by John Goode
Oh my God, I had killed his Jeep. This was it, I was going to turn to face him, and he would either have a huge gun pointed at me or maybe a pair of Freddy Krueger claws. This would be the end of my life and no one would blame him. After all, I had just killed his favorite son. I refused to look at him and turned the key again. Once more the car exploded forward and then died one more time.
Oh God, I killed it twice!
“Danny.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for the bullet.
“Danny, look at me.”
I shook my head; just kill me already.
“Daniel Devon Monroe, look at me.”
Ah fuck. I glanced over at him and saw no gun, no claws, no fangs dripping blood, which was a new thing I just thought of.
“Have you ever driven a stick shift before? Maybe in that driver’s ed course?”
I shook my head slowly.
And he laughed out loud.
Do dads laugh before they kill you? Was that fair?
“Okay, then,” he said when he could actually talk again. “So we teach you to drive a stick and then you get the Jeep.”
“You’re not going to kill me?” I asked in a low voice.
“If you ruin my Jeep? Yes, I will kill you,” he said seriously. “But until you learn a stick, you get a pass.”
The rest of my summer was a mixture of insane delight and towering frustration. I passed my driver’s ed class and got my learner’s permit the same afternoon. I knew the laws of the road and could drive any car with an automatic transmission, which was also a plus.
But driving the Jeep was something else altogether. My dad was a great teacher, never short, never pissed off. He worked all day and then took me out to the airfields to practice driving for hours before dinner and never once complained. So that was awesome. The bad part was that the towering beanpoles that passed as my legs refused to understand the system. I could dribble a ball and sprint up and down a basketball court with no problem whatsoever, but figuring out a clutch seemed beyond me. I was pretty sure I was going to have to replace the transmission by the time I was able to drive it, but my dad said it always took time.
After a month he stopped saying that.
I thought the Jeep was too small for me. He thought I was too big for the Jeep. Either way, things were really not working out. The harder I’d try, the worse it would get, and the worse it got, the less patience he had. Every time the car made that horrible grinding sound, I felt my entire body tense up because it felt like I was stabbing a family member. From the look on my dad’s face, I could tell he was thinking just about the same thing.
Five weeks in and a week away from school starting, the only thing I had learned was that my dad had three faces for when I was driving. The first was a strained smile that passed as rest or relaxed for him but looked more like he was concerned about how badly I was going to hurt his baby this time around. The second face only came out in brief spurts, mostly when the Jeep made a strange sound, which wasn’t so strange when I was behind the wheel. It was what I imagined my dad would look like if someone stabbed him in the butt with a rusty knife. I wasn’t sure why a rusty knife would cause more pain than just an everyday, normal knife, but the pain that was expressed in those few seconds just seemed more than a normal knife could convey, hence the rust.
And then there was the third face. It was easily the worst.
The third face was the one he pulled out when he had suffered enough. It was a silent acceptance of yet another failure on my part mixed with the attempt to not to show how disappointed in me he was. It was the same look he had given me in Germany, and every time I saw it, I died a little more inside. Of course, the more I thought about the look, the worse my driving became, until he would finally tell me we were done for the day. What had started as an incredible gesture had somehow been turned into slow, arduous torture. A week before school began, he stopped me about twenty minutes into the session, signaling me to turn the engine off.
“We’re done?” I asked, not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed.
He shook his head as he leaned back in the seat. “Danny. You know I love you, right?” I nodded mutely but couldn’t help but feel the familiar tingle of fear begin to creep up my spine. “And you know I am going to be proud no matter what you do.” I nodded, even though I knew that was a lie. I had already done things he wasn’t proud of, and I knew deep down if he knew everything, he’d end up hating me. “Look,” he said after a few seconds of thought, “you’re trying too hard. Driving a stick isn’t that big a deal.” If the words were meant to be reassuring, they failed in just about every way possible. Not only did I suck, but I sucked at something that was relatively easy. “I think you’re so wound up about what I might say or feel that you aren’t concentrating on the actual driving.”
He was right, of course. I mean, as long he had owned this Jeep, I had been taught it was more than just an average, everyday vehicle. This Jeep was his pride and joy, and whatever brain aneurism he’d suffered that made him think giving it to me was appropriate was all fine and good, but it didn’t change the fact that there were days he liked it more than me. It was like eating on your best china or wearing your best clothes: you just knew if you screwed them up, there was a whole new level of punishment waiting for you.
“Driving a clutch is like…,” he began, mentally searching for an appropriate metaphor. After about thirty seconds he snapped his fingers and announced, “Driving a clutch is like being with a girl.” I looked at him like he’d grown a second head, but he seemed oblivious to my reaction. “Girls are delicate, no matter how tough or independent they seem on the outside. The plain and simple fact is that physically they just can’t take the same amount of punishment a guy can. Now, the worst thing you can do is to treat them with kid gloves, because trust me, they hate that. Then they’ll try to roughhouse or play around like one of the guys. But deep down you know you can’t treat them the same as a guy, no matter how they act. So there’s this line….” Again he paused as he tried to summon up the correct words. This was the most my dad had said about anything except sports in a long, long time. We just didn’t have conversations like this normally. I was seeing a whole new side of him.
“There’s this balance you have to find,” he started again, “where you aren’t walking on eggshells around them, but you’re still respectful of their space.” He looked at me, but I was more confused than when we started. “I’m saying that there is a level of physicality you can have with a girl, but you have to be aware of your own strength at all times.” The blank look on my face must have told him his words were completely lost on me. He sighed and gazed down for a moment as he tried to mentally regroup. “It’s a Jeep; it’s not going to break. But that doesn’t mean you can just jam it into gear. You have to give a little with the clutch while putting just a little gas into it. Balance,” he said, holding his hands out like scales. “Do you understand?” I answered truthfully by shaking my head. “Look, Danny, you’re a big guy. No matter who you end up with, you’re going to have to be careful.”
I froze as my heart skipped a beat.
“You’re going to need to find that line between strength and control eventually,” he added. “This is a good first start.”
I sat there gripping the steering wheel for almost a minute, trying to calm myself down enough to talk. No matter who I ended up with? Was that a crack about a guy instead of a girl? Did he think I wasn’t getting it because he was using a girl as an example? Was that what my dad thought of me? Was I so queer to him that I couldn’t relate to a girl even when one was used as a simile?
He finally noticed something was wrong. He put a hand on my shoulder and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”
I pulled away from him with a jerk of my arm. He seemed shocked by the outburst but didn’t say anything.
“Can we just do this?” I asked, obviously upset.
“What did I say?”
I refused to look at him as I s
hook my head. “Let’s just drive.” I could tell he wanted to say more, but I ignored him, and I turned the key. Was this how Dad and I were going to be for the rest of my life? Was he always going to question my sexuality? Worse, should he? I had no idea what I was, but I knew it was still unknown and every time he opened his mouth, he made it sound like it was a sure thing, and I hated that. He talked as if he had closed the book on what I was, and there was no way for me to change. Would he always be disappointed in me? Was he more disappointed than I was in myself?
“Danny.”
I ignored him.
“Danny.”
I forced myself not to look at him.
“Danny!”
I snapped and looked over at him. “What?”
He pointed at the road. “You’re driving.”
And so I was. I had been so upset and lost in thought about what he had said that I had just zoned out about the mechanics of what I was doing. I almost freaked and slammed on the brakes, but I stopped myself as I realized I had found the balance he had been talking about between the clutch and gas. I smiled despite being upset as I shifted into fourth gear without a hitch.
“See?” he said, slapping my shoulder in congratulations. “I’m glad my talk helped you.”
As we drove across the airstrip, I had an epiphany about what I had to do next. There was only one way I was going to be able to change my dad’s opinion of me and make him proud of me once and for all. An action that would redeem me in his eyes and end my own internal questions in one fell swoop.
I needed to find myself a girlfriend.
I spent the next week making a game plan. I had screwed things up pretty bad with Carol, so she was out of the question, but it couldn’t be that hard to find a girl to go out with. After all, there were always girls hanging around after parties trying to get our notice. Some of the guys took advantage of the readily available attention, which just added to the allure of landing one of us in an actual relationship. Susan dating Tommy was a fluke: no one had expected them to last very long. They were the exception and very much not the rule. Most of the guys played the field in a way that bordered on hedonism, but no one complained. It was an equitable deal; the guys got laid, and the girls got one step closer to getting them to commit.
I was guessing at most of what I just said, of course. The closest I’d been to going out with a girl was Carol, and that had ended so well. From what I could tell from the outside, dating looked like a game with very liberal rules and more than a few emotional elbows thrown as it came down to the wire. Guys cheating on their girls, girls playing mind games with the guys—they just seemed to circle around each other in what looked to me like a dizzying display of give-and-take.
As the week dwindled away and the first day of school got closer and closer, I vowed that this year would be different. I was going to socialize more, be normal, and find a girl like every other guy did. No more guy shit, no more being gay. This was my chance to flip the script once and for all.
The night before the first day of school, I lay in bed and tried to will myself to sleep with no success. All I could think of was what a difference a year made. Last year I was scared shitless that I wouldn’t be able to handle public high school, and that I might not be able to handle playing basketball. Now, after Florida, I knew I had real talent, I knew the school well, and I was ready for more. Cody was gone, Tommy had graduated, and what I did was all up to me.
At some point I dozed off, because my alarm clock going off scared the crap out of me.
I threw on some of the new clothes my dad had bought me last weekend; most of everything we had bought last year was already too small before basketball camp. I took a good look at myself as I brushed my teeth. I still looked like a goofball to me. My ears were too big, and my face still looked like a little kid’s, even though I was already taller than most adults I had seen. I was skinny as a rail in my opinion, but in my sweatshirt I looked like I had some kind of a body underneath. I wasn’t ugly by any means, but I wasn’t sure what would draw someone’s attention enough to be attracted to me. Cody had been way better-looking than I was. Even Tommy had more chiseled looks than I had. My dad said I was still growing into my looks, but at six five, I wasn’t sure how much more growing I could handle.
“You’re going to be late if you just keep staring at yourself,” my dad said, coming around the corner of the bathroom. I looked away quickly, but from the way I was blushing, it was obvious he had busted me. “You nervous?” he asked as I rinsed my mouth out. I shrugged as I turned off the water.
“Yes and no,” I answered honestly.
He came up and stood next to me. Even though I was inches taller than him, he was still way more impressive in his BDUs. You could tell I was his son; we had the same general features, except for the eyes. I had seen pictures of Mom, and it was obvious I had inherited not only her eyes but eye color. Where my dad’s eyes were dark brown, mine were a bright blue that just ended up making me look younger in my opinion. Where my dad had ruggedly good looks—that whole square jaw, tough as hell Marine type of face—mine was softer, and I hated it.
“You’re lucky,” he informed me soberly after a few seconds.
“Why?” I asked, still examining the differences in our faces.
“You have those cute, lost puppy dog eyes,” he said with a wry grin. “Girls go crazy for that shit.” I elbowed him, but he pushed back. “I’m serious. By your age I was already shaving every day and looked like a goon. Why your mom ever went out with me, I will never figure out.”
“I look like a baby!” I complained.
He grabbed my chin and shook my face. “But you’re such a cute wittle baby!”
I tried to jerk away, but he just laughed. “Seriously, Danny, you’re a kid. Enjoy it while you can.”
“I’ll try,” I said, suddenly feeling emotional about how fast time seemed to be passing.
“I hate to tell you this,” he said in a deadly serious tone. I paused, dreading what his next words would be. “You’re going to be late for school.”
I looked at the time and realized he was right.
I ran out of the door and threw my backpack into the back of the Jeep. I paused and smiled as I realized it was indeed my Jeep and not my dad’s. I felt like a completely different person pulling into the school parking lot, and, in a lot of ways, I was. I found a space in the student lot and jumped out as the first bell rang. I barely made it to my first class on time; the tardy bell literally rang as I walked in.
The teacher looked over at me with one eyebrow arched. “Perfect timing as always, Mr. Monroe.” A small eruption of laughter from the class greeted his words, and I looked around to find a place to sit. There was only one seat left, and as my eyes fell on it, I knew that fate had conspired to help me out with my plans.
I slid into the seat and, with a small smile, looked over to my right.
“Hi, Carol,” I said under the cover of the teacher’s voice.
“I’m still mad at you.” she sniffed, trying to keep her face serious but failing pretty badly.
“Fair enough,” I said, nodding solemnly. “Too mad for me to try to make up?”
She turned her head toward me almost imperceptibly. “What kind of making up?” she inquired.
“Lunch and a lot of apologizing?” I offered.
She looked away and went back to concentrating on the front board. “We’ll see,” she whispered with a smile.
I tried to hide my own grin as I shifted back toward the front. Though I didn’t like to celebrate before the game was over, I had a feeling that would not go away.
I knew this was going to be my year.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
FLOOR VIOLATION
WE SAT in the huddle and pondered on what to do next.
We were in the fifth game of the regional playoffs and were down by six points. With less than twenty seconds on the clock, six points might as well have been a hundred. I looked over at the other team and saw
their point guard glancing over at me as well. He had a small grin on his face that told me he was well aware of the fact he had been shutting me down all night like I had never played the game before. I would be furious if the guy wasn’t pushing every one of my buttons when it came to being attractive. He was as tall as me, which was a turn-on, since I loomed over just about everyone my age in my school. He had dark blond hair that was cut short, with a pair of dark eyes I had been staring into all night.
I had been playing most of this game with my downstairs head, and it turns out it wasn’t all that skilled at hoops.
“You still with us?” the coach asked me.
I looked back and nodded quickly as I tried to ignore the rest of the team staring at me like I had a rabbit hidden somewhere on my body. We had played an incredible season up to this point, and if you had asked us last week if we’d be down three games to two with our lives hanging on this game, we’d have laughed in your face. We had been so sure we were headed for our school’s first state championship that we could taste it. We had started the season by the coach putting it to the team who they wanted as captain for the year, instead of him choosing it arbitrarily. I won unanimously, which only solidified my belief that this was my year.
Carol had forgiven me, and we were going out pretty strong now. Unlike her sister, she was far more reserved when it came to physical intimacy, which suited me just fine. I had hoped having a girlfriend would somehow make me like girls more. Like there was some form of social osmosis that would imbue me with heterosexual feelings. All I needed to do was stand next to a girl to make me straight, or that was what I told myself. It had been five months now, and after countless hours of making out and one halfhearted attempt at a hand job after our first game, I was no closer to straight than she was to being a koala bear. She took my reluctance to paw all over her as me being a gentleman, a misconception I didn’t dissuade her of. We made a great couple and everyone seemed to accept it, which worked for both of us on different levels, I assumed.
