The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy

by B. T. Gottfred

  art

  Only after we’re kissing, after Zee has fallen under my magical powers—and I clearly have magical powers!—do I feel like we’re normal. Like I’m a normal boy kissing a normal girl. I indulge in our lyrical connection for as long as I can. For as long as I can hear our sweet song.

  But the moment I start thinking about sex, that we should start, or talk about it, or something, I realize something horrific—

  ZEE

  He’s not getting hard. Must be he’s nervous. Totally understandable.

  “Do you want to just kiss tonight?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, and he knows I know. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “Let me try something.” I can’t believe I’m offering to do this, but I guess this means I really love him.

  art

  Zee kisses my chest, then my stomach, and, oh-my-god, she’s going to kiss my penis, isn’t she? And then she pulls down my underwear and she can see my penis for the first time and I feel sick to my stomach. She puts it in her mouth and it feels good, very good (of course it does!), like a massage for my penis, but I’m not getting excited, am I? Why aren’t I getting excited? Why do I get an erection when I don’t want one (like when Jayden sent me that picture!) and I can’t get one on the most important night of my life?!

  ZEE

  He’s not getting hard, but the kid’s still pretty huge if you know what I mean and my jaw hurts instantaneously. How do chicks do this longer than thirty seconds? It’s boring and painful, and if Abigail really loves doing this, Cam should have stayed with her forever because I will never love doing this. I can’t fucking believe I’m thinking about Cam now, I should—

  art

  “Zee?” I say, then pull her up so our faces are next to each other.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to be sorry. It happens.”

  “I’m nervous, I think.”

  “Me too,” she says, except she isn’t nervous at all. She’s just trying to be nice. Then she smiles, and runs her thumb along my lips. “My lipstick got on you.”

  “How does it look on me?” I say, because I don’t know why.

  “Probably better than it looks on me,” she says, and tries to laugh.

  “I can’t believe you put lipstick on for me.” I try to laugh too.

  “And I tried giving you a blow job and I hate giving blow jobs.”

  Oh-my-god. “You must really love me.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Zee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really love you,” I say.

  ZEE

  I know the kid loves me, so I say, “I know.”

  But then he gazes deep into my eyes. More intense then he’s ever done it and he’s always super fucking intense. When he knows he’s got me rapt under that gaze, he says, “Zee, I love you you.”

  I say, “I know,” again but this time I feel it.

  He says, “Let’s not pretend with each other again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Zee…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I’ll get excited if you lead. In fact, I’m getting excited just thinking about you leading.”

  “Really?” I reach down and, yep, he’s getting there.

  “Really.”

  “You like when I kiss you like this,” I say, and kiss him hard.

  “Yes,” he says, nodding, shrinking and blossoming at the same time.

  “You like when I grab you like this?” I wrap my arm around his back, pull him fast against me.

  “Yes,” he says, and moans.

  “You like when I’m on top of you like this?” I push him onto his back and straddle him.

  He nods. I slip off the stupid panties and, listen—“We don’t have condoms.”

  “Yes, we do.” He smiles a nervous smile, reaches under the pillow, and pulls out a condom he had hidden there. I take it, unwrap it, and put it on him.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” I ask, because no boy ever asked me and the boy should always ask. I’m not the boy. But I’m not not the boy either.

  “Very much,” he says.

  “I love you, my beautiful boy.”

  “I love you, my handsome girl.”

  art

  I call in sick to the restaurant the next morning. Zee and I don’t spend the whole day in bed together, but we spend almost the whole day in bed together. It isn’t like this soft-core cable movie of nonstop sex. It’s us talking and cuddling and kissing and doing things I’ve never seen on cable.

  I put on her lipstick and panties.

  She puts on my underwear and suit.

  We talk in each other’s voices, walk like the other person, call each other the opposite gender. Touch each other in, um, unusual ways. We laugh, like we’re being silly, like it isn’t real, but it also turns us both on and that is very real and it is very terrifying. It feels amazing. At least our bodies feel amazing. But besides how it feels, it’s terrifying. I don’t know who I am supposed to be anymore, and I’ve always known who I am supposed to be.

  * * *

  After she leaves for her job at the gym, I spend the next four hours googling everything we said and did. This eventually leads me to clicking on sites of people doing and saying those things to each other in videos. I quickly back click and try to forget what I just saw or might see in these videos.

  These videos are also known as pornography.

  I know this is very prudish of me, but I’ve never really looked at porn. My brother, Alex, very inappropriately would try to show it to me when he was in high school and I was, like, eleven. He wasn’t evil, just a stupid teenager being a stupid big brother, and we had parents that were clueless. But it was absolutely horrifying and gave me nightmares and I vowed never to look at it again. I’ve never reconsidered this vow. I always knew I wanted love, then sex, not the other way around. Yes, I knew this made me different from most boys, but I didn’t care! I just didn’t think it made me that different.

  But now, sitting alone in this seedy motel room, waiting for my masculine girlfriend to come home so that she can make me orgasm and moan with high-pitched cries, I start to wonder if I’ve avoided porn because I didn’t want to know the truth.

  No.

  No what?

  We can’t think about this today.

  You’re right.

  But maybe we can look at videos of what we can’t think about today.

  So look but don’t think?

  Yes.

  This is very unlike you.

  Do we really have any idea who “you” are anymore?

  Good point.

  ZEE

  On the drive to CrossFit, nothing feels that weird. Yeah, I’m seventeen, I live in a motel room, and I have sex with a boy who looks hot in my lipstick. Yeah. Okay. I’m not going to tell anyone, ever, about it, but whatever.

  Yet as soon as I walk into the gym, as soon as I see Glen, Bill, Taylor, even Bryan, I get this queasy feeling that everything Art and I have done with each other is illegal. Or worse, inhuman. That we should be arrested for crimes against biology.

  I want to be that girl who Glen booty-calls. Be that girl who has sex with Bill where we never speak before or during or after. Where it never even crosses my mind that I could have an orgasm with a guy. I want to be that girl who silently pines for Cam to twirl me. For me to squeal at the sight of him instead of getting wet when a boy squeals for me.

  * * *

  While I’m working the desk, I feel like I’m still sweating from the workout even though I’m not. It feels like I’m sweating inside my skin. Like I have to change my flesh or I’m going to be this sickly, weird, uncomfortable thing forever.

  Not even halfway through my shift, I start getting excited at the thought of seeing Art. Like sexually excited. I’m fucking throbbing. I suddenly feel like I’m a drug addict. Like Art is my drug again. But this time it feels like I ne
ed to stop seeing him or I’ll overdose and die.

  So I text Arshad. My dad. The recovered addict. And ask if he can talk.

  art

  When Zee texts me she’s meeting her dad after work, I text her that I’d like to go. She says she should go alone, which makes me think she’s seeing Cam even after we had sex.

  It isn’t even seven. If I have to stay in this motel room, alone, for the next four or five or forever hours while my brain tries not to imagine them together, I will probably self-combust.

  I don’t know what to do.

  My heart tells me this is the price I must pay for the girl of my destiny.

  My brain asks what price is Zee paying if I sit here all night waiting for her.

  So my hands text Jayden.

  ME

  I want to see you tonight

  Wow, I’m so demanding. He’ll probably love it.

  JAYDEN

  You’re so demanding.

  I love it

  And then I’m running from the motel to my house.

  Yes, me, running!

  Why am I running?!

  Because I’m going to steal my dad’s car and drive to Winnetka to see a boy.

  * * *

  After I shower, I have no idea what to wear. I had seven weeks to plan what I’d wear for my first date with Zee, I’ve had less than an hour for my date with Jayden. Not that this is a date.

  It’s totally a date.

  I’m going on a date with a boy.

  With a boy who is a better dresser than me. (Crucial clarification: Has a better wardrobe, not is a better dresser.) But this point is not a small one. I don’t want to be in knockoff versions of what he might be wearing. So I decide I’ll dress more casually. Jeans, a gray oxford, and my now faithful Bullboxer shoes. I look good. (I always look good. Ha.) But I look like I don’t care if I look good.

  When I go to grab the keys from the kitchen, my dad is standing in front of the refrigerator.

  “You didn’t go shopping this week,” he says without looking at me.

  “I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “There’s nothing to eat.”

  “Do you want me to run out now? I’ll have to use the car.” Yes, I’ll be late, but expertly so.

  “Yeah. Taco Bell,” he says, and I don’t have the time to argue against my father’s horrible diet choices. Thirty seconds later, I’m in the car, driving like I do it all the time. I order my dad an obscene amount of tacos and burritos and nachos, drive home, put it on the kitchen counter, and yell, “It’s in here, I have to run!”

  And I’m back out the door before he can ask where I’m going. I would have told him if he asked. I would have said, “I’m going out on a date with a boy because the girl I love is with the boy she wishes she loved instead of me.” The look on his face would have been worth it alone. But who am I kidding? My dad would never have asked.

  * * *

  It takes me almost an hour to get to Winnetka, which is basically the fanciest suburb in all of Chicago. Jayden, of course, lives in a mansion across the street from Lake Michigan. I text him when I’m parked on the street outside. He texts back:

  JAYDEN

  In one minute, you’ll meet your destiny.

  But don’t fall in love with me … for at least an hour;)

  Who texts stuff like that?

  Me. I know.

  Being on the receiving end is intimidating! I’m never doing it to Zee again. (Yes, I also know Zee will hate me if she finds out where I am so I’m never telling her and I’m not thinking about her again until I’m on my way back to Riverbend. I’m a horrible person. But she was a horrible person first! Ugh.)

  Ten minutes after the one minute is up, Jayden exits his front door. After a brief, distant moment under the front porch light, he falls into darkness as he approaches the car. Should I get out and open the door for him? Who’s the boy when it’s two boys? Me. I think. I don’t know. I’ve only been (maybe) gay for an hour. I get out just because and move around to the curb.

  Jayden descends the last stairs from his property onto the sidewalk and into the faint gleam of the streetlamp. He’s wearing a long-sleeve coral T-shirt, and designer jeans (in fact, they may be girls’ jeans; in fact, they might be the exact same design I bought for Zee), and he bought them just big enough so they fall low over both his hips. I’d be shocked if he was wearing underwear. His shoes are gray canvas, white-soled, expensive. His walk is impossible not to watch, and his big eyes pull me into him even as I stand in the same place.

  I am definitely the boy.

  He holds out his hand. I take it in mine for a handshake, sort of, but I’m ninety-four point two percent sure he gently caresses my palm with one of his fingers as he says, “Hello, Mr. Art. I’m Mr. Jayden.” Then he winks. Winks! Who winks at someone the first time they meet? Yes, me, I know. I’m being hilarious because it’s distracting me from my impending nervous breakdown.

  “Hi,” I manage, and smile, or maybe I just stare. And then I say, “Ready?” which is so boring but I’ve entered a world where I don’t understand the language or the rules.

  “Yes, darling,” Jayden says, but his eyes say, I want to have sex with you. Oh my god, who looks at someone on the first date with eyes that say that?! (And you can’t say me because even I have never done that!) I open the passenger door for him, and he slides inside. I walk around the back of the car because I have to adjust my, um, penis in my pants because I have an erection. So glad I wore jeans. But, oh my god, how does this happen from just watching him walk down the sidewalk! Ugh.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as I start the car. I think (no, I know) he’s wearing perfume, and I think (no, I know) I like it.

  “You pick,” he says.

  “Oh, okay,” I say, and of course I should have had a place picked out but I don’t.… “There’s a diner in Morton Grove called Seven Sisters that my grandmother used to take us to when we stayed at her place.”

  Jayden levels his eyes at me. “A diner? In Morton Grove? That your grandmother frequented?”

  I feel like the least sophisticated person ever born.

  “I know a brilliant place downtown. We’ll go there and you’ll love it. Just take Sheridan to Lake Shore Drive.”

  “Where’s Sheridan?”

  “I just moved here, Arthur—you’re supposed to be giving me the tour.”

  Um …

  “I’m kidding. Just take a right up at the next street and we’ll run into it,” he says, and I do exactly that. I’m officially terrified of being less than he wants me to be.

  * * *

  Once we’re on the all-important Sheridan Road, Jayden says, “I’ll say this once, and then I want you to forget I said it. Deal?”

  Deal?

  “You’re even more attractive in person. Thankfully, I’ve sworn off sex and love until college or we’d probably do something irresponsible.”

  I emit some kind of never-heard-before under-my-breath chuckle.

  “You’re new at this, aren’t you?”

  “At what?”

  “At this,” he says, and squeezes my leg just above my knee. Oh my god, I’m going to crash and kill us both.

  “I’m … I was … I thought I was straight.”

  “I’m sure you did.” He’s being sarcastic. But I must be sweating sincerity, because he follows up with, “Oh, my, you’re serious.”

  Yes.

  “So you’ve never been with a boy?” He has that sex look in his eyes again. I can’t function properly when he does that!

  “No…”

  “When did you have your precious moment of self-discovery?”

  When he sent that picture? When I liked that Zee looked like a boy? When I looked at porn today? I cannot speak, which is totally normal for Gay Art. Very bizarre how Straight Art was much more eloquent.

  “You are this gorgeous vision of a boy, untouched, untainted. If I met you in New York, I’d probably insist on corrupting you at once, but I’ve decide
d that Chicago Me is going to be a born-again virgin. So we can both be virgins. That way we can suffer together.” He squeezes my leg again, but this time much higher.

  ZEE

  I meet Arshad back at The Forest Café. I know I said I wouldn’t go back, but, fuck, whatever, I’m too desperate to be stubborn.

  It’s even weirder at night. If that’s possible. The ceiling has those glowing stars kids put in their rooms except these stars are giant and feel like they’re three-dimensional and about to fall on your head. Colorful spotlights swim back and forth from some unseeable corners, which makes it feel like I’m in a nightclub with trees. It’s Thursday in the suburbs and this place only serves coffee but people are moving with that weekend party energy, that alcohol-fueled buzz, appearing and disappearing down paths I don’t remember seeing when I was here last.

  Arshad is waiting for me this time. At one of the booths. He looks at peace with this trippy place despite being so old. Maybe that’s because he’s a drug dealer. But I don’t know if I can afford to care how he makes his money if I can’t get Michael to give me what’s mine.

  “This place is really weird,” I say to him as I sit down, and I can’t believe I’m judging anything weird after some of the kinky stuff Art and I did in the motel room.

  “I like weird,” he says, with a smile. “It feels more honest than not weird.”

  He likes to say fancy crap sometimes. Whatever. A waitress comes over. At least I think she’s a waitress because she just put two teacups down. But she’s fortysomething, beautiful, wearing a red suit. She’s Asian. Or Latina. Or maybe both. She’s tall, taller than me, and super feminine. Her lipstick is as bright apple red as her suit.

  “Zee, this is Stephanie,” Arshad says, and I guess he’s friends with her. I sort of say hello but then she lingers. It’s odd. I feel like they have some secret. I can’t look at either of them.