”
“Jay!” Lu yelled. “What was that?”
I cringed as I pulled away the mushy projectile.
“Ohmigawd,” I said. “It’s a sign.”
Literally. A soggy one that had been beaten down by the Seattle rain. Even though its words were faded, they shone like beacons from above.
QUEER-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE
First Meeting of the Year
Tuesday, September 7, Room 313 @ 2:45
“I found them,” I whispered. “I found the gays.”
I stood at the door to room 313 after the last bell rang. My heart went a million beats per second. Stepping over the threshold meant I was about to step into the room that could hold the person who would become my first boyfriend. Or give me my first kiss. Or be the owner of my first number seven!
I did a quick bangs check in my phone’s camera to make sure my hair was perfectly in place. When I looked back up, a familiar face glowed through the doorway. Sitting on the window ledge with the sun lighting him up like some arousing angel sent from heaven—or whatever awesome resort waits for us in the afterlife—was Albert.
My mind went into overdrive. Albert Huang could be gay. Or bi. Or pansexual. Shit! I mean, yay, but, shit! I’d looked like a complete fracking idiot that morning. If he was interested in dudes, the bloody gum fiasco had to have blown any possible chance he’d be interested in me. Then again, he could also be representing the S part of the QSA, and then I’d have nothing to worry about. But honestly, I really hoped he wasn’t straight and that number six could get an immediate revision.
JAY’S GAY AGENDA
1.Meet another gay kid. Somewhere, anywhere . . . please! in Seattle in, like, days!
2.Go on a date with a boy at the Space Needle and hold hands within the first ninety minutes.
3.Go to a dDance with a boy and have my first kiss slow dancing to Shawn Mendes while getting caught in a surprise Seattle downpour.
4.Have a boyfriend, one who likes to wrap me up in his arms and let me be little spoon, and maybe smells like coffee from all the cafés he goes to.
5.Fall in love with a boy, but wait for him to say it first so I don’t seem too desperate, and maybe he says it for the first time at Pike Place Market or in the first Starbucks.
6.Make out with Albert, with tongue, and hard enough that I’d get a little burn from his stubble run my fingers along that perfect jawline.
7.See another penis besides my own, IRL, and do fun things with it!
8.Lose. My. Virginity!
9.Become part of a super-queer, super-tight framily.
There’s this thing in statistics called the Gini index. It’s all about measuring how wealth is shared throughout a whole country. It’s on a scale from zero to one, and a country where everyone shares wealth equally is at a zero. If just one person controls all the wealth, the Gini index is at a one. For the Capitol Hill High QSA, hotness was not shared equally. The Sexy Gini index was all the way at a one, and Albert was the guy who controlled all that sexiness.
“I know,” a voice whispered in my ear. “He’s super hot, right?”
I was caught in the act drooling over a boy while blocking the doorway. Way to make a good first impression.
“Sorry.” I moved to the side, my back still turned to whoever I was blocking.
“Don’t worry about it,” they said. “I haven’t seen you around these meetings before. My name’s Max Knudson. The K’s not silent, and neither am I!”
I turned to face whoever it was who introduced themselves with such magnetic sass. When I took in all his fabulousness, my mouth fell open. Max looked to be about my age, was my same height, and had long blond hair. Illuminating powder highlighted his white, freckled cheekbones, and he wore an outfit that looked almost identical to the one Mom had chosen for work that morning: dark blue, high-waisted paper-bag pants with a white blouse. He wore black booties and carried a blue-and-white tote bag with What Would Dolly Do? written on the side.
No guy in rural Eastern Washington would ever wear women’s clothes. I loved color and wanted to be more adventurous with my style, but I always played it safe in a white Hanes T-shirt, jeans from Target, and my favorite Levi’s jacket my parents bought me in ninth grade. It still fit because, sadly, that was the year I stopped growing at the national average of five foot nine inches.
Max followed my line of sight to his pants. “What? Did my belt come undone or something?”
“No, it’s just . . .” Max lifted his eyebrows and peered at me down his nose. Say something, Jay! The longer it took me to get any words out, the more I looked like some closed-minded, denim getup, country hick. “You look great!”
“Thanks!” Max beamed. “Gendered fashion can be so limiting, don’t you think?” He grabbed my hand and led me into the classroom, all skepticism vanished from his face. “Tell me your life story. Start from birth.”
My mind ran through the list of Jay attributes as Max plopped into a desk in the front row.
JAY COLLIER QUALITIES
1.Hyper-organized list maker (as evidenced by making a list of my own personality traits).
2.Stats geek and mathematician (including a two-time Washington Association of Mathematics (WAM) regional champion at the annual WAMbledon math competition).
3.Reality TV aficionado (I could recite the MTV, VH1, and Bravo show schedules).
4.Three-time award-winning hoedown costumier (the only French word I know).
5.Inexperienced and getting-desperate gay virgin (Ugh).
I couldn’t say any of these traits out loud. I’m super organized and outrageously type A? That will be read as totally neurotic. I’m into stats and math? Huge geek. Lover of reality show drama? I could practically see Chip pointing at me and saying I was a stereotype. Hoedown costumier? I couldn’t sound any more country if I tried, even with a French word in there. And there was no way I was going into my sexual inactivity. I seemed so dull and boring. If I was going to make a new life for myself, I needed to be alluring and captivating so I could make friends and interest guys.
Max stared at me expectantly. “You look like the human personification of the computer-stalling color wheel.” His eyes glazed over, and he said in a robotic voice, “Thinking, thinking, thinking.”
“Ha, ha.” I laughed robotically, only proving Max’s point. I took the seat next to him and decided to just list the surface things that couldn’t land me in loser new kid territory. “I’m Jay and I just moved here. I’m a senior. I’ll be eighteen in a couple weeks. On the twentieth.”
“Ooh, a Virgo. Let me guess. You’re super organized, and you like to make lists.”
Obviously, that was dead-on. I glanced down at my notebook, nervous that somehow it had splayed open and Max could see the Gay Agenda. It was shut tight with my elbow resting on top of its cover. But if Max could guess my number-one personality trait just based on me being a Virgo, maybe there really was something to stars and astrology.
Max seemed to be okay with my neuroses, so I ventured a little further in the truth about Jay. “Sure, I guess I’m pretty organized. I also like drag and theater.”
“Who doesn’t?” Max said.
“Dressing up.”
“Preaching to the choir.”
“Sudoku, calculus, statistics.” I face-palmed. Dropping math bombs was definitely taking it too far. I was coming across as the biggest nerd to the first person I’d spoken to without gum on my forehead.
But Max pulled my hand from my face, his eyes glowing with adoration. “Lord and Taylor, that was the cutest move I’ve ever seen! I’m obsessed with a good catchphrase, but a catchmove! Love it!”
Finally, someone who appreciated the face-palm. Lu always said it was so dramatic, but Max knew what I was going for: sending a message with just the right amount of cute. There’s this study that says it takes two hundred hours
to become someone’s best friend, but if things kept going this well between us, Max and I would be BFFs in no time.
It was such a relief that Max took the conversational lead after I hadn’t been able to muster up the courage to talk to anybody. As he continued to ask me questions, I fully intended to omit the most embarrassing detail of my life, namely, that I was a virgin while everyone our age seemed to constantly be naked with somebody else. But somehow Max was like a bloodhound sniffing out the scent of my boy-on-boy inexperience.
“So, you’re gay, right?” Max asked, then immediately slapped his cheek. “Lord and Taylor, shut up, Max! I didn’t mean to assume or anything, but I just kind of have a sixth sense about these things.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “And your superpowers remain intact. I’m gay.”
“And you mentioned you moved from outside of Spokane?”
I nodded.
“Where outside of Spokane?” he asked.
“Riverton. Most people haven’t heard of—”
“Ohmigawd, you poor thing.” Max covered his mouth in shock. “My mom’s second cousin used to live out there and the one time we went to visit, I couldn’t wait to leave. There’s nothing to do. It’s just farms and fields and”—he gasped—“no gays.”
Max leaned in so close his hair landed on my shoulder. “But I mean, like, you have kissed a boy before, right?”
I hesitated, completely wanting to avoid the subject of my having never done anything with a guy, ever. But my silence only confirmed Max’s suspicions.
“Don’t you worry. Your life is about to change, Jay, because this place is swarming with gays.” Max pointed at himself. “Gay.” Then he pointed at a few of the guys chatting or taking seats. “Gay, gay, gay, gay, a couple freshmen I don’t know, aaaaaand gay. All openly, of course, because I’m not in the business of outing people.”
Three thoughts went through my head: 1) That third gay on the list was Albert, so, hell fracking yes, it was confirmed, 2) I could officially cross off item number one on the Gay Agenda (twice, really, since I’d met Albert that morning and now Max), and 3) Max knew which boys liked boys. He could save me from those awkward Hey, are you gay? conversations. With Max by my side, I could flirt with confidence and meet up with all those other high schoolers in SexTown ASAP.
“Okay, so true-confession time,” I said.
“That’s my favorite time.” I swear Max was salivating.
I lowered my voice. “You were right about how barren Riverton is. I’ve never kissed a guy before.” Max’s eyes lit up and he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t tell anybody,” I rushed to say before he could get the whole QSA’s attention. “But I could use, like, a sort of guide.” I thought back to my encounter with Albert and how stupid I looked. “Someone to help me figure out how to not come across like a total amateur while I cross items off my Gay Agenda.”
Oh, frack. Oh, fracking shit balls shit! This is what happens when someone makes you feel comfortable after nearly a whole day of silence: you spill every single secret without meaning to.
Was there a stat on how many people die of embarrassment?
Because I was about to become one of them.
6.
Become Veep
“Oh. My. Gawd. Your Gay Agenda? Tell me everything!” Max was like a kid in a candy store, and I’d just produced the juiciest piece of candy he could imagine. I was the Willy Wonka of slipups.
“Really, it’s nothing. I don’t know what I was—”
“Please,” Max interrupted. “You’ve let the cat out of the bag now, and I’m just going to keep asking until you say yes. Just like you can’t stop yourself from making lists, Geminis are known for being nosy.” Max motioned for me to hand over my notebook. “I know it’s in there, Virgo.”
I really wanted the QSA meeting to start already so I could avoid the question and pretend like nothing happened. I looked at the clock. It was only two forty. I had five minutes left of this torture.
Here were my options:
GAY AGENDA DIVULGENCE DILEMMA
1.Continue to deny Max and have him keep asking about it (which would inevitably cause a commotion that catches Albert’s and the rest of the group’s attention, then everyone would ask what all the hubbub was about, and the Gay Agenda would be revealed to the entire world).
2.Show Max the Gay Agenda (which would give him more insight into just what I want out of my first year with other gay guys, and potentially lead to crossing off more items with him as my guide).
3.Run.
There were too many people blocking the doorway to run, and if Albert learned about the Gay Agenda, I would move back to Riverton and live with Lu with only myself to blame for my virginity.
That meant there was only one thing left to do.
“Fine.” I flipped to the Gay Agenda, then checked over both shoulders to be sure there was no one close enough to see all my gay hopes and dreams on the page. “The only other person I’ve shown this to is Lu, my best friend back home. So you can’t tell a single person about this.”
Max made an X over his chest. “It’s an honor to be in such esteemed company as your best friend. I won’t take this lightly.” Then he snatched the Moleskine away from me.
When Max’s hand closed over my notebook, I felt a vise grip on my heart. It was like he was holding my soul. Like he could literally tear me to shreds. What if he laughed? What if he thought I was a skeezy perv?
But as Max’s eyes roved farther down the list, his smile got wider and wider. When he reached the bottom of the agenda, he snapped the book shut and declared, “I accept the position as your Gay Guide, your Libido Liberator, and your Jizz Genie. I will make all your sex wishes come true!”
I was relieved and horrified at the same time. “Let’s never use the title Jizz Genie ever again. Gay Guide will totally work if you have to have an official title.” The vise grip left my heart. It actually felt kind of good to have somebody accept this mission head-on. “You don’t think I’m some sex-crazed lunatic or something, do you?”
“Of course I do. But, like, we all are,” Max said. “Except for our asexual friends, who can still get just as wrapped up in romance and relationships. The key is being a sex- and/or romance-crazed lunatic with confidence.”
“You seem to have a lot of that.”
“Confidence is key when you’re genderqueer, or else the world will eat you alive,” Max said, flipping his hair over his shoulder.
This was a time for my internet research to come in handy. I could finally use it now that I was out of the homogeneity of my hometown and able to meet a noncisgender person.
“Cool,” I said. “I go by he/him pronouns, and I’m a total safe space if you ever want to share yours.”
Max gave me an Oh, aren’t you cute look. “There’s never a way to broach this topic without it sounding clinical, is there? I’m an open book, so none of the pronouns really feel one hundred percent right. But you can address your Gay Guide as he/him or she/her. My body is male, my energy is feminine, and I’m down for paying tribute to both.”
“Got it,” I said. “And thanks for accepting the position.”
Max put his hand over his heart. “It’s an honor you asked. And gave in to my pushiness. It’s just that I could really use a project right now, and helping you get a hookup will be fun. For my first order of business as your newly appointed GG: What are you looking for in a man?”
I was prevented from pointing over Max’s shoulder at Albert by Ms. Okeke—the World Lit teacher and faculty leader of the group—clapping her hands. “All right, everybody, settle down. We’ve got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. As most of you already know, the QSA is in charge of homecoming this year.”
Everyone did the exact opposite of settle down. At Ms. Okeke’s announcement, the whole room erupted in excited chatter. I let out a gasp thinking about crossing number three off the Gay Agenda (although unless it was outside, I might have to rethink the getting-ca
ught-in-a-romantic-downpour bit). I’d probably even be able to give that item two check marks if I could get said boy—cough, Albert, cough—to come with me back to Riverton and go to the hoedown.
My eyes slipped toward Albert, and I SWEAR TO GAWD he was already looking right at me. I was getting checked out by a guy! Me! Jay Collier! I mentally added a 1.5 to the Gay Agenda and crossed it off: Get checked out by a VSB the stars may or may not have sent literally crashing into you this morning. Check!
Here was my chance to make up for being a total klutz. I ran my tongue over my teeth to double-check I didn’t have any leftover turkey sandwich in them from lunch. Then I let loose the “sexy smile” that I’d practiced so many times in the mirror: the corners of my lips turned up just enough so as not to seem too eager, and my mouth opened ever so slightly so that he could see just a bit of my tongue. I definitely wanted Albert to be thinking about what it would be like to make contact with my tongue.
All that mirror practice must have worked because . . .
ALBERT SMILED BACK!
Max followed my line of sight. “Lord and Taylor, would you two stop being so cute already?”
I face-palmed, hoping to keep Max’s attention on my face and nowhere near the bulge appearing thanks to tonguing-Albert thoughts.
“Do not let hormones take control of this club!” Ms. Okeke yelled over the chaos. We all eventually quieted down, with a scattered giggle here and there. “We’ve got to get planning right away because homecoming is October ninth. First thing to do is elect our president for the year. That person will oversee all the committees for getting homecoming up and running. Then they’ll schedule various discussions once this dance debauchery dies down and we can get back to our regularly scheduled queer-straight programming. Any contenders?”
Max immediately interlocked his fingers with mine and hoisted our hands in the air. Two gold bracelets jangled on his wrist as he waved our hands back and forth.
“What are you doing?” I was excited to become a part of an LGBTQ framily, especially after that lonely lunch earlier, but I didn’t want to dive into the deep end like this quite so quickly.
