The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (6 page)

Boydyboy:
don’t get pushy,
ya
pushy
bastard.

OwOw0:
just tell me
boyd
.

Sometimes he would take my breath away.

Boydyboy:
Did you know that I’m in love?

Sometimes he would reduce me to a shivering mass in a
world so suddenly silent my ears would ring. I would look at the screen, rub my
eyes, wonder if I was reading him right.

OwOw0:
Really? you’re in love?

I would see the bait and wait for the switch.

Boydyboy:
yes really.

OwOw0:
OK

Boydyboy:
I can’t say who. nothing funky, no animals or objects or
shit because I know how you think.. you
perv
.

OwOw0:
you can tell me who it is.

Boydyboy:
i
don’t know....
i
know
i
can trust you not to say
anything to anyone. but maybe it’s me whose not ready yet.

OwOw0:
you’re right
i
wouldn’t ever tell
anyone.

Boydyboy:
i
need time............. but if
i
ever did tell anybody it would be you.

I suppose if there was a specific moment when I discovered
I was in love with Boyd Wren, it was this one, the one when I suddenly believed
he felt the same way. What he had said took more than my breath away now; it
took all of me, everything I had understood about the world and myself and our
friendship and what the rest of my life was going to look like.

Adrenaline coursed through me and I felt dizzy. There was no
time to think through my response, no time to settle on a code. I had to go on
instinct, and I was weighed down by my fearful unwillingness to gamble, however
small a gamble I thought in that moment it might be, with this last piece of
ambiguity between me and the end of my lifelong secret.

OwOw0:
I really appreciate you feeling like you can tell me though.

Boydyboy:
do you?

OwOw0:
well my list of friends isn’t huge, as you know.
i’m
glad we’re that close.

Boydyboy:
i’m
gladwe
are too. means a lot to me.

And then
something happened.

OwOw0:
I’m glad you
specifieid
that it
wasn’t an object because otherwise
i
would’ve said
your Jeep.
haha

Boydyboy:
haha
no it’s a human.

OwOw0:
because you never let me eat in that thing. HAHA

Even as I typed I couldn’t believe I was turning it into a
joke. If this was the moment I knew I was in love, you could say I wasn’t ready
to be in love. I was too filled with doubt to deal with being in love. I was
exhilarated, but I was afraid. It wasn’t only a fear of coming out and being
out, it was a fear of losing him. Because the closer he got to saying who it
was, the closer he was maybe getting to saying it wasn’t me.

When I logged off, after we’d detoured away from the topic
of his secret love and spent a few minutes talking about R.E.M., the chat
window disappeared and I was left with nothing but my memory of the
conversation to turn over in my mind.

***

The possibility of Boyd loving me was like a werewolf in
my brain: comforting and plausible by day but a full-blown monster of delusion
by the light of the moon. Yet I couldn’t leave it alone. I threw up three times
after he told me he was in love and my crooked-line ticks were ticking like
mad, but I couldn’t leave it alone. The next night when I logged on he was
there. I started typing.

OwOw0:
so I was pondering about who you might be in love with.
heh
.

He could see the laugh.
Heh
.
The little giggle. He couldn’t have known that I was shaking,
that my guts felt twisted, that the weight of the world was on my fingertips as
I pressed the keys. That I was looking for a way to break this open, in the
most careful way I could find. That on second, third, and fourth thought, I
needed an answer, even if it meant giving up my fantasy. I needed to know if it
was me.

Boydyboy:
oh really? pondering?

OwOw0:
So are you gonna tell me who it is? C’mon, c’mon.... Who?
Hehehehe
.

Boydyboy:
i
can’t tell...

OwOw0:
Sure you can tell me.... I mean, remember the
would-you-rather thing with
Mrs
Doyle and the
strap-on? Surely this can’t compare to THAT, in terms of embarrassing
confessions.

Boydyboy:
i
don’t know.... How about
this. if you can guess right
i’ll
tell you.

OwOw0:
You want me to guess?

My fingers froze. I was suspicious of guessing. It seemed
to blow away whatever upper-hand I had here.

Suddenly he disconnected without warning—his name
disappeared from my buddy list. I thought about using that chance to slip away,
to log off too to let the situation cool. But almost immediately, he was back.

Boydyboy:
parents tried to dial out!!

OwOw0:
Aaahh
! I hate that.
Ive
got mine pretty well trained. They know to ask me
before they pick up the phone.
i
keep wanting to get
a second line but they say it’s too expensive.

Boydyboy:
so do you want to guess.

OwOw0:
oh. well, why don’t you just tell me?
haha

Boydyboy:
I told you
i
can’t tell.

OwOw0:
is it someone from your work?

Boydyboy:
...I have seen the person at work.

OwOw0:
is the person in our grade?

Boydyboy:
:-/

OwOw0:
What?

Boydyboy:
Ollie there are 81 kids in our grade, that’s too narrow

OwOw0:
Ok, is the person in our school then?

Boydyboy:
Yes

OwOw0:
Is the person in our grade?
haha

Boydyboy:
Ollie. Whatever. yes.

I didn’t know where to go now. I knew no way to hint at “me”
without flat-out saying “me.” I wanted
him
to say it. My hands were leaving sweat smears on the keyboard and I felt like I
was breathing too much, or not enough, or not at all. The chat window on the
screen looked crooked, as though the words would all slide out and end up in a
pile even more confusing. I was counting my eye blinks. I was afraid I was
going to be sick again.

OwOw0:
I’m stumped.

Boydyboy:
You barely guessed.

OwOw0:
Is it Jasmine
Lorange
?

Boydyboy:
wrong

OwOw0:
Mrs
Doyle?
ahahahaha

Boydyboy:
god! no! not that mustached yeti!

OwOw0:
I don’t want to guess anymore

Boydyboy:
why?

OwOw0:
because.

Boydyboy:
Because why?

OwOw0:
because I think
i
know who it is
but
i
don’t want to say.............

Boydyboy:
why don’t you want to say?

I could feel myself slipping and I’d lost sight of the
idea that if I did slip, he might catch me; there seemed no chance of it now.
It was all in my head, all along—of course. All I felt was the hot dank
breath of exposure breathing on me, like a vicious dog on a fraying leash.

OwOw0:
Because if I say and
i’m
wrong
i’ll
be VERY wrong

Boydyboy:
what does that even mean??

OwOw0:
if I’m wrong it’ll change everything and we might not even
be friends any more

Boydyboy:
it’s not going to change shit

OwOw0:
Boyd. fuck..........

Boydyboy:
just tell me who you think it is Ollie.

OwOw0:
I can’t...

Boydyboy:
why?

OwOw0:
whatever.
i’m
done guessing. You
can tell me if you want, and if you
dont
’ want to
that’s fine.

Boydyboy:
Ollie. Do you think its you?

Time stood still.
The world stopped. You could hear a pin drop.
There are moments in life so
big that phrases were invented for them because nothing that existed at the time
could do them justice. I have my own. For me, forever after, to this day, this
is how I think of those kinds of moments:
It
was as though Boyd asked me if I thought it was me.

OwOw0:
what?

Boydyboy:
do you think it’
syou
?

OwOw0:
I don’t know what to say to
taht

Boydyboy:
I asked a question.......

OwOw0:
if I did think it
ws
me I wouldn’t
want to say it because that
woudl
be implying
i
thought
youwere
gay

Boydyboy:
so you thought it was you

OwOw0:
well from what you were saying like if you ever told anybody
it would be me.... it sure sounded like it was
mee
boyd
.

Boydyboy:
OK.......................

OwOw0:
but obviously if I said that and I was wrong you
woudl
think I was gay and that
i
just WANTED it to be me which is why
i
said if I was
wrong
i
would be very wrong

Boydyboy:
all right.......

OwOw0:
i
don’t know...

Boydyboy:
don’t worry. I don’t think your gay
ollie
:-/

OwOw0:
I don’t think you are either

Boydyboy:
because
i’m
not

OwOw0:
I know

Boydyboy:
this got fucked up fast

OwOw0:
see I told you not to make me guess.

Boydyboy:
i
think
i”m
going to log off now,
i’ll
see you tomorrow.

***

Because I’m not.
The words flayed me. After disconnecting I cried, on the floor beside my bed,
with a pillow covering my mouth so my parents wouldn’t hear. It was all the
worst things to cry about, too, all at once: fear, vulnerability, exposure,
regret—my broken heart was only the tip of the awful iceberg. I had been
sure, hadn’t I? Almost sure. So close to sure. But I’d been wrong. Now the
wrongness had been driven into me like a railroad spike and I swear to god it
felt like I was dying.

***

I didn’t know how I would face him in school after that,
and I had no one else but him. The flip side was that he had no one else but
me. So in real life, where boundaries had always been obeyed and we’d never
talked about things like this, we remained status quo. School continued to be
physics tests and tater tots and standing around in the parking lot at the end
of the day waiting for the popular kids to drive away first. But online things
were changed. We were in an
after
where I felt lonely and disconnected. The
Boyd
& Ollie
ampersand I had wanted to shape into a heart had bunched into a
tangle. I did what I could to reshape it but every time I thought I’d found a
loop, Boyd seemed to tighten the knot.

Time went by. Winter came. The nights got cold.

OwOw0:
I’ve been doing some soul searching for the past few weeks.

Boydyboy:
that sounds deep.

OwOw0:
why is everything so fucked up?
i
wish life was easier.

Boydyboy:
well don’t we all.

OwOw0:
I’m being held down, like. I feel like I’m always on the
verge of doing something I have no business doing.

Boydyboy:
what is that??

OwOw0:
I can’t say.

Boydyboy:
uhh
... well how does not-saying
help you at all?

OwOw0:
Not-saying just might help me a lot.

Boydyboy:
why bring it up then?

OwOw0:
I dunno. Never mind...

Boydyboy:
Jesus. well hang in there!

OwOw0:
Sometimes I wonder, you know....

Boydyboy:
I’ll tell you about my dream to distract you.

OwOw0:
OK.

Boydyboy:
it was a nice one, you’d like it.

OwOw0:
then tell me.

Boydyboy:
well there’s this girl at work who
i
like.

He could make me feel very silly. He could pound on the
railroad spike of wrongness.

OwOw0:
OK.

Boydyboy:
and last night
i
dreamed we
were on a date.

OwOw0:
A sex dream?......

Boydyboy:
we didn’t actually have sex. but we were sitting on a
rock in the river and holding hands and kissing etc. it was nice and she’s
amazingly pretty and nice and it didn’t even matter that we didn’t have sex.

OwOw0:
................

Boydyboy:
what?