I’d finished, and it was his turn. I sat back in my chair, drained. I was sweating and feeling distinctly unsettled; I felt like I’d just walked through a minefield and come through it unscathed and was trying to come to grips with the fact I was still whole. That I was unscathed I wouldn’t have believed, except for one simple, verifiable fact. Kevin was still here. I hadn’t thought he would be. I’d thought when I bared my soul to him, when I stripped away the protective coloration I’d been wearing, he’d simply leave.
All this time that I’d been telling myself I was grown up now, I’d also been trying to convince everyone around me that that was who I was, too. I’d also been trying to convince myself, of course. I hadn’t done a very good job of fooling myself; even my constant pep talks hadn’t really convinced me. But I had thought I had probably fooled people who didn’t know me very well. Like Kevin. So when he heard what a loser I really was, I thought it would come as a shock to him, and he’d walk away, certainly disillusioned, maybe disgusted.
He wasn’t walking away, however. He was sitting next to me, looking nervous. I didn’t quite understand this. He now knew I was not the sophisticated high-school junior who had it all together, who was a mature adult and beyond the petty childishness that comprised so much of high school. He now knew I’d just been pretending. I’d told him who I was. So, why was he still here? He was only a freshman, but he was so much more mature than I was, had it so much more together, he should now have no interest in me. And I’d just proven that to him. Yet here he was, still here.
If he was going to fulfill his part of the bargain, at the very least he shouldn’t be nervous about talking about himself. He certainly didn’t have anything that would come close to what I’d revealed my shortcomings to be.
He did look nervous, though.
Now it was time for him to answer my questions, to talk about himself, and I could see the difference in him. He looked like he was no happier doing this than I’d been. I guess I could have enjoyed that, watching him going through the same emotions I’d gone through, being nervous, ill at ease, uncomfortable. I didn’t enjoy it, however. I’d hated having to go through that, and I was sorry if he felt anything like I had.
Before he began, while he was fidgeting, I took pity on him. “Kevin, you can tell me, whatever it is. What I just told you was hard for me. You’re a lot braver than I am. If I could do it, you can.”
He looked up at me, and I didn’t see any twinkle in his eyes, only a deep uncertainty. “You think so, huh? You think I’m brave?”
“I think you’re brave. I know you are. I’ve seen how you act. I’ve seen you stand up for yourself. I saw you that day at lunch when you attacked Ralph. I know you’re real smart, too. I remember how you were able to come up with all that stuff so quickly when we were talking to your mother. I see you talk to kids older than you like an equal, something I still can’t do. You’re also a good athlete, you’re cute, you, you....” I stopped, then blushed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He was looking hard at me, and now, now I saw a twinkle grow in his eyes. Well, I’d wanted to put him at ease. Evidently I’d succeeded.
“You really think so? You really think I’m—” He hesitated for a moment, then repeated himself. “You really think I’m—brave?” He looked at me, me the one who was now being fidgety, and giggled. I got his joke, and sort of laughed too, and then really laughed as I decompressed, realizing what his laughter meant.
I realized that if he was laughing, if in fact he was still here at all, then what I’d just said to him, my entire revelation of how I wasn’t the mature, have-it-all-together older teen I’d been pretending to be, hadn’t caused him me to look bad in his eyes. The twinkle I’d seen in his eye just now, and the joke he’d make, suggested he was back to the way he’d been in gym class. His spunky nature was reasserting itself. I could hardly believe it. I’d just said things that I was sure would turn any teenager off for good. Those things I was so ashamed of didn’t seem to have fazed him at all.
He paused for a moment, his laugh died away, and he became serious. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts. Finally, he spoke. “Matt, you want to know what’s been going on with me. I don’t blame you. I haven’t been very nice to you. You deserve an apology. Giving you an explanation is harder than apologizing because I have to tell you things I don’t want to tell you.”
He stopped there. I was looking at him, watching him, but he wasn’t meeting my eyes. That was unusual for him and made his younger age more apparent. After a pause, he continued. “I heard what you said to me. Everything. You might say that I’m brave, but so are you. You told me things I know you didn’t want to tell me. You probably think they make you look bad. They don’t. Not to me. I’m really glad you told me. It makes it easier for me to say what I need to say. Not as easy as I hoped. You didn’t say what I was hoping you’d say. I challenged you to talk to me like you did today because, well, I’ll come to that. Anyway, I challenged you, and I know you didn’t want to say what you said. I could see it, and I could hear it. But you did it anyway. Now I’m supposed to do the same thing, and I don’t know if I can. You said I’m brave. I don’t feel it, and I sure haven’t been acting that way lately. I don’t know if I can do this.”
I was looking puzzled by now, I was sure. I wished he would just get to the point. Then, I realized he was saying all this so he wouldn’t have to get to the point. He didn’t know where to start any more than I had.
As if reading my mind, he finally looked into my eyes, grinned nervously, and said, “Well, I guess I need to stop beating around the bush. Okay.”
But he stopped again and dropped his eyes to the table. He really was looking his age now, and I felt for him. It had been the vulnerability in him that I had imagined was there just from looking at his diminutive size that had first caught my attention, along with the cockiness that went with it. I saw that same vulnerable quality in him now. And I responded emotionally just as I had then.
“Kevin, if this is too hard, you don’t have to. I want to know the answers to what I asked you yesterday, but I don’t need to know them. I like it that you don’t seem angry any longer. I like it that we can talk as two guys, that the hostility is gone. That’s enough for me. Really.”
He raised his eyes to mine. At first, he looked almost desolate, but as he looked at me, I saw life returning. It almost seemed as thought looking at me gave him strength. And then a gleam was there. I could see traces of the Kevin I’d known before sitting with me now. “You’d hold that over me the rest of my life, wouldn’t you? That you were able to overcome your fear and tell me what you were afraid to tell me, and I couldn’t match you. Nope. If you can, I can.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to.”
“You saying that makes it even more important that I do.”
I didn’t respond to that. I simply sat there, waiting.
Eventually, he began. “Okay. I’m going to do this. If it kills me, I’m going to do it. Here goes.
“You wanted to know why I said I had a shitty life. You wanted to know why I said you weren’t who I thought you were. And you wanted to know what I was so angry about if it wasn’t that you’d broken my wrist.
“Okay. It’s all part of the same whole, so I suppose I can stop worrying about where to start and just talk to you about myself. I’ve only done this with one other person before, and he’s my only friend. This is tough, but I’m going to do it.
“I should start with my father. My father is this real cold, bossy bastard. He’s a perfectionist. Things have to be done his way. He’s got a Ph.D. in physics and is the Director of Research for a big company that supplies companies that work in the aerospace industry. He’s important, and he’s let Mom and me know that forever.
“He is used to being in control, and telling people what to do at work. I guess, because of office politics and workplace rules, he can’t have all the control he wants. He can’t make people jump when he tells them what to do, and that’s what he wants. He wants to be able to intimidate and scare the people under him, and to the extent he wants that, he doesn’t get it at work. So, he expects his control to be absolute at home. When it isn’t, he gets extremely critical, verbally cutting up both of us. My mom is really nice, but she’s had to live with him and try to meet his expectations. It’s been difficult for her.
“Over the years, she’s become sort of fragile from the stress and worry of trying to keep him happy and off both her and my backs. Now, today, after years of this, it doesn’t take much to upset her, and when she’s upset she gets very emotional, sort of frantic. My father makes this worse, because it’s just another thing to criticize her for, being nervous when he says she has no reason to be. So it’s a little self-perpetuating, her worrying about how he’s going to be when he comes home, the worry making her emotional, somewhat irrational even, and then him coming home and yelling at her for being the way she is. I think he does it on purpose. He likes to see her distraught.
“She doesn’t know how to stand up to him. He dominates her, and it can be real bad. Back when I was real little, maybe six, I began to try to protect her from him. It became a team, us against him. I think maybe being that close to her, and her beginning to lean on me a little when I was way too young to handle that, it’s made me a little paranoid. I know I don’t always look at things the same way other kids do, and I can’t just blow off some things very well. I get defensive, and then combative, way too quickly.
“I’ve grown up with this, trying to protect her, trying to smooth things over between them, and having to learn how to take his criticism and lack of affection myself. Because she gets upset so easily and then gets a little unstable, I do everything I can to keep her from being upset, and everything I can to deflect his anger and scorn from her to me. Mostly, it’s just so she doesn’t have to be involved with anything unpleasant. That’s why when you were over at my house, I made sure nothing happened that would disturb her. I’ve become pretty good at it.”
He was looking at me when he said this, and I felt this huge guilt descend on me. I’d thought at the time we’d been playing some sort of a game, him against me. I’d even started to enjoy it, when I saw what he was doing. I knew now, I’d totally misjudged what was happening. We hadn’t been playing a game. He’d been protecting his mother. Shame on me.
“They’re going to get a divorce. She got a lawyer, and they talked. With her help she finally built up the courage a couple months ago to kick him out of the house. Even then, her lawyer had to be there when she told him to get out. She’ll get the divorce, and a lot of alimony and child support; she has a strong case for psychological abuse, and I’m her best witness. He never hit either of us, but he was cold and demeaning, and he controlled all the money, punishing her for disobedience by withholding it whenever he wanted to. It got very bad near the end. He’s a bastard. I’m just hoping she remains strong enough to go through with it.
“I think I handled it pretty well, all along, but I’m sure it affected me, too. I’ve had to survive instead of just grow up, and that has to have changed me. I’ve lived with it my whole life, so it seems natural to me, but I see how other kids at school react to some things, and how I do, and I know I’m a little different. They take things in stride better than I do.
“Anyway, that’s part of it. I grew up in that family, and probably got a little twisted from it. I’ve always had problems making friends, mostly because I wasn’t around other kids much, and, too, maybe because of what I lived with at home, seeing him belittling her, seeing her taking it and then crying a lot when he wasn’t around. I grew up trying to comfort her and protect her. That’s hard for a little kid to do. It made me suspicious of other people and protective of her, and I didn’t get to mingle with other kids because she got where she needed me with her all the time. That home life was what I had. I look back on it now, and it was shitty. It was just my life then.
“I didn’t learn how to act around other kids because I was never around them. I felt I had to be home when Dad would be there, to protect Mom, and she encouraged that. But also, my dad wanted it that way. He wanted me home.
“I don’t think I inherited a lot from my father, but I did get his brains. I’ve always picked things up real fast. And being smart, understanding stuff that people told me was too advanced for me, that was the only level Dad and I could connect on. He was proud that I was smart because he thought it reflected well on him, and so he encouraged me to read and learn all I could. It was because of that that he decided I should be home schooled. He has a big salary due to his position with his company, so we had money, and it was not a problem for him to hire tutors. I’ve been home schooled right from the start. This is my first year in a public school. And I had to fight with him to be allowed to go. I think if he hadn’t been distracted by Mom filing for divorce, I’d never have been able to make my demand stick to go to high school with other kids. The upcoming divorce hearing gave me some leverage with him that I wouldn’t normally have. He doesn’t know how I’ll testify.
“I knew I needed to be with other kids. I only have one friend. I met him a couple years ago at a park near my home. I didn’t have any idea how to make friends, and I think he did all the work, but we did become friends. He’s really the only kid I’ve ever talked to much at all. I’ve heard some home schooled kids, their parents make sure they’re enrolled in activities where they meet other kids. Their parents sign them up for Boy Scouts and church groups and athletic teams and summer camp and community swimming and lots of things like that. My father wanted me to only be involved with academics, and my mother wasn’t able to change his mind. So I never had any of that.
“Getting to know Chuck, becoming his friend, probably kept me sane. Chuck’s my one friend. He’s a sophomore and goes to our school, so when I started this year, I had someone to eat lunch with, someone who could show me the ropes. We’d talked a lot about school before I started, and he helped me adjust. He’d tell me when I was saying the wrong things, when I wasn’t acting right around other kids. He really helped me. I was almost overwhelmed at first. I didn’t know how to act and be with other kids.”
He stopped at that point. His eyes seemed to be focused on nothing, and I knew he was thinking back, remembering things. I didn’t intrude, just waited for him to continue. It was a while before he did.
“You talked about me taking a swing at that senior at lunch on the third day of school. That’s the sort of thing I mean about not knowing how to act. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I was supposed to sit there and take what he was doing or not. At the time, I felt a little like crying. I also felt like I often felt when my father started after my mother. I wanted to jump up and kill him. I have a short fuse, and from protecting her, all my instincts are hair-triggered. The earlier I’d intervene between those two, the more successful I tended to be. So I was sitting there, scared, mad, and not sure what other kids did in this situation. But dealing with my mother and father, I’ve learned to channel my anger into thought. I can’t get physical with my father, but I can lead him away from what he’s doing to her by making him deal with me. If I focus correctly, I’m smart enough that I can usually misdirect him. It’s become second nature to me, when I get into emotional situations, to think them through, not just react. So, when I was feeling mad and scared and uncertain with Ralph, instead of reacting, I started thinking. My rational mind took over. I told myself, this is a test. I could be someone at this school that kids pick on, or I could be a kid who stands up for himself and fights back, and I don’t need Chuck to tell me what to do here. This I have to do on my own.
“I knew he was bigger than I was, that he could beat me to a pulp, but I also thought that would be better than being picked on all year. I’d seen right off I was one of the smaller kids in school. Anyone could pick on me if I allowed it. Ralph was big enough that one punch would end a fight with him, and I decided one punch couldn’t be that bad. I’d never been in a situation like that before. I simply decided I was going to do what felt right to me and what had the best prospects for success. I think I took out some of the anger I’ve felt for my father when I swung at him. I don’t ever remember being that mad before. You saw what I did.
“And it seemed to work, because I saw other freshmen still getting picked on after that, but no one picked on me again. Pretty amazing, I thought. And it made me realize, I could act like a wimp, or I could act feisty, and if I did that, maybe I could get away with it.”
I jumped in there. I had a question I had to ask. “So you mean you’re not feisty? Your cockiness is all an act?”
Kevin grinned. He sat back a little on his chair, as though he was relaxing a little, like he wasn’t so tense, talking about this. “Matt, this is strange, you might find it strange, but, before that incident, I’m not sure what my personality was. I think I was a work in progress. I hadn’t been in situations like that before. I really hadn’t been on my own before and had never been around a big group of kids like I was now. Right there, sitting there with Ralph in front of me, it really seemed sort of like a beginning to me, or maybe an awakening. It seemed like I could choose what I was going to be. I chose to stand up to him. And when I did it, I can’t tell you how good I felt. I felt liberated. I felt on top of the world. If you were looking close, you might have seen tears in my eyes when I pulled my shirt down after he’d walked away. Those weren’t unhappy or scared or pained tears. They were tears of triumph. It was as though, in that moment, I’d finally become me. The me I wanted to be. Not uncertain and scared, but someone other people weren’t going to push around and take advantage of, no matter how big I was. So to answer your question, is the way I’ve acted ever since then the way I really am? Am I really the cocky kid with the challenging grin on his face you had to deal with? Well, yeah, I think that’s me. It’s a me I really like. It was fun being him. I think it was a me I was trying on, and one I discovered fit me. It was sort of like you trying on your mature, grown up teen costume, which doesn’t seem to fit you very well, but with me, my costume really fit.”
He grinned, and I blushed in embarrassment.
I had another question, and as long as I’d already interrupted him, I went ahead with it. “So you wising off to me in gym, telling me not to stare at you, giving me a hard time, that was really how you felt, that wasn’t play acting, it wasn’t just for show? Why did you do it? Why me?”
He started to open his mouth, then paused. After a moment, he said, “I’m coming to that.” Then he stopped again.
He gathered himself, and then he said, “After that deal with Ralph, I spoke to Chuck about it. He was amazed I was still alive. So we talked. He told me freshmen just didn’t make any commotion, accepted what happened to them, and made the best of it. I asked why, and he said upperclassmen could make life miserable for underclassmen, and if they ganged up on me, I was dead meat. He said I should just watch other people, start to get a feel for them and how they acted, that everyone was trying to survive and they all found their own ways of doing so, of fitting in. He said some guys have a really hard time fitting in, some don’t, and there isn’t always a good reason why. He told me the one thing I didn’t want to do is start acting like something I wasn’t and make too big a splash in the high school pond, or someone, at some time, would try to drown me.
“Well, I’d just had a taste of success being a wise ass combative punk, it felt great, and while I could tell Chuck’s advice was good, and was right for him, I didn’t really want to buy into it, and so I continued to be assertive and not to let myself be pushed around. At the same time, I got to watching other people, and started seeing what Chuck was talking about, that different people do behave differently in different situations, and I started seeing the defense mechanisms they used.
“He and I continued to talk about all this. We are friends. We talk about a lot of things. He of course was being self-protective himself. He’s not a big guy, not an athlete, so he had the same concerns we all did. I realized then that he is something of a wimp. But lots of kids are. Lots of kids avoid confrontations. Some do it more than other, and Chuck was one of those. He is really afraid a lot of the time. He knew about being self-protective. He was really good for me, because he had experience dealing with other kids in packs.”
Kevin stopped, then got up and walked around the room, sort of shaking his arms and squiggling his shoulders, like he was trying to loosen the muscles in his neck. I asked him if he wanted another Dr Pepper, and he said he’d love one. Then he said something else. “I’m at the difficult part now, Matt. I think I need a short break.”
“I’ll get you your drink. Take it easy. Lie down, if you want. You don’t really have to do this, you know.”
He smiled at me then. His smile is just wonderful. I probably shouldn’t keep saying that. But he had white teeth, a perfectly shaped nose, his eyes sparked when he smiled, and I just liked looking at him when he looked happy. He didn’t really look happy now; his smile was a sort of inward one. But it still made him look incredible.
I went down stairs and grabbed two cans and took them back up. He was sprawled out on the bed, with his eyes closed. I stopped and just looked at him for a while. He was beautiful. I would have just stood there longer, but he opened his eyes, so I took the cans to the table and sat back down. He joined me.
“So this is the hard part?”
“Yeah.” He opened his can and took a long drink. Then he set it back down and looked right into my eyes. “Now,” he said, “I’m going to find out if I really am brave.”
I didn’t say anything. I could tell he was screwing up his courage, and nothing I could contribute would help. I had no idea what he was going to say that he needed to be brave about.
“All right, here’s goes. As I said, I’d been watching people, and we’d been talking about them when I’d ask questions. Chuck knew some of their histories, and I had questions about a lot of them, who they were, what they were like, just normal stuff, the stuff you learn about other kids. Well, I’d spotted you eating with those guys you always ate with, and, I don’t know, the body language looked funny. You were sitting up straight, they were both sort of sprawled in their seats. You wear nice clothes, they looked like they shopped at Goodwill after the good stuff had all been taken. You used your napkin, they used their sleeves. You always had a backpack with you, they didn’t have anything. And none of you said much of anything to each other, all through every lunch. You three guys just didn’t fit together.
“Because of that, I ended up watching you a lot. I was feeling like an outsider, and you looked sort of like one, too, so I had a natural curiosity about you. It was more than that, actually. Once I’d spotted you, there was something about you that fascinated me. You looked and acted real mature, most of the time. Other times, you didn’t. When you were at lunch, you appeared cool and calm and looked like you had it all together. Then, sometimes, I’d see a couple of older guys walking toward your table, and you’d sort of draw in on yourself, look like you were trying to be smaller, inconspicuous maybe. It looked weird. In gym, when nobody was looking at you, you’d act really sure of yourself, and there was a tangible sort of pride in yourself I could detect. When other people were standing nearby, you wouldn’t exude the same confidence. You rarely spoke to anyone else. I couldn’t really figure you out. You’d look really together one minute, like an uncertain kid the next, and it really confused me.
“So after several days of watching you, I asked Chuck about you. Just like I’d asked him about any number of other guys. Except when I asked him about you, he looked at me funny. I asked him why, and he said my voice sounded different when I asked about you, and asked why did I want to know about you anyway?
“Matt, being around other kids all the time is new to me, and I was, I am, still learning the ropes. I didn’t know what not to say about some things, what you aren’t supposed to talk about. All along I just talked about anything I was curious about with Chuck. We’d talk about everything. So I didn’t see anything wrong with answering his question. He asked if there was any special reason why I wanted to know about you, and I told him I’d been watching you for awhile now, I thought you were really good looking, and I found you really interesting.”
He blushed. He was looking down at the table, and he blushed. I didn’t speak. I thought anything I’d say would sound wrong, so I just stayed shut up. But I looked at him. He had long, slender fingers, and his nails were perfectly trimmed and clean. The way the sun was coming through my windows, it highlighted the very fine, almost invisible blond hairs on his arms.
He finally went on. “Chuck told me not to say anything else, and asked me to come over to his house after school. I did that. And we talked. He asked me a lot of questions, and I answered them honestly. Finally, he told me it sounded to him like I was really hung up on you, and that I might be gay. I thought about that. This wasn’t something absolutely new to me, this thought. I knew I liked looking at you, and figured he might be right, I did sort of have a crush on you. I knew about gay people. I told you, I read a lot. I’d never really thought about whether I might be gay or not, however. It simply had never crossed my mind. Maybe that was because I’d never been around kids my age before. I don’t really know.
“But he said something else then that bothered me. He told me that if I was gay, I couldn’t hang around with him at school. He said he still wanted to be my friend, but we couldn’t hang at school because he couldn’t risk it if I got outed. He said if that happened, that everyone would think he was gay too simply because we hung together. He said he couldn’t take that chance, that he couldn’t handle that.
“I got upset at that. First, I might or might not be gay, I didn’t know, but if I was, it didn’t seem that bad a thing to me. Why was he making it such a big deal? I did know I liked your looks. I didn’t know you at all, but I liked what I saw, how you walked, how you were. I didn’t see a lot of people hanging around you, and that interested me, maybe because I was in the same boat. Chuck told me it would be better if I stayed away from you. He said you’d had problems the past two years, he didn’t know what that was all about, but most kids avoided you, and so there must have been a good reason for that and it would be better for me if I did too. Especially if I was gay.
“I told him I didn’t think I was gay, it seemed to be what he wanted to hear so I said it, but then he kept asking me questions, and I guess the answers made him think I was. He was still nice to me, we still hung out after school, we still talked, he just didn’t want to risk being seen with me much at school. We usually had only met for lunch there before this, so not being together at school turned out not to be that bad and wasn’t really a very big deal.
“I tried sitting with some other freshmen at lunch, and that worked, but I didn’t really make any friends. I’m not good with people, I guess. No practice. Anyway, that brings us to gym class, and you.”
He took a big drink and set his can back down before going on. He burped, grinned, then sighed.
“I watched you in gym. I’d been watching you at lunch, and now I had the opportunity in gym to get closer to you. No one talked to you; you were always by yourself. I didn’t understand that at all because you were one of the best looking guys there, and usually attractive kids are popular kids unless they’re jerks, and you didn’t seem like a jerk at all. You were quiet and stayed by yourself, but you didn’t bother anyone, you weren’t loud or obnoxious or crude, you didn’t pick on littler guys, you didn’t do anything that made me think you were anything other than a nice guy. That made me wonder what was really going on. I kept watching you, and as the days passed, I realized I was thinking about you a lot. Even fantasizing about you.”
He blushed again, and then so did I when I realized what his blush probably meant. I smiled to show him this didn’t bother me, his thinking of me in his fantasies, but I was pretty sure he’d realize the blush meant the same thing.
“Eventually, since I wasn’t really talking to anyone at school and was lonely, and since I’d been developing this cocky persona, I started to wonder what would happen if I started to sort of, well, engage you. How would you react? So, I did it. And your reaction surprised me.”
“It did? I told you to scram. What was strange about that?”
Kevin smiled. “Yeah, you did tell me to beat it, finally. I was watching you long before you said anything. I made sure you knew I was doing it, too. I did things so you’d have to see me, so you’d look. And you did. You looked. At that point, I thought you’d say something, or threaten me, or give me an elbow when no one was looking, or something. You never did. You had all sorts of expressions on your face when you saw me looking. I couldn’t tell what you thought. But there were a couple expressions I expected to see that I never saw. Not once.”
“What were they?”
“Disgust and anger. I thought with me glomming on you like that, you’d immediately think I had a crush on you, or was gay and wanted you, and you’d be both disgusted and angry.”
“Hey, that’s not true. I did give you an angry glare. A couple times!”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it. I could tell.” He grinned at me, and it was as if we were back on the grass outside. I felt that funny feeling in my stomach. I wanted to protest again, but instead just sort of half grinned back.
“You’re bigger than I am, and older, and I knew you could easily have made me stop if you’d really wanted to. You could have grabbed me somewhere, pinned me to a wall, threatened to punch my lights out if I didn’t stay away from you, threatened to tell everyone I was gay and was hitting on you, punched me in the gut or hard on the shoulder to make your point, or even just been really sarcastic or demeaning or nasty, and I’d have got the message. You never did.
“So I kept it up. I was having fun, and I was happy. You were the closest thing to human contact I had at school, we had a sort of give and take going, and as I said, I liked how you looked, and then, when we started actually talking, even if it was you telling me to beat it, and me acting like a wise ass, I was happy. I was enjoying myself. I looked forward to gym every day. You’d tell me to beat it, but I was sure after awhile you didn’t really mean it. It looked like you sort of enjoyed me bugging you. All that time, the crush I had on you was growing. It became a big one. And I started to think that it was possible you might like me, too. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you have stopped what was happening?
“I decided you might be gay. I never saw you with a girl, even though you were really handsome, and you being gay might explain why you seemed so alone at school. And I wondered if I was gay. I thought I might be. And I wondered if we both were, and we became friends, what that could lead to. I spent a lot of time, thinking about you, and me, and what it all meant. I didn’t know anything about anything, but thought about you a lot. I’d developed a feeling of who you were, and after a while I was sure I had you all figured out.
“Then came that game, Duck Duck Goose. I was in seventh heaven. I now had a chance to do even more with you, more than ever before. When I tagged you and ran, I wasn’t even trying to get away from you. I was just having fun, running with you chasing me. It seemed like I’d been chasing you before this, with all the teasing I’d been doing, and sort of stalking you, and now you were chasing me, and I saw it as more than a game, I saw it as a metaphor for a relationship, and thought how wonderful it would be if you really were chasing me, if you wanted to be my friend as badly as I wanted to be yours.
“So I sort of let you catch me on purpose. I wanted to see what you’d do, what your reaction would be. Would you smile at me? Would you ruffle my hair? Would you say something, something nice for a change, or something to tease me? And then I found out what did happen when you caught me.
“You pushed me. And then I was on the ground and hurting, and it really did hurt, and suddenly, I realized, while I was lying there, that everything had just been a big daydream I’d been having, none of it was reality, only a dream, you weren’t a nice guy who liked me at all, and everything was just shit. It was as though the bottom had just fallen out of everything. I’d been getting away with being this sassy, combative guy who could handle himself, and I was feeling pretty full of myself because of that. No one was messing with me, and being small, I’d expected a lot of guys would be messing with me to show how big and tough they were. I’d been falling in love with a great looking guy who probably liked me, too, and that was all just a dream. And suddenly, it was brought home that I wasn’t big and I could easily be hurt, and I wasn’t going to get away with being cocky any longer, and the guy I was falling in love with didn’t care about me at all and may even have been an asshole all along and I’d been too stupid to see it.
“So I was physically hurting, badly, and I was psychologically hurting, too. You had managed to ruin everything I’d thought I had going for me with just one shove.
“I walked back to the gym feeling about as low as I could feel. Everything had come apart. Now, I didn’t have anything. And I’d misjudged the one person I’d been putting all my hopes on. If I couldn’t trust my judgment with you, then I couldn’t trust myself at all. I had nothing. You came up to me and tried to apologize, but I wasn’t really hearing it. I was thinking about how wrong I’d been about everything, how I’d misjudged you, thinking you were this really nice guy who might like me, might even be gay, and now I knew you weren’t what I’d thought you were, and my wrist was killing me, and I really just wanted to sink down into the grass and die. I wanted to cry, but with you there I couldn’t even do that.
“So I went to the hospital. They took X-rays and decided I just had a hairline crack, which meant they didn’t have to set it, just put a cast on it. I was still in some pain and they gave me some pills that made me feel weird and I stopped taking them real soon, and then I was back at school the next day. I should have stayed home. I was still hurting, I felt sort of weak and a little light-headed, but the doctor had told me to go if I could, it would help the healing process and anyway I couldn’t let my mom know how bad I felt.
“Then I met you in your dad’s office. I couldn’t even look at you. It was all my fault, I knew that. Everything that had happened was my fault. I’d made up stories in my head. Why had I thought they were true? It was because I’d wanted to believe them. I knew now they were just stories. That hurt. When you think you like someone, and they turn out to be people who are different from what you thought and they don’t like you at all, the disillusionment is as bad as anything.
“You were apologetic, and I could tell you meant it, but I was feeling sorry for myself, and being apologetic is different from being what I wanted you to be, and anyway I was barely even listening to you. I was so into my own feelings, I just wanted out of there. I don’t even remember much of what was said, I just wanted out. When I could, I left. I wanted to be away from you so I could start to forget all my silly fantasies, forget how much I liked you.
“But then I found out I couldn’t forget about you, because you wouldn’t let me. I figured out real quickly what the problem was. You felt guilty. And part of me kind of liked that. I knew it wasn’t your fault. I’d made up this great friendship, or more, in my head. That was all me. I’d sort of goaded you, teased you, and so even if you pushed me too hard on purpose, that again was all my fault for treating you like I had and probably making you mad. So I knew it was my fault. But if you wanted to take some of the blame, and if I could make you feel bad about what had happened, I didn’t see anything wrong with doing that. I was mad at you for not being what I’d dreamed you were.
“I took some pleasure seeing how uncomfortable I was making you, not letting you off the hook. It wasn’t very nice of me, but I was still mentally all screwed up about my dream of us together turning into a nightmare. I really was angry a lot, so letting you think I was angry at you was easy. Actually, I was mostly angry with myself, and angry because of how frustrated I was with everything.
“It was funny, though. As time went by, and you wouldn’t give up trying to help, and I saw how frustrated you were getting, my mind began to play tricks on me. It got me thinking, maybe I was wrong about what I’d decided you were like. I’d decided on the spur of the moment, after you’d pushed me, that you’d done it on purpose, and that everything I’d been thinking had been wrong, that you really hadn’t wanted me hanging around and so had done that to make it clear. But if that was true, why were you still trying to help, even with all the shit I was giving you?
“I started thinking this, and also kept arguing with myself. I didn’t want to start hoping again that we might be friends, because I now knew how bad it felt to get my hopes up and then have them crushed. But I just couldn’t see any reason, if you didn’t have some interest in me, why you’d be so persistent. And I realized, thinking this through, that you wouldn’t be so persistent if you weren’t a nice guy. You just wouldn’t be.
“So, just about when I was deciding that if you were going to keep making an effort to be friendly, I’d be friendly back, Becky showed up. And I immediately went into a funk. Because I realized, when I saw you two together, that it wasn’t just friendship I wanted from you. I hadn’t really known that till I saw you together. Then I did. I saw you eating with her, and I was immediately jealous. And I knew right then, I wanted you not just as a friend, but I also wanted more from you than that. I had a crush on you, and it was a strong one. I wanted us to be boyfriends. And with her in the picture, I saw that was impossible.
“When you walked over to my table, I’d just figured that out. And I was angry again, because just when I was starting to rethink you and me, I was again seeing that was impossible.”
“Then when you told me I had no reason to be so angry at you for breaking my wrist, I couldn’t help myself. I told you that wasn’t what I was angry about. And it wasn’t. I was angry because I realized right then you’d really been making an honest effort to be friends all along, and I’d blown it by not allowing it to happen, and so you’d gotten with Becky, maybe because of me, and my chances were dead.”
He stopped there, his head hanging. He didn’t speak again. The pause grew too long, and someone needed to say something, so I did. “Kevin? We’ve already talked about that. You know Becky isn’t my girlfriend. You’re acting, I don’t know, like something’s upsetting you. What’s wrong?”
He looked up then, his eyes blank. He looked at me carefully. And I saw something change in him.
“Matt, are you telling me there’s nothing wrong?”
“No, nothing. Why? What did you think was wrong?”
“It’s just that I just told you I wanted you for my boyfriend. That should tell you I’ve figured out that I probably am gay. And I’ve already said that I like you. I thought, well, I was hoping, well . . . Matt, tell me how you feel about what I just said. Please?”