by Kent Bushart
Get Used To It
By Kent Bushart
Copyright 2017
Contents
I
II
III
I
This is just for me. For me and no one else. I don’t know why but I feel like writing it, but I do. I should be going to bed, getting ready for work tomorrow, but I’m thinking about my last semester at school, when I met him.
My name is Julio Carreras, but I go by Jules. Thank God because I hate the name Julio. It sounds like the name of a Latin clown. Julio. It’s my father’s name and my grandfather’s name, but to cut down on the confusion, I’m called Jules. Even though my name doesn’t sound it, I’m as American as they come. My family is Cuban, or half of it is. My grandparents escaped Cuba with my father when he was barely a teenager, when Castro, the murdering liar, seized the property of the landholders after promising to return Cuba to the constitution. We were rich, according to my grandfather, and employed lots of people on our plantation. Now we’re just middle-class, and glad to be so.
My father married an American girl, as corn-fed, white-bread Midwestern as they come. My father had to speak English to his wife and her family, but my grandmother took care of me a lot when I was little, so I picked up some Spanish. I can speak it some, and understand it mostly, but I’m by no stretch fluent. But I’ve taken it in high school, and now college, so I’m getting there. I want to be a doctor, and I think it would be good if I could talk to all my patients, no matter who they are.
I don’t look that Cuban either, if that is a look, outside of my dark hair and eyes. I’m not quite as pale as my mother’s family, but not quite as dark as my father or grandfather. Not that they’re really that dark. They are Spanish blood going way, way back.
Last school year I was a freshman at Iowa State, in Ames, Iowa. It’s about 30 miles north of Des Moines, where my family lives. It’s close, but not too close. I only went home about once a month. I liked being on my own. And when the second semester rolled around, soccer season was over, and I had more time to myself.
I’m gay, but I was pretty calm about it first semester. I was recruited for the soccer program, but I don’t have a scholarship. Believe it or not, Iowa State didn’t even have a men’s soccer program until last year. Women’s soccer is big, but for men it’s football and wrestling, then basketball and baseball. Because the soccer program is new, there are no scholarships to speak of. Maybe next year there will be some, according to Coach, but I’m not sure I’m great enough to earn one. There are bigger stars than me, although I do alright. I’m a defender, but I still managed to make one goal last season. I was way out of my zone, and I got in a little trouble for it, but it’s hard to stay mad at someone who made a goal, after all. My teammates are pretty good guys, and I think most of them would have been cool about me, still, I didn’t want to walk onto campus and go all gay all at once.
I’ve made some mistakes in that area. I figured out the truth about myself in high school, at least I finally admitted it to myself, although I haven’t come out to my family yet. I don’t want to deal with that now. My father is conservative, and pretty macho, being Cuban, and I don’t think he’d be too happy. Fortunately, I have two older sisters and a brother for him to concentrate on if I turn out to be too big of a disappointment.
The summer before college I used one of those hook-up apps, and had some tricks. I like sex, but it’s seldom perfect. You never know what you’re going to get, exactly. I’ve had to scrape off some pretty grizzly customers, and also got a wake-up call. I hooked up with a guy, he seemed nice and clean, a dude in his twenties. We had a great time, but he gave me crabs. Crabs! I always use a condom, but that doesn’t matter with those things. I had to pray, and wash my sheets on the sly, and my clothes; I was so worried they’d show back up. And I had to run around to another doctor, not my family doctor, because even though there’s supposed to be privacy, I didn’t want it on my records, just in case. After all, my mom is on my HIPPA. I’m pre-med, so I’ve paid attention to those things.
But the crabs made me think: shit, what else is out there I could get? HIV you can avoid with condoms, hopefully, but there’s other stuff, like herpes, and warts. Fuck, I want no part of that. So I calmed down.
So in January, second semester, soccer was over. I did okay first semester, I knew what I had to do to get decent grades, and I started thinking it would be nice to meet someone, have a real boyfriend.
Iowa State is a science and technology school. There is an arts program, but it’s not a main focus of the campus. That’s usually where the gays congregate, the arts. So where are the gay guys at ISU, besides there? Well, the LGBT student union. It’s not a building, it’s just a meeting twice a month. I had to think long and hard. Did I really want to show up there? That would make things obvious about me, and some teammates could find out. I could handle that. I probably would have to, eventually. But the other thing is, the really cool gays don’t show up to those things, in my experience. They’re out hooking up in other ways, private parties and friends of friends. It’s the nerdy, weird underclass that goes to the campus meetings. Those without status to worry about.
I know that sounds arrogant. I swear I try not to be like that, but I’m on the soccer team, and besides, I am really good-looking. Hot, in fact.
I’ve been told, I mean. I know that sounds really stuck-up. I honestly don’t think I’m a jerk, and I try not to let it go to my head, but it’s obvious other people think so, by the way they treat me. Sometimes I think I could get anything, from women, and girls, and some guys. I work out regularly, and Iowa State does have a great facility, free to the students. I don’t worry too much about my legs, they get lots of exercise running up and down the field. I have a great lower body, and a muscular ass. So I concentrate on my chest, back and arms, mostly, and I’m pretty jacked, if I do say so myself.
But don’t worry, my family did their part to keep me humble, my older brother and father particularly. And if my mother ever thought I was getting cocky, I got a smack across the back of the head, no matter where we were, in front of God and everybody.
And I guess the Catholic Church does its job to keep a guy in check, too, what with all that non-specific guilt floating around. The only reason I don’t have to go home every single weekend is because I promised my mom I would go to Mass at least once a week.
But second semester I didn’t have to think about keeping up my soccer team image all the time. Last fall, Coach suggested that the team room together. We were all mostly freshmen, thanks to the newness of the program, and freshmen by rule have to house on campus. Coach said he could arrange for us to have teammates as roommates. I politely declined, with the excuse that I wanted to concentrate on my studies, deciding to take my chances with the general population.
So I drew Carlton Dennis, a full-on science geek from Delaware. We got along well enough, since we mostly ignored each other, but it’s obvious he didn’t think much of jocks. On the very first day, when he found out I was on the soccer team, I got a lecture on how he was there to study, and he didn’t need some party-hardy roommate making trouble and having his jock-buddies over all the time, yukking it up. Once I talked him out of his tree, and assured him I was there to study too, he calmed down somewhat, but it was still obvious he considered himself my intellectual superior. I just wish we’d had a class together, so I could have had the chance to prove him wrong.
But for someone who thinks he’s so brilliant, he’s still dumbly oblivious to the fact that I know exactly what he does in bed every night, with the creaking bed frame, the heavy breathing, and rhythmic scraping of the sheets. I nearly laughed out loud the first time he did it. And more than once I’ve walked in the room and caught him hurri
edly closing a website. Once I caught a glimpse of a splash page, and a title: “Super-Massive Super-Boobs,” with pictures of women with those tits that are really, really huge. I mean freakishly big, like quadruple doubleD’s, that type of thing. I’d almost say at least he’s normal, but there’s nothing normal about that. And if that’s what he wants, I doubt he’ll find it at Iowa State, or even in the state of Iowa.
Anyway, back to him. I finally decided to go check out the LGBT student union meeting, just to see what’s what. I put on a hoodie, and pulled my White-Sox cap as low over my eyes as I could, then entered by the back of the building. I was trying to get there just as the meeting was beginning, but that was pointless. It didn’t start on time and it wasn’t that organized. People were just hanging around, chatting. Fat chicks with green hair and piercings, shy, nervous nerds, and skinny dudes dressed all in black, with eye-liner and spacers in their ears. Man, I hate spacers. My dad would kick my ass if I ever gotten any, he says what do people need with more holes in their heads? But he needn’t worry, because I think they’re ugly, and dumb. The right tattoo, on the other hand . . . but not everyone can pull that off.
I sat down in a corner, hoping for the anonymity of the meeting to start soon, but it was obvious I had attracted some attention. Even covered up in my winter clothes and baseball hat, there’s no disguising my confident, athletic frame and handsome face. Sorry. This is just for me so why be modest. My mom says I’m just as handsome as my dad was at my age. I wouldn’t know, but I’ve seen pictures and I have to admit he was all right.
But at these things there’s always someone ready to drag you out of the closet, so this hefty blond guy with glasses and bad skin comes right up and sits down next to me. Blast.
“Hi, what’s your name?” He asks.
“Julio,” I said, which is my real name, but not what I actually go by. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was ready to give up to those people yet.
“I’m William,” he said. Not Will, or Willy, or Bill, or Billy, but William. All right.
“Hi,” I replied, shaking his offered hand.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” he remarked.
“No,” I said, while thinking: and you probably never will again.
“Well, welcome,” he said.
“Is the meeting going to start soon?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes we never even get around to actually having one.”
He started talking about the meetings, and what they were usually about, and what they were trying to accomplish, and what the purpose of the organization was, and blah blah blah, but I wasn’t paying attention. By this time he had caught my eye.
He was working the room like a politician, nodding, and giving high-fives, throwing winks and pistol-fingers at man and woman alike, smirking the whole time.
He was short, real short, and pale. Not sickly pale at all, his cheeks were rosy, he was just white as everything. And like I said, short. He couldn’t have been over five-three at best. I’m five foot eleven and a half, but I usually just go ahead and claim six feet, arrogant pig that I am. He had thick medium-brown hair, pouty lips, and a cute nose, just slightly up-turned. He was small, but he didn’t seem scrawny. He was wearing a sweatshirt that swallowed him up, but he couldn’t have been scrawny, because he had a meaty, round behind. I’m a bit of an expert on lower-bods, having carefully and clandestinely made locker room observations. His bottom said to me that the rest of him was well-formed, just small. But could he be pudgy, under that huge sweatshirt?
I got my answer a few moments later, as the William droned on at my side. Actually a couple of things happened, in rapid succession, that slayed me. He raised his arm to give a tall, gangly guy an extra-high high-five, and his sweatshirt, although baggy, still came up a couple of inches and exposed his waist, drawing my eye. His belly was milky-white, but not pudgy. Maybe a little baby-fatty, but still reasonable. In fact, very reasonable. It made my breath come shallow and want to see more.
But that wasn’t all. When the extra-high high-five was rebuffed, there was a flash, and it really was just a flash, of hurt on his face. It was just a second of venerability, the briefest glimpse of hurt little boy, and it affected me. I felt it. But swiftly it was plastered over, and the cocky, over-confident, strutting little guy was back, just as before.
Then he looked my way, and I thought for sure he was going to come over and make his moves, but he didn’t. He looked right through me, with what looked like the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Maybe the presence of the William deterred him, or maybe there was something else about me he didn’t like, or maybe it wasn’t about me at all, but it was like I wasn’t even there.
“Who is that guy?” I asked the William, interrupting his soliloquy on the virtues of student involvement in the LGBT movement, at school and society at large.
“Uh, who?” He asked, scanning the room.
“The little guy.”
“Oh, him. That’s Patton.”
“What is he?” I asked.
William rolled his eyes. “Annoying, to most people.”
“I mean is he a Junior, Senior, what?”
“Oh. Freshman, I think.”
Just a dumb Frosh, like me. That made me glad, for some reason.
“What dorm is he in?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” William said, clearly unhappy the attention was no longer on him, not that it ever was.
And at that moment the focus of the room turned to the door, and the guy that entered it. The person who is now my deadly arch-nemesis, for now and forever. A person who is actually arrogant, and overly-confident without reason, not pretend arrogant, like this Patton.
“Kevin!” Someone cried, and the room murmured “Kevin…Kevin.”
He was clearly a star in this motley gathering, and it was almost as if they were waiting for him to start the meeting. It certainly seemed that way, as two people finally stood up in front of the gathering, identifying themselves as co-presidents, a guy and a girl. Gender equality, I guess. I looked around for somebody transgender to object to being left out of the representation.
“I see we have some new faces here tonight,” the female co-president said, and for one awful moment I was afraid she was going to expect me to stand up and introduce myself. I was wearing my baseball cap and hoodie, and I would have put my hood up, but that would have made my attempt to hide a little too obvious, and clichéd. Thank God she moved on to other subjects.
Subjects that just weren’t interesting to me. Okay, call me a shallow jock. Here gays had gotten gay marriage, and so now do we really have to cast around for the next thing to be pissed about? Can’t we just rest on our laurels for a bit? But no, we have to talk about bathrooms and who should get to use what where when, and how and why not.
I sighed and crossed my arms, and saw this Kevin looking right at me. I looked back. I admit it, I looked back. There was no denying it, he was hot. He wasn’t as big as me, but seemed like he went to the gym, at least some, and he had a beautiful, masculine face, and sandy-blond hair, like a California surfer. Of course then I didn’t know what a complete douche he was, so I looked back.
A few minutes later, he stood up and took off his long-sleeved t-shirt, interrupting the meeting with a comment about how hot it was in there. It was pretty warm, like some campus buildings are in the winter. It can be freezing outside, and it was, being Iowa in January, but someone always over-compensates by cranking the furnaces to tropical levels. I was warm, too, but there was no way I was going to take off my hoodie.
So he takes off his over-shirt, and underneath he’s wearing one of those Che Guevera tshirts. I really think he just wanted to show it off, like proving his radical bona-fides. It pissed me off immediately.
I know most of the kids who wear those shirts, and put those posters on their dorm walls, really have no idea who Che Guevera actually was, but I do. Being Cuban, I do, and I hate him. I hate him because he personally murdered people m
y family knew, back in Cuba. Made them kneel and shot them execution style in the back of the head, even young teenaged boys, because he knew they would grow up to oppose him, and because they were from families that were against the revolution. But now Cuba is cool, because our President just actually went there, to make nice with the Castros, and normalize relations, and allowed himself to be photographed in some seedy parking lot, posing in front of a giant image of the bastard painted on some crap socialist shit-hole building.
Fuck, my dad was livid, just about as mad as I’ve ever seen him. The paint was peeling in our house from the colorful cursing he was spitting for days, about the President, the Castros, and every deluded media talking-head who thought normalizing relations with Cuba was just such a wonderful thing.
And the things my grandfather said. Icarumba.
That image of the President in front of a picture of Guevera was the worst. Just as if Roosevelt had stood smiling in front of Auschwitz during World War II, my father said. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I do know Guevera was a cowardly murderer.
So when Kevin stood up, and complained about the horrible treatment that gays receive in America, I just about blew a gasket.
But I didn’t say anything, like a coward. I’m still mad at myself, but I didn’t want to make waves at that moment. I was new, a visitor to their meeting, and I really had no intention of going back. I saw what I came to see, enough to know it’s not really for me. Probably most of those kids were just like me, going to meet people, not necessarily going to get all political, but that seemed to be the purpose.
I’ve never been much of a joiner, outside of the team, anyway. I never expected to play soccer in college, but a man came and watched my high school team, and suggested I come and try-out for Iowa State. I was planning on going to a school in-state anyway, since in-state tuition was just what my parents could afford. I figure I’ll save the crushing student-loan debt for medical school, if I get that far.
