What little levity we’d managed to distract ourselves with disappeared. Fresh tears springing into his eyes, J.J. gently pulled me forward until our foreheads touched. Our eyes held fast, neither of us blinking, as if we each thought he could prove his misery was the greater in a contest no one could win.
“Chris, I can’t do it. I can’t let my entire life be controlled by this one small facet of who I am. There’s too much good I can do.”
“And I can’t keep living a lie,” I told him, my own tears falling anew.
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“I guess we say I love you,” I said.
“I love you,” he said before I could finish.
“And goodbye.”
The look on J.J.’s face combined surprise, horror, pain, and probably many uglier emotions than I was able to comprehend as I found myself running out of the room and racing upstairs to throw myself onto my bed, where I would spend the rest of the night crying, contemplating everything awful in the world, and wondering how I would make it through to the next breath, let alone the next day.
CHAPTER 18
FRENCH FRIES DIPPED IN CHILI CHEESE
I don’t know exactly what I’d expected to happen after that, perhaps because I’d mostly succeeded in avoiding the thought that I wouldn’t convince J.J. that I was right, but what I—stupidly—did not expect was for him to keep showing up almost daily for dates with Kimberly. Each time I saw him it felt like I’d just eaten an entire vat of E. coli, but we both, of course, had to act as if everything in our lives was just fine. I excused myself with the old standby of having homework to do, but my concentration was practically nonexistent. So much so that one of my favorite teachers actually pulled me aside after a class to ask if anything was wrong. I lied, and said that I was fine, but she’d known too many teenagers to fall for it. “Mm-hm,” she murmured through pursed lips. Then, putting a hand on my back to shove me out the door, said, “If that changes, I hope you know you can talk to me.”
I was late to my next class, because even the hint of sympathy had sent me rushing into the bathroom to hide my tears behind a gray metal stall door. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I don’t even know if I’d call what I was doing living, but somehow a week turned into a second, and almost without my realizing, the gray cloud of a foggy January turned into February. And we all know what February means … Valentine’s Day.
On the morning of February 1st, the brightly colored, Xeroxed “Send your Valentine a candy-gram!” postings showed up plastered all over school, and almost as if the great media minds of the world were still in high school, by that afternoon all anyone on TV, the internet, or the blog/Twitter-sphere seemed to care about was whether or not J.J. Kennerly was going to propose to Kimberly Fontaine on Valentine’s Day. And as if it had all been choreographed by the powers that be, the American Heart Association was having the Love Your Heart Ball that night. It was as if the entire world was determined to rub my face in it. Everyone in the world gets to be in love, Christopher Bellows, EXCEPT YOU!
Now, if you’re wondering why I didn’t run to Kimberly and tell her the truth, I will say that only a few times while I was curled up in a sobbing ball on my bed did I briefly consider it. But never seriously. Just in that oh-god-I’m-going-to-steal-all-of-Iris’s-Xanax-and-never-have-to-wake-up-to-this-horrible-world-again way. You know, a flight of imaginary fancy just to cheer myself up a bit. Even in the depths of my misery, I knew that it would only be my own selfishness, not a sense of justice or doing what’s right, that would motivate me. And I simply could never disrespect J.J. in that way. Besides, who would believe me? Even if I tried to prove it by telling Kimberly intimate details about J.J., she wouldn’t have her own knowledge to either confirm or deny them, so what good would it do? I would just end up looking crazed and pathetic. And while I might be both, more than anything, I still felt the sorriest for J.J. What must it be like to go through every day of your life feeling the burden of that much responsibility on your shoulders? He was trying to do what he thought was right, and it wasn’t his fault that the world was a needlessly messed up, hate- and ignorance-filled place that seemed to resent nothing so much as people being happy.
Yeah, so that’s the kind of thing the words “Valentine’s” and “Day” made me think of.
Having noticed my less-than-spirited state, Duane had suggested (i.e. insisted) that the two of us have a night out, and no matter how much I protested, on the first Saturday in February, there he was goading me to make myself pretty, or he’d drag me out in my stained t-shirt and sweat pants, and I’d just have to deal with everyone thinking I was a homeless person. With friends like this …
But he was right. Once I took a shower and got dressed, just knowing that something other than the same depressing thoughts would be filling my head for the next few hours made me perk up a bit. I even found myself feeling a little bit hungry for the first time in weeks. As I started thinking about pizza, I heard Duane talking to Buck in the living room.
“And then how many reps do you do of that?”
“Depends on the day. Some guys do the same number every day, but it’s really better to vary your numbers so that the muscles can’t get too comfortable. Muscles are like a brain; they get bored if things get too predictable.”
“Well, I do like a man with brains,” Duane said. “Can I touch it?”
Clearing my throat as loudly as possible as I entered the living room, I found Buck flexing his bicep, and Duane gingerly prodding it with his index finger.
“Don’t let me interrupt anything,” I said.
Buck rolled his eyes at Duane. “Chris thinks I’m teasing you.”
“Chris should mind his own fucking business.” Duane turned and smiled broadly. “Look at how big your brother’s muscles are getting.”
“They’ve always been big,” I said.
“No, really,” Buck said, “they’re getting bigger. I found out almost all of the body builders at my gym are gay, and ever since I let them know I have a gay brother and I’m cool with that, they’ve been letting me work out with them, and I’m gaining mass like crazy.”
“What else have they been teaching you?” Duane asked, not quite able to disguise the hope in his voice.
“Sorry, brah, I’m still all about the vag.”
If you had told me, when I was fourteen and beginning to realize that I might be gay, that my muscle-bound, meathead of a jock stepbrother would turn out to be one of the most nonjudgmental people I would ever meet, I would never have believed you. And yet, it was the kind of surprise from the people you least expected that can give you hope that other people might also surprise you. But hope is a careless emotion. If you don’t believe me, Duane’s weary sigh would have proved my point.
“Let’s go,” he said to me, shrugging his shoulders.
“Tomorrow we’re doing legs,” Buck said.
“I’ll be back,” Duane said.
Once I’d gotten a little hungry, my appetite seemed to come raging back, and since I knew it probably wouldn’t last, I indulged in every craving that entered my mind. Which was why there was pizza, french fries, a chocolate milkshake, and a chili cheese dog in front of me.
“That one’s cute,” Duane said, watching a preppy Latino guy walk past the window of the diner.
“Mm-hm,” I said without really noticing, returning my gaze to the basket of fries I was working my way through.
“Or maybe you prefer Gaysians?” he said, gesturing at a group of Asian guys across the street.
“I don’t have any preferences based on race.” I dipped a couple of french fries into the chili cheese remains from my hot dog. “Why are you suddenly pointing out every guy who walks by?”
He casually reached over to take a few of the fries. “Because when you fall off a horse, you have to get back on quickly, or else you’ll get too scared.”
“What are you talking about?”
Duane cocked his head to the side, giving m
e an impatient look. “Chris, I know what a broken heart looks like. I know what it looks like, and I know what it feels like, and I also know the only way to get over it is to distract yourself with the plethora of possibilities walking the streets out there.” He held up a hand before I could object. “I know it feels like you’ll never love anyone else again, but Aphra Behn once told me that during the shock after the 9/11 attacks, she knew that the world would continue when she realized the only thing that made her feel better while watching the news was all of the hot NYPD and firemen in the background. I realize we were just little kids then, but the point is that it’s human nature to find hope in the tiniest thing.” Then with a Mae West delivery, he added, “Not that a lot of those boys are so tiny.”
The food in my mouth suddenly seemed about as easy to swallow as a boulder of granite.
Sympathy returning to his eyes, Duane leaned forward. “She told me that story a couple of years ago when I had my heart broken for the first time. You’ll get through it. Somehow we all do.”
“How … what …,” I said.
“I don’t know how you’ve managed it, with all that’s been going on in your house, or especially how you’ve kept it a secret—”
The chocolate shake I’d picked up to try to wash the fries down slipped out of my hand with a bang.
“It’s that Vibol guy from school, isn’t it?” Duane said. “I’m right, aren’t it?”
I began to choke, a combination of the immediate relief from his way off-base guess and a laugh. Shaking my head, I eventually said, “No.”
“No?” He looked disappointed.
Finally, having swallowed the food, I told him, “I’m not sure Vibol even plans on dating until after he gets his medical degree.”
“I don’t know. You ever look at videos online? Some of those Gaysians are damn freaky.” Then he clarified, “I say that with admiration and respect, of course.”
“Of course.”
Duane looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, aren’t you going to spill the beans now that you know I know?”
I returned his gaze, and found the temptation to finally be able to tell someone everything almost overwhelming. But years of holding back had taught me more restraint than was perhaps good for me. Cautiously, I asked him, “What exactly do you know?”
“Well,” Duane said, reaching over to pick off a piece of pepperoni and tear it into little pieces that he ate as he spoke, “I don’t know exactly when it started, maybe before we even met, which was only a few months ago, after all. But I know you had sex for the first time around your birthday, were so damn happy in love through all of the holidays, and then something went sketchy around New Years. And the last couple weeks you’ve been in heartbreak hell.”
And here I’d thought I was so good at hiding things.
“How do you know all of that?”
“Duh, woman’s intuition. Are you sure it’s not Vibol? You don’t know that many other people.” I could see the wheels turning in his head as he considered other possibilities.
I shook my head. “It’s not Vibol. I promise.”
Suddenly, he gasped, his eyes popped open, and he grabbed a knife off of the table and pointed it at me. “If you tell me it’s Buck, I will kill you. As hot as the idea of stepbrother incest might be in a porn, if that man ever turns to dick, he is mine. Do you understand?”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I am one hundred percent serious.”
I laughed harder.
To prove his seriousness, Duane reached over the table with the knife and began poking my hand. As it was a butter knife, the threat made me laugh even more.
“He my man,” he said in a voice that I was pretty sure was an impersonation of someone. I gave him a look to let him know I didn’t get the reference, and he said, “Hello, Rae Dawn Chung in The Color Purple.”
“I’ve never seen it,” I said, finally starting to recover from my laughter.
“Shut up! Oh, damn, girl, if you think you cried over having your heart broken, wait until you see this movie.” Reaching across the table in an overly dramatic way that let me know he was acting out something else from the film, he said, “Nothing but death will part us!” He frowned. “Or maybe it’s nothing but death will keep me from writing? I forget. All I know is those bitches could have used a better texting plan.”
I shrugged, apologetic. “Can’t help you. Haven’t read the book either.”
For the rest of the night, even after we left the diner and wandered the streets of Chelsea, Duane acted out scenes from, first, The Color Purple, then he moved onto Do the Right Thing, In The Heat of The Night, and Boyz In The Hood, and then finally really confused me with his rendition of some ghost from Beloved.
By the time we got back to my place it was getting late, and although I invited him in, he said he had to get back to work. Ever since the New Year’s Eve party, he had been crazy busy meeting with and making sketches for the society women who had loved his designs, and now with the new semester underway, he was finding himself overwhelmed. I told him I really appreciated his taking the time for me since he was so busy, but he responded that he’d needed the break. Besides, the other drag queens were mad at him because he’d been too busy to rehearse, so who else was he going to hang out with? All I knew was that, once again, my fairy godmother had come to my rescue. I was so exhausted from laughing that I was almost positive that I was finally going to get a good night’s sleep.
As I dragged myself up the stairs and reached the second-floor landing, I heard a noise from down the dark hallway. Craning my neck and squinting to see who it was, nothing could have prepared me less for what I saw: J.J., with his hand on the doorknob, exiting Kimberly’s bedroom.
After a long moment with us both standing motionless, J.J. put a finger to his lips as he crept softly towards me. The caution wasn’t necessary because I doubt I could have formed words even if I’d wanted. As he stepped into the light of the stairwell, I looked into the dark brown eyes I had so purposefully avoided for the last few weeks. What I saw there had the odd effect of making me feel both better and worse. I felt better because I could immediately see that J.J. had been every bit as miserable as I had, and I felt worse because he was the last person in the world I wanted to be unhappy. Even more so than myself. I guess that’s what love is. And somehow I could tell from the way he was looking at me that he was thinking and feeling the same thing.
“Do you want to talk?” he said.
I nodded.
“Where?” he asked.
I gestured with my head for him to follow me, then led the way up the stairs to my room on the third floor. Once we got inside, with the door closed, seemingly without thinking, we both sank down to sit on the bed facing each other. There couldn’t have been more than a foot between us, and it took every ounce of self-control to keep myself from throwing my arms around him. Instead, I focused on the way his hands worried the cuff of his slacks.
“You were in Kimberly’s room,” I said, trying to keep the question out of my tone.
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s ….” He sighed, then sat up a little straighter, trying to push his resolve. “I figured if I’m going to do this thing, I can’t put it off forever.”
Unable to contain my disbelief, I said “You mean—”
“No!” He met my eyes briefly before looking back down at his hands. “I mean, not yet.”
“But you know that’s what she’s going to want. I mean, you went to her bedroom.”
“Girls seem to really like to cuddle.”
“So that’s what you were doing in there?”
“Well, mostly. Some kiss—”
“You know what,” I said, “I don’t want to know.”
He nodded.
Although I’d seen him come over to take her out night after night, I’d assumed it was still all for show, but now he was suggesting … well, what exactly had he meant by, “if I’m
going to do this thing?”
So I asked. “What exactly do you mean, if you’re ‘going to do this thing?’”
“It’s what she wants, Chris. It’s what they all want. It’s what the world wants. I’m going to … try. I can do it. It’s not so bad.”
“I don’t think I understand,” I said, fighting the panic that started to build as I feared that maybe I was understanding exactly.
He finally looked up at my face as he matter-of-factly said, “I’m going be straight.”
“But you’re not straight.”
“Maybe not. But what does that matter?” A bitter resolve began to cloud his eyes.
I stood up from the bed, running my fingers through my hair, not believing what I was hearing. “But … but … but that’s not fair to Kimberly.”
“I’m sure I don’t know everything about her either.”
“But being gay is too big not to tell a woman you’re in a relationship with.”
“I’m not going to be gay.”
“You will always be gay.”
“Not if I don’t act upon it.”
“You will still be gay. Someone can die a virgin, but if they’re straight, they’re straight, and if they’re gay, they’re gay.”
“Chris, none of that matters. I’m going to be in a relationship with Kimberly, and I’m not going to cheat, and I’m not going to do anything to hurt her. You and I had what we had, but from now on, I am going to at least live the life of a straight man. It’s the only way.”
I don’t know if what I did next was a desperate attempt to remind J.J. of his true nature, or if I was selfishly trying to satisfy myself in what appeared to be my last chance, but I ripped my shirt off over my head as I threw myself at him, grabbing him to me, and covering his mouth with mine.
He began to respond passionately, but all too soon J.J. struggled to push me away, turning his face away from mine and into the bedspread.
Rejected and despondent, I fell off of him, burying my head into my pillow, already sensing the sobs that it was soon to stifle. With my face averted, I listened as he got off the bed and took the few steps towards the door.
My Fairy Godmother is a Drag Queen Page 20
