I am tired and sad and may never be in love with anyone again. But it seems that I am still Zinny.
November 6, 1997
2:22 A.M.
I dreaded seeing Gray. I was scared he would look different to me, like a stranger. I was scared he would look exactly the same to me and I would want him like always and would fall to pieces because I couldn’t have him. I was scared that I would look into his eyes and see him seeing me as ugly or repulsive, as someone he couldn’t believe he had ever touched. I was so very, very scared that when I heard him coming across his yard to the spot behind his detached garage where we always met, I started shaking and not from cold. My teeth were actually chattering, their clicking sounds so loud in my ears that I was afraid I’d wake up Gray’s dad and little brother, Jimmy, and maybe the entire neighborhood.
Then, there he was, tall and broad and moon-stained, a bundle of blankets in his arms, the two Black Watch plaid ones I’d seen a hundred times at least. I waited for pain to run me over, but instead I felt my muscles unknotting, the ones at the base of my scalp and little ones in my temples and forehead that I don’t even usually realize I have.
Just being near Gray, even before I fell in love with him, has always made me feel this sense of not calm, exactly (because God knows the guy excites me. Or did. Or does. Does), but something I don’t even know the name of. Well-being? Comfort? Or maybe reassurance. You know the song “Let It Be” by the Beatles? Whenever I hear it, instantly, from the opening notes, I’m aware of a solid rightness at the heart of life, and I don’t so much think the words “Everything is going to be all right” as feel them in the center of my chest and down the length of my spine.
Gray is “Let It Be” in human form.
But I didn’t expect him to still be, not now, after everything, and, really, it wasn’t quite the same. Now, what Gray’s presence said to me was something more like: “Maybe, just maybe, if we’re patient and lucky, everything is going to be all right.” Still, it was surprising.
“Hey, Zinny,” he said.
“Hey, Gray.” It came out in a whisper.
Gray handed me one of the blankets, then billowed out the other to lay it on the ground, and he’d performed this very same act in that very same spot so many times that for a second, the last few days disappeared, and we were us.
But we didn’t lie down, and I didn’t cocoon us both inside the second blanket. I put the blanket around my shoulders, and we sat, first me, then Gray, with our backs against the garage wall and two feet between us that may as well have been a mile. For the first time since we’d started being friends, even including the time I screamed at him in the ACME parking lot, I couldn’t think of what to say to him, and I still understood him enough to know he was feeling the same way.
Finally, I said, “I could never hate you. And I don’t think you lied on purpose. I’m sorry I said those things.”
Gray let out a long breath. “Thank you. But no way can I let you apologize. Everything is my fault.”
“No, I was horrible.”
“No,” said Gray.
For a long time, we just sat there, our two separate breathings ghosting and vanishing, ghosting and vanishing in the air.
“My dad always told me that if I tried my best, I would succeed. And he was right. About football, about school. I’m not a natural at anything; I have to work hard. But it’s always paid off. And I know that makes me lucky,” said Gray, in his same exact voice as ever, the voice I loved. Love.
“And I felt for a long time that I might be gay, but I also thought that if I tried my best not to be, it might work,” he said. “And then there you were.”
“You used me. Is that what you’re saying?” It didn’t come out angry. I didn’t feel angry. But I had to ask the question.
“I guess I did, now that I look back on it. But that’s not what I thought then. You’ve always been gorgeous and fearless. You’ve always seemed like this magical creature to me.”
“Oh!” I pressed my hand over my mouth.
“Zin?”
“It’s just—” And I was crying.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to explain,” said Gray, upset. He might be different from a lot of boys in some ways, but he gets just as freaked out by a crying girl as any.
“No,” I said, gasping. “Give me a sec.”
When I could breathe again, I said, haltingly, “I’ve just been so worried that you might, all this time, have thought I was—not pretty, or maybe even—disgusting. And you had to force yourself to be with me.”
“Zin, no. Never. You’re so beautiful. And I love being with you. You’re my favorite person. I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you. I did. I do.”
Those words. From that boy. I knew they didn’t mean what I wanted them to mean, but they still made my heart jump. Poor heart.
“It’s why I thought maybe I could be different,” he said. “There were times when I thought I was almost there.”
“But it never happened,” I said.
“One night, I realized it was no use. And I knew that if it couldn’t happen with you, beautiful, amazing Zinny who I love so much, it wouldn’t happen with any girl.”
I knew what night he meant.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out how.”
“It’s okay.”
We talked for a long time, until it was almost morning. Somewhere in there, I told Gray that I loved him, too. And I said that he had to let himself be himself, and everything would be all right. I think that’s true. I hope he believed me. I hope that for once, I was his “Let It Be.”
I’m making it sound like this conversation tied everything up with a nice bow, but, right now, tonight, everything isn’t all right. Almost nothing is. I still want this to all be a bad dream.
Maybe it is. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and Gray and I will still be in love.
But in this here and now, this dream or not-dream, I told my friend Gray I would stand by him. And I will. I am.
November 10, 1997
Tonight, Gray told his dad. He called me afterward. He said that his father didn’t yell or even get visibly upset.
“He just sat there for a long time. And then he said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said yes. Then, he got really quiet.”
“Oh,” I said.
Gray’s dad never got quiet. He was the talkingest man I’d ever met.
“I know,” said Gray. “Then, later, right before he went to work, he said, ‘Announcing it that way took guts anyway.’ I guess it was kind of a compliment, but: anyway? He didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked out.”
“It’ll be okay,” I said.
“What if he never talks to me—like really talks to me—again?”
“He will,” I said. “He loves you.”
“He loves who he thought I was,” said Gray. His voice made me ache for him.
“You are who he thought you were,” I said. “You’re still you. And he loves you. He loves the you in you.”
I hope I’m right. I have to be right, don’t I? I hope Gray’s dad is as kind and decent as I think he is. I hope he’s who Gray has always thought he was.
He’d better be.
November 13, 1997
Gray came out in Mr. Whittier’s history class today. I wasn’t there, but Kirsten said he was magnificent. She also said he gave her a minor heart attack.
“I could’ve used a heads-up,” she said.
“Yeah, I could’ve, too, actually,” said Gray.
We were talking in the third level of Hell, otherwise known as the old basement furnace room, right after school, just before Gray’s football practice was about to start. The other fall sports were over, but our football team, led by the great Gray Marsden, was in the semifinals of the state tournament.
CJ had put his headlamp hat down on the cement floor, and we were gathered around it like it was a bonfire.
“So it just popped out?” I said. I thought
it must have, since, despite his celebrity, Gray shied away from attention most of the time, and I would have sworn he wasn’t the dramatic pronouncement, bombshell-dropping type.
“Not exactly,” said Gray. “We were talking about the civil rights movement, and Whittier asked whether it was actually over or still going on today. And Kirsten said it wasn’t over because there’s still racism and sexism, and plus, now, other groups are fighting for their rights, like gay people.”
CJ had been oddly silent since we’d all met in the back hallway before heading down to the basement, but now he said, “You said that? Why would you say that?”
We all stared at him, surprised by his brittle tone.
“Uh, because it’s true?” said Kirsten.
“I just mean, why would you bring that up when it’s, like, Gray’s thing?” said CJ.
“Are we not supposed to bring up homosexuality ever, now? It was relevant, CJ. I was in class,” said Kirsten, annoyed.
“But to open the door that way, when maybe Gray wasn’t ready to talk about it yet,” said CJ.
Kirsten started to retort, but Gray interrupted, saying, “Okay, but it turns out I was. Because it didn’t just pop out. I decided to say it. I just didn’t give myself much notice about that decision.”
Kirsten said, “After I said gay people are fighting for rights, stupid caveman Mongo Pilkington jumped in and said, ‘That’s different, though. Because black people don’t choose to be black. Gay people choose to be gay.’ And I said, ‘Montgomery—because you know how he hates to be called his real name—”
It’s true. What kind of person electively goes by Mongo, when he has choices like Monty? The Mongo kind of person. Total bonehead.
Kirsten went on. “I said, ‘Mongo, don’t be an idiot. If you are not in fact gay, did you choose to be straight? Or is that just who you are?’” said Kirsten. “And Whittier said, ‘No name-calling, please,’ but in this manner that suggested he agreed with what I was saying, because Whittier is awesome. And Mongo said, ‘Dude, I have a girlfriend. But anyway that’s obviously different.’” And I said, ‘No, it’s not. Gay people are born gay.’ And he said, ‘You’re wrong.’ And then, Gray said, ‘She’s right.’ And everyone turned to look at him.”
We all looked at him now. Gray said, “Mongo asked how I could possibly know that, and I said, ‘Because I’m gay,’ and the room went dead silent, and then Mongo said, ‘You’re shitting me,’ and I said, ‘Nope,’ and then class was over.”
I wondered if Mongo had added, “Dude, you have a girlfriend,” and Kirsten and Gray were just politely leaving it out, but I didn’t ask.
Kirsten had jumped up and was across that history classroom in a flash, giving Gray an enormous Kirsten hug. No one else spoke to him, but Kirsten said a few kids slid supportive glances his way.
“Typical,” I said. “Gray being brave. Good for you.”
Gray smiled at me.
“Okay,” said CJ. “But we have less than a year of high school left, and you just opened yourself up to a world of crap from guys like Mongo. I mean, maybe there aren’t that many of them at Lucretia Mott, but they are loud and dumb. And mean. You might not know that because they’ve always left you alone because you’re Gray Marsden. But they can be real assholes. Wouldn’t it have been better, for everyone’s sake, to wait?”
Kirsten and I exchanged a look. Everyone’s sake. CJ adored Gray; he was genuinely concerned about him. But I knew that CJ was also thinking something along the lines of: If Gray Marsden, Hero, stops being Gray Marsden, Hero, then CJ can’t be his nerdy sidekick anymore.
Gray said, in a serious voice, “I know the guys you’re talking about. Most of them play football. I should probably be worried about what I’m in for. But the weird thing is that I’m not. I’ve been carrying around this load of worry for a long time, but right now, it’s gone.”
“Good,” I said.
CJ sat thinking and, after a minute, said, “I’m going to be forced to kick major ass now. You know that, right?”
Gray smiled and said, “Yeah, I do know.”
“Same,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Kirsten.
“Know this, Gray Marsden: we will smite anyone who comes after you,” said CJ, pounding his heart with a fist. “We will rain fire down upon them.”
Gray laughed, a rumbling, real laugh, one I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Thanks, but you know what I think we should do?” he said. “Rise above. Let ’em know they’re not even a blip on our radar screens.”
“They’re ants,” I said. “Gnats. Amoebas.”
“Pond scum,” said Kirsten.
“Mycoplasma genitalium!” said CJ.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A parasitic bacterium that lives in the bladders, waste disposal organs, and genitalia of primates,” said CJ.
Kirsten reached over and gave CJ a giant, Kirsten hug that almost knocked him over.
“Perfect,” she said.
November 14, 1997
This morning, when Kirsten and I got to my locker, there was a paper pamphlet about AIDS testing taped to it.
“What the hell?” said Kirsten. She reached out to rip it off, but I caught her wrist.
“Leave it,” I said. “It’s not even a blip on our radar screen.”
When I got back from my second class, there was a condom taped next to the flyer. I left that, too.
November 18, 1997
Gray says that at practice today, Mongo and his friends, Pat and Kenny, started calling him Gay instead of Gray.
“Honestly, though, how could they resist?” I said.
“True,” said Gray. “They would have been remiss not to.”
“Almost too easy,” said Kirsten.
“And yet, they’ve probably been spending every waking minute of the past four days coming up with it,” said CJ.
We laughed. But then tonight, Gray called me to tell me how, after practice, Coach Tremblay had pulled him aside to say, “You couldn’t have waited till after the playoffs, son? We didn’t need this distraction.”
Gray had said, “I guess I thought the team would stand by me. Brothers, right?”
It’s what Coach always told them: that football is thicker than blood; that they’re more brothers than brothers.
“There’s a reason ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ exists,” said Coach Tremblay. “To uphold morale, not to discriminate against gays.”
“I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you on that,” said my brave friend Gray.
“Anyhow. A few guys have approached me with the request that you not shower with the team anymore. It makes them uncomfortable.”
“Oh,” said Gray.
“They’re shitheads.”
“Thanks, Coach,” said Gray.
“But, Gray, I think it’s best for the team if you wait till you get home to shower, just until this thing blows over.”
Gray said he stood there for a few seconds, staring at the floor, before he looked Coach Tremblay in the eye and said, “Right.”
Neither Gray nor I laughed at that.
November 20, 1997
Game day. I wore Gray’s football sweatshirt to school just like I had all season.
Someone taped a piece of paper to my locker. In Magic Marker, whoever they were had scrawled “FAG HAG.” I let it stay.
To the game, CJ, Kirsten, and I brought signs that said, “Go Get ’Em, Gray!” and “#10 is #1!”
As we walked in, I saw Gray’s dad. He wasn’t sitting in the thick of it all in the stands the way he usually did, talking a mile a minute and getting ready to cheer his head off. Instead, he’d brought a folding chair to the little bluff at the far end of the field and was sitting by himself, while Gray’s little brother, Jimmy, ran around with all the other elementary school kids. Gray’s biological mother died and his father and stepmother are divorced, like my parents, but they’re still friends, unlike my parents. His stepmom lives nearby and
comes to all his games, too. But I didn’t see her anywhere.
Early in the first quarter, I made my way to where his dad sat.
“Hey, Chief Marsden,” I said.
I was still in Gray’s sweatshirt and was carrying my sign. Gray’s dad looked me over, and I think I saw his expression soften.
“Hey, Zinny. How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How about you?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze moved beyond me, to the field.
“They’re not really taking care of him out there,” he said. “Pilkington and Broward.”
“Screw Pilkington and Broward,” I said. “Gray doesn’t need them.”
And even though he never took his eyes off the field, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure Gray’s father smiled.
I was right about Pilkington and Broward, too. Gray played brilliantly. Laser-beam passes and quick-as-lightning feet. No one could touch him.
Lucretia Mott won, 21–3. The guys didn’t lift Gray onto their shoulders, but I saw some of the non-caveman types high-five him or slap him on the back, and I could have kissed them, each one, right on the mouth.
Still, a few minutes later, there was Gray, walking into the school behind the pack of guys, alone, his helmet dangling from his fingers. And it occurred to me for the first time that, even before all this, while the guys on the team respected and even worshipped Gray, they weren’t really friends with him like they were with each other. He’d go out to dinner with them after practice sometimes, but mostly, he hung out with us: the artsy girl, the bombshell, and the geek.
I wondered if Gray had created that distance between them or if they’d done it. Maybe it had just happened, without anyone meaning for it to. Either way, now, when Gray could use a real, true blue ally on the team, someone to go out on a limb for him, tell Mongo and his henchman to go straight to hell, there’s no one there.
Even so, next Saturday, Lucretia Mott is going to the football finals for the first time in thirty years. And it’s all because of Gray.
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