by Jason June
1.5.Get checked out by a very VSB!
2.Go on a Digimals date with Albert a boy at the Space Needle.
2.5.Hold hands within the first ninety minutes a VSB after being pulled into my first-ever drag show by a queen named after a fish.
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, or Tony, or, you know, any guy who keeps himself in my personal bubble, 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 by impressing everybody with my epic costumier skills, erasing the “new kid” label, and becoming homecoming royalty.
10.Figure out a way to make my gay dreams come true and not destroy my bestie’s life.
The Handshake from Heaven was interrupted by throngs of people pushing to get inside now that the drag brunch had started in earnest. Max and I wandered to an empty booth, Tony close behind. I hadn’t been expecting the two of us to have company during the show, and now I was certain that I would definitely spontaneously combust if Tony sat with us and our knees happened to bump together. But just as I scooched across the tan velvet booth to make room for Tony, he waved to a group of guys sitting across the room.
“Those are my brothers,” he said. “But you guys should come to our party next Friday. It’s the annual Lambda Chi Fire and Ice Ball.”
“Oh, you’re frat brothers!” I blurted.
Those let’s-get-in-our-undies vibes switched off from Tony almost instantly. “Don’t ever say that. We aren’t a frat. We’re a fraternity. A brotherhood. You don’t abbreviate it. You wouldn’t call a country a cun—”
“Whoa, okay, I get it!” Lu would never forgive me if I let somebody say that word. “Lesson learned.”
“It’s all right.” Tony’s smirk crept back up his lips. “I’ll give you this one. But just this once.”
“We accept your invitation,” Max said. “It’ll be great research on how to really go all out with a theme for homecoming. And please excuse my friend here. He’s new to flirting.”
I glared at Max. There was another thing to add to the Gay Guide Guidelines: no mentioning to VSBs that I don’t know what I’m doing around guys.
“If you come to the party, maybe we can practice together.” Tony paused a beat. I swear he licked his lip, just the tiniest bit of tongue darting out to send my mind reeling. “Flirting, that is.”
It wouldn’t take Tony touching me to spontaneously combust. His words alone could do the trick.
“See you then,” Tony said. Just before turning away, he smirked at me one last time. “Nice to meet you, Jay.”
I tried saying Nice to meet you too, but thanks to becoming a boy-crazy drooling mess, my words came out in a mushy jumble. Fortunately, Tony was headed toward his fraternity brothers, so he didn’t see me melt.
A server came by with waters, and I gulped mine like I’d been stuck in the desert for days. I needed to cool down.
“You’re welcome,” Max said. “For so getting you laid.”
I choked, water flying out of my mouth. “Wh—hack—what?”
“I knew he was going to have a thing for you,” Max said. “And clearly you’ve got one for him. Your mouth has been open so wide I could fit Mount Rainier in there. It’s so on for the two of you at his party.”
For the rest of the brunch, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the Gay Agenda items I could do with Tony that involved no pants. When our server came to take my order, I nearly asked for pancocks instead of pancakes. As Tuna danced across the bar to her own remixes of Beyoncé and Britney and Whitney, I couldn’t stop myself from occasionally looking away from her high kicks and catching eyes with Tony. And when Max pulled me over at the end of the show to ask Tuna if she’d be free to DJ the homecoming dance, I said “Bye, Tony” instead of “Bye, Tuna.” Tuna followed the slip by snapping her magenta nails in front of my face. It took way too long for her movement to register.
“Max, honey, it’s just as I expected,” she said. “This one’s dicknotized.”
Yep. That’s exactly what I was.
11.
Have a Date Downgraded
The next day was surprisingly sunny for Seattle. Clear skies brought people down to Pike Place Market in full force. Vendors were lined up all along the street selling fresh flowers, local art, and handmade jewelry. Behind me was the Fish Market, where muscly guys tossed dead fish to each other and wrapped them up as people placed their orders for fresh salmon. If I had come down here for any other reason than to meet a VSB on my very first date, I would have found those guys and their fish-carcass choreography surprisingly hot. But seeing as how this was about to become my first date, I was too distracted by my heart racing a million miles a minute. The CDC says someone has a heart attack every forty seconds, and if my heart didn’t slow down, I was about to become one of those people. The anticipation of Albert getting there was killing me. I peered through the throngs of shoppers and tourists, expecting him to appear at any moment with his perfect hair, perfect glasses, and perfect jawline, his sexy Digigeek-chic trifecta.
I don’t know if it was from almost eighteen years of suppressed gay hormones or what, but I was like a dog with a bone(r). Even though Tony had had all my attention the day before, my body quickly switched back to the closest hot guy who might flirt with me. And when I finally saw Albert walk past the newsstand next to the Fish Market, his hair perfectly coiffed just like I expected, his glasses perched adorably close to the end of his nose once again, I nearly did have a heart attack.
Because he wasn’t alone.
Three people walked in step with Albert. The first was a pale white girl with jet-black hair that fell nearly to her butt, the second an Indian girl with the fiercest hot pink eyeshadow that would make Max jealous, and the third was the Blue Piercer himself, Reese.
What. The. Frack. This wasn’t a date. This was a group hangout. And with Reese Buttersworth, the ultimate boner shrinker, to boot.
Fortunately, none of them saw my distress because their heads were buried in their phones. Albert looked up when they neared the Fish Market and beamed when he saw me.
“Jay, hey!” He laughed, but in the presence of all this unexpected company, it didn’t make me melt quite like it usually did. “That rhymes! And you made it.”
“Ha, ha, yeah. Sure does. And sure did.” Having a one-syllable name meant an inordinate amount of things rhymed with it. Gay Jay picked up steam for a hot minute when I first came out at Riverton, but Lu shut that down by writing a piece in the school newspaper about how a person’s sexuality does not define who they are. I loved her for that. I didn’t need people pouring salt in the wound every time they said my name by highlighting that I was the one and only gay kid in the student body. Today, however, I wanted the gay part of my identity in caps lock and bright lights since I’d thought I was going on my first GAY date.
“Guys, this is Jay,” Albert said to the group.
“Hey, everybody.” I tried to save face by smiling, showing teeth so that it looked like I really meant it. But I overdid it, my lips stretching too tight. I’m sure I looked like that psychotic clown in It, grinning maniacally before he tried to eat everybody.
“Good orthodontia.” The pale girl with jet-black hair inspected my too-toothy smile. “Braces?”
Gawd, the only tooth interaction I wanted was Albert’s teeth biting my lips in a hot make-out sess
ion. I’d seen it enough times in movies that it had to feel good, even if it did make your lip look like Silly Putty when it was stretched back from your face.
“Yep,” I said. “From sixth grade to eighth.”
Hot Pink Eyes bumped Braces Observer with her hip. “Regina, we’ve talked about this. Putting someone’s teeth on blast is a really intimate thing. It makes people self-conscious.” She looked at me pointedly. “Didn’t it make you feel self-conscious?”
I caught myself running my tongue over my teeth. “Yeah, I guess it did.”
“Sorry about her.” She put her hand out and we shook. “I’m Shruti Dhawan. This overenthusiastic tooth inspector is Regina Walsh.”
Regina threw her hands in the air. “I can’t help it if I get distracted by great teeth. Albert, you didn’t tell us he had such a cute smile.”
“Seriously,” Shruti deadpanned. “Did you even hear what I said?”
So Albert mentioned me to his friends. But Regina said he didn’t say I was cute, so it had to be more of a Hey, I’m bringing this new kid Jay around kind of conversation instead of I’m bringing this cute guy Jay who I might be interested in.
“Well, I mean . . .” Albert’s eyes met mine and he smiled even bigger than I had. “I guess I was distracted.”
Or maybe this group hangout wasn’t a lost cause. Albert was blatantly flirting with me again like he had when we were selling homecoming tickets.
“Okay, enough about distracting smiles and blah, blah, blah. We’re on a mission.” It seemed like Reese really loved to be a wet blanket. I wouldn’t expect someone as soul-sucking as him to be friends with a guy as kind and smart and hot as Albert. “We’ve got today and today only to find a sparkly PomPom, and we’ve already wasted seven minutes!”
“Reese is right,” Regina agreed. “We need to get serious.”
I raised my hand and Reese nodded in my direction. “Good, yes,” he said. “We need order, we need discipline, we need hand-raising.”
It actually seemed like he might not hate my guts for a second.
“Um, what’s a PomPom?” I asked.
Reese went right back to looking like he would kill me. “Only the most versatile Digimal known to Digikind. It can evolve into eight more powerful Digimals, all representing different elements. It’s a cornerstone of the Digimal community.”
“Plus, it’s really cute,” Shruti added. She showed me her phone. A fluffy purple Pomeranian wagged a tail that was very reminiscent of a cheerleading pom-pom.
“Aw, it’s adorable!” I said.
“Adorable,” Reese muttered. “I can’t with you people.” He pointed at Albert, back in Digigeneral mode. “Digihips. Now. We need the luck.”
Albert thrust from side to side. “See,” he said, grinning at me while he gyrated. “I told you these work. Sparkly PomPom, here we come.”
We walked past the burly fish throwers and into the market. I don’t know how they did it, but Albert, Reese, Shruti, and Regina were all able to keep eagle eyes on their phones without running into any shoppers, flower stalls, or the vendor selling hand-knitted cat figurines. I kept myself as close to Albert as I could so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, which led to my elbows bumping into him pretty often. But he never pulled away. In fact, I think he bumped me on purpose a few times. He’d look up and smile slyly every time our elbows made contact even though we weren’t jostled by someone nearby. I didn’t know it was possible to flirt without any words, but I think we were officially flirting in some kind of elbow-tapping Morse code.
But when a particularly aggressive shopper with a basket full of healing crystals bulldozed through the crowd, I had to jump away from Albert and into Reese. He gave me that icy blue stare. “You don’t have your phone out?” He looked to the sky as if he was asking the universe to smite me. “We need all hands on deck here. Sparkly PomPoms aren’t going to find themselves.” He put his hand out. “Give me your phone.”
Reese didn’t seem like the kind of guy you argued with, especially when on a Digimission. As Max put it, he was difficult, so I decided it was best to just do as he said.
While Reese was distracted with my phone, I whispered to Albert, “I didn’t know you two were friends.”
“Who? Me and Reese?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, he’s been a part of the Digigang for a while. He stopped coming recently for acting gigs, but he’s been a little down lately. I’m glad he’s back. The Digihips always cheer him up.”
I had a hard time picturing icy Reese feeling down about anything. He still had my phone, glaring at it while he tapped on my screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked Reese.
“Starting you a Digimals account,” he said, then handed back my phone.
“This is my favorite part!” Regina said with a squeal. “You get to come up with a username.”
“And it can’t just be your name,” Shruti added. “It’s got to reflect who you are, what’s in your soul. It stays with you forever.”
“So,” Regina asked, “who are you, Jay?”
The whole group stared at me. Shruti’s head was cocked in thoughtfulness, Regina bounced on her tiptoes, Reese scowled with one eye still trained on his screen, and Albert’s smile unleashed that irresistible dimple.
I peered down at my phone. Reese had created an avatar that actually looked just like me; there was even the swoop to my light brown bangs that took six weeks freshman year to figure out. But blinking right next to Digime was a cursor under the glaring question:
What’s your name, Trainer?
The moment of truth when I had to declare who I was and what I stood for, not just to Reese and Shruti and Regina, but to Albert. A VSB I wanted to impress and keep flirting with. AlbertFlirt would be too obsessive of a name, though. And besides, that wasn’t really what made me me. So I was back at that unanswerable question of what Jay stood for. Or, I guess I could have answered it, but with the world’s most boring response:
Hi, I’m Jay, and I’m a hyper-organized, sexually very nonactive numbers geek.
“Um, well, I . . .” If I didn’t say something quick, Reese would just grab my phone and make my username Dumbass.
“SPARKLY POMPOM, FOLKS, WE GOT EYES ON A SPARKLY POMPOM.” Reese was off and striding through the crowd. “This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!”
Saved by General Reese!
Shruti lit up when she checked her own game. “He’s right! Only point three miles away.”
“At the Great Wheel!” Regina added. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the crowd. “Come on, Cute Incisors. Let’s go, Pearly Whites. Giddy up, Nice and Straight 32. Hmmm, no, that one might be read as homophobic.”
“Regina, what are you doing?” Albert asked.
“Trying to come up with Jay’s screen name, duh.”
“You’re doing it again,” Shruti said. “And I doubt Jay has your same affinity for teeth, Gothodontist.”
Ohmigawd that name perfectly described Regina: goth-tastic and obsessed with teeth.
Regina rolled her eyes. “What, I’m just trying to help, ShruteForTheStars.”
Shruti turned to me and asked, “You don’t happen to be into astronomy or anything, do you? Because I could help you come up with some space-themed usernames that are out of this world. Pun totally intended.”
I shook my head. “Sadly, no.”
Reese was now yards ahead of us and barreling down a staircase that led to the lower levels of Pike Place.
“PomPom’s still at the Wheel,” he yelled. “Let’s move, move, move!”
Shruti took off after him, and Regina rushed to follow. “This isn’t over,” she said. “We’ll come up with something, Mouth Guardian.”
“Regina!” Shruti shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
“All right, all right, I’ll stop.”
I looked down at the cursor still blinking on my phone, ready for me to declare my soul to the world. Who knew that Digimals was goin
g to send me into such an identity crisis?
I moved to follow Reese, Shruti, and Regina, but with my eyes still on my phone, I totally misjudged how deep the stairs were. I leaned forward way too far, my stomach lurching as my foot plummeted farther than expected. I might not have known what made me me inside, but Albert was about to see my literal insides if I fell down the stairs and broke my whole body.
A hand snatched my shirt and pulled me back just in the nick of time. My shoulder blades slammed into Albert’s chest. My feet dangled dangerously over the step in front of me, but Albert had me tightly pressed against his pecs. His strong, firm pecs.
“I got you,” Albert said.
I looked up, his face upside down from my vantage point. It was like that part in Spider-Man where Peter Parker slides down his web and kisses Mary Jane in a dramatic, upside-down, rain-soaked kiss. I would have given anything to re-create that scene.
Our eyes met. Electric tingles cascaded over my body just like they had with Tony, only this time the energy poured through my shoulder blades. They’d never felt so alive, and I was completely, totally, 100 percent here for it.
“What’s your username?” I breathed. “Knight in Shining Glasses?”
I guess Albert wasn’t bothered by my total cheesiness because he chuckled. The vibrations traveling from his chest to my back set my body on fire. “Maybe I should change it,” he said.
Albert put me back on my feet, but even when my shoes were firmly on the steps, he didn’t let go. His hands were now on my sides, keeping me steady, the perfect position to pull me closer and kiss.
“You good?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Should I let go?”
No. Never. I wanted him to pull me closer and get to number six right that very second.
“Sure,” I said. “We should probably catch up with the group.”
“Undecided,” Albert replied.
Maybe he hadn’t heard me. “Well, I don’t want to keep you from your friends, unless—”
“It’s my username,” Albert explained. “Undecided Huang. Don’t worry about what the Digigang says. Coming up with your avatar name is really not as life-or-death as they make it sound. I mean, I’m as much of a gamer as the rest of them, but as for who I am inside, I’m still trying to figure that out. There’s always so much pressure to know everything about ourselves right away, don’t you think?”
