Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits

by Jenna Hilary Sinclair

  “Oh, and one more thing. You heard how Mr. Bannerman said that there really are people like Angel and Collins and Maureen and Joanne? I’m one of them. I’m gay.”

  The entire room, it seemed, gasped out loud. Dear God, why had Robbie… why had he said that? I dropped my head into my hands. His life was going to be a nightmare until he graduated.

  “I’m one of those people the play is written about, only it’s 2008 and I live in Texas, and I don’t have AIDs or do drugs or anything like that.” He spread both arms to either side of him. “But here I am. As real as could be. The way I look at it, this is the way God made me. If you ignore me by trying to ignore the play, then you’re dissing on God’s creation. And I don’t think he’d want you to do that.”

  His hands dropped to his sides and he stood there, a slender, pale boy who’d just come out in front of hundreds of people, when he already knew for sure many of them would never be able to accept him and many would probably even hate him for it. Because in this town, gay people didn’t exist.

  “He is one cool cat,” the man next to me said quietly. “Bravest thing I’ve ever seen.” Abruptly he stood up. “Hey!” he called down to Robbie. Everybody turned to look at him. “I’m just visiting here, rode my bike in to see my cousin and heard about all this. I’m gay too. There’s plenty of us all over. You find yourself a better place than Gunning someday, and you’ll do fine.”

  A few seconds passed while Robbie smiled shakily up at biker-man, but then all hell broke loose as it seemed every person in the hall had something to say. Some of the roaring was angry, no question. Mayfield grabbed his gavel, rapped it on the table, and hollered, “This session of the Gunning School Board is adjourned.” I could barely hear him.

  Biker-man turned around and jutted his hand in my face, asking for a shake. “Seems you’ve been taking this play thing a little hard,” he said. “Hope it all works out, but I’m hitting the road tomorrow and can’t hang around to find out. Do you know that kid?”

  I nodded, because I couldn’t find any words.

  “You give him this, then.” He hauled out his wallet, selected a card, and thrust it into my hand. It said Phoenix Pride. “I gotta go.”

  I sat there for a while, not seeing anything but a blur of people getting up and leaving and not hearing much of anything either. Like the biker had said, what Robbie had done was the bravest thing I’d ever seen too, and the stupidest. But he’d done it, and now it would be up to teachers like me to help protect him… except, of course, I couldn’t do it too obviously, or people might talk about me the same way they would undoubtedly be talking about Robbie for months to come.

  But maybe his coming out of the closet could be a good thing for me. Maybe it would work the opposite of what I feared. All the attention would be focused on him, and maybe nobody would even notice Mr. Smith standing in the shadows. And Mr. Bannerman, the man who’d spoken at the school board meeting that time back in November? Well, nobody would ever remember him. Hadn’t he left town?

  Eventually I left with the last of the stragglers. I’d successfully evaded George and anybody else who might have wanted to talk to me. I didn’t feel as if I could tolerate the postmortems, the speculations. I didn’t have it in me to dissemble that way right now. I’d been stripped naked by life and had no protection anymore. As I pushed the double doors open, the cold night air hit my face and woke me up as if from some sort of sleepwalking episode, and I thought: I made it through. Nobody knows about me. It’s November. Thanksgiving’s next week. I’ll go to the ranch. No Kevin.

  A long line of cars with their headlights cutting through the dark was trying to leave the parking lot through the two inadequate exits. The lot itself was dotted with cars and trucks that had their motors running, people sitting inside them, waiting. I started off across the striped surface to where I’d parked.

  “Mr. Smith.”

  I whirled around as if I’d need to defend myself and even had to hold my hand out against the glare shining off the asphalt to see, but it was only Mr. and Mrs. Sutton coming toward me. Looking as grave as ever, Mr. Sutton extended his hand and shook mine.

  “Just wanted to say thanks for all you’ve done for Robbie,” he said gruffly. “He’s told us how you’ve been on the lookout for him.”

  “I’m a counselor for the play,” I said, falling back to my fail-safe position. No way I’d be helping him out because I was gay too. “It’s my job.”

  “Still,” Mrs. Sutton chimed in, “we appreciate it.”

  “Look,” I said a little desperately, looking at their placid faces, “maybe you don’t get it. What Robbie just did, it’s…. Well, I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous, but he’s going to have a tough time at school now.”

  “We know,” she said, nodding.

  “If they let it go on, you really need to think about pulling him from the play. If he plays Angel, it’s going to bring him so much attention, and it won’t be the good kind.”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Sutton said. “We can’t do that. We support Robbie all the way.”

  I wanted to shake these two. “Don’t you understand? He’s set himself up for a world of hurt! A world of isolation and depression and… and… and difficulty.”

  “Of course,” she said gently. “But how different is that from any high school student?”

  I stared at her. “Don’t you want to protect him?”

  “Of course we do. He’s applying to the most gay-friendly colleges we can find. There’s a website online where you can find out about these things.”

  “But—”

  “High school’s hard for a lot of kids,” Mr. Sutton said. “But Robbie’s tough. I’m real proud of him. When he told me last night he was gonna do what he did, I almost tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Me too,” Mrs. Sutton said. She pulled her jacket more closely around her.

  “But then I thought I shouldn’t,” Robbie’s dad said. “Everybody’s got a different way of showing who they are. Mine was military service over in Desert Storm. 197th Infantry Brigade, Mechanized. But that’s not Robbie’s way. I’m proud of my son. What he did tonight called for a lot of guts.”

  “Yes indeed,” his mother agreed.

  “Yep, I almost forgot that life ain’t no picnic, that’s for sure, and what Channing’s dad said is true, a father can’t protect his kid forever. And I can’t change him, neither.” He laughed briefly, a fierce eruption from his overlarge frame. “That boy of mine is one of the most stubborn kids in your school, didn’t you know it? We tried to get him to stop playing with the dollies when he was three, and he went on a hunger strike that almost wasted him away to nothing. Nope, the boy’s got to be what the boy is.”

  “He’ll be all right,” his mother said. “It’ll take some time and care, but Robbie will find his place.”

  “Anyway, just wanted to stop by and say thanks for the help with him so far. I’m guessing you won’t have to worry about the play and him being on stage in that role, cause there ain’t no way it’ll keep going.”

  “It’s such a shame,” she said.

  “Yep, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

  I watched them leave and wondered if they realized what they’d said. They’d watched their son come out for no reason at all? Then why had he done it?

  THE STREETS of Gunning were quiet as I drove from the administration building to my house on the west side of town. After the tumult of the meeting, the silence all around should have been soothing, but it wasn’t. I was a jumble of thoughts and feelings, as if my brain were moving as quickly as my car, and I wouldn’t be able to settle on anything until I was fixed in one place in my home. So I drove too fast. South on Jefferson past Hunnicutt’s church and then west on McCarthy for twelve blocks before I could turn into my modest, aging subdivision. Hardly anyone was on the road, though, at almost midnight. Where had all those impassioned people from the meeting gone?

  Fifteen years ago, after therapy had made me as good as
I was going to get, it’d been turn left onto Suppression Street, then travel along the straight and narrow Hidden Cove Drive and stay there, going on and on and on. I’d traveled ten million miles on that road.

  Why was I thinking about that? I’d been letting myself remember Sean and those bad days too much lately. I had enough trouble to deal with without reliving the disaster that was my past.

  Turn into English Estates, then left, right, left, and there was my house at the end of the street, and past it my attached garage, and finally home and safety.

  Except I didn’t get as far as my garage. Parked in front of my house was a familiar Silverado.

  With a thump of my heart and a wrench of the steering wheel, I pulled in directly behind it and killed my engine. Nobody was in the cab, but a shadow sat on my doorstep. As I watched, he stood up.

  Anger was safe to feed on, so I gulped it down. The car door couldn’t let me out of the Miata fast enough. I stormed up the walkway, my shadow reaching him first because of the streetlight behind me. My fists tightened by my sides and I was barely able to stop myself, inches short of Kevin.

  “What are you doing here?” I ground out between lips that didn’t seem to want to move.

  “Returning your stuff.” He lifted my overnight bag that he was carrying in one hand.

  “Then give it to me and get out of here.”

  “Tom….”

  I got right up into his face, as if we were going to kiss right there on Somerset Drive in front of all my neighbors. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to throw him back into his pickup and kick his ass. Kiss his ass. Kick it. “You need to leave, now.”

  “No.”

  “I said, go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Give me that.” I reached for the bag, and we fought for control of it, me trying to pull it away from him, him trying to keep it to himself. He punched my right shoulder to shove me away, and I staggered back empty-handed, gasping.

  Kevin threw the bag behind him, and it landed against my outside door with a clunk on the metal, so loud on my slumbering street that I winced.

  “You don’t get it until you let me in.”

  “Into my house? No.”

  “We need to talk. Let’s go inside.”

  “We can’t. Kevin, just leave.”

  “If you don’t let me in, I swear I’m going to start hollering right here and wake everybody up.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes I will. Try me.”

  “That won’t solve anything.”

  “The only way to solve anything is to talk. C’mon, let me in before I start shouting.”

  I hesitated, but there wasn’t any question what I would do. My keys were in my pocket and then in my hand, and I brushed past him to unlock the door. Any idea I had about darting inside without him he got rid of by crowding behind me and pushing up against me, the way I loved him to do. I instantly stilled, closed my eyes, and tucked my chin into my chest. He couldn’t have gotten any closer. His breath caressed my neck, and his groin warmed my ass. I wanted to say what I’d said before, that what he was doing wouldn’t make any difference. But I knew better. The way I felt about Kevin, how I longed for everything to be all right between us, how I wanted to go inside, rip off his clothes, leave bite marks all over his neck, and bruise his hips with my possessive grip: that made everything more difficult.

  “Stop it,” I managed to get out.

  “I don’t want to. You don’t want me to, either.”

  The key turned and the door opened. We tumbled inside, and he slammed the door behind him, leaving the bag outside.

  I flipped on the lights and whirled around to face him, there in my tiny entryway with the fake Mexican tile, with the plastic overhead lamp glowing yellow and making me blink, with the living room behind me and the front room open to the side. Even in my most irrational, deepest imaginings, I’d never seen him here where I lived: Kevin in the perfectly fitting suit he’d worn to work and the board meeting, stubble on his chin, and determination in his eyes.

  I had to get rid of him. Having him here was a representation of the impossible when the impossible was all I wanted. No one could tolerate that, especially not me.

  “Kevin, this isn’t going to work. Don’t make it any harder than it already is.”

  “Why won’t you talk to me? I make one mistake and…. Are you really saying this is it between us?”

  “You know we can’t be together. We’re never going to work out.”

  “Why? Because of what I didn’t tell you about Channing? Tom….” He took a step closer, one hand reaching for me and pleading. “I’m sorry. God, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that. Give me the chance to—”

  “No, it’s not that. Yes, it…. Shit, it’s that and everything else. Don’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  “If we keep seeing each other, there’s no way we can keep it quiet. We’ll both be outed.” I backed up a couple feet away from him. “Just go. You can’t stay here.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Are you crazy? This is my house and I don’t want you here. Get out!”

  “That’s bullshit. You want me here and you know it, but you’re afraid of your own shadow.” Relentlessly, he came up close to me again, I backed off, and he followed me. He’d herded me to the edge of the foyer, almost to the step down to my living room. “Don’t be afraid, Tom.”

  I knew what he wanted, and I put all the scorn I could muster into my words. “So you think I should be inspired by you and by Robbie? Is that right? For God’s sakes, Kevin! You want me to follow his lead and throw my life away?”

  “No, I want you to reach for the life you deserve.”

  “I’ll be the judge of what I want and what I deserve, not you. I’m fine the way I am.”

  “You are? You’re fine? Finally, the elephant in the room that we were never able to talk about!”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I stubbornly insisted.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Don’t you dare to presume anything about me. I make my own choices. What, are you going to out me yourself?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with outing or not. If you were as straight as John Wayne, I’d still say the same things to you. This has to do with living.”

  I saw red; my throat got so tight I could barely breathe. “How dare you say that to me,” I gritted out to him. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “I am not going away. Look at yourself. Take a good look at yourself. And then think of how things could be if you stopped being so afraid.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You hide all the time. Constantly. Your every move with me…. Come on, leaving town for weekend dates?”

  My face flushed with heat. “Shut up, Kevin. Shut up.”

  “Being so afraid to come to my house? Freaking out over this play?” He threw his arms wide and gestured wildly, as if taking in the whole of my doll’s house. “What kind of life have you been living?”

  I lunged for him, clawing at his chest and pushing him back brutally against the door, and I was right there, up against him. “It’s my life!” I screamed. “You don’t have any right to change it.”

  He stopped fighting me, collapsed willingly back against the wood, and every part of us was pressed together.

  “Sure I have a right,” he said calmly. His blue eyes were beautiful. “I love you.”

  That was as painful as a punch to the stomach. “You can’t,” I gasped.

  “Do you think a person has any control over something like that?” Then his voice turned soft, caressing, and his hand came up between us. The tips of his fingers stroked my face. “Damn it, Tom, I love you. Listen to me, please.”

  I was numb and not able to move.

  Slowly, Kevin straightened against the door. “I’m on the edge of changing everything,” he said, as sincere as I’d ever heard him. “In a few months, in the spring, I
’m going to be leaving here and starting everything new. Quit the job and go someplace where I can be honest and open about who I am. When I go… I want you to go with me.”

  Before that night at Good Times when we danced, I would have laughed at him. But since that first time I’d touched him, Kevin had been… not pushing me forward, but pulling me backward. He made me remember the young man I’d been: in love, full of hope, when I’d honestly believed there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t be able to do. I closed my eyes and remembered that man, honored him, mourned for him, and wished with everything I was that he still existed.

  But he didn’t. I opened my eyes and sneered at Kevin because he was appealing to someone I wasn’t, and because he had the audacity to think otherwise. This small life, this restrictive home was my reality.

  “Go with you? Don’t you mean you want to take me with you? Put me on your leash so I can be your boy toy you can push this way and that, get me to do anything you want?” I hardly knew where that had come from, but once said, I realized how truly I felt it, and how I’d resented what Kevin had tried to do to me.

  “What?” He released me with something like horror in his eyes. “You can’t believe I think of you that way.”

  “Why not? I’m nothing like the man you want me to be, so you keep pushing me….” I reached for the ammunition that I knew would hurt him most. “You like that, being in charge, making me the way you want me.”

  “Goddamnit, no!” he roared. “You stupid fuck! I can’t believe you…. That’s what you think?” Suddenly he spun away and stepped down to the front room. He paced the short length of it while he ran both hands through his hair, and then he turned to face me. He didn’t speak right away but took a few deep, definite breaths, and I saw the effort he made to calm himself.

  “Look. If I’ve made you think I don’t respect you…. Hell, that thing with Channing, what a mistake, but it doesn’t mean…. I do respect you, Tom, and I’m not interested in dominating you or changing…. Well, okay, so I do want you to change, but it’s for your own…. Shit, this is impossible!”