I spent some time just lying on the bed thinking after Becky had finally hung up, saying she was going to consider some things we could do to test her theories about Kevin. I shuddered at the thought. It was enough to make me want to go back to the good old days when she wasn’t my friend and I didn’t have to deal with all the shit she came up with. Well, not really, but almost.
But rather than go back to my homework, I remained on my bed, thinking about things. What she’d said, it did seem like it could be true. It didn’t explain everything, but it explained a lot more than any reasons for his behavior I could come up with. There were probably other things it could be that I just hadn’t thought of, but I couldn’t just dismiss this explanation out of hand.
I wondered what it all meant. I mean about me. Because I hadn’t told Becky all my feelings, just the ones it was safe to tell her. And if Kevin was gay, or if he had a crush on me, what did I really think about that?
My very first reaction, without giving any thought to why, if I just looked at how I reacted to that, my reaction was, I was a little scared. See, there was no question in my mind, I was straight as an arrow. I certainly wasn’t gay. I was just another regular guy. Like all the rest of us. And that’s why being a little scared at the thought of Kevin liking me, liking me as a boyfriend, was upsetting. Because I didn’t find the idea offensive. I found it flattering, and a little exciting. That’s what was scary.
Wasn’t I supposed to be mad? Other guys always talked about being mad if some boy showed any of that kind of interest in them. All the gay jokes I’d heard, they had a real mean edge to them. Or were belittling. Locker room talk was always so dismissive of gay boys, and it was hostile, too. There was talk of beating the shit out of them if any of them looked at one of us regular guys. That was sort of the thing to do, beat the shit out of them. Now, truthfully, I’d never felt that way. Gay boys didn’t offend me at all. Or they wouldn’t if I ever knew one. I thought that would be so. This was virgin territory for me. I didn’t know any, no one was out at school, but the idea of a gay kid didn’t bother me. And I certainly didn’t think about beating the shit out of anyone, even if they were gay. That wasn’t me.
I wondered, all the boys who talked so bravely and boastfully about the shit-beating thing, if they thought about a boy liking them, would it make them mad, or would they find it a little exciting, just to themselves, with no posturing for friends involved? I didn’t know the answer to that. The more I thought about all this stuff, the more I realized I didn’t have any answers to most of it.
I did know, I did realize, that I’d been thinking about Kevin some. I also knew, but never allowed myself to think about it very much, that in the past I’d found some other boys attractive, and had thought about them in the way I was now thinking about Kevin. I’d thought about girls too, of course, which was why I knew I was straight. I just didn’t think about them very much, was all.
I never worried about the fact that I sometimes found some boys attractive. It was just me. I had always been that way, and it was nothing to worry about. It was just me, and I was very normal. I’d always done it, thought that way I mean, and there was nothing wrong with me. Nothing that meant I needed to have the shit beat out of me. If I found other boys attractive, I assumed other boys also did. They didn’t talk about it, so neither did I, but I assumed it was so, and we just didn’t say it. I found boys attractive, I found girls attractive, and I was a regular kid. I was sure of it. I felt normal. If I were strange, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? I’d feel different, and I didn’t. I felt like me. Just a regular kid.
But this thing with Kevin. I found him attractive, even if he was a damned nuisance, and there seemed to be a difference in the way I felt about him compared with how I’d felt about the other boys I’d found attractive. I cared a lot whether he hated me or not. I’d never cared a bit about what the other boys I’d watched thought of me. I never even thought about them thinking about me. It wasn’t an issue. I was flattered that Kevin seemed to watch me in gym, and really was upset when he now seemed to hate me. I didn’t want him to hate me. I hated that he hated me. Hated it enough that I’d started crying when I’d told my mom about it.
Was that normal? I didn’t know. Maybe. As Becky said, I was a nice guy. And I was. So maybe not wanting Kevin to hate me was just part of that. But it felt like it might be more than that, too.
What if I did like Kevin a little bit more than I wanted to admit? Well, I was straight. I wanted to be straight. It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t want to be gay, it was more I’d never even thought about that possibility. I was straight, so I’d never thought about that. Could I think about that, or be like that? I didn’t think so. It would be such a change for me, I didn’t think I could do it. I couldn’t think what it would be like if I were left handed, or played linebacker, either. I didn’t know how to relate to those things, couldn’t really imagine it, didn’t have any reference framework to stick it in.
But I simply couldn’t deny the fact that I felt something for Kevin that I hadn’t felt before with anyone else. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what I wanted, or didn’t want. I didn’t seem to know shit, and that was unsettling.
The fact was, all this thinking was getting to me. I was starting to be upset, and the more I thought, the more bothered I was. I had to stop this, but stopping thinking about something that has you bothered is difficult, and it doesn’t solve anything. I got up and tried to read my history book, and simply couldn’t.
When I get upset, there is usually something I do that helps. It was difficult for me to do it now, but I was used to doing it. So I did it: I went to talk to my mom.
◊ ◊
My mom was in her office, reading charts. She has charts that she makes up on all her patients. Before seeing a patient the next day, she reviews the chart the night before so she has the details of the person well in mind. Then, after seeing the patient, she spends some time adding to the chart before meeting her next patient. She’s very organized. I think the fact I like practicing the clarinet as much as I do might sort of stem from that quality in her. She can really concentrate, really devote her full mind to just one thing. I can do that when I’m practicing. I don’t get distracted. She doesn’t either. I think it’s a good thing.
I might not have given the right impression about my mom. I get mad at her some. Don’t all boys? I sure did. But with both my parents, I never, ever, felt they didn’t love me. They were the center of my life, my constant, my reassurance. Some kids talk about hating their parents, about running away. Some even do it. I couldn’t imagine that. My parents were my home, more than my house was, if that makes any sense. They were my support structure. They fed and clothed me, but it was their love that sustained me. I might not have told them I felt that, but I knew they knew.
We talked. They insisted on it, and we always had, which made it easier for me, now that I was older, to talk about things that a lot of guys won’t talk about with their parents. I thought maybe I was lucky in that. One of the reasons I could talk to them was that they weren’t judgmental, always wanting to tell me I was wrong about things. We discussed things. I was wrong about some things. I made mistakes. I was a teenager. It was part of the package; I made mistakes. But I never was made to feel I was a bad kid or a stupid kid because of it. Just that a mistake had been made.
My mom was the parent I interacted with the most. My dad was in the background more, but it was a strong, supportive background. I needed his quiet love and presence as much as I needed my mom’s advice and counseling. They were markedly different in approaches. My dad would listen to me when I spoke to him, but he rarely said a lot, unless I asked him to. My mom was much more dynamic. She talked a lot, and demanded I do so, too. At times she was quite maternal, but at other times she was fiery, and argumentative, and domineering, and scrappy. When I’d think back, after a time with her, it always surprised me that the mom I’d just dealt with somehow was the appropriate one for the situation. I didn’t know how she knew, but she seemed to. She seemed to know what I needed. Long before I ever did.
When I went into her office, my mom glanced up from the chart she was reviewing and smiled at me.
“Hi, Matt. Something on your mind?”
I sat down in the chair next to her, the one by her desk. I realized as I was doing so that it was her clients’ chair, but it was comfortable and in the right position to talk to her. And maybe I did need some shrinking right then.
“Yeah, I think so.”
I guess it was my tone of voice more than what I said that caused her eyes to come up from the chart as I spoke. She dropped the chart onto the desk and looked at me. The intelligence in her eyes when she gave you her full attention could be intimidating, but I was used to it.
She didn’t say anything, but gave me an encouraging half smile.
“Mom, I was on the phone with Becky. We were talking about Kevin, and what his problem might be. You remember how I told you he’s been watching me at lunch, and he seems mad all the time? Becky was trying to figure out why he’d be so mad at me, and she said something. I need to talk to you about it.”
“Okay. What did she say?”
“She thinks Kevin might be gay. And likes me. Or maybe isn’t gay, but has a crush on me.”
My mom kept her eyes on me, and slowly settled back into her chair. She thought for a moment, then asked me, “Do you think that might be the case?”
“I didn’t when she first said it, but then I started to think about it. It explains some things, if it’s true.”
“And how would that make you feel, if it were true?”
I hesitated. She was my mom, after all. But she was also someone I could count on. And I trusted her.
“I feel a lot of things, and some of them are sort of mixed up. The guys at school, basically all of them, talk about if some boy liked them, they’d beat him up. They act like that would be about the worst thing ever, being liked by another boy, how wrong it would be. So I think I’m supposed to feel mad about it, that Kevin shouldn’t feel that way, that it’s wrong and maybe I should hate him.”
I stopped. I wasn’t saying this exactly right. It was difficult to say what I was feeling.
“Matt, you didn’t answer my question. I asked how you’d feel if he did like you, or if he was gay. You told me what the other boys would feel, or how they’d act, how they’d expect you to act. Does it bother you to tell me how you feel?”
“A little. But mostly because I’m not sure how I feel. I’m sort of mixed up. I think I’m flattered by it rather than mad. I guess I know for sure that I’m not mad about it. But should I be? Is it normal to be mad if another boy likes you?”
“Matt, the word “normal” isn’t very useful in that context. People are different, and their reactions to things vary. Not only that, what people tell you their reactions are might be what they want you to hear rather than how they actually feel, so you don’t really know their true feelings.
“But more importantly, you can’t tailor your feelings to match theirs. You have to be honest with yourself, and wondering if you’re normal or not interferes with that process. This isn’t a really difficult question. Let’s simply pretend that he has a crush on you. Does that upset you?”
She was simplifying the question to its basics, getting rid of the peripheral complexities. I’d already thought about this, and knew the answer. And I didn’t see any harm in telling Mom. It was why I was here, to discuss this, to get help with my confusion.
“No, it doesn’t upset me, him liking me. What does upset me is what that might mean about me, though. The more I think about that, the more confused and upset I get. That’s why I wanted to talk.”
“What’s upsetting?”
“I think I’m supposed to feel angry that he likes me. I don’t really know if he does
like me, but if he does, I’m supposed to be mad about that. I’m not. So is there something wrong with
me?”
She was looking at me, and I could still see the intelligence in her eyes, but as I watched, I saw some softness creep in. I then heard it in her voice, too. “There’s nothing at all wrong with you, Matt. Your feelings tell you who you are, they help you define yourself. Some people don’t trust their feelings, and if they want to feel a certain way and they don’t, they deny what they feel and try to force themselves to feel the way they want to feel, or think they should. That causes huge problems.
“It might be good to ask yourself why you’d want to feel mad if someone liked you. Someone liking you is something to feel proud of, something that should make you happy. I think maybe you’re confused not because of what you feel, but because you don’t feel the way you think some other people might expect you to feel. If you simply allow yourself to feel the way you do feel, and accept that, I think you’ll stop being upset.
“Tell me, Matt. Are you a good person?”
“I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“Do you feel like you are?”
“Yes.”
“Aha!” she laughed. “A positive answer. No indecisiveness there. You feel like you’re a good person.”
“Yes!”
“All right then. I agree with you. You’re a good person. You have good, decent, kind thoughts. So trust them, Matt. Trust your thoughts, trust your feelings, trust yourself.”
That made sense to me, but also opened some other doors that I’d have to think about. I didn’t want to do that right now. She’d answered a big question and told me not to doubt myself, and that my feelings, whatever they were, were my own and nothing I should feel bad about. That meant, whatever I thought about all this in the days ahead, I should do so from a position of self-confidence, knowing that my feelings weren’t bad, they were simply part of me.
She was telling me to trust myself. And I think I needed that advice right then.
◊ ◊
Becky was waiting for me at my locker the next morning.
“I’ve got some ideas,” she said, excited, her eyes flashing. When she was animated like this she always seemed bigger to me. She was actually smaller than I was, a couple inches shorter and probably several pounds lighter. When she gave her full personality free rein, however, I always felt a little smaller than she was, even with her standing next to me.
“Uh, do I really want to know about them?”
“You have to; you’re the one who’s going to do them.”
“I have to get to homeroom, Becky. Maybe we can talk about them at lunch. Or maybe, if I’m lucky, you’ll have forgotten about them by then. I don’t want to test Kevin. He already hates me. And whenever I do anything with him, it seems to backfire.”
She gave me a stern look. She disapproved of people who were timid. Why she wanted to hang with me I had no clue.
“We need to figure this out, Matt. You cannot have someone going around hating you for no good reason.”
“Breaking his wrist isn’t enough of a reason?”
“You’re the one that told me that wasn’t a good reason. And he told you that wasn’t why he was mad. You’re just trying to weasel out of this now. Look, we have to do it. For his own good, and for yours.”
“For mine?”
“Sure. So you won’t have anyone hating you, so you can stop being bothered by it, and maybe so you can get a boyfriend.”
“BECKY!” I actually shouted at her.
“What?” she asked, looking all innocent, but then she started to grin, and finally laughed. “You should have seen your face!” And she continued to laugh.
“Becky, there are things, some things, we don’t kid about, all right? What if someone had heard that? I told you last night, this is a touchy area, very sensitive, and it has to be handled carefully or while you’re laughing your ass off, someone might get hurt. I’m not sure this is something you should be dealing with. I don’t think I should, either, but at least I seem a little more concerned about the possibilities of disaster than you do, and about people’s feelings. We have to be cautious, you have to be more sensitive, and it might be best to forget it altogether.”
“We don’t have any choice. There’s a problem to be solved. It may be a dirty job, people may be hurt, lives ruined or lost, but we’re the ones stuck with the job and we’ve got to suck it up.” She grinned at me. “I’ve got some things figured out. We’ll talk at lunch.” And she bounced away, as though I hadn’t said anything at all.
I didn’t know if she was serious or not. I don’t know if she knew. I hoped she’d heard me. She needed to have heard me.
◊ ◊
Becky took a bite of the thing the school called pizza. There were rumors that International Paper delivered a load of waste cardboard to the school in the mornings of pizza day, and that a truck had been seen in the delivery bay with a legend painted on its side that read Montgomery Industrial Waste Company: Reconstituted Cheese Division, but the rumors were unconfirmed.
There had been the rumble of thunder in the distance when I’d sat down at our table. That was something we rarely heard. It did rain here, of course, not in September, but it did rain. Not much, not now, but it did rain. However, we almost never got thunder. It seemed fitting for this day to have some. First Becky going crazy on me, then thunder. What was next? Would whatever it was be as ominous as the thunder?
“Can you talk to him? You need to be able to talk to him.” Becky was looking at me as though this was very important.
I didn’t know, really, and told her so. “He wouldn’t let me, for a while. Then yesterday, he didn’t leave right away when I sat down. Maybe he’s mellowing. I don’t know. He sure didn’t sound friendly, but I don’t know him well enough to know if he ever sounds friendly with anyone. He eats by himself every day. Maybe no one likes him because of his mouth.”
“That might be right. Maybe you just think he’s mad at you when really he’s mad at everyone and it’s not your problem.”
I considered that while looking under the white stuff on top of the pizza that in no way resembled cheese except for the color. Maybe it wasn’t industrial waste. Maybe it was that government surplus cheese I’d heard about, that stuff they made by the ton in 1945 and still had warehouses full of and were always trying to give away. I’d heard they were using it to kill rats in Hong Kong, but doubted it. Hong Kongian rats would be too smart to eat this stuff.
I pushed the plate away, my appetite not satisfied but gone, killed by the smell of the ersatz pizza. “I don’t think it’s that. I think his anger is directed towards me. I suppose he might be that way with everyone, but even if he is, I think it’s worse with me.”
“Okay, we have to go with Plan A, then. It doesn’t require that you talk to him at all and we’ll learn if he’s gay.”
“What is it? I’m just asking for academic reasons. I can tell you right now, there’s no way I’ll go along with whatever you’ve come up with, but just to satisfy my curiosity.”
“Okay,” she said, undaunted. “The easiest way is to just ask him, but you’ve already
chickened out on that one, and we don’t know if he’ll talk to you.”
“Hey, I didn’t chicken out! I told you, it would hurt him to do that. You’d force him onto the
defensive, you’d make him feel threatened, and I’ve already hurt him enough. No way am I asking him
that. No way, no how!”
“Just so you realize, if because of that we’re going to have to get devious, it’s on your head. Not mine.”
“Wait a minute. I told you I wasn’t going to ask him. You can if you want to. I don’t object to that at all.”
“Matt, he knows you’ve been sitting here with me for lunch all week. He’s been watching us. If I ask him, he’ll think you put me up to it. He’ll also think you were too chicken to ask him yourself. Is that what you want?”
“All right. I wasn’t thinking when I said that, just reacting. So, neither of us asks him.”
“So we’re back to Plan A, which is your fault. Just so we agree on that.” She kept grinning at me.
“Hey, I’m going to find someone else to eat lunch with!”
“I might suggest you try that little kid over there with the cast. He seems to be all alone.”
“You’re really nasty, did you know that?”
“Heh heh heh, ve half our vays.”
She was having a ball. I was worried this was a game to her, and it wasn’t to me. And it wouldn’t be to Kevin. I kept it firmly in mind that I could always say no to whatever she came up with. I was pretty sure I would be doing that.
“So what’s your plan?”
“You might not like it.”
“What, you’re suddenly getting a conscience? You’ve suddenly become aware of the sensitivity of the situation? Really?”
“Your sarcasm doesn’t endear you to me, Matt. I’ve thought hard on this.”
“But you seem to be getting cold feet.”
“No, I’m just afraid you’re going to say no without even thinking about it. I’m not afraid of the plan, I’m afraid of your reaction to it.”
“Well, you’ll never know till you tell me.” I looked at her in anticipation, trying to look neutral. In fact, I was sure this wouldn’t be good.
“All right. Plan A. What you do is make sure you see him in the locker room after gym, either before or after you shower. When you see him, and he’s looking at you, you sort of accidentally have your towel drop off your waist. So he can see you. You fumble around picking it up, maybe step on it once or twice, making sure he gets a real good look. Now to do this right, it would be best if you were hard, so he sees you all sticking out and real big. Can you make it hard like that, just when you want to, and are you real big when you are hard?”
“WHAT?! Are you trying to get me killed?! Do you know what happens to boys who get hard-ons in the locker room?!”
“I assume other boys come over to look and giggle. If you get really big, wouldn’t you be proud and want to show the other boys?”
“BECKY! It’s just the other way around, that’s just when you don’t want other boys to come over. It’s a matter of survival in there. Where do you get all this stuff?! Didn’t you ever hear about girls being all demure and shy and like that? And how come you’re always asking about my dick?”
“Well, if it’s big the plan would probably work better. Aren’t gay boys more excited by big dicks than small ones? And hard ones rather than soft ones?”
“How would I know?! Becky, come on. I thought you were serious about this.”
“I am. If you flash him, and watch his face, you’ll see how he reacts. Then you should know more than
you do now. I mean, his eyes could open wide and he could gasp, or he could look away in disgust. Either way,
you’d have more information. See, it’s a good plan. But the thing I was asking about you, I just wanted
to know about the bait. I guess it isn’t absolutely essential I know about that part. Still, a girl
can’t help but be curious about some of the details that are going to affect the plan, her plan. Just so she
can gauge the effectiveness of it; no other reason.”
I looked at her hard. She sort of looked past me, with a very benign, innocent expression on her face. I wasn’t fooled for a moment, but had something else to say.
“Becky, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“Kevin isn’t in gym class any more. And even when he was, I never seemed to bump into him in the locker room. So it won’t work.”
“Boy, do you ever give up easily! So we have to change the plan a little. We can’t do it in the locker room. What about one of the boys’ bathrooms? Couldn’t you show him your dick there?”
I felt like screaming. I opened my mouth, but then just sat there. What was wrong with her?
She was looking at me expectantly, I guess hoping for a positive reaction. She didn’t get one.
“Becky, you’re nuts. I’m supposed to stand in one of the bathrooms, waiting for him to come in, and then find a way to expose myself to him? And you expect that to work?”
She looked disappointed. She thought for a moment, and then said, “The problem here is that you’re not helping. You’re finding fault with all my plans instead of contributing. What kind of a team effort is that? We’re doing this for you, you know. Not for me. You need to help. My basic idea is, you show him some skin, he reacts, and we know more than we do now. If you show him something and he pays no attention, then we reconsider whether he’s gay. But the basic plan is good. It’s the details we’re having a problem with, mostly because you seem reluctant to get with the program.”
The conversation seemed like something out of the Twilight Zone; the occasional thunder in the background supplemented that feeling; but then, this was sort of usual for Becky even though I wasn’t actually getting accustomed to it. I seemed to be on the defensive, being forced to be the voice of reason, whenever I was talking to her. I’d thought at first she did this on purpose, but I wasn’t sure now. Maybe this was just Becky.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m reluctant to wave my dick at him. Great plan, Becky.”
“Well, it was just an idea. But listen, I suppose it doesn’t have to be your dick. Though that would be best. But what about if you showed him something else. Let’s say, uh, you’re around him, and he’s looking at you—I guess that’s easy because when he’s around, he’s always looking at you—and you whip off your shirt. Don’t gay guys like to look at other guys who don’t have their shirts on?”
“Becky, will you stop asking me these things? I have no idea what gay guys like looking at. And just why would I take my shirt off? These ideas of yours, I really don’t know.”
“That’s because you’re not thinking. You’re not helping. You’re not concentrating on the problem.” She frowned at me, and then appeared to start sulking. Which was a wonderful break for me. She wasn’t peppering me with all these insane thoughts, and I could finally relax a little and eat lunch. Except it was industrial waste disguised as pizza and it wasn’t doing it for me.
She finished lunch without saying anything else. Of course, there were only a couple of minutes left in the period by then. But it was a relief. If this was the way girls talked, I was glad I was a boy. I mean a man. I wish I wouldn’t keep forgetting that.