Openly Straight (5 page)

“Now
don’t kill me,” I said when the voice at the other end said hello. “I know it’s been too long. I’ve been really busy settling in.”

“Who is this?” Claire Olivia said. “I don’t recognize the voice.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right it won’t. What’s with not calling me back for almost a week? What am I, chopped liver?”

“Are you still going for the whole Jewish grandmother thing? Because I thought we’d talked about this? You’re Irish, girlie girl. It’s not working.”

“All I know, Seamus Rafael Goldberg, is I haven’t heard your sweet voice in way too long! What’s going on, Shay Shay?”

“Oh, you know. Got married. Divorced. Became a drunk. Moved to Reno.”

“You are NOT getting away without giving me a full report. I’ve MISSED you, Shay Shay! Seriously. You cannot not call like that. I’m having Rafe withdrawals!”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I hate that I’ve been such a suck-ass friend. What’s wrong with me?”

“We do not even have time for you to get all self-pityish. We have way too much to cover. After all, my life is going to serious hell.”

I lay back sideways on my bed and kicked my legs up against the wall. I knew Claire Olivia well enough to know that I was about to hear a drawn-out story. And I was glad. It
had
been too long, really. “Tell me, tell me,” I said.

She took a dramatic breath. “Thank God. I absolutely have to tell someone who will actually understand. So I’m with Courtney and her boyfriend, Sam, and You-Know-Caleb at the Laughing Goat.”

Claire Olivia called this guy Caleb “You-Know-Caleb,” because that’s how everyone mentioned him to me. He was the only other openly gay kid in our grade at Rangeview. If I had to describe him, I’d say he was, well, bitchy. I hate to stereotype, but he was. Anyway, almost every day someone said to me, “You know Caleb?” — like we must be close, since we shared a sexual orientation. It made me a little crazy. We definitely didn’t hang out.

“So this is like Monday, after school, first day. And we’re just hanging out, and this serious cutie is with his friend, he’s wearing a burnt-orange ski hat and has the most insanely beautiful blue eyes and cheekbones up to the ceiling, and he keeps looking over. And it’s like, at me. I mean, he’s looking. So I smile at him, and Caleb, of course, you know he goes over….”

I looked at my skinny legs and then studied the ceiling. I was used to Claire Olivia going on and on; that was our thing. I did it sometimes too. It was just that so much had happened since the last time we’d done this. Back in Boulder, it wasn’t unusual for me to go
weeks talking only to my parents and her. Now I had a lot of people in my life whom I talked to, and it felt different. I imagined her on a raft at Barker Reservoir, floating off into the distance, floating, floating.

“… And so that night we text a hundred times, and it’s obvious that he likes me and I like him, and he finally says, ‘Wanna hang out Friday?’ And I didn’t even play coy, because it wasn’t needed. I just wrote yes. And he’s like, ‘Cool. I’ll call you.’ And then Tuesday and Wednesday, no calls, no texts. And I finally text him on Wednesday night with something appropriately snarky, like, ‘Are you dead?’ And get this: no reply.”

I suppressed a yawn. How many boyfriends had I been through with Claire Olivia? How many bad dates? And that was the thing. How many had she gone through with me? I hadn’t said much to her about the only so-called dates I’d ever had because, frankly, there was nothing much to say. And now I had lots to tell her, and, granted, it was my fault she didn’t know some of the stuff that was going on, but even if she had known, would I have gotten the chance to go first? Or would we be having this same one-way conversation?

“… And I call Caleb and we talk about it for an hour, and even he’s like, ‘Enough, you’ve known this guy like a day,’ and I said,
‘But we texted,’
and Caleb is like, ‘Two out of three psychologists say that texting is not an actual date.’ But, anyway, the guy totally blows me off.

“So, like, Friday, yesterday, after school we go back to the Goat. It’s me and Courtney and You-Know-Caleb again, we’re like this trio now that you have ABANDONED me. We go there and we’re having Italian sodas and guess who walks in?”

There was a pause, and it occurred to me that it was my line.

“The guy,” I said.

“The guy,” she repeated. “Whose pathetic name is Pete. Pathetic Pete. And he’s all smiles, and he comes and sits with us.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to straighten my legs to be at a ninety-degree angle with my torso.

“… And he says, get this: ‘I’m just not into you in that way. But you’re a really cool chick. Can we be friends?’

“Um, no! So I told him in no uncertain terms that we could not. Okay. That’s a lie. I said I had to go to the bathroom, and then I waited in there until Courtney came, and she totally was there for me and she said she’d make sure he was gone before I came out. She’s a really cool girl. You would have liked getting to know her better if you had NOT ABANDONED ME HERE.”

“Have you sold the film rights?” I asked.

“I know you did not just say that, Shay Shay.”

“Tee hee,” I said. And the thing was, I was only half kidding. It was a decent story, but we hadn’t talked in over a week, and I was at a new school. Surely if our roles were exchanged, I would not have gone off on a pointless story like that, would I have? And then having that thought made me feel a little guilty, because it was Claire Olivia, and she was my best friend in the world.

“That guy is a jerk,” I said, hoping it would make up for my snarky comment.

In the slight pause she gave, I could sense that she got that our connection was a little off. “I know, right?” she said.

“Totally,” I said.

“So other than my catastrophic life, what’s going on with you in Rhode Island?”

“I’m in Massachusetts, girlie girl,” I said, a little irked.

“I know, Shay Shay. But to be honest, I’m pretty sure the East Coast is not really a place. I think it’s all a Republican plot to create this make-believe liberal place so that they can claim the rest of the country and be like,
You have your place
. So given that it doesn’t exist, I refuse to believe in state lines and artificial boundaries. So I’m going to call it Rhode Island or North Carolina or Delaware, or whatever occurs to me at the moment. ’Kay?”

“’Kay.”

“So what’s going on in Vermont?”

“It’s cool. I really like it here. I’m having a blast.”

“Have you met any guys?”

“It’s an all-boys school. I’ve met tons of guys.”

“No. I mean, like, dateable guys.”

“They’re all dateable for someone.”

“Evasive much? You’re pissing me off.”

“I’ve met a lot of great people,” I said. “I’m not looking to date right now. I just want to hang out, you know?”

She was silent for a while. So I was too.

“I miss hanging out at the Laughing Goat with you,” she said.

“Me too.” I did. I missed sitting in a diner with her and deciding which of the patrons had been in prison, and which guys were wearing women’s underwear, things like that. I didn’t have that easy relationship with anyone at Natick.

“You’ve changed, Rafe.”

“Have I?” I said, a little anxiously. The truth was, I hoped I had changed. And I wanted her to tell me exactly how.

“I don’t know if I like it.”

“Just give me some time, okay? I’ll be back. I promise.”

I could hear the sulking at the other end of the line. I imagined her lying on her bed just like I was, her legs above her head, her stockinged feet against the wall.

“But you won’t be back.”

What would that be like?
I thought. To never return to the person I was before. To never again have to stand out as different, to fade into the crowd, to be this new, uncomplicated Rafe forever? The idea made me shiver.

“I’ll be back,” I said, and my voice cracked a little as I said it.

“You won’t be the same,” she said.

“Maybe not,” I replied.

At the bottom of the page, it read:

I went to Mr. Scarborough’s office during my free period and sat across from him. I threw the essay onto his desk, maybe a little arrogantly.

He picked up the essay, scanned it, grinned once, and put it back down.

“Good start,” he said. “You are a bit all over the place, but the voice, it’s intriguing.”

No one had ever told me that my writing was all over the place. I could feel heat spread across my face and into my ears. Take away my labels, fine. Take away part of my identity, fine. Just leave me the things I know I am, like being a good writer.

“I was trying to be amusing,” I mumbled.

He smiled. “I got that. The way you started was a bit generic, with that lame AA joke, but, otherwise, quite amusing.”

“At my old school, they loved my sense of humor,” I said, crossing and uncrossing my legs.

He took a sip from his orange ceramic coffee mug and leaned back in his chair. “I liked it, Rafe. To me, a B plus is what it deserves. It’s clever, but I don’t feel this piece ever really comes together the way it would need to for an A piece. You bring up some good questions without really reflecting on them.”

He picked up the essay and leafed through it.

“You say here that you would love to be as free as your parents. What do you think is stopping you from being that way?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my ego still bruised, thinking,
What are you, my shrink?

“You don’t need to know the answer. But I don’t think it would
hurt for you to be a bit more self-reflective about it. Anyhow, that’s actually not why I called you in here.”

“Oh,” I said, reclining in my chair a bit.

“I hope you’ll accept what I’m going to tell you in the manner in which I am offering it to you,” he said. “I don’t think it takes much reading between the lines to know that perhaps you are … well, you’re different. I wanted to let you know that you can be that here. Different. For instance — we have a GSA. Did you know that?”

I took a deep breath.

“I’m the faculty adviser, actually. We have several boys this year.”

“Oh,” I said, taking in those pieces of information.

We stared at each other.

“Wait. I’m different?” I asked.

He nodded, this time with a supportive smile on his face, and I just wanted to wipe it clean off him. Who the hell was he to intrude? What if I was, like, in the closet, deep in the closet, and I didn’t want to be out? Wait. Was I in the closet? No, not exactly. But how was that his business? I gripped the handles of the chair.

“What do you mean, ‘I’m different’? Where are you getting this from? I’ve sat in your class for a week. Are you asking me if I’m gay? Because that’s kind of inappropriate, don’t you think?”

He pursed his lips and looked down at his desk. “Actually, I got that from your mother.”

I raised my voice. “What?”

He cleared his throat. “Your mother called the school about a week before classes. She asked to speak to me, as the head of the GSA. She told me about her work with PFLAG, and I have to say, I
was excited to have you join us. But … you haven’t joined us, have you, Rafe?”

“My mother called you?” She was way out of line. Way out.

“She did. Nice woman.”

I could feel the veins pulsing in my forehead, the skin pulled tight by the angle of my neck. Why couldn’t she mind her own business, even one time? I sighed, dropped my head back, and studied the ceiling.

“This is so extremely typical,” I said.

He didn’t answer. I stared at the ceiling for maybe a full minute, knowing that at some point, I’d need to say more. Finally, when I was pretty sure I was calm enough that my head wouldn’t burst, I raised it again.

“You want to hear a story?” I asked. “You’d be the first to hear it.”

“Sure,” he said, looking a bit concerned.

So for the first time since I’d come to Natick — the first time ever, really — I explained what I was doing. And you know what? It felt pretty good, having a confidant. Letting my secrets go. Having a secret feels exciting at first, but it seems like it always winds up being more of a weight than anything else.

Mr. Scarborough listened intently, not taking his eyes off mine as I explained what label-free meant to me, and why I’d felt the need to try to start anew.

“Interesting,” he said, once I was done.

I blinked expectantly. Wasn’t he going to have any advice for me? I wouldn’t mind, I realized, some sage words from someone older and wiser and not my parents. Who, I knew, would be less than thrilled if and when they heard the details of my plan. I’d been
evasive with them every time we’d spoken, and that wasn’t going so well. My folks were not fans of evasive.

He broke into a grin when he saw that I expected him to say something.

“Sorry, Rafe. I don’t know what to say other than I’m glad you told me. You’re on an interesting ledge, and I’m curious to hear about your explorations. So no GSA for you, I suppose?”

“Nah,” I said.

“What about the literary magazine? You’re obviously interested and talented.”

“Soccer,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry.”

He waved off the apology. “Do what you need to do,” he said. “And as for your experiment, please feel free to write about it. Okay? In fact, that’s what I’d like you to do. Your journal. That’s your assignment this semester. Write about why you’ve done what you’ve done.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” I said.

“Start at the beginning, then,” he said. “We have all semester.”

I thought about what it would feel like to write everything out. I wasn’t sure he was going to like everything I wrote. “Sure,” I said.

He smiled again. “I’m reminded of the ancient Chinese proverb — well, in fact, the origin is unclear: May you live in interesting times.”

“Thanks, I think,” I said.

He tapped his orange coffee mug and stared intently at the handle, lost in deep thought.

“I guess we should be happy that you have the choice today,” he said. “Ten years ago? Twenty? I’m pretty sure this situation wouldn’t happen. That’s something, isn’t it?”