Straight

by Seth King

  As I stare up at the window, I note that I don’t know too many things in my life. I don’t really know who I am or what I want or where I’m going or how exactly to get there. And things are getting more confusing than ever: a few days ago I was an ex-Lacrosse star who had only ever been attracted to women, and currently I am lost in a sea of butterflies over a dude.

  Right now I only know three things for sure. First, I have been one hundred percent straight my whole life – up until now, at least. Second, I live in the deepest of the Deep South, and many of the people in my world are homophobic to varying degrees. And third, I am suddenly and helplessly falling for a guy named Ty Stanton.

  7

  I meet Ty the next day at my favorite coffee shop, a few blocks from Paula Deen’s infamous restaurant. He is so magnetic I can’t wrench my eyes off him, but he makes me so nervous I can’t look directly into his eyes, either – it’s like he sucks all the air out of every room until there’s nothing but a Ty vacuum. We discuss more of the gay issues I’m curious about, but when the table next to us empties out, he leans closer. “Okay, this is your first big gay lesson: Grindr.”

  “What-er?”

  He laughs and takes out his phone. “Okay, I’ll back up. Grindr is a hookup app, and it’s one of the biggest parts of modern gay life. In the South, lots of people won’t come out of the closet, and even the ones who do come out – it’s not always safe for them to talk or date in public. So they go underground, on these apps.”

  He downloads an app with a bright orange icon and then creates a username, and suddenly the screen is filled with photos of nude torsos with the heads cut off. In a few cases a smiling face is shown, but most of the faces are hidden. “So,” he explains, “you download the app, talk to someone, and then maybe hook up or go on a date if you both click.”

  “You mean people just…hook up? Without knowing each other?”

  “Sometimes, yeah,” he blushes. “Think about it: every time you would hit on a girl in a bar, you did it with the hope of having sex that night, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well guys always want sex, so we don’t even go about with the charade – sometimes guys just cut right to the chase.”

  I take his phone and see that many of the profiles say something like “Straight guy just looking for casual fun” or “Married dude visiting on business, searching for hotel hookup.” When I make a note of this to Ty, he laughs again.

  “Oh, you’d be shocked – probably fifty percent of the guys on these apps will be straight, married, Republican, and anti-gay rights. They want you to come to their hotel room, suck them off, and leave. They’ll never come to terms with what they are, so they do this instead.”

  “But they’re straight…”

  “Henry,” he smiles, “I’ve tried to tell you – straight means nothing sometimes. Nothing. Society has such rigid rules about sexuality: straight guys are masculine and play football, gays are sashaying queens, yadda yadda yadda – it’s all bullshit. But those rules only exist because the majority of sexually fluid guys are closeted. You know how many straight, popular, ‘manly’ guys have messaged me on Grindr, looking for a low-key hookup? You would be shocked. But since they lie about it and cover it up, the rules stay rigid. Actually, I had this conversation just the other day with a very close-minded conservative girl from school who said I was just projecting my issues onto everyone else, and claimed sexuality was very black-and-white for most people. ‘Most guys are just straight, and that’s it,’ she said in her snooty little voice. And you know the hilarious part? I’ve seen her ex-boyfriend on Grindr a million times, looking for gay sex! I obviously couldn’t tell her, because I would never expose anyone like that, but still. He’s a big jock on campus who will never reveal his bisexuality, and so people like my friend will never get the full picture, and the cycle of ignorance will just repeat itself.”

  “Jesus,” I say as I lean back. “I didn’t even know all this stuff existed.”

  “Buckle in, then,” he smiles. “You’re about to get a crash-course in gay-dom.”

  We text all day and then meet the next morning at Panera, and the next one, too. I hang onto his presence every second I am around him, even if I don’t show it. A really cool thing about our dynamic is that he’s like my best guy friend, but he’s becoming my romantic partner, too – it’s like getting to hang out with a bestie who makes me orgasm. And his penis: I do not get sick of it. If anything, with every new encounter I find new ways to admire it. The large vein that runs down its length, the way I enjoy his smell the most when he’s a little musty, the way it seems to fit perfectly in my mouth like it was made for me…

  Suddenly I find myself getting out of bed the second my eyes fly open, instead of lingering for half an hour, dreading the day. For the first time in a long time, I have something pulling me into the world instead of making me want to sit on the sidelines and wait things out. I think about my very heterosexual life before the bus ride – I saw the same people, went to the same places, talked about the same boring things. And you’d better believe that all of those people had very similar views about certain subjects, too. Where was the variety in that? Where was the color?

  One day after we visit a bakery where his gay friend works, we take a walk. “What does your mom look like?” I ask, and he laughs.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I just always find myself wanting to know things about you. And what music do you listen to while you work, and do your art?”

  “Punk rock, film scores, cheesy show tunes, bad pop music, and ‘90s rap,” he says easily, smiling. “And my mom…she has long dark hair all the way down her back. I get my hair from my dad, he’s the blonde. But my mom is my best friend, and the only reason I made it through my childhood.”

  “Wow.” I lower my voice. “Speaking of that, what’s being gay like? Deep down, what’s it really like?”

  “Honestly?” he breathes. “I think it is the best and most special thing about me. I’m so glad I didn’t let the world break me down and take that pride away from me. I still love myself, and sometimes I can’t believe it.”

  “Explain?”

  “Society has very specific rules for gays. But I never fit into any one category: I was on the hockey team, and I painted my nails sometimes. I had Barbie Dream Houses and toy tanks. The world wants us to hate ourselves and remake ourselves – it picks and picks and picks at us until we break, and let it mold us in its image. Society only accepts gays like Boy George or whoever, who make themselves into freak shows and willingly play the jester, or ones who try to blend in and act straight. Why is Neil Patrick Harris famous right now? For playing a womanizer on TV. You can either become a spectacle or put on a business suit, but you have to pick one. People don’t know what to do with guys who don’t fit into any kind of box.”

  “Interesting,” I say, still trying to process everything. “Can I meet more of your friends? I still want to know so much more.”

  “Of course you can,” he laughs, so cool it makes me ache. “That would just require me actually pulling myself away from you and seeing them, which isn’t happening much lately.”

  A strange thing also happens during this same time period: I start getting a barrage of texts from my ex-girlfriend, Caroline. Here’s a sampling:

  Hey. You were in my dream last night, isn’t that weird?!

  Hi there. I miss you. Just peeped your tagged pics on Instagram and you look really good. How are you?

  Hey, just thinking about you. What are you up to?

  Hey there, you know hangovers always make me horny…I got wrecked last night and I’m sitting here going crazy, I would love for you to drop by and maybe take a bath or something…

  Hi. Remember how we planned on seeing the new Star Wars movie together? We should still go. Even though everything went to hell…

  Hello? I’m starting to feel neglected.

  Um. Really?!?! Are you really going to ignore me like
this?

  Okay. Fine. We’ll see what happens about this.

  And finally…

  Fuck you, asshole. Sincerely, my period.

  I don’t know what to say, though. I’m not interested, and besides, this is what she always did – whenever I’d try to push her away she’d try to find some crazy reason to make me stay. She’d say she was feeling unstable; she’d say her mom possibly had breast cancer and she needed support; she’d say her dad was about to file for divorce and she needed someone by her side. None of these things ever panned out or happened, and in the end I realized I was getting played by someone who may or may not have had mental problems. So I never respond, even though I used to be quite literally scared to ignore her. Her grandfather invented and patented some component of a car bumper that is now used by every auto manufacturer in the world, and her family is connected to trust funds worth billions. They do crazy things to people who cross them, and once they got involved in a minor scandal when some girl from school did something to piss her off, and she got one of their private investigators to trail her. Sometimes I wonder if she’s even watching me or something – why else would she be so insistent on hanging out? What does she want from me?

  For one day Ty and I don’t see each other, since both our semesters are starting to kick our asses. But then Ty texts me out of nowhere: I want to go on a date with you. A real date.

  I smile, then gulp. A few weeks ago I was chasing girls in bars, and now a guy is asking me on a real-live date. A date…what did guys even do on dates? And what if people see me and make assumptions before I’ve figured all this out?

  A real date? I ask. It almost seems like you miss me, or something.

  Because I do, he says, and I smile and shiver.

  Same here. But a gay date – what does that entail?

  Whatever we want it to. And you’re a lifetime Savannah guy, right?

  Right, I say. Even though I went to private school and you went to arts school and we never intersected once.

  Yeah. So I assume you’ve never done a lot of the touristy things all the visitors do?

  Oh, trust me, I avoid River Street like it’s an STD, I say.

  Good, then. Let’s go on a tourist date!

  I meet Ty on a corner of Broughton an hour or so before sunset, and I’ve worn my best khakis with a button-down cotton shirt. He’s in a red jacket that makes him like a punk rocker, and for the first time I understand the phrase “weak in the knees.”

  Together we do all the touristy things we’ve never done before. Savannans have a weird relationship with tourists – we need their money to survive, but they’re always crowding our sidewalks and walking into traffic – so neither of us have even been inside of many of the businesses they frequent. We get candy apples and pralines at the crowded candy shops on River Street, we get whiskey sours at one of the tourist bars overlooking the water, we even duck into some of the tchotchke shops. It’s an entirely new lens through which to see my hometown, and honestly I’m having fun. Once I catch myself leaning against a doorway, just staring at him like a crazy person. He turns everything else soft-focus.

  “What is it?” someone asks, and then I realize that person is Ty. I shake my head and look away.

  “Nothing, let’s keep going.”

  We pass a bar with rainbow stickers in the window, and he explains it’s one of the town’s two main gay bars. “Do you want to go in?” he asks, and I bite my lip.

  “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet, to be honest. But I’ll come eventually, I promise.”

  At the height of sunset we end up atop a fancy hotel on the river, in a rooftop lounge probably twelve stories above the city. All the while I want to freeze this moment, remember it exactly as it’s coming – the gold of the sunset on his hair, the quiet murmur of the patrons around us, even his perfectly-tangled silver bracelets shining against this tattoos. And his eyes – no matter how long I live, I will never get used to how brazenly blue they are.

  “Hey,” I say soon. “This is the first time I’ve been tipsy since I met you.”

  “Okay?”

  “It means I’m happy. I only drink when I’m sad.”

  “Why were you sad?”

  “Probably the breakup. Or maybe I just hadn’t met you yet.”

  “Much better answer,” he says, pinching my cheek with movement that lasts a split-second. After ten minutes or so, I lean into him, letting my leg rub against his – and not caring who sees. I lower my voice to match his scratchy tone.

  “So. You promised you’d tell me about gay sex. I’m your pupil now, but you’re neglecting a certain subject.”

  His eyes grow, and he smiles. “What about it, my dude?”

  “How does it work?”

  He watches the water. “You’ll find that it’s not any different from straight sex. All you have to do is make sure everything is, you know, clean down there.”

  This is the part I was curious about, in the most horrified way possible. “…How?”

  “Sometimes a shower is fine, sometimes you have to do other things.”

  “Other things?”

  “You’ll learn. But it’s nothing. Straight people do anal all the time, anyway, so I don’t understand why it’s such a taboo when guys do it.”

  He’s right. A lot of my friends love doing it with their girlfriends, and make jokes about it whenever they get drunk. But the concept of a guy ever doing it with another guy is obviously different…

  Or is it? Why did I always assume that?

  I swallow some more of my Miller Lite. It’s so hard to tell what he’s thinking. Does he even want to do this with me? Or is it too soon?

  “So…which one are you?” I ask. “Are you usually on the receiving end?”

  His blue eyes sparkle. “No. I’ve done both, but with my past boyfriends I was usually the giver. But obviously that will change with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You haven’t even taken a finger yet, Henry. You’re still a while away from taking anything more. Trust me.”

  Suddenly I realize I’m rock-hard. I’m also so fascinated, once again. All the while this whole “gay world” has existed right under my nose, with all its rules and customs, and I’d had no idea. I feel like a freshman showing up to the first day of high school.

  I fix my eyes on a tanker approaching the docks beyond the bridge. “So…can we try? Are you good for tonight, if we get there?”

  He leans into me, smiling. “I thought you’d never ask. You didn’t think I would come unprepared, did you?”

  “Hey, is that why you invited me out?”

  “I can’t say it didn’t go into the equation.”

  I slap him a little, but really I love it. We each get another beer, and with every sip his muscles get more defined under his shirt, his hair gets more perfect. It’s like there’s a pinball between us, and we’re the machine – our energy just bounces off each other. So I take charge, offer to pay the bill, and tell him I want to go home.

  “Already? But-”

  “I want to be inside you,” I murmur into his ear, and he freezes. “I want to have sex with you like I had sex with my girlfriends. I want to try.”

  His demeanor changes immediately. “Hey,” he suddenly calls, “could we get the check, whenever you’re ready?”

  We speed-walk the ten or so blocks to my townhouse. I feel an electricity erupting between us, and the buzz grows with every step. As I look around at my town I marvel that I existed within its borders for so many years without ever knowing that Ty Stanton existed, too. I can’t believe the chain of events that brought me here, from the bus meeting to the past days of flirtation to the chat room to everything else. But it did happen, and I’m glad.

  Once at my house, go time arrives. We kiss and stumble our way up to my bedroom. “Eat me out first,” he says, breathless, and so I throw him onto my mattress and start sliding off his clothes while kissing every inch of skin I can. He tastes so good, so salty, and sm
ells so fresh, I haven’t even taken off his shirt by the time my mouth is kissing his hole. It’s sweatier than last time, but in a delicious way, and I can’t get enough. Soon I think he’s already of the edge of finishing, so I pause and look up at him.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” he huffs, his face red. “Fuck yes. Just get the condom and let’s go.”

  “Wait.” I sit up. “Condom?”

  He opens his eyes fully and looks down at me. “Uh. Yeah. I don’t have sex without condoms.”

  “Be right back, then,” I say, sprinting down the stairs and running to the corner store, which is mercifully still open. I buy some lube, too, and ignore the curious/condescending stare of the clerk, who’s seen me in here with Caro a million times. When I get back, he’s already naked, holding himself. I still get a little jumpy at the sight of those abdominal muscles descending down to his dick…

  “What took you so long? I want you so badly.”

  “Sorry, the store girl was lighting me on fire with her eyes, for buying stuff that obviously hinted at anal sex.”

  “Get used to it,” he laughs.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’ve started buying my stuff on Amazon just to avoid that very scene. This might be Savannah, but it’s still Georgia. People think you have to punch a gay dude in the face to be a homophobe, but it’s so much subtler than that – the things that really hurt are the gestures, the stares, the narrowed eyes. You can make someone feel like shit without doing anything at all.”

  I think about this for a second, but then I shrug and remember how outrageously horny I am. “Don’t I know it, after that,” I say, kneeling in front of him. “Now give me some dick.”

  With my eyes closed, I blow him until he’s almost climaxing again. Then I get up, slide on the condom, and scoot him up to me in missionary, since this is what I observed in the gay porn video.

  “Wait. Go slow at first,” he breathes. “You’re big – my biggest ever. Let me get used to it.”