Straight

by Seth King

  “You’re going too fast for me.”

  “Okay. Society took a hard turn to the right, and gays needed protection – so to please Christians who preached that God made everyone perfectly, we said, ‘Hey, don’t hate me, God made me like this!’ That was the defense. But to me, sexuality can be like picking up tennis as a hobby, or taking a cooking class – you try, you experiment, you see what you like. I know a lot of people who just look for people instead of genders, and they’re fine with it. Obviously a lot of people are just straight, and a lot of people are just gay. But the in-between is so much bigger than anyone will ever know.”

  “So you’re saying my feelings for you could just be…a phase, or something?”

  “Wait, you have feelings for me?”

  I blush and look away. He laughs and kisses my sweaty forehead. “Not saying that at all. I’m just saying our meeting happened, and it’s been great, so let’s enjoy it and not overthink ourselves into insanity. You don’t have to label anything. Do you like hanging out with me?”

  “I think I might love it,” I say quietly. He smiles so big, it makes me crumble inside.

  “And I love seeing you, too. So let’s leave it that for now, okay?”

  “Deal,” I smile.

  “But actually, you know what’s funny?”

  “What?”

  “You already seem so comfortable with this. Trust me, I’ve been pursued by some super-closeted guys before, and everything about them reeked of self-hatred and disgust. Which I totally understand, because the church, and not to mention the South, tells them they’re dirty and sinful for what they feel. But you’re really…free. You’re free with the way you seem to like me, at least…”

  He trails off, and all goes quiet. I want to disappear into his smile and never come out.

  “Thanks,” I say, “but you can probably thank my parents. They raised me really well – we were taught to overlook the differences in people. So more than anything, I’m just confused by all this – not drowning in fear, or anything. Just curious.”

  “I can tell.”

  I take a breath. “Yeah. Imagine you hated coffee your whole life, never had a sip of it, and then one day you woke up guzzling Starbucks. Anyone would be thrown.”

  “I get the analogy.”

  “I have one more question,” I say soon. “How do guys have sex? Real, full-on sex?”

  He bites his lip, his eyes swirling with something dark. “We’ll cover that soon. Right now, just shut up and kiss me.”

  “Just kiss?”

  “Sitting on my dick would be great, too, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Right now I just want to kiss my dude.”

  Ty stays until his building’s curfew starts to approach. When he’s gone I realize he’s left his undershirt behind, this faded tie-dye thing that says ATLANTA PRIDE 2014. I don’t tell him, though – instead I lay it on my bed and sleep next to it.

  I don’t think I’m done with his scent just yet.

  6

  The next day I pass him on campus for a pre-planned meeting we’d decided on in the morning. Oh, God – he looks so cute, here in the light, and it makes me more nervous than anyone ever has before. And I still can’t believe I’m calling a guy cute, but I am. Sue me – I guess words all start to mean different things when your mind starts expanding. He’s dressed like a punk rocker, with ripped black jeans and a red flannel shirt tied over a muscle tee. On anyone else it would just look weird, but he looks badass and…well, sexy. Even a few girls check him out as he walks up to me.

  “Howdy,” he says. “How goes it?”

  I look around to make sure nobody’s listening. “Half mast,” I whisper. “But pretend I never said that.”

  He smiles so large, his blue eyes crinkle. I can’t process how badly I want to push him up against the wall and kiss him, touch him, explore him again. Why does he have to look so hot all the time? Why can’t he just save it for me, or something?

  “How are you feeling?” I ask him.

  “Honestly? I want to hook up again, but pretend I never said that, too.”

  He winks and strides away. God, I am overflowing for this kid.

  ~

  That afternoon a new response comes to my chat room post, from Brandi in Ft. Worth. I read it in the back of my classroom, silently getting lost in the words:

  Yo, I saw your story, and I have a similar background with my girlfriend Michelle. I was totally straight, never so much as drunkenly kissed a girl at a party, dated guy after guy and never questioned anything at all – and suddenly I’m falling in love with my mattress salesgirl at JCPenney on a Sunday afternoon. Jess had big brown eyes and an even bigger butt, and immediately I knew I liked her – but my parents are evangelical Christians, and since I’d never liked a girl before, I avoided it for a while. I wasn’t horrified or anything, I was just confused. I loved dick, you know? Really, honestly enjoyed it. But I couldn’t shake her. So one night I drank a beer and texted her, and that was it. We’ve been together for six years now. Society tells us that sexuality is a two-way street, straight or gay, pick one and move on. But I think that’s wrong. I don’t even think sexual categories exist, really – it’s like the wind. When is the wind ever blowing exactly north, south, east or west? Whatever happens with you, good luck. But I think you should stop thinking and just follow the wind.

  I don’t stop smiling even after I finish. I file away her username for future use, and then I close my laptop. Then I ask myself a question: what even is straightness, anyway? I’d never felt this before, but why did that invalidate my current feelings? Maybe she was right – maybe sexuality was like the wind, a mysterious force instead of a cardinal direction. I can’t deny my body and my mind’s reactions to people, and the simple truth is that Ty is like dynamite to me.

  And that’s when I tell myself once again to stop thinking about labels, stop fretting about categories, and see where these feelings take me. Who knows? Maybe they could lead to the sky.

  I’m getting onto my bike after class when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around. It’s him.

  “Hey,” he says, and just like that I lose all the feeling in my face.

  “Hi,” I say, trying not to sound nervous. “What’s up?”

  “Would you like a ride? Or maybe to just hangout before I have to meet my mom for dinner? I have her car until then.”

  The prospect of parting with him makes my shoulders fall already. “Yeah. I’d love to. What’s on your agenda?”

  “I’m smoking a J with Little Gracie.”

  “Come again?”

  “Come on, tie up your bike, I’ll explain. And my friend Anisha is coming, is that cool?”

  I nod and follow him to his car, where we find a rich-looking girl leaning against the car, annoyed.

  “Sorry, I was getting my friend!”

  For some reason her annoyance evaporates as soon as she studies me. “Oh. Okay, then. Let’s go!”

  His mom’s car is a (much) older Toyota SUV, and the odometer says 200,000 miles. I feel dizzy and uncomfortable next to him, like everything I’m doing is wrong, but I try to play it cool.

  “So, you know Bonaventure Cemetery?” he asks in that cool, low, smoky voice.

  “I mean, vaguely.”

  “Well, it’s one of the oldest around, and it’s supposedly got all these ghosts. There’s one girl, Little Gracie, who’s really famous.”

  “Tell me about this famous ghost.”

  “Sure thing. Her dad managed the best hotel in Savannah in the late 1800s, and she’d always come down and put on dance shows and make all the guests fall in love with her – until she died of pneumonia. They made a statue of her at her grave, and people say she comes around and sits there sometimes. That’s why all the visitors leave toys there.”

  I’m getting lost in his voice so thoroughly, it’s hard to pay attention. “And so you come here and smoke because…”

  “I don’t know, I guess I’ve always been drawn to
cemeteries. If you couldn’t tell by my emo-ass clothes, at least,” he laughs. “But seriously: what happens to us? Why are we here? What’s the point of it all? These are the things I think about.” His voice drifts off. “Anyway, it’s also just a pretty place to hangout, so when I’m in the mood to get high I usually come here.”

  “So you’re Ty’s straight friend, right?” Anisha asks out of nowhere, looking lost in thought. I exchange a look with Ty, then nod.

  “Um…yeah, I guess. Why?”

  “Just curious,” she says as she stares out the window. “What is being straight like these days, anyway? It seems so…boring.”

  Ty looks over at me. “Anisha, here, has been turned off from the penis after a few too many bad breakups,” he explains, smiling. She nods.

  “Hell yes, I was turned off, and I’m not looking back. At least girls will dump you before they break your heart, and not cheat on you for six months while acting like everything is fine. If I’m going to get ruined, I’d might as well get a good shopping partner out of the mix.”

  I laugh. “I mean, I guess it is boring,” I say. “Especially in the South. There’s a bit of a blueprint: find someone in college you can stomach to be around, settle down at twenty-four, get a nice job, move into the starter house, pop out a kid. They all live the same lives, and do the same things. Especially in my circle.”

  “Then why is it still your circle?” she asks, chomping on her gum. I just stare out at the road, wondering where the drive will end.

  “Good question.”

  Soon he turns into Bonaventure and disappears down a tiny road flanked by graves and mossy, sprawling oaks. We pull up beside a beautiful statue of a little girl behind a gate, and sure enough a pile of rain-ruined plush toys is behind the gate. He parks on the grass and takes out a joint.

  “Wanna share?” he asks, motioning at the joint.

  “Sure.”

  We pass it back it forth, and all the while I am praying he doesn’t notice the way I jump whenever his skin touches mine.

  “But the saddest thing about Gracie,” he says soon, his voice matching the smoke swirling around the car, “is that after she died, her parents got so depressed that they lost everything and moved back to Boston, where they were from. So she was alone. She had nobody to come see her. That’s another reason people leave the toys. And hey, look – I don’t think I showed you this. See the tattoo here, on my forearm, next to my dog? I told you I had a thing for tragic beauties...”

  Sure enough, he has a perfect replica of the statue on his arm, even with the girl’s haunting, vacant eyes. I watch him, and it’s like the cemetery was invented for him. His inky tattoos, his dark eyes, his voice so quiet I can barely understand…he was made to be sitting here right now, next to me, in this cemetery. He is so sexy I cannot handle it.

  I look around at all the graves and notice many of the people died in their twenties and thirties. As the light filters down through the oaks I wonder what ran through their minds when they knew it was the end; what they must’ve thought when they looked up at the ceiling and knew the curtain was about to close on them. Were they sad, were they relieved, were they regretful? On their deathbeds, when everything was roaring and coming into focus, were they worried about things such as the opinions of strangers about the quickly-developing love they felt for someone who was the same gender as them?

  “You’re very smart,” I say soon, wanting to giggle for some reason. “Weird, but smart.”

  “Thank you,” he says with a smile that is so sly, so sexy, it makes my cock throb. For a few moments all is silent, and I want to grab him so badly I can’t process it.

  “God,” a voice says, and I remember Anisha is in the car with us. “Can you guys just make out already? This tension is making me feel even more single than I already am.”

  We both laugh. For some reason her statement doesn’t terrify me, like I expected. It just makes me happy.

  Soon Ty pulls the car into gear to leave, but I stop him. “Wait, we need to leave something,” I say. “For Gracie.”

  “I have a deck of cards in the back?” Ty says. “Maybe she can play, if she gets sick of the whole ‘haunting Savannah’ thing?”

  “Perfect idea.”

  Anisha finds the cards, and I hop out and give them to Gracie. And then we drive away, a pack of Dollar Store cards nestled safely against the little girl’s monument. Who knows – maybe she had a thing for Go Fish.

  “By the way,” Anisha says soon, “please don’t date.”

  I throw a look at Ty, who glances back at her. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re both already too hot on your own, and a combination like that would make the fucking world explode.”

  ~

  The ride home is wistful and sad, and not because of the cemetery: for some reason I don’t want to go home alone, without him. It’s pulling at my soul already. Even sitting next to him, I can already feel the separation. I catch him stealing glances over at me a few times, but why? He’s so hard to gauge. I couldn’t even read women – how am I supposed to start over and learn how to read guys instead?

  He drops me off at my bike, and it is nearly impossible not to reach out and kiss him. I say goodbye to Anisha, who blushes. Then I turn to Ty. “Text me tonight?”

  “Are you crazy?” he smiles. “I’m texting you as soon as you close this door.”

  “I’m holding you to it.”

  “Please do.”

  I slam the door and he drives away. Sure enough, as soon as his car turns around the corner my phone pings: If Anisha wasn’t in the car, I’m pretty sure I would’ve had my first cemetery hookup today.

  I smile and tap a response. For Little Gracie’s sake, thank God we didn’t.

  Rain check? he asks, and I sigh.

  I’m already dreaming about it.

  I’m too giddy and happy for dinner, so before bed I go on a walk under Savannah’s oaks. I’ve always loved this quirky little town, so much more European than it is American, from the huge old brick townhouses lining the tree-filled squares to the centuries-old monuments and fountains and churches. (I live only minutes from the bench from Forrest Gump, which actually isn’t even there anymore.) Actually, I love everything except the hordes of tourists that wander around all day, blindly looking for candy stores and riverboats. My mom, an embarrassing prototype of a Southern belle, met my dad – a Manhattan Yankee – in grad school, and when they got married they both agreed they didn’t want to raise their kids in New York. They moved down here for my childhood, but now they’re back up in the city. After I graduated school and got an intern job, I realized after two years that I was an autopilot – so I came back to Savannah College of Art and Design to enter an architecture program. Honestly, I’m in no rush to finish – not while the job market is this terrible. School isn’t too hard this semester, but my heart just isn’t in it, and sometimes I wonder if I’m following any sort of compass at all, or if I’m just going anywhere the current takes me.

  When I get home I crash into bed, lean against my new headboard, and Google the word “gay” for one last investigation session before sleep. The definition is pretty straightforward: Homosexual – (noun) any organism that is attracted to same-sex members of its own species.

  I think about this. Why would any man be attracted to a man, biologically speaking? But then again, why not? And why would they be attracted to a female, anyway? Just for procreation? What about people who don’t want kids – why would they need to be attracted to females? And why did procreation matter when you could just adopt?

  I dive into Wikipedia and take a course in the history of homosexuality. What I find shocks me: I expect to see doom and gloom and tragedy, but it’s almost the opposite. In ancient Rome, bisexuality was more common than not, and every recorded emperor (except one) was known to take male lovers. For the Native Americans, homosexuals often took up the highest places in their societies. And King James of the Middle Ages, whom a version
of the Bible was named after? He had numerous male lovers over a span of decades. It almost seemed like gay-hatred was a modern problem. But why? Why would anyone care? I certainly never had before this.

  I close my laptop, too overwhelmed to go over any more. But still I can’t get one word out of my head: Ty. Ty Ty Ty Ty Ty. It sings in my head like a love song, makes me feel lighter than the clouds in the September sky. Happiness like this is a rare feeling for me, lately at least. If I’d rushed into my early twenties, restless and brash and alive, I am drifting into my late twenties. As kids we’d been sold a brave, thrilling version of adulthood – you can wake up whenever you want! You can eat ice cream in the morning! No more school! But when we actually threw ourselves into the world, we realized growing up wasn’t real. Adults were just large children who hadn’t figured anything out yet, and the world was just as much of a crapshoot as it was before. I always thought people were either good or bad, light or dark, black or white – but then I learned we were all just different combinations of both, all just varying mixes of grey. We all lived by rules we didn’t question, settling down and getting the white picket fences as our insides died. Whenever I went to an engagement party or a birthday gathering I looked at all these people approaching twenty-right or thirty and detected some strange form of low-grade sadness radiating throughout the crowd; a resigned sense of whatever that made us take long naps and avoid all forms of excitement and date people that treated us like background noise. Paying rent sucks, and having your heart smashed in your first big breakup is a hole in your chest that will never stop smoldering, and remembering to send in your phone bill every month is super stressful – so why not get tanked off white wine on a Sunday night? It’s not like Monday will challenge or surprise you, anyway. It’s just another Monday, after all…

  I lay myself out on my bed and sink into my comforter, Ty’s shirt still safely at my side. The scent has faded, but it’s still there. And it makes a sunrise erupt inside my chest. Maybe it is time for a new chapter. A chapter that isn’t so straightforward…