Out of Position (8 page)

After the meeting, we all went out for drinks. Brian and I closed the bar down, then went back to his dorm room and talked until four in the morning. We didn’t sleep together or even fool around, then or ever. He said it was because we were too much alike, but the truth is more prosaic. That first night, we were both hyperconscious of the “safe sex” talk we’d gotten at the orientation. Soon after that, he hooked up with Tad, and by the time they broke up (a memorable scene worth a story in itself), I was dating Micha. After that, we were too comfortable with our friendship to want to sleep together.

Not that we didn’t have some partners in common. He dated Micha after I did, and we both slept with this ringtail named Allen, who joined FLAG our sophomore year. Comparing partners was always good for hours of talk, tossing back a couple beers in between bitchy and sometimes wistful commentary (“such a shame… that thick head on that cute ass”). But Brian and I never lacked for things to talk about. He was a theater arts major and I was English, so he got me to join the Forester Troupe and I got him to read Wilde. We both loved sports, and though I liked the mechanics of football and the tactics while he liked to follow players and keep statistics, we both liked watching the guys’ butts onscreen. Brian used to say it was the gayest thing you could do while acting straight.

 
Monday nights are the FLAG meetings, and I’ve been avoiding those too. But to assuage some of the guilt from Brian’s call, I head down there tonight.

Going to a FLAG meeting isn’t as easy as just showing up at the Richman F. Baker Center at 8 pm. No, there’s a whole ritual around it. Dinner at the Class of 1939 Pavilion, first, where my arrival at the table is greeted with mock amazement designed to hide the real thing.

“Wiley Farrel, as I live and breathe!”

“Hey, look, fellas, this newbie’s a real fox!”

“Oh, Mister Farrel, how nice of you to step down off the stage and mingle with us common rabble.”

“Slumming it tonight, Lee?
”

The fake Southern accent belongs to Allen, the ringtail who does sets for the theater troupe, and whom I’ve mentioned once already. The punster is Liz, a badger who wears denim overalls everywhere. They’re both juniors. Daniel is the sole sophomore, a twinky raccoon who obsesses about his weight. Jake, the cougar who’s his current fling, is a senior like me, though he didn’t join FLAG until our sophomore year. Came out to his parents over the summer and they kicked him out. Last year they took him back in.

And the lanky weasel who doesn’t say anything, just slides his chair over and smiles at me, that’s Salim, my best friend now. I didn’t tell him I’d be coming tonight, but I knew he wouldn’t be surprised. He asked me why I stopped going. When I didn’t tell him, he just shrugged and said, “You’ll come back when you’re ready to come back.” And he never asked again.

“Hello, ladies,” I say with a flourish. “Sorry: ladies and Liz. Yes, I felt it was time. You all have suffered without my classical charm and good looks for long enough.”

Liz snorts, and as a badger, she does that exceptionally well. Daniel flutters his eyes and says, “Oh, Mister Fox!” and feigns a swoon.

Salim gives me a soft smile and says, “Don’t eat the green beans, they’ve been there for ages.”

“I got a fresh batch,” I say, digging into the chicken a la king.

“So to what do we owe the honor, Lee?” Jake says, his black-tufted ears flicking in my direction.

“’Square Room’ is all done,” I say around mouthfuls of cream and chicken. “And we finished the draft of ‘Monkey Wrench,’ so no more writing meetings.”

“Did you write yourself a big fat part for that one, Red Flag?” Liz thinks that nickname is cute, because (she says) I like to draw attention to myself. Plus she thinks the “FLAG” tie-in is a bonus. Liz thinks a lot of weird things.

I give her a courtesy flick of the ears and then return their focus to the table at large. “No, I’ve done enough acting for a while,” I say. “But if you want a part, we have ‘Screaming Baby’ still uncast.”

“Did you guys work out your issues with the writing?” Salim says, and for a few minutes we divert the conversation into the faults and strengths of Jeffrey Purgudgeon, my co-writer on the play.

Allen, predictably, is the one who brings it back around to me. “So, you sleeping with him?”

“Jeffrey?” I snort. “His knowledge of sex is purely theoretical, and he’s so straight you could calibrate a ruler to him. He’s utterly bemused by the concept of any non-traditional relationship. I wrote a gay couple into the script and I think he still thinks they’re ‘just good friends.’” I pause for effect. “The kiss did give him a little pause.”

The ringtail leans his elbows on the table while I take another few bites. He waits until I look up to see his stare and accompanying smirk. “Well then, who is your new ‘good friend’?”

I take a long time to chew my food. “Why?” I say. “Tired of hitting on all these guys and anxious to meet someone new?”

Allen arches an eyebrow. “Well, if he’s up to the famous Lee standard, then he must be something to see. And we’re all curious to see who could’ve held your attention for more than a month.”

I grin back. “See, even if I were dating someone, why would I bring them into the house of a thousand daggers here?” I’m playing a double game, here, not confirming the existence of my friend and not mentioning a gender intentionally.

“Only five hundred daggers when you’re not around.” Jake claps me on the shoulder.

“And when you keep yours sheathed,” I say. “Really, I’m gonna try to make it to more meetings from now on.”

“Cool,” Daniel says, and pushes his plate away.

“Oh, come on,” Liz says, pushing it back. “You better finish that or I’ll have Jake hold you while I force it down your throat.”

“I dunno,” Allen says, “He’s looking a little chubby around the cheeks.”

“Allen!” Jake says.

“Fat city,” I chime in, and Jake mock-threatens me as Liz glares at Allen, Daniel looks worried, and Salim chuckles. “Don’t listen to them,” Liz says, “just eat.”

The raccoon looks doubtful, but takes a few more bites. We watch until he scowls at us.

“Hey,” Allen says after a minute, “you know, Brian’s gonna be in town next weekend. We’re having a little party over at our place. You should come, Lee.”

“Can’t,” I say. “I’m going out of town.” I’m sure Brian told him that, and his attempt at a guileless smile confirms it. “Oh? Where to?”

“I’m going up to Giancolo to frolic in the snow,” I say blandly.

“Well, you can still come, Salim,” Allen says.

Salim nods his head towards me. “I’m giving the fox a ride.”

“Oh, is that how it is?”

“Not
that
kind of ride,” I say.

The humor falls rather flat. Allen looks back at me, and I can see the thoughts in his head: he’ll tell Salim, but not me. I feel pretty confident that he can’t get to the truth from where he is. Nor can Jake or Liz, who are both looking a little puzzled. But they give up quickly. Allen keeps staring at me, turning my words over in his head, searching for that one clue that will unlock the vulpine mystery.

Daniel looks up from his plate at the silence, his black mask turning back and forth. “What?”

“Ah, nothing,” Allen says. He leans back in his chair. “Same old same old, eh, Lee?”

I flick my ears. “Why change now?” I give him my best foxy grin, and he grins back.

“Swear to God,” Jake says, “I don’t know how you two stayed in the same room without ripping out each other’s fur.”

“That only happened the one time,” I say, and Allen giggles, breaking the tension. I finish up my dinner and we head off to the meeting.

The FLAG meeting is being run by some business school polar bear named Keith, whose immaculate fur and diction are what we seniors snicker about in the back of the room. Allen joins us, making remarks about how glad he is that he didn’t run for president. Back when Jake was running it, it had a friendlier vibe, and the meetings had a social component. Now it’s all business, with no room for our comradely ribbing.

Our little group goes out to Kitteridge’s for coffee afterwards, as usual. We sit around until nearly midnight catching up on gossip. The subject of where I’ve been doesn’t come up. It’s like I’m part of the group again, sitting around, shooting the breeze over lattes, looking at the postcards covering the walls. Fleetingly, I wonder if Brian might have sent one.

“That was nice,” I say to Salim as we walk home.

He smiles and shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have avoided the meetings for so long.”

“You seemed to be doing okay.”

“I just never started again after the summer. It was easy not to miss it, with Dev and all.”

Salim bumps me as we walk. “I am going to get to meet him, right?”

“Yeah.” I don’t bother hiding my nervousness, but it has more to do with how he’ll react to Salim than the other way around. Salim already knows what to expect, and he’s so even-tempered, I can’t imagine anything ruffling him. When I told him what was going on, his tail twitched, he leaned back for a moment, and then said, “Well, I can see why you’ve been having problems. I assume you haven’t told Brian.” And that was the whole of his reaction.

 
I told Brian things I never told anyone else. I hid things from him, sure, but they were little things, like what Tad said about him the week before they broke up. I told him almost everything, but a few hurtful things I kept to myself. Other than that, there weren’t many secrets between us.

The whole FLAG dinner group was light on secrets. When Allen and I slept together, three weeks after he slept with Brian, the phrase “another ring on his tail” was coined. When Jake failed his Econ midterm and didn’t know whether he’d graduate, we all offered plans of action (Brian and I recommended an Econ tutor who ended up helping him pass). And when the thing with Brian happened, before it made the papers, our group knew all about it. We didn’t get home from coffee ’til 3 am that night, and none of us slept when we did, jittery from caffeine and anger.

Brian and I were the backbone of the FLAG dinners. Salim and Daniel joined our junior year, replacing the guys who’d graduated. When they did, Brian and I were the ones who issued the invitations, not because it was ever formally decided that we would, but because the others deferred to us. We knew they’d fit in, and they did. I was especially glad to have Salim there, later on.

They didn’t actually get to see very much of Brian. And once he was gone, the group was just too different, at least for me. But I’d told myself that for so long, tried to convince myself that that was the reason I stopped going, that I’d forgotten how much of it was the same.

 
We’re five songs into the first CD when the subject of Brian comes up. Salim’s been driving steadily and reliably; every time I glance at the speedometer it reads 73 mph, an amazing feat considering he doesn’t have cruise control. It’s only a three hour drive, but I’ve been fidgeting the whole time: rearranging my tail against the seat, shifting my weight, curling one leg under me, sitting properly again, looking out the window, looking at Salim, looking at my own paws in my lap. All this while Salim is talking about classes, about the scenery, about hoping the weather will hold—it’s one of those clear winter days where you can see the puffs of white as the car exhausts give up what little moisture they contain to the cold air.

December hits Forester gently; usually the big storms don’t come in until late January, early February. Still, car trips are an iffy business between Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s, and I didn’t have the money to rent a car or fly to Chikewa Falls, so having a best friend with a working car was the only way I was going to get to the game. I was paying for the gas, and my… boyfriend… had paid for the lodging.

It still feels weird to call him that. I’ve had boyfriends before, plenty of them. It’s a casual term, loosely slung about when you stop looking at other guys for a few weeks. You wear it proudly to your straight friends because it’s a validation of your lifestyle: I am gay and I have a committed partner. So there, myth of promiscuity! You wear it proudly to your gay friends in the way that women show off engagement rings: look, I got someone to commit to me! And the silly truth is that there’s a world of difference between the boyfriends I had before now, and the boyfriend I have now.

We use the term whenever we get a sniff of commitment, but like love itself, whenever you think you’ve arrived at the pinnacle, you find that there’s something beyond that. In high school, when I had my first sexual experience, I thought we were boyfriends the next morning. Sophomore year, when Micha called me his boyfriend, I looked back on high school and laughed at how naive I’d been. Now, I look back at that and laugh, but more quietly, because I’m starting to wonder what I’ll be feeling when I look back at myself in a few more years, and whether I’ll be laughing then at my ignorance now. Because Micha was and is a sweet, sweet arctic fox. But I never would have driven three hours to see one of his debate matches.

“I heard from Brian last night,” Salim says unexpectedly as the fifth song on the album is winding to a close in a screech of guitars. His car, he gets to pick the music.

“Huh.” I make a noncommittal noise and look out the window at the skeletons of trees rushing by.

“He was asking about you, asking if you were avoiding him.”

“He knows I am.” I kept looking out the window.

“He doesn’t know why.”

“If he did,” I said, “I wouldn’t have to avoid him.”

“You should just tell him, Lee,” he says. “He’ll understand.”

“He’ll kill me.”

“Maybe,” he concedes, “but afterwards, he’ll understand. I mean, it’s not like you’re dating one of the guys who actually did that terrible thing.”

“It’s not just that.” I sigh. “I’m worried that he’ll do something…”

“Rash?” Salim cocks his head. “You never mentioned this before.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it much. I just feel guilty as hell about it, and I feel like this is pushing the blame back on him. At the same time… you didn’t really get to know Brian. He was impulsive at times.”