Openly Straight (13 page)

“Good college,” I said. “I mean, I can probably get laid at Harvard or Yale, right?”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Steve. “Those Harvard girls are off the hook.”

“Yeah, like any Harvard girl would give a moron like you the time of day,” Zack said, and everyone laughed. I joined in, because at least it wasn’t about me again.

I looked over at Ben again. He caught my glance and rolled his eyes, and at first I thought he was judging me, that he knew what I was doing. But then I realized he was rolling his eyes at the conversation, and I smiled, grateful I had a friend who didn’t need me to be someone I was not.

When I called Claire Olivia later, I felt like I’d dragged out naked pictures of her and showed them to the guys. It felt like I’d crossed the line. But there was no way I could explain that to her, so I went in another direction.

“My mother is driving me crazy,” I said.

“What now, Shay Shay? Did she actually send you those hemp pillowcases?”

“Nah, she gave up on that. But now she’s all about coming to visit on Parents’ Weekend, and you know she’s going to embarrass me. She lives for that. They both do.”

“Sigh. Parents. They’re the worst,” she said.

“Totally.”

“So how’s the boyfriend front?”

“Nonexistent. I’m just studying all the time.”

She asked, “How’s Ben?” I’d mentioned my new friend a few times, and I had told her about the time we’d gone looking for Bryce, and then how he’d cried on my shoulder and asked me to sleep over. I didn’t tell her that I thought about Ben a lot these days, because that would bring up all sorts of issues I wasn’t ready to talk to her about, such as the fact that Ben didn’t know I was gay.

“I think you’re in love with him,” I answered, laughing.

“Me too. Maybe I’m just jealous that he’s your new me.”

I said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He’s, like, your gal pal, or your guy pal, whatever. And I think it’s so cool, the whole straight and gay buddies thing. He just sounds, you know. Cool.”

“He is,” I said.

“You know, you haven’t said even a single word about the GSA or what the gay scene is over there. It’s a little weird,” she said.

“I’m just not focused there,” I said. And that was the truth.

“Okay, whatever. I want to go on record and say that if you become some celibate monk or something, I am so going to want pictures of you in any frock they make you wear.”

“I’m not becoming a monk,” I said. “Although some of those frocks are very flattering.”

She laughed. “Why can’t You-Know-Caleb be less of a bitch and more like you?”

“It’s one of the mysteries of the universe,” I said. “Why can’t all gay guys be exactly the same so that Claire Olivia doesn’t have to adjust?”

“You’re such an ass.”

“Love you!”

She laughed again. “I love you too, Shay Shay. I just can’t wait to see you. You’ll be back for Thanksgiving, right?”

“Definitely.”

MY FRESHMAN YEAR at Rangeview, two seniors on the football team dressed up as Shakira and Beyoncé for Halloween. One wore this midriff shirt that showed off his hairy stomach, and he kept shaking his butt in people’s faces, and the other wore huge hoop earrings and this tight red dress. It was hysterical. So for Halloween sophomore year, I got this idea. I told my mother, and she took me to this cool vintage clothing store where we got me a leather miniskirt and black leggings. She made me up that morning for school, and Dad couldn’t stop laughing when I came downstairs as an eighties rocker chick, with this stupid plastic electric guitar thing around my waist. I wasn’t pretty, exactly. If anything, I looked kind of butch.

But when I got to school, the weirdness began. Kids looked at me and then quickly looked away, as if they were seeing something delicate and secret about me. In history class, Ms. Peavy used my outfit to talk about Stonewall, which was this big riot during which drag queens fought cops in Greenwich Village in New York City. It turned out to be the beginning of the gay rights movement.

“When Rafe wears that outfit, it works on two levels,” she told the class. Everyone was staring at me, and suddenly I was a red-faced rocker, wishing I were just about anywhere else in the world. “It’s fun, and at the same time it reminds us of the powerful role drag queens played in the gay rights movement.”

I wanted to say,
Um, I’m not actually a drag queen. Drag queens impersonate women. Wait,
am
I a drag queen?
I didn’t even know anymore. All I knew was that suddenly everyone was looking at my outfit like it was a political statement, or proof that deep inside I really wanted to be a woman. Not funny at all.

When the two football guys wore women’s clothing, I’m pretty sure nobody called them drag queens. I remember that day at lunch this kid at the table next to mine asked his friend if he’d seen the two jock transvestites.

Drag queen. Transvestite. Very different, I guess. And apparently, an openly gay guy can only be the former.

It was a way awkward day, and I will definitely never do that again.

A few weeks after that, after a soccer game at Gateway, this huge high school in Aurora, Jordan Kemp came up to me in the locker room.

“Hey, Rafe,” he said, his head down. Jordan and I had probably exchanged two words ever. His eyes were really close together, in the way mentally challenged people’s eyes are often too close together.

“Hey,” I said. “Good game.” Jordan had scored two goals. I’d done nothing to help the team at all.

“Lemme ask you a question,” he said, furtively looking around the otherwise empty row of lockers.

“’Kay,” I said.

“I’m definitely not gay, but if I was, would I be considered hot?”

I tried really hard not to laugh, knowing that if I did, it would close this little honest window that had opened.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Kinda hot.”

“Should I get, like, a different haircut?” He touched his dark blond hair. It was short on the sides and front, not neat and not styled, but short, almost like he should have a mullet, except he didn’t have the party in back.

“Maybe use some gel,” I said, having no idea.

“Cool,” he said, avoiding my eyes, and then, with a quick, impersonal nod, he was off. I don’t think Jordan ever said another word to me.

A couple of weeks later, I scored my first goal of the season. The goal happened to help us beat Niwot, 3–2.

Afterward, a reporter for the school paper, Roger Jones, came up to my locker with a notepad and a digital recorder, which he shoved in my face.

“The gay guy won the game!” he enthused, as if that were a question. I froze.

We stared at each other for a few seconds until it got uncomfortable. “Do you have anything to say?” a rattled Roger asked. I was like,
No, not really
, and he went away, and the article came out, and the headline had the word
gay
in it, as if who I was attracted to had anything at all to do with kicking the stupid soccer ball. So Rosalie, the guidance counselor, went and had a talk with Roger. Because it was Boulder, we had to have this big meeting where I sat uncomfortably in the background as Rosalie lectured the newspaper
staff not to make a big deal out of someone’s sexuality unless it was relevant. And all the time, I sat there wondering:
When is it relevant? When I get a boyfriend?

“So,
are you up for something insanely stupid?” I asked Ben when he opened the door.

It was late Saturday morning, a week before Parents’ Weekend. He stared at me, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. He was in his sleeping shorts, his thick legs making it hard for me to look up at his face.

“So, something insanely stupid?” I said again. “You game?”

“Wow, that’s quite an offer. I’m guessing this is not a two-person outing?”

I laughed. “Did the ‘insanely stupid’ part give it away?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“I actually have no idea what this outing is. I just have a strong sense that it will be odd, since it’s an Albie-and-Toby production.”

“I’m in,” he said.

Later, we four walked to the parking lot, me and Ben wearing normal clothing, Toby wearing his usual skinny jeans and hoodie, and Albie wearing pants with arguably the biggest pockets I’d ever seen. It looked like you could fit a family of squirrels in there. When
I asked him about it, he said, “You always want to be prepared for the unforeseen.” And that’s when I started really having doubts about this outing.

Steve Nickelson was in the parking lot, getting something from his trunk. As we approached, he had a weird look on his face. I knew it was because Ben and I were with Toby and Albie. Then, as we got closer, the look turned to a smile.

“Hey, guys,” he said.

“Hey,” Ben said, and I saluted.

We continued on in silence toward the car.

“You know, the way Steve and all of them are so nice,” I said, “there’s something menacing about it.”

“Nice? When is Steve Nickelson nice?” Toby said.

“He’s almost always nice,” I said.

“Yeah, if you’re on the inside,” Albie said. “Otherwise, he’s a flaming prick. And not in a good way, Toby.”

Toby said, “Thanks for clarifying.”

“But wasn’t Steve nice to you after the guy …” and then I realized this might be a delicate area. I mean, Ben told me about how Steve hung out with Toby after the gay speaker came in, and if I’d been publicly gay, I might have been free to talk about it. But since I was supposedly straight, I had to watch what I said so that I wasn’t (A) too knowledgeable about gay things or (B) insulting to gays. It was exhausting. Don’t try this at home.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “For like a week after that football guy spoke, he was all over me. I was like his pet. Like, oh, look, how cute. A homosexual of our very own. And then he was, like, gone. I haven’t talked to him since, and he ignores me in the hallways if I say hi.”

I was having trouble thinking of Toby in quite the same way ever since I saw him leave the woods after Robinson. I just was having trouble … picturing it, exactly. Toby, first of all, was like the least sexual person in the history of the world for me. Too skinny and spiky haired and quirky. And Robinson was the least talkative person ever. No personality at all. What did they talk about? Did they even talk? Maybe that’s how it worked at Natick: Take what you can get. So far, I had made getting laid at Natick an impossibility for myself, so who was I to say?

We got into the car in our previous formation: me and Ben in the back, Albie driving, Toby shotgun. I had no idea where we were going as Albie pulled Sleepy out of the parking lot and onto Green Street.

“Give me a hint: Does this trip have anything to do with the end of the world?” I asked.

Albie and Toby looked at each other as they pondered the correct answer.

“In a way, yes,” Albie said.

“Oh, good,” I said. “I’m sorry in advance, Ben.”

“Hey, I’m here on my own volition,” Ben said.

Even though I liked hanging out with Steve and his posse, I was equally happy spending time with Albie and Toby, a fact I hid from my jock friends — except Ben. The few times we walked as a foursome, Ben didn’t seem to give a crap what people thought of him hanging out with Albie and Toby. It made my opinion of Ben even higher.

Five minutes later, Albie turned on his right turn signal and we pulled into a place called Dowse Orchards.

“Huh,” I said. “I was not expecting this.”

“No. Me neither,” said Ben.

“How is this related to the end of the world?” I asked.

“Well, if the world was going to end, an apple orchard would be a reasonably good place to camp out. Food, shelter of the big trees,” Albie said.

“Ah,” I said. “Of course.”

Albie broke into a rare smile. “I didn’t say it was the BEST place to be should the apocalypse hit. That would probably be a cave stocked with nonperishables and enough ammunition to survive the inevitable postapocalypse riots.”

We walked over to the farm stand where the owners were selling apple cider.

Toby said, “Hi, my name is Bailey Hutchinson, and I am an apple enthusiast. Might we pick apples at your orchard?”

It took everything I had not to laugh.

The woman, maybe forty, with curly brown hair and lots of freckles, smiled. “So long as you pay for ’em, I don’t care what the heck you do here,” she said. “Want a picking pole?”

“Indeed,” Toby said. “Indeed we do.”

“And a couple of buckets?”

“Four, please,” Toby said.

She studied us before turning around and getting us four buckets and a pole with what looked like a birdcage on top of it.

“Now, you look like nice boys. You behave, hear?”

“I promise. I’ll keep an eye on them, or my name isn’t Bailey Hutchinson,” Toby said.

We each grabbed a bucket and headed back to the orchard, the smell of apples suddenly lodged in the back of my throat. I’d never really noticed that apples had such a sweet smell before.

“What possible trouble could people get into at an apple orchard?” I asked as we passed through an open field.

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Albie. “Haven’t you heard of apple gangs?”

This cracked Ben up, and Albie seemed pleased.

“Absolutely. There are drive-by apple throwings. It’s a dangerous world.”

“Not to mention the terrible things that can happen when rival gangs wear the wrong colors. Like if the Golden Deliciouses wear red, or the Honeycrisps wear green,” said Toby.

“I wonder what they’d call an apple orchard gang?” I asked. “The MacDaddies? Like Mac-Intosh? That’s not bad.”

“Eh,” said Toby. “We can do better. You don’t like the Golden Deliciouses?”

“Would you be offended if I said that sounded really gay?” Albie asked.

“I would take it as a compliment,” Toby said, and Ben laughed again, so I did too.

“Are we forming some kind of apple gang now?” Ben asked.

“Sure,” Toby said as we reached a clearing with a bunch of picnic tables. All around us were groups of trees and signs about what harvests were available and where to find them.

“The Apple Dumpling Gang?” Ben asked.

“What the hell is the Apple Dumpling Gang?” asked Albie.

Ben said, “The Apple Dumpling Gang. Wasn’t that like an old movie or a cartoon or something?”

“It does sound kind of familiar,” I answered. “I like it. We’re the Apple Dumpling Gang.”

Toby giggled. “It’s perfect. Scary, but not too scary. Cartoonish, but not too cartoonish. Sexy, but not too sexy. You don’t mess with the Apple Dumpling Gang.” He struck a pose, his arms crossed in front of his skinny chest, and attempted a serious, menacing expression.

“Yeah, but what does our gang do?” Ben asked as we approached a sign for Jonathan apples.

“We maintain order among the different apple breeds,” Toby explained. “We make sure the Jonathans and the McIntoshes don’t get into it. And, of course, we defend our territory. This, friends, is our territory.”

“I want the pole,” I said.

“I figured Toby would say that,” Albie said.

I turned crimson.

“Come on, be nice,” said Ben, which made my face and neck flush even more.

“Oh, please,” Albie said. “You should hear the things he says to me.”

“It’s true,” Toby said, turning around from where he was standing guard, defending our territory. “I’m horrible to him. And he deserves it.”

“You guys are like an old married couple,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not gay, Albie?”

Albie put his arm around Toby. “If only. Wouldn’t this be a nice trophy wife or husband or whatever? The only problem is that I find boys about as attractive as I find hamsters.”

“Yes, if you don’t dig hamsters, that’s a problem,” I said, looking over at Ben, who was smiling at me. And I got the idea he was thinking the same thing I was:
We’re nice, comfortable straight guys. That’s cool, right?

Ben and I went and actually picked apples, which wasn’t super-exciting, exactly, but was mildly entertaining. We took the pole, and it was fun trying to get the apples high up in trees to fall into the birdcage thing. We succeeded about half the time.

“I’ve never had a gay friend before,” Ben said, and my heart skipped a beat until I realized he meant Toby.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I have. But it’s the same. People are people.”

“People are, people are,” he said, and I cracked up because he was so adorkable — Ben the apple orchard philosopher. I could get used to walking through apple orchards with Ben.

We came back with a whole bucket full of Jonathan apples and found Toby and Albie filling their buckets with shiny red and green fruit. “Nice job protecting our territory,” I said.

“Thanks,” said Toby.

Just then an old lady walked by. She smiled at us. I smiled back. Then Toby stepped forward, crossed his skinny arms again, and tried to look tough. The woman looked at him, did a double take, and walked away, shaking her head.

That made Ben howl. I definitely had never heard him howl, but I guess something about Toby scaring away an old lady from our gang turf was funny to him and he doubled over. That made me laugh, of course, and soon we all were, and I kind of felt sorry for the old lady,
but mostly I felt like it was hard to breathe because I was laughing so hard.

“Stop,” Toby said, once he recovered and went back into character again. “You’re killing our reputation as gang members. We’re the toughest gang in this entire apple orchard, and you can’t show weakness.”

Albie kept laughing, and Toby picked up an apple and kind of tossed it at him. It hit Albie in the forearm hard, though.

“Hey!” he yelled.

Albie picked up the apple, and Toby started running. So Albie chucked it as hard as he could, but he couldn’t reach the sprinting Toby.

“You need someone with an arm,” Ben said, and he picked up an apple and threw it high and far. Toby was now facing us, a good one hundred feet away, and the apple was in the air for a long, long time. Toby watched it as it approached and stuttered in his shoes, unsure of which way to dodge. He was still standing in the same spot what felt like minutes later, when the apple smacked him on the shoulder.

He fell over. Which just about made us die laughing.

I grabbed a bucket and ran over to Toby, who at first was afraid but then got it — I was going to protect him. Apples started flying in both directions as infighting overtook the once solid Apple Dumpling Gang. I took one from Ben on the shin, and it really hurt. But I got him in the back, and he yelled, “Shit!” and even though we were involved in a painful apple fight, we kept throwing. Fortunately, none of us had real good aim.

“Boys! Excuse me! Excuse me! Boys!” the woman yelled, running up the hill toward the clearing. “Stop this right now! You will pay for all those apples, you know. Are you crazy?”

“We’re sorry, ma’am,” Toby said. “We apologize. There was a gang war.”

It took everything I had not to bust out laughing again.

It cost each of us twenty-one dollars to pay for the apple carnage. We wanted to take some home, but the lady confiscated them and told us never to come back. I couldn’t help it; my face got red from getting yelled at, but also from having the most fun I’d had in an afternoon, maybe ever.

Back in the car, we just drove around for a while, not sure where to go. Then Albie reached into his pocket and pulled out one shiny Jonathan apple.

“Hungry?” he asked us.

“How’d you do that?” I asked, wondering when he’d had time to pocket an apple.

“Oh, I have four of them,” he said, patting his megalarge pockets. “Next time you won’t laugh when I tell you to watch
Survival Planet
.”