Circumstances 39

My heart was suddenly running twice as fast as it had been, the pity-pats coming almost on top of each other.

“Uh, you mean... like a... date?”

He laughed.  “No, I mean, you wanna go to the movies this weekend?  I heard there’s one called Predators that’s really good, about a bunch of guys taken to another planet to be used as prey for alien hunters there.  But these guys are smart and tough and it’s supposed to be way bad.  Wanna go?”

My heart slowed down.  While it was slowing, and I was composing myself, he went on, laughter in his voice, “Why, did you want it to be a date?”

“God!  No!”  That was easy to say, a defensive, protective reaction if there ever was one.  “I thought that’s what you were asking, which is why I stuttered like I did.  Yeah, I’d love to go see that.”

We figured out the logistics, and then hung up.  It only then occurred to me that he’d asked only me, not Gary.  I started smiling.

I slipped into Gary’s room that night.  I’d been doing that three or four times a week since I’d moved in.  About the only times I stayed in his bed all night were Friday or Saturday nights.  The other times, we helped each other, and then I slipped back to my room.  It only took a second to jump from his room to mine.  I hadn’t been caught, and I didn’t plan to be.

After we were both satisfied, I lay next to him for a little longer than usual. 

“Gary?”

“Yeah.”  He was still breathing hard enough it came out in a sort of gasp.

“You know you said you weren’t gay, that you like girls, but were willing to mess around because you like sex?  You still feel the same about all that?”

“Yeah.”  He wasn’t gasping as much now.

“You know how I feel about you, don’t you?”

“That you like me a lot, sorta in the way a boyfriend likes his boyfriend?”

It was my turn to say yeah.  I did.  Say it, I mean.

“I know that,” Gary answered.  “I know you told me you were trying not to fall in love with me.  We’re not talking about this because that’s changed, are you?  You’re not telling me you’ve fallen in love with me, are you?”

“No,” I told him.  “I wanted to make sure you haven’t changed your mind.  That you haven’t fallen in love with me.”

He rolled up on his side, propping himself on his elbow.  “Keith, I like you a whole lot, but I’m not in love with you, romantic love I mean.  I love you like I’d love a brother, or perhaps even more than that because brothers are always on each other’s case, and you and I never fight.  But why are you asking me that?”

I rolled over to look into his eyes.  “Because I’m getting the idea that it’s possible Darryl’s gay.  He might not be, too.  I don’t know.  But, if he is, it’s possible, after I go to the movies with him, that maybe one of us will get brave and we’ll talk.  Maybe he’ll want to be boyfriends.  So, before any of that happens, I wanted to know how you felt about me, for sure.”

I paused, wanting to say this right, wanting him to understand exactly what I was feeling.  “I love you like you love me, sorta like a brother, and I love your parents, and I simply won’t risk doing anything that’ll make you guys feel differently about me.  I don’t want to even think about getting together with Darryl if there’s the slightest chance you’re falling in love with me.  I wanted to make sure you weren’t, is all.”

His smile at me was a little awkward.  “Uh, if that happens, Darryl and you I mean, does that mean what we’re doing now, we couldn’t do any more?”

I laughed.  “Probably.  What it’d mean is, I’d be getting some with Darryl, and you’d be back to using your fist.  Unless you move a little faster with Amy.”

“Damn,” he said, then chuckled.

I lay back down flat, laughing at first, and then chuckling myself a little before I became silent.  After a moment or two, in a very sober voice, feeling some emotion, I said, “Gary, I told you I wouldn’t do anything to make your parents feel differently about me.  Well, at some point, they’ll learn I’m gay.  Do you think that’ll bother them?”

He shook his head.  “They’re not like that.  If you’re gay, you’re gay, and they realize it’s not a choice.  I’ve heard them discussing it.  They’re sad about how many problems gay kids have.  They won’t care that you’re gay.”

I relaxed.  I’d been pretty certain they felt like that, but hearing Gary say it was really good.

A little later, I slipped back into my own room.  My own room.  That’s what I was thinking it was.  I was getting too comfortable here, I realized.  It was going to be painful to have to leave.  But how could I not feel this way about living here?  I was getting good meals every day now, and maybe that’s why puberty had kicked in with a vengeance, finally.  Maybe why my arms and legs didn’t look so much like matchsticks, too.  I was living in a loving atmosphere.  I wasn’t being ignored.  What I said was listened to here, meant something here.  I had nice clothes now, and new ones when I needed them.  I lived in a great house in an affluent neighborhood with my own room.  There was a swimming pool out back, and I had a brother my age to share it and everything else with.

I thought about all that and realized, all the creature comforts I now enjoyed played second fiddle to the less substantial things.  The love I got from the three Jenks, the support, the hugs that showed me there were people who really cared about me and how I was feeling, those were what mattered most.  I felt better about myself now.  My attitude and outlook were changing, and it wasn’t a nice room or a swimming pool or clothes that were the cause of that.  It was good people who saw something special in me.  Me, a kid who’d grown up never having any reason to think he amounted to anything.  Them standing behind me and caring about me simply because I was who I was, supporting me rather than criticizing me: that was why I was just beginning to get my feet on the ground and able to start figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be in life.