The Lie (19 page)

The Heaven and Hell party
was, for me, an exercise in self-control. From a very young age I’ve found myself to be extremely mild-mannered in the face of conflict. Despite my deep hatred for most of my peers, I’m easily able to hold conversations with them and engage in casual friendly interaction. I’ve never known a person to have the ability to alter my natural demeanor. In the end, I suppose, I’ve realized that the resource available to me renders any potential situation of hostility completely meaningless. This was all true until the night of the Heaven and Hell party.

I despised costume parties. It wasn’t because of the theme or the effort necessary to wear a costume; it was something deeper than that. The very idea of wearing a costume implies false importance surrounding the event that demands it, and the people who succumb to this demand seem weak to me. Nonetheless, the costume was mandatory so I wore a T-shirt with an image of Jesus Christ sucking a cock prominently displayed on the chest, which I purchased from cafepress.com after Googling “gay christ costume.”

Most party attendees took the shirt in stride. Some were offended, yes, but they made no real effort to voice their distaste for my costume beyond a sarcastic “Nice shirt, asshole,” or something similar. The only person whose indignation seemed genuine and problematic was my big brother, Greg Simmons, who was himself dressed as Judas with a sack of gold-foil-covered chocolate coins that he would hand out to anyone he passed while saying, “I’m rich, biatch.” Even the most rudimentary research would have informed Greg that Judas’ bribe was silver, not gold.

He had approached me near the beginning of the night and asked me to change my shirt due to its sacrilegious nature. I refused, citing the very same nature of his own costume. He countered by attempting to explain that Judas was a “Bible bad guy” and it was okay to make fun of him, but making fun of Jesus directly was a terrible thing to do. I told him I would change the shirt to avoid further conflict, having no real intention of ever changing it. My assumption was that by the next time I saw Greg he would be too drunk or too high to remember our initial interaction, or at least incoherent enough not to care.

I proceeded to drink to excess and futilely attempted to find a single whore at the party whose face hadn’t already felt the slick warmth of my semen. At some point nearing two
A.M
., if memory serves, I came out of our kitchen, rounded a corner into the living room, and saw Greg with his shirt off forcing two Pi Phi pledges, whom I had not yet had the opportunity to debase, to pledge allegiance to his credo. Not thinking about my direct disobedience regarding the shirt I was wearing or what consequences it might bring I joined Greg, the sluts, and a tolerable member of Alpha Tau Omega named Jeff Rettinger.

The sluts were, of course, impressed by his tattoo and kneeled before it as per Greg’s instruction as I joined the group. Greg greeted me and was amicable for seconds prior to noticing my shirt, at which point he became enraged almost instantaneously. What followed was a tirade in which Greg elucidated his true impression of me. With only a minor slurring of his words he claimed that he hated me from the first day I came into the Alpha Tau Omega house but could do nothing about it because of who I was. I remained silent as he spoke. He went on to explain that he was certain I viewed myself as superior to everyone there, based on my net worth, and I obviously didn’t accept Jesus as my savior or I wouldn’t have worn the shirt.

At this point I was too drunk, I suppose, to keep quiet. I informed Greg that he was only partially correct. I did view myself as better than at least one person in the room, and it wasn’t based on the amount of money I had, it was based on the fact that I wasn’t an ignorant douchebag. And I conceded the fact that I did not share his childish beliefs in talking snakes and imaginary friends who live in the sky.

Of all the insults based in truth I issued in that conversation, the attack on religion was strangely the one that sent him over the edge. He drew back his fist and punched a hole in the wall in my general vicinity. The sluts left immediately. I found myself wanting Greg to punch me for some reason. I knew I wouldn’t fight back, but it seemed like an unchecked physical attack would cement in my mind that Greg was a living vessel of everything I hated in my peers. He was the purest version of the hypocritical self-absorbed asshole who truly believes he is correct in all things.

He didn’t hit me, though. Instead he explained that he would love nothing more than to cave my head in, but he had secured a summer internship at my father’s company and he didn’t want to jeopardize it. For me, the revelation of this internship was more crystallizing than any physical attack could have been.

I had respect for my father. I just disagreed with much of what he stood for. This respect made it difficult for me to believe he would have knowingly agreed to allow a person like Greg Simmons within a thousand yards of his business. The only other explanation for the internship was even more horrifying to me. My father was so far removed from the business his father built that he had very little to do with the day-to-day operations, the quality of incoming employees, the basic ethics of anyone who worked for him, et cetera. My father must, I reasoned, have become a faceless name on the bottom of a check to all of his employees. In understanding this, I found some empathy for him. He, too, was possibly doing something only because he had been told to, and he had been doing it for so long that any alternative seemed impossible. His desire for me to follow his path was born only out of a lack of alternative possibilities in his own mind.

So it was there, standing in front of a seething Greg Simmons, his “Bros Before Hos” tattoo fully exposed, that I came to the conclusion my father had to know I did not desire the life he had led, that I had no intention of walking the same path two men had walked before me, that my future was uncertain, and that this uncertainty is what made me value it.

I wished Greg good luck at his internship, stumbled up the stairs to my room, and placed a call to my father. I reached his voice mail and left a message explaining that I had found out one of my fellow Alpha Tau Omega brothers had been granted a summer internship at Keller Shipping and that it had made me realize something very valuable. I asked that we discuss it later. And, strangely, I was compelled to end the call by telling my father that I loved him.

There was still some time
left until the end of the year, but Mac’s Place was closing early to get started on summer renovations. So I went up there to clean out my locker, which didn’t have much in it, just an old pair of tennis shoes I wore when I worked there. While I was there Raulio invited me to a barbecue. He said, “Kyle, you want a barbecue with me on weekend?”

I said, “Thanks, Raulio, but I have some stuff to do with my girlfriend this weekend.”

He said, “Bring the woman. She get barbecue.”

I said, “Thanks, Raulio, but I really can’t.”

Raulio had invited me to what must have been a dozen or so barbecues over the course of the two years I had worked with him. I had never gone to one. I always imagined his barbecues consisted of him and two other Mexican dudes sitting around a tiny charcoal barbecue in his front yard drinking beers and staring into the distance. In actuality they were probably really fun. I’d never know.

So I got my shoes and headed over to Erin’s place. She was still at class but she had given me a key at some point, so I basically used her place as my own. I had more clothes at her place than at McElvaney, and she had a computer and Internet and everything so I didn’t have to go to a computer lab to get online.

I was just about to get in the shower when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Heather. I don’t even know how to fucking describe my reaction. I had been thinking about her a lot at that point. It wasn’t like anything was wrong or bad with Erin. It had just kind of reached a place for me where it was as good as it was going to get, and it wasn’t the best I’d ever had. The fucking sweet irony of that is that it actually was the best I’d ever had and probably will ever fucking have for as long as I live. I mean she fucking made us dinner, gave me foot rubs, actually studied sex books and shit and would just whip out new positions and techniques every other week. And she didn’t do all of that shit because she was into that shit, she did it because she was into me and she knew I liked that shit. It doesn’t get better than that.

But I had been thinking about Heather a lot. It was probably a month or two after we saw each other by Dallas Hall and had our conversation and I wanted to call her but never did. I thought it would be a bad move. I thought if there was some chance to rekindle things, me making the first move would seem weak and it would turn her off immediately. So there it was—a call from Heather. I had no idea what she wanted, obviously, but no matter what it was, the call was another chance to talk to her. The fact that she was placing the call meant that she was taking the first step to be a part of my life again.

All of that is what I assume made me feel like I was about to puke, but in that good kind of excited way. I knew I was too nervous to talk to her so I just let the phone ring and waited for her to leave a message. I waited five minutes after the last ring to see if I got a new voice mail and I never did.

I was more pissed at myself for not answering than I had probably been for anything in my life. I would be much more pissed off at myself in the years to come, but that day, missing that phone call…I wanted to punch myself in the balls.

I got in the shower and went through all the possible reasons she could have called me and not left a message. The most likely, I assumed, was probably that it took her some amount of self-convincing to even make the call in the first place and then once she actually made it, she hadn’t worked out in her head what she would leave on my voice mail if I didn’t answer, so she just hung up. Before I arrived at that conclusion, though, there were some pretty good ones, like that she’d called just to offer me a three-way with her and the hot chick I fucked at Brett’s house, but I had to have answered the phone to qualify, and because I didn’t it was off the table forever. And there were some pretty bad ones, like that she’d called to tell me she was getting married to the douchebag she was dating and needed my address to send an invitation.

When I got out of the shower I went and looked at my phone hoping for a voice mail but there wasn’t one. I must have spent half an hour staring at my phone wondering if I should call her back without a voice mail asking me to do just that, wondering if that would be just as weak in her eyes as calling her in the first place—or maybe even weaker, like I didn’t have the balls to just call her but once I’d seen that she called me I could call her back.

Then I started thinking about the possibility that her call was for something completely innocent and not even worth leaving a message about. What if she’d called just to ask me what kind of cheese Mac’s Place uses on its turkey-and-Swiss? I know it didn’t make much sense, but it was possible.

After overthinking it to death, I decided I would call her. I picked up the phone, brought up my missed calls list, and was about to hit the call button when Erin came home. She tossed down her purse and jumped on top of me.

She said, “I missed you today.”

I said, “I missed you, too.”

She said, “You know what I was thinking about all day long?”

I said, “
Battlestar Galactica
being on tonight.”

She said, “Yeah, that, but also about sucking your dick.”

Then she unzipped my pants and gave me a blowjob. It wasn’t the best blowjob, but I came in her mouth and she swallowed. The fucking horrible thing is the whole time she was giving me a blowjob, I was thinking about Heather. I’m amazed I’m still alive and haven’t eaten a fucking bullet by this point. Erin was fucking incredible, but she wasn’t Heather, and sadly that was all that mattered to me.

Erin cooked dinner, which we ate while we watched
Battlestar Galactica
, and then we had sex. During all of that the only thing I could think of was Heather. Where was she? Was she doing the exact same thing with her boyfriend, also lying awake thinking about me? I hoped that was the case. I waited until Erin fell asleep and looked at the clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. I thought returning a missed call that didn’t leave a voice mail at one-thirty
A.M
. would seem pretty fucking pathetic and desperate, so I tried to go to sleep and succeeded at about five in the morning when fatigue finally overcame the fire that was burning in my brain.

I only talked to Brian
one other time after the Heaven and Hell party. He called me the next day to see if I wanted to go get dinner and I said I wasn’t hungry. Then he was like, “Okay, babe. Well, give me a call when you want to hang out,” and I never called him again.

It was pretty weird. I mean, we were a couple and everything for like a pretty long time and he just never called me again. I seriously think he knew that he fucked up that night, letting Josh fuck me and everything. And the more I thought about how fucked up I was I realized he probably drugged me and had the whole thing planned or something. So I just decided to never talk to him again, and since he never called me it was like pretty easy to do.

It was maybe a few weeks after that when I called Kyle. I was just in my room thinking a lot about when we were together and what a good boyfriend he was and I guess I just like missed that, you know? After the thing with Brian I just wanted to be with someone who was like nice and wanted to cuddle and everything, and at that point Kyle wasn’t a complete dick yet, so I thought he was the best candidate. I mean I guess I could have just tried to hook up with some other frat guy or something, but I didn’t even really know if that was possible. Like I didn’t know if Josh had already told every guy in Pike that he fucked me while I sucked Brian’s dick, or if I could even really be into another frat guy after that. I mean if Brett would have been like, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” or something, then yeah, of course, but I mean I didn’t know if I could like start dating some other frat guy again. I know they weren’t all like Brian and Josh, but they all had the same smell in their rooms and I didn’t really want my next sexual experience to have anything to do with that smell and just the whole set of circumstances that always went with a frat guy.

So I was just in my bed one afternoon and I thought I should give Kyle a call. I really didn’t know what I was going to say. I thought I might like ask him out for coffee again or something or maybe dinner. I mean I didn’t even really know if I wanted to try to get back together with him or anything. I just kind of wanted to hang out with him and be with a guy who I knew actually cared about me and would listen to me and everything. But when I called him he didn’t answer and I didn’t want to sound retarded on a voice mail so I just didn’t say anything. I hoped he’d see my caller ID and call back, but he didn’t.

I waited a few days, and when he still didn’t call I just guessed he was happy with whoever his girlfriend was and he didn’t want anything to do with me. It kind of made sense. I mean at the time I did it, I wasn’t really sorry for sucking Brian’s dick and dumping Kyle, but as time went on I figured out that was a pretty shitty thing to do. Even now after I know what I know about Kyle I wish I wouldn’t have done it. I mean I wish I would have just broken up with Kyle before I sucked Brian’s dick.

Anyway, a few days had gone by and I had pretty much given up on ever talking to Kyle again. One afternoon Andrea called me up and asked if I wanted to go get some lunch down on Yale Boulevard at this new Mexican place. I don’t remember the name, but they were having like a ninety-nine-cent margarita lunch special or something. So we went.

We got a table, sat down, and ordered some drinks. She was like, “So the reason I asked you to lunch is because I haven’t seen you at any of the parties over the last couple weeks or so and you seem to like be kind of withdrawn and everything. You doing okay?”

I hadn’t even really thought about going to parties or anything since the thing with Brian and Josh. But when Andrea mentioned it, I realized other people had probably noticed that I’d withdrawn from the whole thing a little bit, too.

I was like, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just been really tired. Some of my classes this semester are like kicking my ass.”

She was like, “Oh, well, you know we’re throwing a party with Pike next week and you did such an awesome job with the Heaven and Hell party…I was wondering if you’d want to help plan that one.”

I was like, “I don’t think so.”

She was like, “I can tell something’s wrong. We’ve become pretty good friends over the past year and a half. You know you can tell me.”

I don’t know why I didn’t want to tell her. I guess I was ashamed that I let it happen. I also didn’t want to get Brian in trouble. I didn’t care as much about Josh. But Brian had been like a pretty good boyfriend up to that night. But I decided I should just tell her. I thought it might make me feel better about the whole thing.

I was like, “Okay. On the night of the Heaven and Hell party I went back to the Pike house with Brian and I was seriously fucked up and you know that guy Josh Paulson that always hangs out with Brian?”

She was like, “Yeah.”

I was like, “Well, he and Brian did like a three-way with me.”

She was like, “Gross—two guys?”

I was like, “Yeah.”

She was like, “Was it fun?”

I was like, “No. I was like so fucked up that I couldn’t move and they just kind of did it.”

She was like, “Oh my God, Heather. Why didn’t you tell someone?”

I was like, “I don’t know. I guess it’s not like that big of a deal. You have to promise not to say anything.”

She was like, “I won’t. I’ll leave it up to you, but if those assholes raped—”

And then the waiter came and set down our drinks, which I started drinking like immediately.

When he left Andrea was like, “If those assholes raped you, you have to tell somebody.”

I was like, “It wasn’t rape—it wasn’t like they tied me down or hit me or anything and I’m fine now so…”

She was like, “You said you were so fucked up you couldn’t move. Are you sure you weren’t drugged or something?”

I was like, “I was drugged. I drugged myself, Andrea. I took like E and was doing coke all night and was super fucking drunk.”

She was like, “Yeah, but you’ve done that before and you weren’t like paralyzed from it, right?”

I was like, “I guess.”

She was like, “Like I said, I’m not going to say anything, but you know deep down if they like deserve to get called out for what they did then you have to be the one to call them out.”

I was like, “Yeah.”

She was like, “And I totally understand why you haven’t been at any parties and why you don’t want to help with the Pike party next week but eventually you’re going to have to find some way to like look past this and start hanging out. Some of the other girls have been asking what the deal is with you, too.”

I was like, “I know. I’ll be okay. I just like need a little time to like not think about it every day, you know?”

She was like, “Yeah. Have you talked to Brian since it happened?”

I was like, “He asked me out to dinner once but I didn’t go and I haven’t talked to him since then. I don’t think I’m like going to talk to him ever again.”

She was like, “That’s pretty fucking terrible.”

I was like, “Seriously.”

It felt good to tell her about it but I also knew what she was saying about like getting back into going to parties and everything was true. I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to tell anyone else about it. Like I mean I knew I wasn’t going to call them out or anything. It sucked, but it wasn’t like it was violent or anything and I knew calling them out would probably be more trouble than it was worth in terms of staying in the Kappa house and having to go to parties and everything with people who were their friends. I figured I could just like find out which parties Brian and Josh were going to be at and not go or if I saw one of them I could just leave. Or I could just like ignore them or something.

I had like four margaritas at lunch and then Andrea drove us back to the house. I wasn’t like super drunk but I wasn’t sober. So I got out my phone and called Kyle again. This time he answered.

He was like, “Hey.”

I was like, “Hi. How have you been?”

He was like, “Fine. How about you?”

I seriously had like no idea what to say. I was just drunk enough to not be able to talk very well and just sober enough to know that I should say as little as possible before I said something I would regret.

So I was like, “I don’t know. I’ve actually been thinking about you a lot. Would you like want to go get dinner with me sometime or something? My treat?”

He was like, “Uh…yeah. Sure. I guess. Yeah.”

I was like, “Cool. Tomorrow night?”

He was like, “Yeah, I can do that.”

I was like, “Cool, I’ll pick you up at seven.”

He was like, “See you then.”

I hung up the phone and felt happier than I’d been in a long time. I kind of thought we might talk about getting back together, but I wasn’t sure. I mean I figured whoever he was dating he probably wasn’t as into as he was with me when we were together, so I didn’t think it would be hard to get him to choose me if he had to make a choice. I already knew which outfit I was going to wear. I had this shirt that really showed off my boobs from Forever 21 and this pair of Seven jeans that my ass looked seriously awesome in. Then for the first time since the thing with Brian I actually thought about sex and it was with Kyle.