by Seth King
I think long and hard, and finally spill out my heart to them – with the help of a joint Ty left in my room the week before, of course:
Update: so, it’s me, the guy from the bus. It’s been about two months now. I listened to some of you, and I let myself fall for the guy in question. I think I resisted at first, but there is no resisting someone like him. I was powerless. He is changing my life every day – he is making me want to get out into the world and get to know different people instead of shutting myself in my own little bubble where it’s safe, and he is making me want to stick my head out of the foxhole and dream of changing things instead of just hiding and accepting the status quo. Has the ride been easy? Not very. He is so dramatic. I also wish I could make myself strong enough to move this along, and brave enough to love him and not care about the world’s reaction. But I think being happy and being free of regrets are two very different things. Nobody who ever spent their life avoiding heartbreak and disaster ever got to feel even a moment of raw, wild joy. Nothing worth gaining is easy to chase. I didn’t do everything perfectly, but my life is already so much richer for having let myself get to know him. If anyone out there is reading this and is struggling with their sexuality or their identity, stop questioning and let love in. I don’t know where this relationship is going, but I do know I am happier for having taken this chance. I hope you all jump, too.
I start to get up, then I stop and type one last sentence:
Oh, and by the way: the word “straight” means nothing. A few months ago I was a red-state jock, and today I live for the feeling of my boyfriend’s penis down my throat. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. That is both a warning and a promise. Have a good day.
~
The next day, I wake up and spend one perfect day with him. We meet his gay friends for brunch at The Public, a beautiful spot downtown. Halfway through my southwestern omelet, I grab his hand.
“So,” I say. “Let’s talk about the governor of Georgia recently sending federal money to a program that sponsors conversion therapy. What a fucktard. Have you ever heard of something so crazy?”
He stills, then smiles. “Well hello, Anderson Cooper. You’re very informed today.”
“Of course I am. You matter to me. This matters to me,” I say, motioning at the table, and his friends.
“Really?”
“Of course, mister blue eyes. Now let’s start a huge fight over politics and social issues, and ruin brunch!”
After everyone is good and mimosa-drunk, Ty walks me home. “Can I tell you something honest?” he asks as we hit Broughton, the main road.
“Sure.”
“When we first met, I kind of suspected you were lying about never having talked to guys before. I thought it might’ve been an act. But now it’s very clear – you couldn’t have been more straight, or more clueless about all this,” he laughs.
“Shut up. And why’d you think that?’
“I don’t know. The term ‘straight’ means a lot less than people think it does. Like I’ve said before, you would be absolutely shocked by the guys that have hit me up for sex. If you downloaded one of the hookup apps right now, fifty percent of the guys would be married businessmen trying to meet guys on work trips. I’ve seen millionaires, doctors, lawyers – one of my gay friends even hooked up with a judge who’s a big pusher of ‘Christian family values.’ He has three kids and a wife at home.”
“No.”
“Absolutely – if you see a conservative politician going on and on about how he wants to overturn gay marriage or whatever, there’s a good chance he’s had a gay sex app on his phone at some point. People who don’t think about dick have absolutely no reason to care about people who do. Would you get up one morning and decide to start some campaign to ban the world from eating, say, Ramen noodles, just because you don’t like them?”
“No. I don’t care about that.”
“Exactly. I rest my case.”
This makes me laugh louder than I have in a while. Before our goodbye kiss he starts to head into my house, since I usually don’t kiss him out in the open. But I grab his arm, stand firm on my porch, and kiss him right there.
“What was that?”
“Two boys kissing,” I smile. “In public. What. Haven’t you ever heard of it before?”
Ty leans in and rubs his cheek against mine, and I feel like I am flying through sunrise. When I was young I always looked at people my age like they were magic: they were still sort of kids, but not yet sedentary adults. They weren’t yet fearful and tired, but they weren’t still clueless and naïve, either. They knew a secret – they knew a secret that children couldn’t figure out, and that adults always eventually forgot. And that, I knew, was what I was finding with Ty. The secret.
~
And then my old life calls. That night I begrudgingly go to Thad’s yearly party where everyone watches football and eats junk food and says terrible things about women and minorities, and every second is a drag. I’d heard a few secondhand rumblings that this crew has been whispering about where I’ve been, but since nothing has been said directly to me, I’m not too nervous about a confrontation.
“So where the hell have you been?” Thad asks after we install ourselves in the corner, away from Shepard and his visiting frat brothers, who are loudly having a burping contest by the TV. “Seriously, it’s starting to get weird.”
“Around,” I say, and he raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know. The football thing hasn’t held as much appeal for me lately.”
“Are you okay? You look…different. And you never text me back.”
“I’m good, this semester has just been annihilating me.”
He’s not convinced, but he lets it go. As the night goes on I try to pretend everything is fine, but it’s not. If anything I’m getting more and more uncomfortable. Shepard’s friends keep saying awful things, and I have absolutely no interest in watching a bunch of men run into each other on a grass field anymore. During one interview segment with a star running back with dyed blonde hair, Shepard leans back and points at the TV.
“Gross, this is the guy I heard was gay. I heard he’s a total homo on the down low.” He doesn’t pronounce the word “gay” like any other word – he says it like he’s actually calling him a murderer or a rapist or something. In his eyes, these words are all probably the same, actually.
“Yeah, look at his tight little suit,” a frat brother laughs. “Fudge packer.”
I sit up straight. The old me would’ve rolled his eyes and ignored this talk, but the new me can’t hold his tongue. Even if The Monster has terrorized me, I know too much now to keep my mouth closed. My senses have become more heightened than ever. I’ve been noticing things, like the way people use the word “gay” as an insult or how I hear the phrase “no homo” in rap songs all the time and how I’d overheard a father tell his little son in Target that “real men got their hunting licenses.” A “real man” was any male human who was made of bone and melanin like anyone else, and my patience was wearing thin. Who would I be if I kept my mouth shut and let all these people continue with their ignorance? I’d be just as bad as them.
Or what if they were hateful because they were like me? After all, Ty always said a lot of the “straight” guys were into dudes on the down-low. When I was straight, I couldn’t have cared less about who was gay or not – but these guys are weirdly fixated. What makes someone hate something deep down, anyway? What did it have to do with them? What was the root of all this?
“Hey. Don’t forget the dude just made a sixty-yard touchdown,” I call, unable to control it anymore, and everyone goes silent. “Did his alleged gayness affect his ability to run down a field and score against the team you’re rooting for?”
All of them stare, and for a second I can’t believe what I’ve done. After the most excruciating silence of my life, Shepard finally shakes his head at me and turns away. “Whatever, Morgan’s been a total weirdo lately anyway…hey, look at this,
halftime’s on!”
Thad looks as relieved as I am that Shepard and his boys let it slide. I end up excusing myself in the third quarter and jogging home, too bored to keep feigning interest. And as I slip out of the door, I do it with the feeling that I would be perfectly fine with never seeing ninety percent of those idiots again.
~
Since Ty is doing family stuff the next day, I skip my class and decide to do something that came to me last night, during the hatred-fest: I want to get a little gayer.
I don’t want to look in the mirror and see someone who looks like Shepard anymore, so I head back to that outlet mall from before. This time I dive in headfirst, though, and get a leather jacket, some tighter pants, and some shirts that are in size small instead of medium or large. Before I would have associated the act of caring about style as feminine, but now I know the truth – you can be whatever you want to be, and I want to look hot. I don’t want to dress like a boring old accountant simply because of the fear that I’ll look “gay” anymore. And by the way, what’s wrong with gays? Nothing at all.
Then I stop by a tanning salon, since I’m sick of the autumn making me look Casper the ghost. Finally I get a haircut, cutting it closer on the sides while leaving the top a messy, swoop-y mass of light brown. When I pass myself in a bathroom mirror, I almost check myself out – that’s how much better I look. And I look like someone who is comfortable with himself, too – for the first time I look at home in my own body.
I take a shower and go to sleep early, seeing the same dreams of silver-white hair and cornflower-blue eyes.
And when I wake up, my world explodes.
15
I wake to truly horrifying news that only gets worse: apparently there was a coordinated attack against Atlanta’s large gay community. A small bomb went off in a trashcan at a peaceful Pride event in Prospect Park, but most horrible of all, The Monster, a gay bar in Midtown, was attacked by a crazed gunman twenty minutes later. Tears stream down my face as I watch the reports and read the latest on Twitter: seventeen young people are dead, with the coward gunman being shot outside after a standoff. I am stunned into silence. I can’t believe this could still happen; can’t believe anyone could carry this much hatred in themselves, especially for such a nonsensical reason like this. These people went out expecting to have fun, and ended up being shot like dogs. All the faith I’ve gained in humanity over the past few months, all the hope I saw in Ty’s eyes – all that is dashed the instant I see the headlines. The world is sick, and it is not okay. Over a dozen people who were just like the friendly, vibrant, loving kids I’d been getting to know lately – they were dead. All of them were gone.
I am paralyzed with fear that one of my new friends was killed, but eventually I learn none of them were in Atlanta at the time. Ty updates me throughout the morning, and it turns out his good friend’s ex-boyfriend was seriously injured, so he’s offered to drive him to an Atlanta hospital to visit. (Of course he has – he’s the best person in the world; the den mom of his social circle.) I sit around my house alone all day, haunted by something I can’t quite pinpoint. It’s not just the death…it’s not just the viciousness…it’s not just the tragedy…it’s also me. Soon I realize I am truly scared for myself now. And for Ty, too. And for both of us, together.
At the end of it all, this is what I’ve gotten myself into: a situation where I can be shot down for walking out into the public and being myself. Dating and hooking up and having fun was one thing, but I am about to cross a threshold I will never be able to come back from. I never even thought about this aspect of it all, and as the night goes on, the uneasiness grows. For some reason the phrase “guy crush,” from one of the chat room people, keeps sliding into my mind. What if I am changing my whole life, and endangering it too, for a boy crush? For a bro flirtation? Do I love Ty down to my bedrock, or is this some kind of innocent puppy love thing? Actually, scratch that: I know I am falling in love with him, but is that love permanent, and is it worth possible persecution and danger and death?
Sleep evades me until well after midnight. I kill a bottle of wine to quell my anxiety, but I keep being jolted awake by my nightmares. My dreams are dark and tense and unsettling: I see bizarre, macabre visions of vivid blood spilling under disco balls, I watch people falling dead against velvet nightclub booths, staring sightlessly up at the disco lights. At around three I wake up for good and decide I can’t do this anymore, at this speed. I can’t live with this fear. I need to figure this out once and for all before I make a decision that could impact my life forever.
Ty Snapchats me a few times the next day, but I open them and don’t respond. The silence becomes excruciating, but I have no idea what to say – so I say nothing. My parents arrive that afternoon, and I do my best not to act like a sad sack. Caro texts relentlessly, of course, furious that I’ve been talking to her one week and then ignoring her the next. She’s heaping on the pressure, inviting me to family events and then responding with angry emoji faces when I don’t respond. I get a little more distant with Ty, waiting much longer than usual to respond to his texts. Soon I’m not responding at all.
One day turns into two. I start to miss him already, and beyond that I miss the Henry I was when I was around him, and the way he made me better and funnier and sharper somehow. It breaks my heart, but every time I see his name on my screen, I see an image of us lying dead together on the floor of a gay bar, struck down for the crime of loving each other. I had no idea how dangerous being gay could be, and part of me is even angry at Ty for not preparing me for this. Why didn’t he warn me? Why did this come as such a shock?
I spend a quiet Thanksgiving with my parents. At dinner I feel empty and listless, and I realize it’s because Ty isn’t here. This is the longest we’ve gone without speaking, by far. I want him with me. He should be next to me, laughing and touching me and charming my parents. He was my safe space, my warm little heaven I retreated into whenever I was stressed or overwhelmed – I’d just ask him to come over and then I’d hold onto him in bed, wrapping my legs around him and reveling in his touch and his pulse and his human-ness. Nothing else mattered when my skin was against his. Nothing scared me, nothing phased me. In a way I even miss his imperfections, and how he could be distant and distracted and remote and a little confusing. I miss everything, even the bumpy parts. But I don’t want to dissolve into a needy little desperado, so I don’t text him.
~
After four full days, I’m in a dimly-lit SCAD office trying to sort out the spring semester before it’s too late when I see Ty’s friend Anisha.
“Where have you been?” she asks when she comes over. “You’ve missed out on a lot.”
I look away. “I know, sorry. I’ve been…busy.”
“Well Ty won’t stop talking about you.”
“What?”
“God, I want to cover my ears. It’s always Henry this, Henry that, Henry doesn’t like this place, Henry loves that place. It’s like he’s mentally broadcasting from a satellite truck in your anal cavity.”
“Ha. And…he’s still talking like this?”
“Of course. If anything he’s worse. Why? What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Well…I don’t know. Stuff.”
“Gay guys are so dramatic,” she says as she rolls her eyes. “Just text him. He’s sounded really off lately.”
The second it enters my ears I know I won’t be able to resist – massacre or not, I need to see that boy’s eyes. So I walk outside and call him. He answers on the very last ring before it goes to voicemail.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” I say. Hearing his voice feels like sinking into a warm bath on a winter day. And then I see them, the visions of us together, in cars and cemeteries and sunset balconies…are those visions done?
“Why haven’t you texted?” he asks.
“I didn’t know what to say. Did you want me to text?”
He sighs.
“What?” I ask.
And I am alive again.
“How have you been?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Not good. I’m still so torn up about The Monster. Some of my friends aren’t even leaving the house.”
“Why?”
“And walk out into a world that will shoot us down like animals? Why would we?”
My eyes bulge. This is when I realize he is truly in distress.
“And then…”
“And then what?” I ask.
“Well, I saw some bigot posting on Facebook about how the victims deserved it for being ‘sinful,’ and I commented back like an idiot. That opened up a whole world of crazy, and last time I looked, I had a dozen comments telling me I was a freak and a sideshow and a pervert.”
“Oh, Ty. God, I am so sorry for ignoring you during this.”
“It’s okay, I was helping friends anyway.” I think I hear him sniffle. “Anyway. Sometimes I…I just get so sick of being pushed into the corner, of being told I’m not worthy because of…what I am. This is all so unreal. It’s become fashionable to marginalize me. I thought we were making progress, but everywhere I look, I’m seeing the message that I don’t matter...”
“Fuck them,” I say, my temperature rising. “Fuck all of them and stay away from Facebook until I can see you and delete everything from your phone.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“No. Let me do it. I want to see you,” I say. “Where are you?”
“I’m going to a wedding.”
“Whose wedding?”
