Circumstances 46

At lunch the next day, I told Darryl I’d be leaving school and the city soon, and it could happen at any time, without warning.  He looked stunned.  I explained the circumstances to him.  He sat there looking at me.  I could see he didn’t know what to say.  I saw how he felt—he was as unhappy as I was.

When I explained, he simply shook his head, then looked away across the cafeteria.  I watched him.  I knew what I was feeling, that this was a boy I liked, that I was liking him more and more as I got to know him better, and I had thought, hoped, he might be my first boyfriend.  Looking at his face, I kind of thought maybe he was having very similar feelings.

He looked back at me and reached out and touched my hand.  Just touched it.  We were in the cafeteria.  He couldn’t do more than that.  He could look into my eyes, however, and he did so with his own eyes full of emotion.

“Keith,” he said, and his voice was strained, “I’ve never said this to anyone else.  I like you.  A lot.  My head is full of you, all the time.  I don’t want you to go.”

“Me neither.”

“This is way screwed up,” he said.  He sort of growled it.

“Yeah.”

“And it could be any time, you could simply be gone?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice because the emotions he was showing were getting to me.

He was quiet for a moment or two, then said, “Fuck it,” and sat up straighter, and his eyes never left mine.  “Keith, I’m gay.  I think I am at least.  I’ve never even kissed a boy, but I think about it a lot.  I think about kissing you.  And I might as well say it.  I think about a lot of things too, when I think about you.”

I blushed.  I did.  Right there in the cafeteria.  And then I said, softly, “Me too.”

His eyes widened, and he smiled one of his 1,000-watt smiles and he raised his hand and reached out again, but set it back on the table.  I realized I was smiling just as broadly as he was.

“Could we go swimming again?  This afternoon?  At your house?”

I nodded, and couldn’t stop grinning.

I was feeling really good.  I told myself to stop thinking about my mother, to just enjoy what I had as long as I had it because there was nothing I could do about any of this.  So after lunch that’s what I did.  I just thought about Darryl, and him coming over after school, and I was grinning so hard I wasn’t paying attention all that well in the hallway, I was simply walking and thinking, and someone bumped into me, hard.  I dropped my books.  And, probably because of my mood, feeling so good about myself for a change, what I did was way out of character for me.  What I did was stand up and shout at the kid who’d bumped me, “What the hell’s your problem?”

The kid stopped and turned around.  It was Antonio Carrasco.  Shit!  He just happened to be the hardest of all the hard cases in school.  He wasn’t someone a person like me yelled at.  He wasn’t a person anyone yelled at that way.

He looked back at me, standing in the hallway, my books scattered on the floor beside me, and walked back toward me.  I just stood there, watching.  Everyone around us did, too, and the silence was immediate.  He could easily exterminate me.  With extreme prejudice, too.  But what my mind was telling me was, Darryl likes me, the Jenks’ all love me, and I was trying to stand up for myself.  So, I didn’t move.  I was scared, but I didn’t move.

Antonio walked up to me and said “Sorry.  I wasn’t looking where I was going.”  Then he leaned down, picked up my books, handed them to me, and walked away.

I was stunned.  Everyone else looked that way, too, but the general hallway noise came back as soon as he turned away from me.  I took a deep breath, feeling relieved, and had taken one step when a hand clamped itself onto my shoulder.  A bitter voice spoke softly, close to my ear.

“I just got through talking to him in my office.  I told him one more incident, anything at all, and he’d be expelled.  That’s why you didn’t get punched in the nose.  Or kicked in the balls.  Or hopefully, both.”  He paused a moment, maybe to let me think about that, then said, “Had I known this was going to happen, I’d never have spoken to him.  He saw me in my doorway, watching, when he turned around.  He saw me.  Otherwise...”  Mr. Johnson squeezed my shoulder hard enough to hurt, then turned around and walked toward to his office.  He stopped after a few steps and walked back to me.  He leaned down and said, quietly enough so only I could hear, “You know, you did give me an idea.  Maybe I can think of something that Antonio could do that would clear his slate, in my book.  Something he can do off the school grounds.  Maybe I’ll talk to him about that.  I’ll think about that.  Maybe you should, too.”

    ∫    ∫    ∫

 

Darryl came over after school and we changed into our suits together this time.  I looked at him, and he at me, and it wasn’t till a while later we went swimming, now that we both knew.  He was as eager as I was, but it was brand new to him.  We spent a lot of time just kissing.  But that wasn’t all we did.  We got to  second base; he slid in and was safe.  OK, OK, I’m not sure what that means either, but I liked saying it.

We had fun, and that’s all I’m going to say.  We were both smiling when we jumped into that pool, and I’ll leave it up to someone else to decide exactly why.

That night, I went to Gary’s room.  I sat on his bed.  He pulled the covers back so I could get in with him, and the sight of his naked body was just as attractive as ever, but I shook my head.

“I came to tell you we can’t mess around any more.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I found out Darryl’s gay.  We did some stuff this afternoon, before we went swimming.  I really like him.  And he likes me.  So I don’t think, if I’m doing things with him, I should be doing things with you.”

“Are you boyfriends?”

“Well, no.  But I think we will be.  If we have enough time.”

Gary knew about my mother, about my circumstances.  So, he knew what I meant by that.  He looked sad for a moment, but being sad wasn’t really who Gary was.  So, he said, “Well, until he asks you, or you ask him—” and he pulled the covers back again, and gave his eyebrows an inviting wiggle.  His midsection wiggled, too. 

I wanted to slide in.  I really did.  But I shook my head instead, and said, “It would make me feel like I was cheating on him, even if technically I wasn’t.”

“Damn!” he said.  “I guess I’ll have to start putting more pressure on Amy.  Once you’re used to getting it from someone else, it’s hard to go back to unisex.”

I was still laughing when I left the room.