At dinner I told Mom and Dad that I’d called Ron. They remembered him.

“He seems like a nice guy,” Dad said.

“Yeah, he is. It’s really comfortable talking to him. He and I have a lot of the same interests, books and movies and TV and stuff. Would you believe it if I told you that we were talking on the phone for almost two and a half hours?”

Dad turned to Mom. “Another good reason for having an unlimited call and data plan.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Mom! That’s personal! I don’t ask you what you talked about with Aunt Margaret, do I?”

“No, I guess you don’t. But I’m curious what the two of you could talk about for two and a half hours.”

“We talked about what’s going on with Quin and when the trial will be, how my head injury is getting better, what it’s like being home tutored, how that’s different than being home schooled, my Physics experiments, getting up to date in my classes, what my physical therapy evaluation was like and that I’ll start my exercises on Monday, how he fooled his Mom into thinking that Brussels sprouts and broccoli made his throat sore and how she caught on to his sham, about how Nate has become such a great friend and is helping me study and we do our homework together, how he left the note with my phone number and address in his shirt pocket and his mom washed it so he didn’t have it, stuff like that.”

Mom looked at me. “Did Ron tell you if he found a boyfriend yet?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Ron’s mom and I chatted about it when we went out together. She was hoping that he’d find a friend who was gay.”

“Wow. I don’t think that Ron knows that his mom is talking about things like that to other people.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. It just seems weird, that’s all.”

“I might talk about you getting a girlfriend to someone. That’s a natural thing for moms to talk about with each other.”

“You talk about me getting a girlfriend? Who do you talk about that with?”

“Brian, I was just using that as an example. I didn’t say I actually told anyone anything like that. And you haven’t answered my question yet. Did Ron say anything about finding a boyfriend?”

“Yes, he did. He met a guy at the theater and they chatted and decided to watch a movie and now they’re friends. Ron’s folks know about it, so no need to phone Mrs. Anderson to tell her.”

“I wouldn’t do that, it’s up to Ron to tell his parents. Just like it would be up you to tell us if you have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend?” What was Mom trying to tell me?

“Yes, either a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Being straight or gay or bi is wired in your genes. Your dad and I wouldn’t care one way or the other.”

I looked at her, then at Dad. It didn’t look like they were trying to tell me something. Unless they were being a lot more subtle talking to me than they ever were. I decided that I should pull their chain a bit.

“That’s cool. I’m glad you’re so open about things like that. You know, Ron’s new boyfriend, his name is Sean, he’s afraid to tell his folks that he’s gay. So they only get together at Ron’s house. Ron said that he and Sean have to keep his bedroom door open at all times when they’re in his room, or they have to be in the family room or kitchen. His folks don’t want them to… uh… you know, mess around. With each other. I’m sure glad you two aren’t like that with me when Nate’s over. Making me keep the door open. It gets really stuffy with my bedroom door closed.”

I sat back and watched the expression on Mom’s face. First there was a little concern, then shock, then she got that look she gets when she’s trying to figure out exactly what I meant after I’ve said something.

Dad stepped in and saved the day.

“We trust you, Brian. We don’t think you’re messing around with Nate. But if you do, and we catch you, then we’ll make you keep your bedroom door open just like Ron’s parents are having him keep his bedroom door open.”

I started to laugh. “You know I’m kidding,” I said.

“Yes,” Dad replied, “that’s what I figured you were doing. Trying to pull our leg, right?”

“Something like that. But where are two guys, like Ron and his boyfriend, supposed to go to mess around a little, to experiment?”

Mom glared at me. “Brian, if you had a girlfriend or a boyfriend we’d want you to abstain from having sex because you’re too young. You’re only fifteen, and a couple of fifteen year old kids do not have the maturity to start having sex with each other. And that applies to Ron and his boyfriend too.”

“Then how old do we have to be?”

“Eighteen is a good age for that kind of ‘experimenting’, Mom answered.

“You know that kids are doing it a lot earlier than eighteen. How about sixteen?”

“Brian,” Dad replied, “you don’t want to get a girl pregnant. We don’t want you to get a girl pregnant. That’s why you need to abstain from having sex until you’re old enough to understand, really understand, the ramifications. And some of those ramifications are STDs, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and you could get one or more of them if you’re not careful and if you don’t use protection.”

“But what if it isn’t with a girl?”

There was almost five seconds of total silence. I discovered that five seconds of silence is a very, very, very long time when you’re waiting for a reply.

“Are you telling us that you’re gay?” Mom finally asked.

“No. But guys my age think that it’s an option. You know, messing around with another guy. Just casual, it’s a way to have sex without having to worry about getting a girl pregnant. And no, I’m not messing around with another guy. Or a girl.”

I heard a sigh of relief from Mom. I glanced at his dad and saw that he was trying, not very successfully, to avoid a grin.

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect our dinner to include a large dish of sex education,” Mom said. “Since we seem to have exhausted this topic, at least to my satisfaction, I suggest that we change the subject. Let’s talk about the deposition. That’s going to be on Friday at nine thirty. Greg, do you think Brian will need any coaching? I saw that on one of the Law and Order show on TV.”

“He won’t need any coaching.” Dad turned and looked at me. “You’re ready for the deposition, right Brian?”

“I’ve said what happened so many times that I’m sure I’ll answer the same questions the same way. And everything I’ll say will be the truth. I don’t need any coaching.”

“Good,” Dad said. “That’s exactly what I’d expect of you.”

“By the way, Ron and I are going to do a video call tonight using Skype. It’s one hundred percent free. There’s a camera in my laptop, and Ron has a camera in his computer. It’s going to be great to see him again. When we talked this afternoon we talked about if he could come up here and stay a few days this summer, assuming you and his folks agree.”

Mom looked at Dad, they seemed to come to an agreement, and she nodded. “I think that’s a good idea, if his folks agree. It will give you a change of pace. We’ll just have to make sure that it doesn’t interfere with the trial if it’s scheduled for some time this summer.”

I was shocked. “Oh, man! You mean the trial might not happen before then? That’s a long time from now.”

Dad shook his head. “I don’t think it will be that long. Quin and Tom would be in jail for at least four more months. It’s something we need to ask Ian Kilpatrick. I’ll phone him Monday morning from the office.”

“What are you guys going to do tomorrow?” I asked.

“I have a little shopping to do. What about you, Greg?”

“I brought home some paperwork that I need to finish for work, then I’ll read the paper and watch some basketball. March Madness is coming up around the middle of the month, so some games for the league championships will be on.”

Mom looked confused. “What in the world is ‘March Madness’?”

“That’s the college basketball playoffs,” I replied. “It lasts from about the middle of March and the final championship game is played about the end the month. Right now the top teams in each league are playing for the league championships. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State have good teams and might make the playoffs. That would be very cool, right Dad?”

“Yes, it is very cool, Brian.” My dad is a college basketball fan. He played for Oklahoma State when he was in college.

We finished dinner and cleaned up the kitchen. Mom kept telling me she and Dad could handle the cleanup, but I insisted on helping. I put the dishes in the dishwasher. That was something I could do with one hand.

Afterward I headed up to my bedroom. My physical therapy session was scheduled for Monday afternoon, and I was looking forward to that. In the meantime I had a ton of homework to do, including finishing up the Physics experiments and writing my reports to give to Nate on Monday. I’d submit the rest of my homework through Blackboard. That included reading three stories from kids in my Creative Writing class and writing my reviews. I also wanted to reread the stories I’d written to check for any typos and grammar mistakes. Then I’d submit all of those. Mr. Field was supposed to send me the projects for the Web Design 2 class. That would be a lot of work since he wanted me to do everything starting from the beginning of the semester.

I also wanted to think about the discussion we’d had at dinner. Actually, what I wanted to do is talk with Nate about that discussion. That was weird. I’d become friends with Nate on Thursday, just two days ago. I learned that he’s gay, and here I’m going to talk to him about the strange conversation I had with my folks, or really that my folks had with me since I didn’t say much.

I looked at the clock. It was almost eight, so that gave me about an hour and a half to get into my homework. I looked at the list of Physics experiments David had given me, and decided I could finish those and the reports by nine thirty. I got up and walked over to my “Lab Table” and got started. I did the other experiments that used the electromagnet first, since it was set up and ready to go. Then I finished the chapter seventeen experiment number one. David was right, it was a no-brainer with things like “Hold two horseshoe magnets together, rotating them to see what happens. Explain your observations.” Duh. One way they stick together and the other they’re repelled because of the polarity of the poles.

I still had almost forty-five minutes, so I started on the student stories in Creative Writing. The theme was “Relationships between teens and their parents.” Two of them were very good, well written with no typos and good spelling and grammar. The plots were interesting and really different. The third story amazed me for two reasons. First, it was a step above the other two stories in the way it was written. It read like a professional writer had written it. Second, it was about a boy coming out to his parents, telling them that he’s gay. It definitely wasn’t the kind of story I expected anyone in our class to write. We give out copies for the rest of the class to comment on as we read the stories out loud. The student’s name on the story surprised me even more. Rob Langale wrote the story. He’s a good friend of mine and we’ve known each other since first grade. The story is written in first person. I know that doesn’t mean that he is the protagonist, but it makes me wonder. This is the first story anyone submitted that has a gay character or is on a gay subject. I wondered how it went over in class. I suppose some of the guys might have made rude comments and there could have been guys laughing and girls giggling. Mrs. Ocampo would have shut that down real fast. She told us at the beginning of the semester that anyone who didn’t show respect for other students or their stories would be marked down for that class. Three marks and their semester grade would be reduced by a full point.

I sat back and looked at the poster of Green Day from “American Idiot” that’s on the wall in back of my desk. Billie Joe Armstrong is bi and out. He’s says he was confused about his sexuality as a teen, wondering if he was gay or bi or straight. I sat and just looked at the poster. Billy Joe has a teenage son who’s the drummer in the band “Emily's Army.” I wondered what he thought about his dad being bi and that he could read about it all over the internet. I wondered if the son, or daughter, of someone famous said they were gay and it got all over the internet what their parents would think. We learned about sexuality and gender identity in our Health class last semester. That included learning about kids and adults who are gay or bi and the problems many of them have because they came out or people said they were gay or their parents weren’t accepting. I keep my class notes in spiral notebooks. I pulled out the one for my Health class and looked for suicide statistics. Between two and three times as many gay kids attempt suicide as straight teens, and suicide is the third leading cause of death for those age fifteen to twenty-four. That’s so sad.

Damn! I realized that I was getting myself all depressed thinking about some of these things. In my opinion there’s so much to live for, even if I’d been attacked by Quin and his asshole buddies. Jeez, enough of this!

I got back to Rob’s story and wrote my response. It was hard because everything I thought about made my report sound gushy, more like a marketing pitch like you see on the back of a book than a response to what I’d read. Finally I was finished with it, and I thought I’d done a good job analyzing the story and saying what I thought was best about it.

The Skype window opened on my laptop. It was Ron, a few minutes early. I supposed better early than late. I grinned at his avatar. It was two stuffed bears hugging. That must represent Ron and Sean. Cute. I put on my headphones and answered his call.

“Hey, cutie! How you doing?”

“Good. First, I want to tell you that I asked my folks about you coming up this summer, and they said yes. Of course, your folks would have to agree, and there’s the part about how you’d get here, and so on yada yada yada.”

“That is absolutely great. Now I'll bring it up to my folks. So, what’s second part of how you’re doing?”

“I just finished part of my homework. It’s a total pain in the rear trying to catch up after being out of school for over two weeks.”

“Hmm. Seems to me you need someone to massage that painful rear of yours. Where’s Nate?”

“He gets the weekends off. I don’t know what he does on his weekends, so don’t bother to ask me.” That made me laugh.

“Speaking of rears, you need to invite him over for a sleepover. You only have one bed in your bedroom, right? It might end up interesting.”

“I’m fifteen years old. Guys our age don’t do sleepovers. That’s for middle school kids.”

“In what rule book is that written?”

“It’s in ‘Things You Shouldn’t Do if You Want to Survive High School.’ I think it’s rule number five or six in the ‘Male’ section of the book.”

“And who’s the author of this magnificent tome?”

“It’s me. I’m the author.”

“And what’s the publication date, ‘cause I can’t find it on Amazon.”

“It reads, ‘Not yet published, check back regularly.’”

“So this is your invention? Or should I more correctly say ‘figment of your imagination’?”

“Hey, I thought this up at the beginning of the semester when Mrs. Ocampo asked us to think of a title of a book we wished someone has written but hasn’t and give a brief one or two paragraph summary of what the book is about.”

“Man, you read that like you were reading off the dust jacket of a book. And you say you thought it up?”

“Absolutely. Here, I’ll show you.” I pulled out my three-ring binder and pulled out the title I’d chosen the writeup and Mrs. Ocampo’s comments, all positive. I held it up to the camera that was just above the screen of my laptop. “See? Just like I told you. Now all I have to do is write the book.”

“You mean it’s not written yet? Get off your flabby butt and get thee writing, Really. This sounds like a fun book for any middle school and high school student.”

“Tell you what, I’ll write a short story based on the book with excerpts from the book. We’ll find out if it’s okay when I read it to the class and they give me their written critiques.”

“That’s a rather piss-poor alternate for the reality of you writing the whole book. But I guess you’ll need time to write it. Just don’t name it ‘The Great American Novel.”

“That I can guarantee. First, it isn’t a novel. Second, there’s already a novel titled ‘The Great American Novel". It’s by Philip Roth. It’s a satire about a defunct baseball team. You can find it in your public library. It’s funny and in some parts sort of silly, but I really liked it.”

“I’ll look it up. So, tell me what’s going on with you and Nate.”

“Dufus! Nothing is going on. He’s gay, I’m straight.” I thought about that for a few seconds. “Mostly straight. I guess.”

There was a silent pause as Ron’s just looked at me for a few seconds.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes... no... I don’t know. I’m just confused.”

“Confused is what happens when you start thinking you might be gay. Or bi. That’s what happened to me. But being confused doesn’t mean that you’re gay or bi. You still might be straight.”

“When did you start thinking you might be gay?”

“I was about eleven or twelve. That’s a terrible time to discover that you’re gay, in the hell of middle school. Your hormones are popping up and screwing up who you thought you were, they’re changing your voice, and causing your dick to pop up all the time, usually when you have to go up to the board in class. That’s when you start wishing that you were tiny down there like some of the younger kids, you know what I mean?”

I laughed. “Yeah, I know what you mean, it happened to me, too. But I’m fifteen, not eleven or twelve, and I’m in high school, not middle school. Why should I start thinking about stuff like this now?”

“So tell me, what happened to get you started thinking about this? Was it Nate?”

So I told him what I could remember, starting when Nate and I touched each other’s chests, then Nate coming out to me because he thought I was gay, and my thoughts about Nate and why it felt so good when he touched me, then the weird conversation I had with my folks at dinner tonight.

“Jeez, no wonder you’re wondering. What about girls? Do you date? Is there a girl you’d like to have as your girlfriend? Does thinking about naked girls get you all hot and bothered?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, I have girls I’m friends with and go on dates with, or I did that before I got attacked by Quin. Thinking about girls does get me ‘hot and bothered’ like you said.”

“Do guys get you hot and bothered?”

“Can I take the Fifth on that?” I busted up laughing, and so did Ron. “Yeah, some.”

“That’s not a complete answer, Brian. So let me add this to my question. Do you ever dream about doing it with girls? Do you ever dream about doing it with guys? I guess this turned into a two part question. So answer them both. Truthfully.”

“You’re a terrible person, you know that Ronald Anderson?”

“Yup, I am a terrible person, Brian Anderson. So stop stalling and answer the question.”

“Yes. Not often. Once recently.”

“HEY! What kind of answer is that?”

“You actually asked three questions. So I answered them, in order.”

“Ah. So, ‘yes’ guys get you hot and bothered. You dreamt about doing it with girls but not often. You dreamt about doing it with guys but only one time and that was recently. I’m sort of paraphrasing here. But that’s what you answered, right?”

“Right.”

“And the guy, I’m assuming, is Nate. Right?”

“Right.” I grinned into the vid cam and wiggled my eyebrows.

“Come on, I want complete answers, I want details.”

“Not gonna happen. I’m still thinking about these things. Mainly I’m thinking I can’t be gay because they’re gonna ask me that question in court and I have to say the truth. So right now I can say I’m straight, not gay or bi, and I’ve never had sex with a guy. Actually I’ve never had sex with a girl, either.”

“Okay, I can see your dilemma. So after the trial all bets are off and you can experiment with a guy. Maybe Nate?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided. I don’t even know how to decide! I don’t know if I even want to decide. And it depends on Nate, too. This is all too confusing.”

“Well, what I think is that you’ve gotta figure out if you’re really attracted to guys. I’m going to send you a list of sites that have tons of info about being gay or bi, and another list of sites that, uh, show you what doing it with guys is all about. But I’m not going to send any of this to you until after the trial.”

“Okay. Cool. So, tell me about Sean. What’s he like, what do you guys do, like go to the mall, go to movies, skateboard, whatever. I’m interested.”

So for the next fifteen minutes Ron told me about Sean. He held a picture of him up in front of his vid cam and I could see what he looked like, and I could agree that he’s cute.

Finally Ron started yawning. Then I started yawning.

“Man, yawning is contagious.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ron giggled. “It even works with my dog. If I start to yawn, he will start to yawn, and vice versa.”

“It’s quarter to eleven. I’m bushed. This is great, doing a vid call. We should do this regularly. Right now what I want to do is go to bed and get some sleep.”

“Sounds like a plan. I have to get up early to go to church with my family tomorrow.”

“What church do you go to?”

“St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Granbury. We go every Sunday and on Christmas. Do you go to church?”

“We go to All Souls Presbyterian. We don’t go on Sundays, but we always go on Christmas and Easter, so it’s basically twice a year. What’s it like at your church for someone who’s gay?”

“I believe in ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ as far as the church is concerned. Pastor Downing is very anti-gay and he includes something negative about gays in almost every sermon. So I’m not out at church and I intend to be not out at church until I’m old enough to finally tell my folks that I’m not going to church anymore and have it stick.”

“Whoa. I kinda gather that you’ve told your folks that you don’t want to go to church with them, am I right?”

“Yes. Let’s just say it didn’t get a positive reaction.”

“Oh. Well, that’s probably a biggie for parents, you know, picking their kids’ religion and where and when they should go to church and stuff like that. My folks aren’t uber-religious, so neither am I. In your case it seems like the opposite is true.”

“Exactly. Is your church anti-gay?”

“I don’t go often enough to know. There are no anti-gay sermons when we do go at Chrismas and Easter.” I yawned. “With that, let’s say good night so we both can go to bed and get some sleep. This has been great, doing a Skype call with you. It’s a lot better than the phone.”

“Yeah. I come up with great ideas once in a while. And your idea to get some sleep is a great idea too. Good night, Brian.”

“Goodnight, Ron.”

I ended the call and signed off of Skype. Tomorrow would be a big homework day. But today had to be classified as one more very strange day in a growing list of very strange days.