Openly Straight

by Bill Konigsberg

  That was as far as it went. It was just a normal tutoring session, and at the end of it, off came the finger, and both of us pretended like it hadn’t happened. I asked what subjects interested him in school, and he said, “I want to be an engineer.”

  And I was like, An engineer, asking the writing kid for help in science? That’s when I fully accepted that Clay had come over with a specific purpose in mind, and that purpose consisted of laying one digit on the meatiest part of my thigh for somewhere between twelve and eighteen minutes. I was definitely okay with that.

  “Do you think you’ll need help again?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Cool.”

  Rafe,

  Nice job of showing us Clay (and Claire Olivia) without telling us too much! It would be easy to just say that Claire Olivia has a way with words, or that Clay is an awkward character, but you do a nice job of demonstrating it through their dialogue and actions. In your opinion, does self-expression get easier once you’re out of the closet? Do you think it would help Clay?

  — Mr. Scarborough

  I waited to call my mom until Albie packed up his bags and went off to the library. It was hard enough avoiding the subject of my sexuality with her; I didn’t need to be worried about how it all sounded to him too.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Darling! How are you? How is Massachusetts? How do you like the school? Are you making friends?”

  “Whoa, one at a time, please,” I said. “I’m fine. School’s good. It’s totally … different than Boulder. In a good way.”

  “That’s fantastic, Rafe. Fantastic. I can’t wait to see it in person!” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s hilarious.”

  My mother’s tone changed. “Hon. You know that Parents’ Weekend is not this weekend but next, right? Did you really think we wouldn’t come?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Um, yeah, no, I totally figured you’d be here.”

  “Oh, Rafe, you’re such a bad liar.”

  “Fine. No, I didn’t know.” I rested my forehead on my desk, my mouth far enough away from the mouthpiece that I could say an inaudible “fuck” even though I was alone in the room.

  “Well, now you do,” she said. “We can’t wait to see you.”

  “Are your tickets refundable?”

  “Honey! Did you really think we’d send you to school across the country and then not check up on you? We want to know that you haven’t run off and joined the circus. We’ll be there, Rafe. Count on it.”

  I cradled my head in my left hand, holding the phone with my right. “I’m kidding, Mom. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Well, you better be. I wouldn’t want your father to get it in his head that you need to be embarrassed.”

  “Mom! Please. Please tell me you’ll bring his leash.”

  “I never leave home without it,” she said. “Now tell me, who are these new friends of yours? Have you found a boyfriend?”

  “…”

  “Darling?”

  “Mom …” I said softly. Maybe communication was a lot harder when you weren’t out, like Mr. Scarborough said, because I felt like I had to choose each word supercarefully.

  She said, “What? It’s a perfectly normal question.”

  “I’m not looking for a boyfriend, Mom.”

  “That seems like a strange choice … at an ALL-BOYS SCHOOL! I mean, come on, darling, who do you think you’re talking to? You know, when your dad and I went to Oberlin, well … Oh, for God’s sake. You know you can talk to me.”

  “You really don’t want to know,” I said.

  “Well, now that you say that, I really do, Rafe. I really do want to know. What’s going on?” I could hear an edge in my mother’s voice.

  “Mom. I’m not gay at Natick.”

  “You’re … straight?”

  “No.”

  “Bi? Bicurious? Genderqueer?” she asked.

  “Stop it, Mom. I’m just not gay.”

  “Just not gay,” she said, as if she were reading some odd item off a menu.

  “Right.”

  “But you are still gay.”

  “Duh.”

  She raised her voice a bit, which was unusual for my mother. “Oh, I do NOT think this is a situation that calls for a duh. I don’t get it. You’re back in the closet?”

  “Not exactly, Mom. I’m just not telling anyone.” It was more like I was in the doorway than actually in the closet, I thought.

  “Seamus Rafael. For goodness’ … That’s the closet, honey. You’ve been through this. Why would you go through it again?”

  “The closet is when you say you’re not gay,” I said, standing and moving over to my bed. “I’m just not saying one way or the other.”

  She sighed. “It sounds like you’re lying, honey.”

  “Not telling is not lying.”

  “Well, what’s going to happen when you make a close friend?”

  I lay down, turned on the speakerphone, and placed the speaker next to my head. “I already have,” I said, thinking of Ben. “And I’m not telling him.”

  “Why would you do that?” She sounded so exasperated.

  “I’m tired of it. I’m so tired of being the gay kid. I don’t want this anymore. I just want to be, like, a normal kid.”

  “Oh, honey. There’s no such thing as a normal kid.”

  I closed my eyes. “You don’t get it.”

  “That’s true. Explain this to me, Rafe. I must be lost.”

  I took a deep breath. “Back in Boulder, when people saw me, they saw the GAY kid. It was like, every second of my life, I had to be aware of the fact that I was different.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” my mother said, her voice full of compassion in that inimitable Opal Goldberg way.

  “When I went to soccer practice at Rangeview, I knew they were not talking about girls in front of me because it was awkward having me there. Did you know that in history class, Ms. Peavy asked me for the gay perspective on the civil rights movement?”

  “I’m sure Ms. Peavy was just trying to support you,” my mother said. “Surely you could have told her how this made you feel. Told anyone, really. This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

  “But that’s part of it. It was like, I’m so special, my feelings are so special. I wanted to get my feelings hurt sometimes and not have Mommy come to school.”

  “Well,” my mother said, her voice sharp.

  I said, “I know, Mom. You’re awesome. Dad is awesome. I just — I just wanted something different, is all. I just want people to see me.”

  “You don’t have any idea how lucky you are, do you?”

  I closed my eyes. “Yeah, I do.”

  “No, you don’t. If you had been born just ten years earlier, you would have been torn apart for being openly gay.”

  I exhaled. “I know, Mom….”

  “Twenty years ago, you might have had to quit school. There would have been violence.”

  I repeated myself in the exact same tone. “I know, Mom….”

  “Now you’re able to be exactly who you are, and your friends love you for it, and everyone seems to respect you, and you’ve thrown that all away,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “I really don’t understand you, Rafe. I don’t understand this.”

  “Well, I guess you don’t need to,” I said.

  “That’s your answer?” she asked.

  I sighed. “I just, you don’t get it. If it’s so different being gay these days, if I’m such a new case, then how can you expect to understand what’s going on inside me?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Well, I don’t have an answer for that one, Rafe. But I don’t like this.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. But this was what I wanted to do.”

  “And when we visit?” she asked.

  I sat up. “You’ll need to go along with my choice. Sorry, but you will.”

  “Oh, no. No, no, no,” she said, her voice trembling now. “I am not liking
the sound of this, Rafe. You’re telling me that I have to go back in the closet too! And your father. How could you not think about that?”

  “Why do I need to worry about your reaction to my life?”

  “Rafe, you are really being a brat right now,” she nearly shouted. It was so unusual for her to raise her voice that a part of me was enjoying getting her riled up.

  “Okay, if this is where this conversation is going, Mom, I’m hanging up,” I said, staying calm.

  “Rafe. Did you expect you could just tell me this and it would immediately be fine?”

  “I expected not to tell you at all.”

  “Wow. I am just so … disappointed. I don’t know how to react to you doing this.”

  “You don’t need to react in any way. Just be my mom.”

  “Be straight Rafe’s mom, you mean,” she said flatly.

  “Why does it need to be labeled one way or the other?”

  She sighed, still sounding exasperated. “It’s called heterosexism, honey. You used to talk about it when you spoke at schools, remember? You’re assumed to be straight if you’re not openly gay.”

  “Fine. Then, yes. You’re the mother of straight Rafe, if you have to put a label on me.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I just HATE this, sweetheart. Hate it. But if this is what you want, I’ll speak with your dad. We’ll do the best we can, I suppose. But please do not blame me if we screw this up. We’re not perfect, you know.”

  “I’m counting on you,” I said. “I need you to please try your hardest. Please.”

  “Ugh. We’ll do our best. That’s all I can promise.”

  “Thanks, Mom. You are the best. Really.”

  “You know, I’m beginning to think perhaps I am.”

  CLAIRE OLIVIA, not my mother, was the one who talked me into getting involved with Speaking Out.

  One day after school we were at the Laughing Goat, a cool coffee shop on Pearl Street, the kind of place where they proudly announce that their napkins are made from 100 percent recycled hemp. Claire Olivia was talking about this guy Willy in our school. He was a Mormon and he came from this huge family that was super-strict. His dad fully expected Willy to wear that special Mormon underwear and go on a mission for two years when he was nineteen. Willy was superartistic, like incredible at painting and stuff. He was a nice kid too. What he definitely wasn’t, though, was a lumberjack type. He would never wear flannel, and he would totally look ridiculous holding an axe.

  Claire Olivia was talking about how in homeroom, out of nowhere, he started crying, and it turned out that the night before, his dad found Willy on this emo website. It wasn’t even a gay thing; it was just emo music and chat. But his dad got furious and threatened to “put an end to this GD misfit stuff.” He said if Willy went on that site again, he’d be sent to a place called Exodus, a church camp where they turned guys like Willy into “real men.”

  As I said, it wasn’t even a gay thing. But it made me think of how hard some kids have it with their families. Me, I could show up as Lady Gaga dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and Mom would be like, “How was your day, honey?” That’s just not the case for most kids.

  I told Claire Olivia about my mom’s idea that I should join this group in which I’d speak at high schools about what it was like to be gay, to be, like, a good role model, and Claire Olivia’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh, my God, Shay Shay, you should totally do that,” she said. “You would be seriously awesome at that.”

  Maybe I’m a praise whore or something, but that was enough for me. I volunteered. My mother was so proud of me that she started to cry as she gave me the e-mail address of the woman to contact.

  I had to go to three Saturdays’ worth of training, where I basically learned how to speak to big groups, and how to make sure not to say anything that could get Speaking Out in trouble, and how to handle all sorts of gay questions. You become an expert on gay issues in a way, because they keep throwing numbers at you. Like, did you know that LGBT kids are 8.4 times more likely than straight kids to attempt suicide? And 50 percent of LGBT kids are rejected by their parents? That between 20 and 40 percent of homeless teens say they’re gay, lesbian, or transgender, and that up to 50 percent of the guy teens have sold their bodies to support themselves? Well, that’s the kind of stuff I learned, and not having those issues made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

  The first school I ever spoke at was Niwot, which is about twenty minutes north of Boulder. My mom drove me there, and she was sitting in the back of the auditorium while I talked.

  “What was it like, telling your mom and dad?” this big blond girl with a butterfly barrette in her hair asked.

  “Well, my parents are awful, so … oh, hey, Mom,” I said. “My mom is here, actually, so I can’t give you all the dirt.”

  There was polite laughter from the audience.

  “It’s kind of unusual, my situation,” I said. “I mean, my mom and dad always talked about how some people were straight and some were gay, so it wasn’t, like, shocking that when I told them, they were totally fine with it.”

  This kid, maybe fifteen, raised his hand. I remember I was smiling, thinking that it was good that I was keeping things light and humorous. It really helped straight people deal with gay issues if you fed it to them with a little humor, I’d learned.

  “What would you do if, like, you had a friend? And your friend was gay? And his parents were, well, they don’t like gays at all, and they said they’d disown him if he turned out gay?”

  The room got silent. I got it immediately. I could see it in his drawn, tired, sad face. And I felt bad, suddenly, that I’d been acting like being gay isn’t this big thing, when for a lot of kids, it totally is.

  I wanted to say to him: Stay strong. Don’t ever let that light inside flicker out, because your situation, it’s not ever going to be easy, and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. But I couldn’t say that to a kid who was talking about “a friend.” So instead, I said, “Outside support. Tell your friend to find some youth groups, or a gay hotline where he can talk to someone. And be a good friend to him. Please. He needs good friends.”

  The kid nodded blankly and sat down, and I don’t remember anything else from that day, except how my mom and I drove in silence most of the way home, and I reached out at one point and took her hand, and I could sense the tears dripping down her face without even looking.

  Rafe,

  Lots to like about this piece! It made me cry. I cried not just for the boy who asked the question, but because I feel pain here. That tells me that you did a good job of showing the scene and not just telling us about it. At the same time, this feels brief. Could you have gone further? Are there places you fall back on exposition when you could have stayed in scene? Take a look at the paragraph where you write “I felt bad, suddenly, that I’d been acting like being gay isn’t this big thing.” What other choices could you make there, and how would they change the piece?

  — Mr. Scarborough

  “I want to talk a bit today about respecting and understanding differences,” Mr. Scarborough said as he sat down on the corner of his desk and faced us, crossing his loafers. He had become my favorite teacher, and I had spent several free periods in his office, just talking about writing.

  “I’m sure there are a lot of feelings going on about your classmate Bryce Hixon, who is no longer in school with us. Now, the word around school, I understand, is that Bryce suffered from depression. Fine. But I want to talk about the invisible elephant in the room.

  “Bryce is black. How many other black students are there in the junior class?”

  Everyone looked around. The answer was obvious.

  “None?” I said.

  He nodded. “Oftentimes here at Natick, we talk about being color-blind. But I want, for just a moment, for you to think about what it might be like to be the only black person in the room. Would color blindness then be a good thing,
or a bad thing?”

  Again, we were quiet. There was awkward foot shuffling.

  “Depends?” a kid in the back said.

  “Sure. Depends,” Scarborough said. “What else?”

  “We’re a pretty tolerant place,” Steve said, an edge to his voice.

  “Ah, interesting word. Tolerant. What does tolerant mean?”

  “It means we tolerate,” Steve said, flat. “We accept people.”

  “Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn’t it? Acceptance, though, what’s that?”

  I thought about that. It reminded me of the excerpt from Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story that Mr. Scarborough had assigned us. White had talked about the strange sort of tolerance his roommates had had for him back at his boarding school in the 1950s. I remembered underlining the word tolerance. I mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less. So is acceptance at the top of the pyramid? Is that what everyone wants in the best of all possible worlds? Acceptance? I rolled the idea around in my head. It didn’t feel right, somehow.

  No one was saying anything.

  “Acceptance also has a bit of negative to it, doesn’t it?” I finally said.

  Scarborough looked over at me. “Yes! Tell me more about that.”

  My face reddened. I knew everyone was looking at me. I didn’t want to stand out in this conversation, but I did have something to add. I took a shot.

  “Well, if you need to accept something, that means it’s not like it should be, right? Like you accept something as it is.”

  “No,” someone said, from the back. “You get accepted into college. It doesn’t mean you aren’t as you should be. That’s stupid.”

  “Not stupid,” Scarborough said. “Stay with me here. That’s a slightly different form of the word. And yet, colleges accept students who are otherwise rejected. Acceptance is an affirmation that you’re good enough.”

  We were quiet. I looked around. A lot of the kids, Steve included, seemed to be writing that down, and I almost laughed. It was like, This isn’t going to be on a test, dummies. Listen. Stop worrying about memorizing things you don’t even understand. I turned my eyes to Scarborough, and I watched as he saw the same thing I did. I could see that the class’s silence was even more disappointing to him. His expression was sad, and then he caught me looking and put on a poker face as quickly as he could. It made me feel good to know I wasn’t the only one concerned about the lack of intellectual curiosity within this group.