by Gene Gant
And there was Caitlin Eisner. Her family moved into town about seven months ago, and she and Jessica took to each other right off. Caitlin was blonde and pretty. She was also, as my Uncle Ronnie would put it, “pleasingly plump.” She was over in a corner of the dining room, holding hands with Jessica and laughing as they danced away.
They were all girly as they dipped and stepped and twirled, letting go of each other when they went into their spins but joining hands again once they were face-to-face. Jessica looked cool in her cut-off jeans and tank top, and Caitlin looked like hot-spun cotton candy in her fuzzy pink sundress. Caitlin leaned forward and tiptoed to whisper something in Jess’s ear. Jess laughed out loud and squeezed Caitlin’s shoulder.
I felt a twinge of jealousy. Jessica really seemed to like Caitlin.
“Hey, Geordi.”
I turned, a bit startled. Jake was standing close behind me. Smiling.
It was a damn pretty smile. Nice, moist lips. Lots of sparkly white teeth. He’d ditched the Afro he usually wore, his hair buzzed down close to his beautifully shaped head, and his dark brown skin was positively glowing.
Dark. Brown. Skin.
Glowing.
“Oh… uh….” I often went “Oh” and “Uh” when all the blood in me went running south of the border, leaving my brain high and dry. My groin suddenly felt heavy. “Hi, Jake.” I looked up into his genial auburn eyes. Jeez, everybody was turning into giants. Jake was almost as tall as Jessica now. Toff was the only friend I had who was still stuck at five foot seven like me. Damn. Jake somehow was even better-looking than he was when I saw him five minutes ago.
Jake put his hands on his hips, which had the effect of broadening his shoulders and making his pecs flex delightfully beneath the fabric of his sleeveless red T-shirt. A few weeks ago, I overheard his dad tell my dad that Jake had started weight training so he could try out for his school’s wrestling team in the fall. The training was definitely showing. “So. You’re out and loving it, huh?” he asked.
“Uh… oh, you know….” I grinned as I slid my hand in my pocket and pinched my thigh hard, again and again. It was the only way to stop the spread of a boner down my leg. My thought processes seemed to have ground to a halt. What was it about being around hot, handsome dudes that just sucked all the oxygen out of my brain?
He grinned back at me. My grin probably looked stupid. His grin looked sexy. My crotch got heavy again. This can’t be happening. I can’t be getting turned on by Jake freaking Butcher. Please God, don’t do this to me.
“I never would’ve thought you were gay, man,” Jake said. “You’re full of surprises.”
“Surprises, yeah. Me. Full of.”
He gave me a one-eyed squint. Or was it—oh jeez—a wink? “You know, I might have a surprise or two in me.”
“Oh?” That came out more like a gasp. What happened to all the air in this room?
“Ever dance with a guy before?”
That got me so excited I thought the top of my sore head would spin off. “N-no.”
He stepped back, made a bow, and held out his hand to me. “Then let me be your first.”
Cue the theme from The Twilight Zone.
I was stunned. This was absolutely and totally unreal, so unreal I just stood there staring at Jake. He smiled and took my hand and pulled me out into the middle of the living room. Thankfully, a fast song was playing. If it had been a slow song and I’d gone front to front with Jake, I don’t think shoving a machete through my thigh would have been enough to stop me from throwing wood.
Jake was a great dancer, those long ropy arms and legs popping and locking hypnotically. After I stopped being stunned, I turned out some pretty good moves myself. The jeans Jake had on were just tight enough to be Thank-ya-Jesus-hallelujah! enticing, and I was equally happy whether he turned his back, front, or either side to me as we danced. My other guests gathered around and clapped to the music, urging us on. Mom and Dad actually cheered. Mae didn’t seem especially happy for us, though. She gave me such an evil eye I thought she wanted to set fire to my hair.
But I was more taken with the way Jake looked at me. His gaze and his smile were so warm they made me tingle inside. His expression held a world of meaning, and all of it flowed right into making me feel like a pretty special guy. How could someone do that with just his eyes and his lips? How could a guy go from being a bug eater to a freaking hot-bod? How could I get myself out of this dance with my dignity intact?
That last question was especially relevant, because every time I looked at Jake’s mouth, I had to fight the urge to send my tongue on a bug chase.
IT TOOK two whole hours after Jessica hauled my sorry butt back home for my coming-out party to end. I spent much of that time worrying about Toff. He was pretty upset when he left, and I started getting afraid that he’d never talk to me again.
But there were distractions that took my mind off those worries. After the song ended, Jake actually thanked me for letting him be my first boy dance partner. He thanked me! And then he gave me a congratulatory hug, whispering “Happy coming-out day, Geordi” in my ear before moving off to mingle with the other guests. I mingled too but always seemed to find my way back into visual range of Jake. He never freaked out or anything when he caught me looking at him; he just winked or smiled. And every time he winked or smiled, it felt as if I were levitating.
It occurred to me that I really didn’t know that much about Jake, a circumstance I suddenly wanted to change. Was he gay? He did say he might have a surprise or two in him. Could he be getting ready to come out himself? Would he hang out with me, maybe go on a date with me, if I asked? Maybe I’d have worked up the nerve to ask him out if he hadn’t gone right back to hanging with Mae after chatting with my other cousins. Dag, what was up with the dude? Mae was sixteen and stacked like a brick house, so hanging with her was definitely straight-guy behavior. But there was nothing straight about those winks and smiles he shot my way.
When the party ended and my guests started to leave, I stood at the front door the way Mom always insisted to send everyone off with a personal thanks-for-coming and goodbye. When Jake headed out after his dad, he stopped and shook my hand. “Great party, man,” he said, flashing that newly knee-weakening smile of his.
“I’m glad you had a good time, Jake. Thanks for coming.” We’d finished shaking hands, but Jake held on, looking into my eyes. His grip was so warm, so strong. Alluring. Breathtaking. Jeez…. Uncomfortable, I lowered my gaze and found myself looking at his crotch. “Oh… uh….”
He laughed in that way parents do when their baby babbles something cute. “See you around, Geordi.” Then he squeezed my hand, let go, and hurried out to his dad’s car. I closed the door, holding my Jake-squeezed hand up like it was a delicate piece of glass.
I turned around and almost bumped into Mom, who had just walked up behind me. “Well,” she said cheerily, “that was a wonderful celebration.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You and Jake certainly seemed to enjoy each other.”
“Yeah. I like Jake.”
Mom gave me that hopeful look, and I knew what she’d ask next. “Is that as in like like, or just plain like?” Dad was hovering in the dining room, gathering dirty paper plates into a garbage bag. I could tell he was listening eagerly for my answer.
My parents are as progressive as can be. Mom teaches fifth grade at our neighborhood elementary school—she walks to work, rain or shine, claiming that’s good for her health and the environment—and Dad is the director of the Education Department at the Pink Palace Museum. They believe unequivocally in recycling, equality, socialism, green energy, universal healthcare, a woman’s right to choose, a living wage for all, and the complete and utter separation of church and state. Since finding out about my gay side, they’d been anxious for me to begin embracing my identity. They were probably more ready for me to have a boyfriend than I was.
I’d never kissed a guy, held a guy in my arms, gone out on a date o
r made out with a guy. I’d never had a boyfriend. I wanted to experience all those things, and yes, I now would have liked very much to start experiencing them with Jake. But Jake and his parents lived in Arlington, a quiet, rural, fast-growing town in the northeastern section of Shelby County. That was a pretty long haul from Midtown Memphis, where my parents and I lived in the hip, historic, and very gay friendly Cooper-Young district. As things stood, I probably wouldn’t see Jake again until October, when the museum put on its annual Crafts Fair. We’d never exchanged cell phone numbers, so I couldn’t even text or call him.
I could have pumped Dad for information about Jake. I could have also gotten Dad to pass on a message through Jake’s father for Jake to call me. I was still pissed with Dad, however. Looking at him made my eyes burn, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him just yet. And even if Jake and I texted or hit each other up on Facebook or Snapchat or whatever, hanging out with him would never be as simple as just walking over to his house, the way I did with Toff, Jess, and the rest of my friends. So there wasn’t any point in trying to pursue any type of relationship with the dude.
“No, Mom,” I answered, “I just plain like him.”
Mom looked disappointed. That made two of us.
Chapter 4
TOFF IS a phenomenal guy and a great friend, and I am a selfish bastard.
Toff proved himself phenomenal on the very first day we met. It was a cool and sunny Saturday morning in spring after a nearly weeklong spell of windy rain showers. I was seven, and I’d gotten Mom to put me into my rain boots so I could go out and stomp my way through all the puddles in our neighborhood. I wound up in a big lot that had been cleared and graded for the construction of a new house. There were lots of puddles—muddy puddles. I thought I’d made it to heaven.
There was a girl in our neighborhood who was big for a nine-year-old. She would have been big for a nineteen-year-old, or at least I thought so at the time. Her name was Belle, but some smartass nicknamed her Big Belle, which evolved into Big Bull. Looking back on it all now, I can understand how a girl widely known as Big Bull would be self-conscious and a little miserable, and how that would keep her in an almost perpetual state of being pissed off. But at seven, I thought Belle was just plain mean.
I had my head down, merrily splish-splashing my way across that muddy lot when suddenly I came up against a wall. That’s what it felt like when I bumped into Belle. She stood there with her arms at her sides, staring down at me as if the mere fact that I was having fun offended her. She didn’t say a word, just casually reached out and shoved me butt-first into the mud. She waited patiently while I struggled to my feet and then shoved me down again.
There was no fighting Belle. Other kids tried and lost. Badly. I’d tried myself, a couple of weeks before, when she knocked my backpack off my shoulder and I punched her in the stomach for it. She responded by picking me up and slamming my back against a wood fence. I think my body and that fence twanged for fifteen minutes from the impact.
I wasn’t about to repeat that mistake, so after my second trip down into the mud, I figured it was best to just lie there until Belle decided to move on and darken someone else’s day. Obviously she still saw potential for torment, however; she started kicking the thick brown watery sludge over my whole body as if trying to make me into the world’s biggest mud pie. I lay there and cried. Really, what else could I do?
Then I heard this high-pitched little voice shouting, “No fair! No fair! Leave him alone!” Toff came running from out of nowhere. He got between me and Belle, and he did one of the bravest things I thought anybody could ever do. He planted his little hands against Belle’s shoulders and pushed her back.
Or, I should say, he tried to push her back. Toff was as small and thin as I was. He stood as much chance of pushing Belle away as he did of buying the Empire State Building for cash. But he kept pushing and pushing until Belle, who was looking pretty bored by then, planted a hand on his forehead and shoved him down in the mud next to me.
Belle walked away. I’d stopped crying, amazed by what Toff had done. Toff and I looked at each other. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m Sandor.”
“I’m Geordi. Wanna come to my house? My mom’s making tofu burgers for lunch.”
“Okay.”
See what I mean about Toff being phenomenal? How many kids do you know who’d risk their own butts to help another kid who’s getting slaughtered by a bully? How many kids do you know who’d risk their stomachs eating a tofu burger? Toff had just moved into the neighborhood with his dad—Belle moved out of town with her family a couple of weeks later, which seemed a pretty decent tradeoff to me—so he didn’t even know me when he rushed to my rescue. That made him my friend right off. Mud mates for life, yeah!
Over the years, Toff had shown the depth of his friendship in dozens of ways, including:
1) Standing up to Mr. Hanson, our elementary school principal, when the man falsely accused me of deliberately belching out a moose mating call to disrupt his announcements during afternoon assembly. It was an accident, by the way. I’d had two Pepsis for lunch.
2) Hiding a three-foot ice sculpture of a snowman in his father’s deep freezer for four days so Dad and I could surprise my mom with it on Christmas Day. She said her parents had one every Christmas when she was growing up.
3) Giving me a giant Snickers bar every year on my birthday. I love Snickers, but Mom won’t buy them—or anything else that a human being might actually enjoy snacking on. Thank God Dad did all the menus for my parties.
4) Using his emergency cash to buy me four new sets of underwear from the commissary at summer camp after I accidentally burned all my tighty-whities trying to light a fire for roasting hot dogs. Don’t ask me how that happened. Just… don’t ask.
And I repaid all that devotion by being a selfish bastard. What else would you call it? After my coming-out party, I didn’t spend the night worrying about Toff feeling hurt and left out. No, I spent the night fantasizing about all the ways I wanted to kiss Jake Butcher. Every time I thought of kissing Jake, Toff’s face popped into my head and dumped buckets of guilt all over my brain. By Sunday morning, I was so disgusted with myself, I couldn’t even eat breakfast. I decided it was time to make amends with Toff. If he’d even speak to me, that is.
The Tofflers and the Quintrells were not churchgoers, so Sunday morning was as good a time to make my apologies to Toff as any. I’d usually text before I dropped in on one of my friends, but in this instance I thought showing up out of the blue was the best strategy. I walked the two blocks to his house under a sunny sky, already sweltering in the hot, humid air. At Toff’s house, I knocked quietly on the door. A few seconds later, Mr. Toffler opened the door.
“Geordi,” he said with a nod. Mr. Toffler wasn’t a big man, only an inch or two taller than me with a wiry body almost like a kid’s. His face was heavily lined, though. He wore his hair long, and he had a beard. His hair and beard were streaked with gray, and he looked more like sixty-five than forty-five. Mr. Toffler’s eyes always seemed to be focused somewhere else, even when he stared directly at you. He never looked happy or sad or upset or anything. In all the years I’d been coming to this house, I’d never seen him even smile. It was easy to believe he didn’t feel anything.
“Hi, Mr. Toffler,” I said, flashing a little smile. “I came to see—”
“Sandor!” he bellowed over his shoulder, not waiting for me to finish. “Geordi’s here!” He turned back to me, stepping aside as he did so. “He’s in the kitchen. Go on back.”
“Thanks.” I walked inside, crossed the living room and dining room, and turned left into the kitchen. Toff was at the stove frying bacon. On the counter next to him was a plate holding two slices of bread slathered with mayo and piled high with lettuce, sliced tomato, and pickles. Mmm, a BLT. That sounded and smelled heavenly compared to the granola with almond milk and sliced fruit that Mom set out in front of
me for breakfast. The moment I walked into Toff’s kitchen, my appetite sat up and begged like a hungry dog.
But I was through being a selfish bastard and pushed away all thought of asking Toff to share his sandwich. “Hey.” Please say it back. Please, please, please don’t leave me hanging.
“Hey, Geordi.” He didn’t turn to me, and he sounded sort of sad. But at least he was speaking to me.
Sighing inwardly, I sat down at the table. “Can we talk? It can wait until after you have your breakfast if you want.”
“No, we can talk now. The bacon has to finish cooking.” He turned, came to the table, and sat down across from me. He was barefoot, wearing only a pair of blue striped, knee-length pajama bottoms, and his hair was sticking out all over his head. Calmly, he folded his hands together on the table in front of him and waited.
Now that I was there, I wasn’t sure exactly how to start. Before I could pull my head together, Mr. Toffler called out, “I’m leaving now, Sandor. Be sure to lock up if you take off before I get back.”
“Okay, Dad,” Toff called back.
I heard the front door close. “So where’s your dad off to?” That was so not what I wanted to ask.
“Shelby Farms,” Toff said. “He’s going fishing. He likes to go by himself.” And then he sat there, waiting for me to say my piece.
Okay. Just go ahead and lay it out there. “Toff, I’m really sorry I got you so upset yesterday. And I get it. I understand why you were mad that I didn’t tell you before that I’m gay—”
