by John Goode
And that is how people are. They fixate on that person. Everyone else is compared to them and always found wanting. I’m sure what I’m saying is nothing earth-shattering to anyone. It’s not like I have the launch codes or anything. But here is the rest of that reality: you either know you are It or that you are not It. Knowing that simple fact changes who you are inside for the rest of your life. And not in a sunshine and flowers way, either. Knowing that you’re It also means you know you have a shelf life. From the second that someone tags you and you become “It,” a timer starts counting down over your head. If you’re not “It,” you just stare at that clock and wait. There is only a finite amount of attention that people can focus, only a finite amount of attention on one person, and only for so long before their attention shifts. That means if someone becomes more popular, someone else just becomes less popular. It sounds stupid, but it’s the way it is for those of us who live on the adoration of others.
Once you enter that race to the top you are forever looking around you to see if there is someone you can pull down on your way. You wonder why pretty girls are so bitchy? Because they know every slur that the other girl takes means one step closer to the top of the food chain. You ever ask yourself why jocks always seem to be fighting? It’s because we are just a few IQ points away from pissing on stuff to claim it as our own. We are all sharks swimming in the same small tank, wondering who’s going to fall asleep first so the rest of us can have lunch. Not everyone thinks like this—they simply act like this out of survival, and most of it is subconscious behavior.
I always knew that there was something inside of me that, if it came out, would make me the very opposite of everything that makes up a popular person. So I guess I was always aware of how cutthroat popularity was, because it was just a matter of time before it was taken away from me. I could, or at least I hoped I could, handle what I always knew might happen.
Kyle was the one that I was worried about.
He wasn’t used to any kind of attention; he’d been careful to avoid any attention at all, for Pete’s sake. For someone to go from school unknown to school pariah over a weekend was a lot to ask.
I hadn’t realized how long I had been sitting, lost in thought, until Kyle squeezed my hand and asked, “You okay?”
I looked over at him and felt an ache in my chest when I realized how much I liked him. I had never felt like I did with Kyle. Not with Kelly, the first guy I had fooled around with, not Jennifer, not with any of the people I had dated. I had liked them, sure, and they had even turned me on; but when I looked at this boy, my mind lost the ability to comprehend simple concepts like breathing and speech. I couldn’t get close enough to him, and knowing how much I needed to be with him scared the bejeezus out of me. But that fear always ran like a bitch every time he smiled at me. The sincerity in everything he felt and said made me feel like a fraud in comparison. Then I saw Julie Benson walk by the car with one of her friends, and they laughed when they saw who I was in the car with.
Just like that, the fear was back.
I slipped my hand out of his and tried to ready myself for this. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes and I felt horrible, because there was nothing I could do about it. “Look, Kyle, this is going to suck pretty badly, and I can’t imagine it’s going to get better anytime soon. So let’s make a promise. No matter what happens, we don’t take it out on each other. It’s going to be us against everybody else; the last thing we need is to turn on each other, okay?”
I could tell he didn’t understand exactly what I was talking about, but I thought I knew the danger of the next few weeks. We were going to have no one else but each other to rely on, and if we alienated each other, we were truly fucked.
He just nodded and looked as frightened as I had ever seen him.
“Ready or not,” I said, trying to show him my most confident grin before we got out of the car.
After I swung the door shut, I forced myself not to look up to see how close the ball was to me.
Kyle
LESS than twenty minutes after I walked into school, I realized I hated being the center of attention.
The looks I got from everyone—and until that moment, I hadn’t realized how many everyone was—as I walked down the hall were creepy. The whispering from behind me was a little too serial killer for me. But the suck-cherry on the top of the entire sucky sundae came when some girl I had never seen before walked up to my locker and started to talk to me. “So you’re, like, the gay guy, right?”
Four years at this high school, two years in junior high, and another seven years at two different elementary schools, and I was boiled down to being the gay guy.
I bit back a sigh and closed my locker. “I’m Kyle,” I said, trying not to sound as pissed as I felt.
When I looked, there were, in fact, three girls instead of just the one. I assumed either they were like a soaking wet Gremlin and multiplied over time, or I had just missed them walking up. If she understood the difference between referring to me as “the gay guy” and using my actual name, the knowledge was lost between her vapid gaze and her single AAA-battery brain. Clueless, but on a mission, she just stumbled on with her question. “Um, right. So you’re the one who turned Brad gay, right?”
As stupid as this might sound, I honestly didn’t think that there were people who still believed that.
I mean, sure, I got that I was outed as being gay now and that people were going to know about Brad and me. But the thought that some people might be so ignorant as to think someone can be “turned” gay had just never crossed my mind. Who thinks this crap? Like homosexuality is a contagious disease. And if it was contagious, wouldn’t a group of us have left packages of infected plaid shirts and jock straps lying around to turn the guys we wanted? I was hoping that AAA-Battery girl was asking a sad and completely inappropriate question for the sake of being sarcastic, or maybe making a joke. But I could tell from the unblinking stares from her and her friends, and the way other people slowed in the hallway to hear my answer, that she was asking a serious question.
“Yes,” I said, turning to face her directly. “Yes, I did. I took Brad Greymark, one of the most popular guys in school, and used my gay magic on him to turn him into one of us.” Her eyes got wide, and she looked at each of her friends’ faces in disbelief. I realized too late that she really thought I was answering her honestly. Foster, Texas, Kyle. Remember. Foster, Texas.
Before I could say anything else, they began to laugh and wandered off like a flock of peroxide-addled sheep.
A couple of the guys shook their heads at me and walked by, no doubt hoping they could resist my “gay magic.” All I knew was that I had probably just made Brad’s day worse without even trying. Of course, the thought that my day was just starting to spiral downward hadn’t even entered my mind yet.
When I walked into Civics, the buzz of half a dozen whispered conversations stopped. Three guesses who they were talking about. I sat down and pulled out my book while the whispers slowly began to start up again. I caught Brad’s name a few times and the word “fag” at least once. I focused my attention on a random page in my book and struggled to find a way to turn off my hearing. If you were wondering, turning off my hearing is not a superpower I happen to possess.
If anything, I had become almost hyperaware of the conversations around me over the years. One of the practical advantages of being socially invisible was that people talked about almost anything in front of you. I had adapted almost secret-agent levels of eavesdropping, and that was messing me up at the moment since I could hear what everyone else was saying.
“I don’t get it.”
“Him? Why him?”
“I didn’t even know he was in our class.”
“Brad must be into nobodies.”
“He’s kinda cute.”
That one got my attention, but I forced myself not to look up to see where it came from. I was cute? Now I was cute? I mean, how long had I sat here next to these peo
ple, but it took this to be considered cute. I swear I didn’t understand how the world worked. I had looked up to see how much longer before class started when my phone vibrated in my jeans. I pulled it out and saw a text from Brad.
BRAD: I hate my life.
I knew how he felt.
KYLE: I hate your life too.
BRAD: Hey you started this!! lol
KYLE: You kissed me jackass!!
BRAD: That doesn’t count. You threw wood first.
KYLE: I hate you.
BRAD: GTG class starting.
I didn’t even notice until I had put my phone away that I had a Stepford Robot smile plastered on my face. My face felt weird as I forced it back to normal and had to wonder how screwed up my life was that smiling was considered an experience outside of normal for me. When I did look around, I saw a few dozen people look down quickly and I realized that I had just added more fuel to the fire.
Thankfully, Mr. Richardson walked in, with the tardy bell right on his heels.
“Okay, settle down,” he said, grabbing his own book off the table. “We left off on Rosa Parks last week, and her arrest in Alabama. Anyone want to explain why she was arrested?”
Of course no one raised their hands because if there is anything worse than being the guy who thinks knowing the answer is cool, it’s being the person who has to prove they know the answer by raising their hand all Mr. Kotter-style. I wasn’t the only person in the room who knew the answer but I was just as afraid to raise my hand as everyone else. He finally called on someone who mumbled a barely audible, “Um, because she was black?”
There were a few snickers from people, and the person who answered tried to shrink back into their chair. Mr. Richardson gave the room a death glare, which was the teacher equivalent of throwing gasoline on a brushfire of embarrassment before it turned into an inferno of humiliation. There’s nothing worse than being laughed at in class while the teacher stomps a foot and claps their hands in an anemic attempt to regain control. It had never happened to me because, until recently, no one could have actually proven I went to Foster High. But I had seen it, and the torture looked horrific.
Mr. Richardson had begun to explain what Rosa Parks was actually arrested for when I heard a fake-ass whisper from behind me. “Maybe she wanted to do it on the bus like Kyle, here, huh?” There is a physical reaction that comes when you realize someone is talking directly to you. It’s a bit like a flush, but instead of warmth, it’s a chill that transcends any reaction you have had from a drop in temperature. It runs down your spine, and it’s what I must imagine being chased in a horror movie must feel like: that moment when the fear turns to panic, and no matter how hard you scream at yourself to move, nothing in your body wants to listen to anything you have to say on the matter.
I knew he saw me stiffen up because his douchebag laughter followed, echoed by the snorting chuckles of two other people. He was performing for an audience.
“That’s what you want, right?” he whispered again. “To get it in the back of the bus like a little bitch?”
I should have been scared. I should have been terrified, to be honest. Minus walking into class buck naked, this had been my nightmare for the past decade, hands down. Getting ridiculed for something I had done was bad enough, but being mocked for being gay? I think I would have preferred going to class naked, as long as it wasn’t so cold my junk didn’t look like it belonged to an infant.
“Least, that’s what I heard. Brad bopping his boyfriend on the bus like all good faggots do.”
I stress again: I should have been scared. But I wasn’t.
I was furious.
I stood up and turned around to glare at the asshole. The look on his face went from cruel leer to absolute shock in two seconds flat. Mr. Richardson stopped talking as the entire class held its breath. “She didn’t want to sit in the back of the bus, you retard!” I screamed at him. “She didn’t want to do it in the back: she refused to move to the back.” The people behind him covered their mouths as they reveled in their comrade’s embarrassment. “And if you have something to say, why not be a man and stand the fuck up and say it out loud?”
There was an audible gasp as the class reacted to me swearing. There were few taboos in high school that can shock a class of teenagers, but swearing in front of a teacher will always be one of them. “Mr. Stilleno,” Richardson called out loudly. I ignored him.
“Does anyone else have anything they want to say?” I asked, looking around the class. “Yes, I’m gay. Yes, I’m dating Brad. I have no idea if he’s gay; if you want to know, ask him. And if you want to know what we’ve done, feel free to describe to me in detail what you’ve done sexually and I’ll be more than willing to share.” I thought people’s eyes were going to fall out of their heads from the way everyone looked at me with stark amazement. “It’s the twenty-first century; I cannot believe my sex life warrants this much conversation. Are we done?”
My heart was pounding in my chest like it was a gerbil trying to escape Richard Gere’s house.
I’m sorry, that was uncool of me. Richard Gere has done nothing to me but make me love him in Pretty Woman, and for me to lash out like that was just tacky.
My heart was pounding in my chest like it was a kid trying to escape Michael Jackson’s house.
See? Again uncool. I am a huge MJ fan and he’s dead, so again, my bad.
I was close to pissing my pants as I realized I had stood up in front of the entire class and essentially dared them to ask me about my sex life.
I turned around and saw Mr. Richardson gaping at me with no earthly idea of what to do next. “What to do when the gay kid loses his shit during class” was not covered in the teacher handbook. I grabbed my book and backpack and tossed my stuff inside. “Don’t bother,” I said, saving him the trouble. “I’m on the way to the principal.”
The room was dead silent as I slammed the door open. Insane or not, I knew I just did something that most people would have thought impossible for me less than an hour ago.
I just gave them something else to talk about.
This was the second time in a week I’d been in the principal’s office. Two times was exactly two more times than I had been in the last ten years combined. Mr. Raymond walked into his office, no doubt holding my file, which I’m pretty sure was heavier than it had been last week. He sat down behind his desk but said nothing as he kept reading whatever it was that was contained within my mythical permanent record. I am sure Mr. Richardson had called over before me and informed them of my Rosa Parks meltdown and that Mr. Raymond was once again stymied by what the hell was wrong with me this time.
“Kyle,” he said, closing the folder. “Another bad day?”
I don’t know if it was nerves or just a lifetime of pent-up frustration bubbling up despite my best efforts, but a sharp bark of laughter escaped my mouth before I could stop it. When I saw the blatant lack of amusement on his face, I tried to sober up, but it was too late, I had caught the giggles. I’m not sure if The Giggles is an ailment that is unique to the socially undeveloped, but I know that I had a bad case of it. Helpless to do anything else, I covered my mouth and looked away from the ever-deepening scowl spreading across his features.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, no doubt hoping his tone might act like a glass of cold water in my face.
No luck.
“Bad day?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Bad day? Mr. Raymond, I have been having a bad life so far.”
He cleared his throat as he waited for me to regain my composure.
“I’m sorry, sir, but no, I’m not having a good day.” I tried again without the laughing. “I suppose that’s because I came out last Thursday and it isn’t going well.” His only reaction was arching one eyebrow in surprise, so I went on. “Kelly kind of cornered me and I just admitted it. So I suppose it’s out there now, and it’s been a hard morning so far. A guy in Civics class began going on about it, and I lost it.”
He had his fingers steepled in front of his face, which looked confused, as if my words were in some foreign language and he had to translate them. After a few seconds of silence, he finally asked. “So, then, you admitted to others you were gay?” I nodded, not sure what part he hadn’t heard the first time, but hey, better late than never, right? “To other students? You actually said it out loud?” Another nod. “Well, then, I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do about it.”
I tried not to drop my jaw in shock.
“You had to be aware that this news was going to be taken with some trepidation by most,” he went on, getting up from behind his desk and starting to pace the room. “This is North Texas, Kyle, and people around here just aren’t going to accept it.” He looked back to me, and I saw not one iota of compassion in his face; if I didn’t know any better, I would have said he was angry. “Now, if anyone threatens you with physical harm or actually hits you, of course, we will intervene, but you had to be ready for this when you ‘came out’.” He added air quotes to the last two words, the distaste in his voice evident.
“I didn’t come out; I was being bullied by Kelly,” I retorted, trying to get my metaphorical feet under me.
“Either way,” he said, opening my file quickly and scribbling something down on the first page. “I would suggest just staying away from those people for the time being.”
“How long would that be?” I asked, not so much shocked as I was pissed.
He looked up again. Closing my folder, he offered, “We are only six months away from graduation.”
I could say nothing to that. I was floored: he pretty much told me to just tough it out until school was over. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to say anything back, he added, “Second period is ready to start. You might want to make sure you aren’t late.”
Part of my brain realized he was dismissing me because I got up and grabbed my backpack automatically. The rest of my brain could not believe this was happening. “So you aren’t going to do anything?”
