The next day at lunch, and for the rest of the week, I sat with Becky. I wasn’t ever going to sit with the two C’s again. I could see now they’d been a distraction, a way to keep me from facing my problems. I’d thought they represented my new way of thinking and added to my greater acceptance at school this year. It was possible I hadn’t been thinking quite right.
In class, I began sticking up my hand more, a lot more, actually, as all year I’d never done it once. I’d been pretty sure, when I started doing it, I’d start hearing the kind of comments I’d heard before, about sitting in the front row all the time, about being every teacher’s favorite, and then all the worse ones. I don’t know why, but that wasn’t happening. I didn’t notice any different behavior from anyone. Maybe they just hadn’t noticed I hadn’t talked before in class and now was.
Sitting with Becky at lunch was great. I hadn’t known girls were like she was. She talked about everything and anything, she was really funny and smart, and nothing was out of bounds for her. I mean, she was nasty! And she had no shame or sense of decorum. Like once at lunch, she sort of sniffed at me when I sat down, and then again a couple times while we were talking. I was baffled why she’d do that, so asked what she was sniffing for.
“Are you wearing perfume? You smell like you’re wearing perfume.”
“No, I’m not wearing perfume! Are you nuts? Why would I be wearing perfume?”
“That’s a different discussion.” She stopped and grinned, and so I caught what she was talking
about and was a little shocked, but she went on before I could say anything. “But there’s this smell,
and it’s coming from you. It’s pretty strong. Sniff your shirt.”
“I’m not going to sniff my shirt! Everyone out here would see me!”
“You’re so tight you probably squeak when you move your arms! Loosen up, Matt! Who’s going to care if you sniff your shirt? Here, I’ll show you how.” And she pulled her shirt out of her jeans, pulled it as high as she could, pushed her head down to it and took a big whiff.
Then she looked at me.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and did the same thing with my tee shirt. And I smelled perfume.
“Hey, what is that?”
“That’s what I want to know. A little closet action here?” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, Groucho Marx style.
Rather than answer, I leaned down and sniffed again, puzzled. I thought I recognized the odor. And then it came to me.
“I know what it is. In gym today, I was standing near this freshman and he was complaining that his mom had bought him spray deodorant instead of the gel type, and he was spraying it around in the air a little and kids were yelling at him to stop it, and then he sprayed some on his pits, but because of where I was standing, and his bad aim, some of it sprayed on me. That’s what this smell is. Damn, I hope everyone isn’t smelling it. What’ll they think?”
She laughed. To change the subject from the question I’d just asked which I really didn’t want her to talk about, I instead told her about how the younger kids rarely showered, and what the locker room smelled like. That was easy to explain to her. She’d already smelled me when I’d sat down.
She was more interested in another aspect of what I’d said than the smell part, however. “But the older guys all shower?”
“Yeah, we men shower.”
“So you’re all naked in there. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No, I’m used to it, and we’re all pretty much the same. When you’re mature, those things don’t bother you. Maybe when I first did it, as a freshman, but not now.”
“You’re mature?”
I thought I’d better change the subject again. “Don’t the girls shower after gym? You must see everyone naked too.”
“Our shower room is broken up into little private cubicles with curtains. Sort of like health clubs and spas have. We go in there in our underwear or gym clothes, shower with the curtain closed, then put clean underwear on and come out. We see each other in our underwear, but that’s all.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun.” I winked at her.
“Not as much as you’re having, I guess. So you see a lot of guys naked each day?”
“Yeah. Not that I spend a lot of time looking at them, you know, but yeah, they’re there, and I see them. Sort of incidentally, like.”
“So do you ever see Jeffery Rodriguez naked?”
“Yeah, he’s in my class and—hey, why are you asking about Jeff? Do you like him or something?”
“Ugh. No. But he struts around, all macho, and says things to some of the girls that suggest he’s pretty proud of himself, all of himself. He told a couple girls he could really satisfy them, because he’s built for it. But quite a lot of guys talk big, and there’s a lot of speculation among the girls that all it is, is a lot of talk, with most of them. So, I was wondering if it was true, with Jeffery. I don’t mean the satisfying part, I mean the well-built part. Is he hung?”
She had the ability to shock or embarrass me, and managed to do so quite frequently. She did so with this question. I answered the best I could. “Becky, I don’t check out guys to see who’s bigger or smaller or anything like that!”
“Come off it, Matt. Of course you do. When I was going with Rob, he told me all the guys do that, they’re just careful not to look too long at any one person. A glance is perfectly okay. Several glances, if you space them out, are okay. He said all you guys are curious, you all want to know if you’re bigger or smaller than everyone else, you even want to know just what other guys look like. You must do the same thing, Matt. So, is Jeffery bigger or smaller than you are?”
“Becky! Why were you talking about things like that with Rob?” I thought maybe I could distract her. I didn’t want to talk with her about the boys in the showers. Or about them compared to me. It was embarrassing.
“We talked about a lot of things. You know me. I’ve got questions, and this stuff is interesting. So, just tell me, is Jeffery bigger than average?”
I was starting to fidget. This wasn’t a topic boys talked about nor one I was comfortable talking about with a girl, but this was Becky, this was the way she was. I’d heard once that girls are much less shy about talking about stuff like this than boys are. Boys boast a lot about what they’ve done, but don’t talk nitty-gritty details much. I guess girls do. And now, one was doing it with me. This was virgin territory she was invading and I hardly knew how to answer.
I didn’t say anything, so she kept going. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen him hard. Have you? No, probably not. Well, when he’s soft, is it real big around? What color is it? Rob told me some of them are real dark, some are just the color of the rest of the body, that it varies boy to boy. Rob’s was darker than his other skin, and he told me that’s because he’s had lots of sex, and that made it dark. I asked if that meant him jerking it made it dark, because he sure didn’t have lots of sex with me, and he’d told me at the beginning I was his first girlfriend. I think he was full of shit.”
I think I was turning pale about this point. First I’d been red, but then she just kept going on and on. How could she be talking about this stuff?
“So, tell me. Is he big around? Long? Short? Tiny? Pink? Dark? Lots of pubic hair? I want to know.”
“Uh, I can’t really talk about this, Becky. Boys don’t do that.”
“Matthew Tucker. You’re going to tell me, or I’m going to start talking louder, maybe call a couple girls over here to listen because they’d like to know, too. Then you’ll have to tell all of us. And they probably will have other questions. Is it true you all jack off several times a day?”
“Becky!”
“I’m going to call some girls over here.”
“You wouldn’t do that!”
“Angela,” she called, speaking to a girl at the next table.
“Becky! Stop it. Okay, I’ll tell you,” I said softly but vehemently. I really was pale now.
Angela turned around, and Becky said, “Oh, sorry. I thought I saw a bee flying around near your hair, but it left.”
Angela smiled to her and turned back to her table.
“Well...?”
“Becky, I don’t study other boys’ dicks! I’ve seen him, but that’s about all.”
“So tell me what you saw. Everything you can remember.” She leaned closer, her eyes alive.
“Damn, Bec. Okay. He’s probably like most of us, maybe a little smaller. I don’t remember anything about the color. He’s got the normal amount of hair, and it’s real dark. Oh, and he’s not circumcised.
“See, you knew a lot! I knew you would.”
“What do you mean by that?!”
“That you look at the other boys. All you guys do, and are ashamed to admit it. Boys! You guys don’t make any sense. Half the girls don’t even bother putting their bras on going to and coming from the showers. We talk about our breasts, compare them. You should do the same thing with your penises.”
“Becky!”
As I say, she’d talk about anything. I loved sitting with her. But it did take some getting used to.
◊ ◊
Sitting at lunch with Becky seemed to have changed my whole attitude. Being alone all the time affects you. Now I had someone to hang with, to eat with, to talk to on the phone, to bounce feelings off, and it was incredible how much better I felt, how much better my whole attitude was, and my entire outlook, too. I was much more relaxed, but that was only to start with. I was starting to feel a little more self-confident. I didn’t understand it, but I felt it.
There was still a nagging issue, however. Being with Becky at lunch was so invigorating that I’d get completely enthralled with what we were discussing and sort of forget a little bit about Kevin. Totally forget, really. When I remembered, which was only a couple times that week, I looked over at where he was sitting. He was still by himself, and he always seemed to be looking at me.
And unfortunately, he wasn’t just looking at me, he was looking at me with malevolence. His eyes were just as expressive as ever, but instead of shining, they were almost dark holes, and I didn’t at all like what was coming out of them, directed at me.
As soon as I’d see that, I’d quickly turn back to Becky, but it bothered me. I was so happy with Becky, and because Kevin and his problems no longer were right in front of me, commanding all my attention, they didn’t distress me like they had before. But when I saw the look in his eyes, that did bother me. I had no idea where the degree of dislike he was showing me was coming from. It didn’t seem reasonable to me. I would have worried about it, but sitting with Becky was a great distraction; she always had something interesting to say, she had a way of chatting about things that made them really funny and compelling and her charisma took my mind off Kevin.
Friday was one of the days I remembered to look his way, and he was doing it again. Staring at me. I suddenly realized, this was just like gym had been. He didn’t come to gym any more. He was still wearing his cast, although he didn’t wear the sling any longer. Since he wasn’t in gym, and that was the only class we had together, I didn’t see him anywhere other than at lunch. So now he was using lunch for the same purpose he’d used gym for, to stare at me.
I didn’t like it. In gym, I hadn’t liked it because I didn’t know what it meant and was afraid other guys would get the wrong idea. Now, I didn’t like it because of the ill will I could read in his eyes, and it’s disconcerting to have someone hate you like that, even if they are a little shrimp who can’t hurt you at all. It doesn’t feel right, however, no matter how big they are. I didn’t want to be the person who’d been the cause of that. I didn’t think I had been, really, but he sure seemed to hate me.
As I say, I saw it again on Friday, and had the weekend to think about it. The more I thought, the more I didn’t like him doing that. Staring at me. I didn’t like him hating me, either, but if he wasn’t staring at me, I wouldn’t know about the hating part, so could probably handle it better. I thought about what I could do about it, and the only thing I could come up with was that I could talk to him again, just like I’d done during gym class. It hadn’t helped then, but maybe it would now. Just going up to him and telling him to stop staring at me certainly wasn’t going to do any good.
So, I decided on Sunday, while I was doing homework, that I was going to confront him Monday. I thought a lot about him, and me, and what had gone on, and decided I owed him something. I decided that something should be done to get whatever was causing him so much stress out in the open. He owed me something, too. He shouldn’t be hating me and causing me to think about that. I was a decent guy, kind of ordinary and not someone anyone should be hating. I was going to talk to him.
Maybe it was all the time I spent that evening thinking about him, but that night, I dreamed about him. I hadn’t been doing that since I’d met Becky. I’d been falling to sleep easier and not dreaming at all that I could remember. But I dreamed about Kevin that night. And I had to change my boxers. And I stuck them in the washing machine along with some other dirty clothes I had. Some things just areb’t any of my mother’s business.
◊ ◊
I’d thought about when and where to talk to Kevin on Monday. It would be best to do it in private. You just never knew what you were going to get when you spoke to that kid, and I didn’t want to have a bunch of people around. The possibility that this would blow up in my face was pretty good. Probably about 90%, actually. But I wanted to try.
I got a pass from Mr. Bellands to go to the library during history. I’d seen Kevin there before during that time, and I thought the library would be a wonderful place to talk to him. He’d have to be quiet in the library.
But he wasn’t there. I spent as much time waiting as I could, but he didn’t show up. I returned to class. I’d just have to see him at lunch. It was that or go back to his house, and as the chance I’d do that was about the same as the chance I’d be playing center on the basketball team this year, all 140 pounds and almost six feet of me, I didn’t spend any time thinking about it.
I knew it would have to be at lunch. I was pretty sure he’d be there. He always had been.
I ate with Becky as usual. When I came in, I checked, and sure enough, Kevin was there, sitting alone at his table. I sat down at our table, and she joined me almost immediately. We ate, and chatted, and finally, when the time was getting short—okay, I’d been putting it off, I’ll admit it—I knew I had to do it now or not do it at all. I told Becky I was going to go over and talk to Kevin.
“Who’s Kevin?”
“See that little kid sitting alone over near the jacaranda tree? The one with the cast? That’s Kevin. I’m the reason he’s wearing that cast. I’ve been trying to help him, ever since, and he won’t let me, and he stares at me all the time like he hates me, like he’s doing now, and I decided over the weekend to try to talk to him again.”
She was looking at him now, and he looked at her for a second, then back to me.
Becky was asking me to tell her all about it as I got up, so I said I’d call her tonight, then walked over to his table. Nervously. He’d already told me once that if I kept bothering him he’d go to the principal and I’d be in trouble. So I’d left him alone. I didn’t know if it had been enough time for him to calm down. He didn’t look calm. Was he angry enough to make good on his threat? I didn’t know, but was about to chance it. I just had to talk to him, and taking this risk was the only way to do that.
“May I sit down, Kevin?”
“No. Get away from me.” The look in his eyes was the same, but the voice wasn’t as harsh as it had been before. It wasn’t as angry as it had been before.
I sat down. I was afraid he’d jump up, but he didn’t. He just sat there glowering at me.
“Kevin, I just don’t get it. I’ve been thinking about you. Too much, probably. All weekend. And I just don’t get it.” I was using my reasonable, even sympathetic voice. “You’re staring at me again, like in gym, and it looks like you hate me. I don’t want you to hate me. I like you, which is a bit strange and I haven’t quite figured out why yet, but I do. And I don’t want you hating me. You sit over here every day, watching me, and I can see your eyes. That can’t be good for you, expending that much emotion on me. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why I deserve it. I pushed you just a little too hard, a little harder than I wanted to. I was feeling, I . . . I. . .” I stopped, because trying to figure out what I’d been feeling at the time hadn’t worked when I wasn’t sitting looking at him; it sure wouldn’t work now, here. “No matter what I was feeling, I wasn’t trying to hurt you, and by now you should have realized that. You certainly have figured out I’ve felt badly about it, and that I’ve been trying to help, even if it hasn’t worked out like I wanted it to. So I don’t understand, but I don’t want you hating me.”
“Why do you think I care what you think?” His eyes were blazing at me, his voice tight and hard. He was angry, and had gotten angrier as I’d been speaking.
“See! You’re still doing it! You’re full of anger I don’t understand. The only thing you could be mad about is what I did playing Duck Duck Goose, and that’s nothing to be mad about. Can you at least talk to me, tell me what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is you knocked me down, and I found out I was wrong about you, and my life is shit, and I don’t want to talk to you. I keep telling you to leave me alone, and you won’t do it.” He didn’t say that like he was whining. And to tell the truth, he didn’t sound mad. He sounded something else, and I wasn’t sure how to classify it.
“But you’re not leaving me alone,” I replied. “You sit here every day staring at me. What’s with that, anyway?”
“Maybe I just like looking at the guy who broke my wrist, thinking about how to get even.”
“Kevin, I wasn’t trying to hurt you!” I raised my voice, frustrated beyond measure. “You’re mad as hell at me, and what did I do? I pushed you a little too hard! That’s all I fucking did! And you’re mad and won’t get over it, and it was all a mistake, and I’ve apologized, and tried to help you, and I still feel rotten that I did it. I felt awful at the time, and you just won’t get over it! And it’s starting to piss me off, and I don’t want to be pissed at you. But you’re still mad, and you’re always mad, and it doesn’t make any difference what I do, you just stay mad at me, and all I did was push you a little too hard! It was just a push!”
“You stupid shit! That’s not what I’m mad about!” And he got up and walked away before I finally came up with a brilliant reply to him. “Huh?” I said, but he wasn’t there to hear it.
◊ ◊
“He’s gay.”
“What? No way!”
“Sure he is. He’s gay. And he likes you.”
“My God! Becky! That’s nuts! You’re nuts!”
I was lying on my bed, with the door closed, talking on the phone to Becky. She’d called, right after dinner, and I’d stopped doing my homework to talk to her. I’d told her I’d call her, but I guess she couldn’t wait.
I’d told her all about Kevin staring at me in gym, about me telling him to stop, how well that had worked, and then about the Duck Duck Goose game. I even told her that I’d been upset about playing it, about being upset with Kevin being in the same circle I was in, about him tagging me, and how some of the anger I’d been feeling had resulted in me pushing him too hard. That I didn’t know why I’d done that. That I’d been really upset that I’d hurt him. And what had happened since then.
We’d kicked it around a little. Becky always wanted all the details of everything. Maybe that’s a girl thing, or just a Becky thing, but she really picked apart whatever was being discussed. She kept asking how I felt about everything. I answered, but didn’t tell her about my crying, or how I sometimes thought about him at night. That would be way weird.
So we were still talking, and then she said that. That he was gay. And I told her she was nuts.
“What’s nuts about it? Think about it, Matt. It answers a lot of questions. Okay, okay, maybe he’s not gay, I don’t know that for sure. But at the very least, he has a crush on you. You know younger guys sometimes sort of idolize older guys? So he has a crush on you, or idolizes you. It fits. He liked or admired you, then you pushed him. He told you you weren’t the guy he thought you were. Maybe that means he’d had a crush on you, he’d liked you, you were someone he looked up to, being bigger and older but really a nice guy and not threatening to him. He saw you like you are. You are nice, you know. So he felt all that, then you viciously knocked him to the ground.”
“I didn’t! It wasn’t a bit vicious! I just pushed him a little too hard.”
“But that might be too fine a distinction to a little kid whose hero just broke his arm. So you knock him down, break his arm, and he suddenly realizes you’re not the idol he thought you were. That explains his comment. It even explains why he’s been mad: he’s mad at you and even more so at himself for liking some guy that turned out to be a jerk and broke his arm.”
“It wasn’t his arm. It was his wrist. And I’m not anyone’s hero! I’m not a jerk, either. Where are you getting all this?”
“Think about it! It all makes perfect sense, and explains a lot of stuff. He was always hanging around you. That’s what a kid who worships you would do. And when you called him on it, he was all mouthy. Being mouthy is a defense mechanism. That’s what he’d do when you called him on it, if he had a crush on you. He certainly couldn’t let you know how he felt. Not in a hundred years.”
“But Becky . . . .” I stopped. I had to think about this. I mean, this couldn’t be right.
Could it?
I was thinking about it when Becky said, “Matt? Uh, if he did have a crush on you, or even if he was gay, you wouldn’t do anything bad, would you? I mean, I wouldn’t think so, I think I know you, but you’re not one of these guys who hates gay guys, are you? You wouldn’t do anything violent if it were true, would you? He’s just a little kid. I wouldn’t have said anything if I thought you were that way.”
“No, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m not homophobic. I’d have to discourage him, of course, but I’ve already hurt him physically. I don’t want to hurt him even more psychologically this time. But I’m sure you’re wrong.”
“Well, we should find out.”
“How? We can’t ask him. That would be terrible.”
“What do you mean ‘we?’ You’re the one who has to ask him.”
“Me? I can’t do that! I’ve already hurt him. And whether he’s gay or not, asking him that would hurt him. Even if he has a crush on me, which he doesn’t, me asking him that would be humiliating to him. He already hates me. I can’t do that.”
Becky didn’t say anything which meant her wheels were spinning, her mind was busy, and that was scary. Look at the sort of crap she was always coming up with! Whatever it was this time, I expected the worst.
She didn’t disappoint me.
“Matt, I know what we have to do. We have to figure this out, whether he’s gay, or if it’s just a crush that he’ll get over. Boys get crushes on other boys even if they’re not gay, don’t they? I’ve read about that. You’ve had crushes on other boys, haven’t you?”
Damn it! How could she always work her way into a conversation I wasn’t about to have with her, and find ways to involve innocent little me in her weird thinking? She did it all the time. First it was what other boys’ dicks looked like. Now it was about me having crushes on boys.
“Becky, you were talking about figuring out what’s going on with Kevin. Not about me. If you’re going to talk about me, I’m going to hang up. You said boys sometimes have crushes on other boys. My mom has told me that’s true. So it’s possible, I suppose, that that’s Kevin’s problem, or even the other one you mentioned. But I don’t think so.”
She was silent again for a bit, then asked, “What did you mean, a minute ago? You said if you asked him if he was gay, it would hurt him. I don’t get that. Why would that hurt him? I’d think if he was gay, and you asked him, it would be a relief to him. He could then tell you.”
“I don’t think that’s the way it would be. If he is gay and I ask him, he’d be afraid to answer it truthfully, afraid I’d either beat him up or tell everyone that he’d admitted he was gay. And the question itself would tell him I thought he was gay, and would make him think other kids may have the same impression and are wondering the same thing. So either way, the question would hurt him. And if he wasn’t gay, he’d still have the same fears about what other people might think. It’s a question you just don’t ask a boy, unless you don’t care about his feelings at all.”
“What if you told him it wouldn’t make any difference if he said yes?”
“Becky, you just don’t understand all this stuff. I don’t either, to tell the truth, but it’s something boys have to be very careful about. I’m not going to walk up to Kevin and say, ‘Hey Kev, are you gay? And it doesn’t make any difference to me if you are.’ The first thing he’d think is that I was probably gay myself, and I don’t want him thinking that. See, it’s all difficult, and something most of us just stay away from. I’m not going to get into it with him.”
She digested that, then said, “Well, I still think that’s the problem. He’s gay, or he has a crush on you, or both.”
“Well, there’s no way to find out, so it’s best to just drop it.”
“No, we need to find out.”
“But there’s no way for us to do that!”
“Sure there is. We just have to find a way to test him.”
“Becky!”