Openly Straight (20 page)

Ben came up behind me. “Pretty incredible that someone made that,” he said. “I just don’t want to eat it.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said, not turning around.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

I was, and I wasn’t. All the people I loved were around me, and I felt like I wasn’t even fully there, and for the first time I began to wonder if my decision wasn’t catastrophically bad. I mean, why did it all have to feel so dirty, so fake? How did I wind up this far away from the real Rafe, when my only goal had been to find him? And how could I get back to myself without any major damage — not to
Ben, and not to me? Here was the person I was falling in love with, but how did you get from this ugly-feeling, unreal place to a real, romantic relationship with a guy like Ben? I’d never wanted anything more in my life, but it seemed as distant to me as this tofu beast was from a real live pig.

“Yeah,” I said, turning around and managing a smile. “I’m okay.”

True
to form, my dad made a big spastic deal out of sleeping arrangements, confusing himself and everyone else along the way.

“I don’t know what the right thing is to do,” he said as my mother finished putting individual servings of tofu pig in the freezer after the party. “If Ben was of the opposite sex —”

“Dad,” I said, hoping he’d stop.

He just looked baffled. “We’d put him in the guest room, I guess. And since he’s a boy, I guess …?”

“Dad,” I said. “He’s a guest. He’ll sleep in the guest room. Duh.”

Ben looked over at me like he had a question. I looked away. As much as I craved time with him, I craved sleep even more. So I was okay with Ben in the guest room. It also gave me a chance to degayify my room. Not that there was much to be done, but there were a couple of Alex Sanchez novels I wanted to put away.

That night, I slept holding a pillow to my chest, pretending it were Ben. It was a deep sleep, and I woke up Thanksgiving morning feeling like myself again. In a way.

Thanksgiving dinner was, in a word, crazy. Mom busied herself cooking some meatless monstrosity, and also a turkey, which I had pleaded with her to do. My father, in protest, refused to go in the kitchen. Instead of watching the football game, there was a marathon of the show
Intervention
on A&E, and my dad spent several hours watching drunk people and drug addicts do insane things and then agree to get help when their parents yelled at them.

Before dinner, my dad said it was time for gratitudes. In our family, that means going around the table and coming up with things we are truly grateful for, one at a time. The catch: You have only to a count of three to come up with yours, and if you fail, you’re out. You also can’t repeat any one that had been said. We’d done this every year, and I actually liked the tradition because it made you think about being grateful, like Thanksgiving was supposed to, but it also made you laugh once we got to the end, when everyone started to get silly.

“I’m grateful for my wonderful son,” Mom said, smiling at me.

“This trip, my family …” Ben said.

“Only one,” my dad admonished. “You’ll need to keep some for later.”

Ben shrugged. “This trip.”

“My absurd parents,” I said.

Dad smiled. “My snarky son.”

It went on from there, and by round fifteen, it was getting a little weak.

“Oreos,” Mom said.

“Gerunds,” said Ben.

“Lindsay Lohan” was mine.

“Pornog …” My dad realized what he’d said, and stopped, and we all laughed, and my mother buzzed him.

“You’re not just out, you’re cut off,” she said. “Okay, ready? Three of us left. Tofu.”

Ben: “Soccer.”

Me: “Sports cars.”

Mom: “Chandeliers.”

Ben: “Sex.”

Me: “…”

Mom: “Zzz. Out. Just me and Ben, I guess. Onions.”

Ben:
“Agape.”

Mom: “…”

All of us: “Zzz.”

And we all applauded Ben, the newcomer, who had come in and beaten us at our own game.

“To
agape
,” my dad said, smiling warmly at Ben.

“To
agape
,” we all echoed, raising our wineglasses and drinking to higher love.

That night, Ben and I stayed up drinking wine with Mom and Dad. They had always felt that having me drink with them would “normalize” the experience, as Dad said, and make me less prone to drink otherwise. They were half right. We all got a little buzzed, and they started hammering Ben with stories about me as a kid. My mother’s favorite was about how I had been horrified by the phrase
hot dog
the first time I heard it, when a vendor offered me one at a fair.

“‘Hot. Dog?’ he said. ‘Hot. Dog?’” Mom laughed. “Rafe was
traumatized, poor thing. We’d hoped it would turn him into a vegetarian, but somehow that didn’t happen.”

“My dad made me watch him slaughter chickens on the farm,” Ben said. “To this day, I can’t eat a chicken.”

My dad winced at the thought of animals dying, but I could see he was making an effort not to have any big scenes this weekend, and for that I was grateful. Soon it was time to say good night. We both hugged my parents and went upstairs. Ben changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, and I put on a pair of thin flannel pajama bottoms and a long underwear top. Then he came to my room to hang out.

“So much fun,” Ben said as I closed the door.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

He laughed. “That was like the most fun I’ve ever had at Thanksgiving. Seriously. Meanwhile, you guys probably have that much fun every year.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “A lot of it was the company.”

I got in my bed and Ben lingered. I patted the space next to me, and he came and lay down. The bed creaked from his added weight. My heart felt so full, like it could burst. Like I could.

“Would your parents freak out if they walked in?”

I shook my head. “Please. My dad just about married us off already.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? I would think any parent would not want their kid to be, you know. And ever since we met, they’ve treated me like, I don’t know. A son-in-law. It’s odd.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “My mom told me when I was fourteen that she wanted me to be gay.”

“Therapy much?” he said, laughing, and I laughed too. I left out the small fact that I’d just told her I
was
gay.

“If I told my parents I was gay, they would probably throw me out of the house,” Ben said.

“Wow,” I said. I imagined that happening, and how I would be there for him. It would be me and Ben, against the world. The fantasy made me tingle with excitement.

“So we’re going skiing tomorrow, eh?” Ben asked.

I nodded.

“Cool. You ever want to get back with Claire Olivia?”

I thought about that. “Nah. I mean, maybe if we go to the same college. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“True,” he said. “She’s really beautiful. So full of life.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She really is.”

We were quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of neighborhood dogs barking.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” Ben said softly. “Your family is so open and accepting. I love them. I wish my family were like them.”

“You can take ’em,” I said.

“I swear to God, I wish I really was gay. I’d totally marry you.”

I had had enough wine to do what I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I rolled over onto my side and faced Ben, looking deep into his soulful, kind eyes. “Should we try it?”

Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I can’t figure out any way to get closer to you, and I feel it. Like I want to get closer. It’s not sex I want, it’s just …”

I kissed him then, on the lips, keeping my lips there until he kissed back. And he did, he kissed back, and we opened our lips slightly and then wider, and our mouths were two Os pressing together, and I could taste his tongue because it was so close to mine. Ben breathed
into my mouth. It felt like I’d shot to the moon, this pulsing, rushing roller coaster from below that overtook my body, and I shook.

He pulled back. “Wow,” he said. “That was, that was different.”

I was wet. I could feel it in my pajama bottoms. “Yeah,” I said, breathless.

“Did you like it?”

“Did you?” I asked.

“It was — it was okay. Your lips are different than a girl’s. It was sort of alien.”

“Totally,” I said.

“Did you get, you know, hard?” he asked.

“Did you?”

He looked down, so I did too, and he was definitely tenting the front of his sweatpants.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Thank God,” I said, relieved. “I did more than that.”

He looked down at the wet stain forming on my pajama bottoms. Then he looked back up at me, his eyes wide. I felt as if my heart were in my throat.

“That’ll happen,” Ben said, but his voice was a little shaky, and I knew he was scared. I was too.

“Will it?” I felt so vulnerable.
More naked than naked
, Ben would say.

“I guess
agape
and
eros
are close” was the best he could come up with.

That made me want to hug him tight, because it was so Ben. But I was wet below, and I was pretty sure that hugging was out of the question for the moment.

“Maybe we should …” he said, his voice still shaking a bit.

“Sure. Call it a night.”

Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Don’t you. Freak out about this. It’s okay, all right? It’s okay.”

But I could hear something different in his voice, like he was looking at me but talking to himself. It was like he was trying to save face with a basically straight buddy who would be feeling all freaked about his first time. And I wasn’t that. I felt like that tofu pig, grotesque and in the spotlight and horrible, dishonest in a way that felt so basic that it hurt me behind my eyes to think of it.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re okay.”

He leaned over and softly pecked my cheek, but there was hardly any contact at all.

“Good night, Rafe,” he said, the words right but the tone all wrong. “Love you, man. I love who you are inside.”

The words rang hollow to my ears.

“Yeah, love you too,” I said.

And he left, and I felt like my skin could peel off and there would be this thing underneath, this creature, that would make Ben leave my life. And that scared the hell out of me.

“Just
follow my tracks,” I said. “Stay forward, and let your skis do the work. Don’t force your turns.”

Ben lowered his goggles over his eyes and adjusted his gloves. “Yessir,” he said, and we were off.

I had gotten us to Eldora as early as I could, because I wanted to be first on the mountain — not just for the day, but for the season. This year, the day after Thanksgiving was their opening day. Skiing the virgin trails first was something I tried to do every year if I could. I loved the sound of my skis carving into the pristine white blankets of each run.

The quiet of the mountain matched the silence of our car trip there, but the one thing that was different was how serene the trails were. Untouched, unbothered. That was hardly the way my dad’s Prius had felt as Ben and I wended our way through the mountains.

“Nice morning,” Ben had said, sipping his coffee, as we listened to one of my dad’s CDs, some lame seventies elevator music thing we were too lazy to change.

“Gorgeous,” I’d said. “This is perfect.”

“Perfect,” he’d said, too quickly.

I’d turned up the music, and we’d driven in thick silence to Eldora. On the plane we had gotten around to talking about sleeping in the same bed. This thing that had happened last night felt way harder to deal with.

I took him down Foxtail until it met up with Ho Hum. Two beginner trails — nice and wide, not too steep. The snow was soft and quiet, ideal for some easy runs, and it felt good to be back on familiar terrain, given how unfamiliar everything else in my life felt these days. I made some quick turns, picked up some speed as we reached a short, slightly steeper part of the run, and then slowed at a plateau. I lifted my left ski pole high to let him know I was stopping, then turned to watch him.

He was pretty far up the run still. He made two turns for every one I’d made, traversing the slope before leaning back and swinging his body the opposite way in order to make a quick turn and traverse again. He was controlling his skis, I could tell, yanking them around rather than allowing a weight shift to do the work. When he got to me, his mouth was curled down and he was breathing heavily.

“Show-off,” he said, between huffs.

I smiled. “Sorry.”

“You’re really good.”

“I’m from here,” I said.

“I just need to get my legs under me. It’s been two years. It’s not really like riding a bike, I guess.”

“Don’t worry. We’re just here to have fun. How’s it feel?”

He adjusted his coat. “Other than petrifying, it’s pretty nice. Our mountains aren’t quite this tall.”

“Your hills,” I corrected.

“Whatever,” he said. “They’re not quite this imposing.”

We got a rhythm going. I slowed down and took wider turns, and soon Ben wasn’t working so hard to keep up. He wasn’t great, but he was skiing, and we were both relaxing into the sport.

On the first chairlift ride all the way to the top, I began to feel more like myself again. I think maybe it’s hard to be anxious or unhappy on a ski lift, in the midst of breathtaking beauty. At least for me it is.

“My mom has a saying when we ski,” I said. “She always says, ‘Lean forward, and head on down the mountain.’ I love that. It’s true, right? About life?”

Ben swung his right ski back and forth. He rested the left one on the footrest.

“Interesting. What do you think
lean forward
means?”

I wiped my nose. “It means to be unafraid. Lean into the challenges, don’t lean back. I don’t always do it, but I love it.”

“Lean forward and head on down the mountain. I like that,” Ben said, and the turned-down edges of his mouth curled up.

I inhaled deeply to get that fresh mountain air into my lungs. It seared my nostrils. This was going to be okay, I realized. We were going to be okay. I felt this great sense of relief.

“I’m glad we did this,” I said, looking over at Ben. “I’m glad you came.”

“You wish I came,” he said.

My face flushed pink, or pinker. The silence felt like it could fill the resort for hours. “Did you just make a sexual joke?” I finally managed to say.

He grinned.

“You’re such a dick,” I said, laughing.

“Are you trying to make me make another one?”

I smacked him in the goggles, which were resting on his forehead.

The next run was better. I was actually laughing while skiing, thinking of Ben and his stupid joke. My body felt so much lighter than it had before our chair ride, like I could float away if my skis weren’t weighing me down. And Ben was getting the hang of it too; I saw he was beginning to make turns just by shifting his weight. As in everything else, Ben had an elegance to him. When he let his legs do the work, he was a pretty skier to watch.

“Thanks for bringing me here. I love seeing where you’re from,” he said on the next ski lift.

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe you can take me to New Hampshire next.”

He placed his skis on the footrest and pretended to slice his own throat.

I laughed. “Are you sure you’re not adopted?”

“If it weren’t for my uncle, I wouldn’t be sure of anything.”

We were maybe just a quarter up. That’s the great thing about skiing. You get long, gorgeous rests after you fully exert yourself on a long run. The longest one at Eldora is three miles, and I knew Ben had never seen, or skied, anything like it.

“What was he like?” I asked.

Ben looked out at the horizon.

“He was basically the black sheep of the family. Went to college. Traveled the world. Never married. When my parents talked about him, there was always something in their tone. Like he wasn’t quite right. When he stayed with us, we’d talk about everything.” He lifted his goggles. His eyes were watery, and I didn’t know if it was the wind or what he was sharing.

“He was the one person who made me realize that it was possible to do more than, you know. Stay on the farm and work the fields, I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just I think that’s not really what I’m meant to do. He got that. He got the hell out of Alton. He traveled. Went to China and taught English there. He lived a full life.”

“He sounds amazing.”

“He was. You know, he didn’t care what everyone else thought about his life. I admired that because I can’t even …”

I didn’t ask him to finish the sentence, because I got it. As cool as Ben was, as much as he didn’t get caught up in labels, it was pretty clear that they did matter to him too, underneath. There was a big part of Ben that still bought into his parents’ way of thinking about life. You work hard, you suffer, you die. It was amazing to me that a person could be as smart as Ben but still feel chained in by what his parents thought. I thought about it. Did I buy everything my parents had raised me to believe? No, or else I’d still be living in Boulder. But while I didn’t agree with them on everything, they had taught me that life was an exploration, not a job. That part I definitely liked.

I turned to face him. “Your parents are proud of you,” I said.

He didn’t react. He looked out into the snowy distance.

“They are. They just don’t know how to say it.”

He wiped his nose with his glove. For a second I felt very alone, but then I settled into the moment, and we shared one of those perfect silences. I focused on this beautiful, solitary tree on the apex of one of the slopes above. It looked like it was perched there, all alone, waiting to be told what to do.

“So are we okay about last night?” I finally blurted out.

He looked over at me. I took off my sunglasses and we locked eyes.

We just looked at each other for a while. I wondered, as we did, what he saw. What I saw was this incredible person who was exactly who he was. I admired the hell out of that. Maybe he was gay, maybe he wasn’t. But he was always Ben.

“Still processing,” he said.

I wiped my nose, which was leaking again. “Me too.”

Ben turned forward, so I did too. I looked at the empty seats coming toward us, heading back down the mountain. I watched the skiers below, carving into the virgin white powder. Then I felt a weight on my gloved hand. I looked down. His gloved hand was on top of mine. I turned to look at Ben and got a stunning view of his profile — that strong Roman nose of his, pink from the thin, frigid air.

He didn’t turn his head, but I could feel him squeezing his hand around mine. So I squeezed back.

We allowed the whistling wind to be our sound track for a full minute. As the zenith approached, it was time to raise the bar. Ben tucked his poles on his lap as he adjusted his hat and goggles, and I
grabbed his poles. I motioned and he lifted his skis off the footrest. It was all so easy, communicating with Ben.

The lift reached the plateau, and we raised our ski tips just before they made contact with the crisp snow. Then we stood and let gravity do the work, and we glided down the slope and to the right.