I had never seen Kevin looking so young before. He had managed to say what he felt he had to say. His honesty in light of what it must have cost him to say what he did stunned me. What I’d had to say had been hard for me, but it wasn’t that bad, in retrospect. At most, I stood the chance of losing him, but it had seemed most likely to me that I never had had him—or the chance of having him—as a friend in the first place; the loss was mostly an illusory one. He, on the other hand, and told me things that could get him ruined if I was of that sort of mind, if I were that sort of kid. He was trusting me, gambling on me.
“Kevin, you didn’t say anything that makes me dislike you. Nothing. If you’re gay, or not, it doesn’t make any difference to me. Do you know what I heard? I heard that you want to be my friend. And that was what I was most hoping would happen, that we’d be friends. I didn’t think we had much chance, because I thought when you found out who I really am, this boy who’s pretending to be a man, this boy who lacks self-confidence and has all this uncertainty to deal with, you wouldn’t be interested in hanging with me at all. But you heard what I said, all about me, and still want to be my friend. I can hardly believe it, but you’re here, and I’m really happy right now.” I smiled at him, and then couldn’t help myself. I reached out, leaning forward, and sort of awkwardly hugged him for a second.
Then I realized how and why I shouldn’t do that, and quickly let go. When I sat back, he was looking at me with all the intensity I’d ever felt from someone else’s eyes. I thought I saw moisture in his, but then he turned away.
He didn’t speak, so I thought maybe he was still calming down from having said what he’d said, from the emotion he’d been feeling, and so I spoke to give him some more time to pull himself together, if that’s what he needed.
“We still have some things to talk about. I’ve got some questions, and maybe you do too. But now, now we’re friends . . .” I paused. I didn’t want to be assuming this, I wanted to be sure. “We are friends, aren’t we? That’s what I hope. That we are. Are we?”
He didn’t speak. He just nodded, and the intense stare turned into a grin. So I continued my thought. “I have questions, and now that we’re friends, I can ask them. You can ask what you want, too. You can forget all about worrying if I’m upset that you like me, or even if you are gay. It doesn’t matter. I can forget all about trying to impress you with how cool I am, how I’m mature and sophisticated and adult.”
He hesitated still, then said, kind of tentatively, “Can we do that again?” Just for a second?”
“What?”
“This.” And he reached over and hugged me. Wow! It felt different when he did it. I’d done it spontaneously as a gesture of friendship. Knowing what he’d just confessed to me, when he hugged me I knew there was more behind it than just friendship, and somehow he managed to make it feel like that. I figured he’d been thinking about doing this, wanting to, and maybe he really needed it. To tell the truth, I liked how it felt, too.
He hugged me, but we were both still seated side by side at the table, so basically we had our chests together awkwardly, the sides of our faces touching. He held me like that for a few seconds, then pulled away. He had the strangest look on his face as he did that. It looked like happiness and sadness and longing and hope, all rolled into one.
My feelings weren’t that complicated. “Kevin, I feel like jumping up and down, maybe running around the block, maybe shrieking my lungs out. I’m excited, and, and, I’m feeling things I haven’t felt before. But I know I can’t keep sitting here. What about going swimming. I can work off a lot of energy that way. Can you swim?”
Kevin grinned. “Like a fish. I told you, my dad and my mom both wanted me at home a lot. For different reasons, but they were together in having me confined there. And we had lots of money, so I knew I could get them to build a pool in the back by saying I was going to join the local swimming club. So Dad had the pool put in, and it was something I could do to get rid of some frustrations. I spent a lot of time in our pool.”
“Let’s go, then. We’ve got tons of suits. You can wear one I wore a couple years ago. I was just your size then. Hey, I’ve always wanted to know. How old are you?”
He started to answer, then stopped. “How old do you think I am?”
I stopped my quick reply, too. This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. “Stand up,” I said, my voice in command mode.
He did, and I did too. Then I stated looking at him, my face wearing a frowning, evaluating expression. I walked slowly around him, studying him. I finally had to stop. My studying him wasn’t having any effect on him that I could see, but it was on me.
“Okay. You look like you’re 13 to me. Could be 12, because you said you were very smart, so you could be in 9th grade that young. But I’m guessing 13. Am I right?”
He grinned. “I’ll tell you if you can beat me in the pool. Two lengths, up and back. Where are the bathing suits?”
He was teasing me, playing with me. I loved it.
I took him downstairs and outside. We have a small pool house off the patio, and there are a couple dressing rooms inside, along with showers, a toilet and a wet bar in a small entertaining area. This had all been there when we bought the house. Two wet bars were about two too many for my parents, who aren’t drinkers.
I showed Kevin some suits and he chose one. I changed in one of the dressing rooms, he used the other, and we met on the side of the pool. That’s when I realized, way belatedly, that there was a problem.
“Kevin, your arm! You can’t swim with your cast!”
“I already thought of that. If you have a trash bag, or a wastebasket liner, and a roll of tape, I can just cover it up. I don’t need two good arms to beat you.”
“Are you sure? Won’t the stress of swimming hurt your wrist? We shouldn’t do this.”
“Are you always this anal? Come on, Matt. Ease up. I can do this. And I want to.”
“Okay,” I said begrudgingly. “Come with me, I’ll see what we have.”
We went back into the house, and I opened the cabinet in the kitchen where we kept the trash bags. I found the smaller ones we used in our wastebaskets. They were long enough that when he put his arm in, they came up past his elbow, which was farther up his arm than the cast. I thought it would be safer to use two bags, so I doubled them up. He put his arm in, then twisted the bags around the arm, getting as much air out as possible. While he was doing that, I went down into the basement and found a roll of duct tape. I taped the bag to his arm, using several wrappings. I was very aware that I was touching him, touching his arm, a lot. He seemed pretty much okay with that. I was pretty much okay with it, too.
“You’re sure of this?” I asked, inspecting the job we’d done.
“Stop worrying. You’re worse than my mother.”
“I just don’t want you getting hurt, or your cast getting wet.”
“I’m fine.” With that, he went back outside, and I followed. When we got to the pool, he walked over to the steps and used them to get into the pool. Not having any plastic bags or broken wrists to worry about, I simply jumped in along the side, then stroked my way over to where he was kneeling in the water, getting himself entirely wet. We keep the pool heated to 74o. It was a warm fall day, in the high 80’s, and the water felt wonderful.
With his arm in the water, the small amount of air that had remained trapped was puffing out the plastic wrap a little, but there wasn’t much of it. Kevin was checking it to make sure it wasn’t leaking. He looked up and smiled at me. “Looks good.”
“Try swimming a few strokes, see if there’s any pain, or if the cast weighs you down or anything.”
He did that. He was up against the front wall of the shallow end of the pool. He lowered himself till he was completely under water, then kicked off the wall and shot off, and quickly began underwater strokes and kicks. Quite rapidly, he made it all the way to the other end on one breath of air. He made an underwater turn, kicked off at that end, and swam back to the shallow end and touched the wall, only then coming up for air.
He came up, violently shook the water off his face and hair, taking a deep breath at the same time. He was also grinning at me.
“Works just fine. How do you want to do this, under water or on top?”
“You haven’t tried swimming on top yet. You should see what that feels like.”
“You’re going to be a mother hen, aren’t you?”
That got me a little pissed at him. “I’m just trying to see you’re all right. What would be really great is for you to go swimming with me in my pool and hurt your wrist again. Then I’d have to go through you being angry again for a month, and I don’t need that.”
“Touchy, touchy,” he said, and laughed. It was infectious. I tried to resist, but couldn’t, and laughed with him.
We swam for a while. I was careful with him, not getting in any splashing fights, not tussling with him. I was getting the idea that he might not be as careful of himself as he should be. Maybe it was his age.
He was a good swimmer. I had swum a lot, so was very comfortable in the water. Before we’d changed, when he’d challenged me to a race, I’d thought it was funny. I was taller, stronger, older than he was and a good swimmer. I’d been sure I could beat him easily. Now, watching him in the water, I knew I’d have to swim well to beat him, maybe as well as I could. Or, maybe he’d just forget about it. That would be okay, too.
We swam and fooled around in the water, gently, for probably 20 minutes. Then I pulled myself out of the water and sat on the side of the pool, my legs dangling in the water.
He swam over to me but didn’t get out. “Are you ready for our race now?”
“You sure you want to do it? You sure you want to taste ignominious defeat? It won’t hurt your ego or anything?”
“Hey, neat word. But the only taste that’ll be going on here is crow. You eating it. Come on.”
He swam back to the front wall at the end of shallow end. I lowered myself into the water and joined him. “You want to do the crawl, or swim underwater, or what? Which are you best at?”
“Either way. Why don’t we swim underwater to that end, then just sprint back?”
“All right with me. But if we’re under water, how do we say ‘go?’ “
“Good point. All right, we swim the crawl stroke first. Okay?”
“Yep. Ready?”
He was, we got in position, and I said, “Ready, set, go.”
I have a strong crawl, and know how to breathe out of the side of my mouth like competitive swimmers do. I started out about three-quarters speed because I didn’t want to shame him. After about four strokes, when he was a full body length in front, I decided that wasn’t going to work, and gave it my all. He reached the back wall ahead of me, did a flip turn and was underwater streaking out ahead of me as I made my turn.
I tried my hardest, but the gain he’d made on the front half of the race ended up widening slightly by the time he touched the front wall. I was probably two seconds behind him. He was standing there grinning at me when I surfaced, breathing hard. I’d had to swim the length in one breath, and that’s difficult after just having raced up the pool immediately beforehand. Of course, he’d done the same thing.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you now, do I? The problem is, we didn’t make the bet fair. You should have some penalty for losing it, and all I get is to keep secret how old I am.”
“Yeah, and I don’t really care anyway.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“Well, I’m interested, but only in a purely academic sort of way.” I was talking out of my ass, and I’m sure he knew it because he was grinning at me. I was still breathing hard.
“I suppose I can tell you. You really think I’m 13?”
“I’m not sure, but that’s my guess.”
“That’s how old I look to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m 14. But I know I look younger. I hate it, I hate how I look, but I can’t do anything about it. I look like a little kid. When I went in for the broken wrist, I asked the doctor about it. He said . . . well, I don’t want to get into what we talked about.”
“Why not?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“I thought we were going to be friends.”
“I hope so. But it’s still embarrassing.”
“Tell me. You probably want to know if you can trust me. You’ve already told me you might be gay. If you can trust me with that, there isn’t much else that would be worse, if I wanted to tell people things. Besides which, other than Becky, I don’t have anyone to tell.”
He climbed out of the pool, grabbed one of the towels we’d brought from the pool house off the deck where we’d dropped them, and walked over to the patio, drying himself off on the way. He sprawled back on one of the loungers we had there. I followed him, sinking down on my own lounger next to him.
“I can really tell you, and you won’t tease me or anything?”
“Kevin, you’re the one who’s cocky and teases me. I’m not like that. Not much, at least.”
He heard me, then looked out over the back yard and didn’t say anything for a while. I was starting to wonder if somehow I’d offended him when he spoke.
“The doctor asked me about puberty. If I’d started it. It’s embarrassing. I really haven’t. I mean, my voice is still high, and I don’t even have any hair at all yet. You probably saw my pits. Bare as a bald head. That’s the way I am all over. And I’m 14. That’s why I didn’t ever shower in gym. You noticed that, didn’t you?”
Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. If I said I did, what would he think of that? But what he said was more embarrassing than what I could say. He was trusting me. That’s the way my mom said friendships were built. On common interests and trust.
“I did notice. I didn’t wonder about it, though. Most freshman don’t shower” There. That ought to get him going, and if he asked what I meant, I’d end up saying things I didn’t want to say, but things that should get us to a point where I’d have to trust him to. I wanted to do that.
“Okay, so you noticed. I thought you would, the way I was bugging you all the time. Did you like that, or hate it?”
“I guess it’s my time to confess a little. All the time you were doing that, giving me shit in gym, and I was telling you to leave me alone, I was enjoying it, too. I had really mixed feelings about it. And about you. Upstairs, I sort of slipped and told you I thought you were cute. I never think other boys are cute. I don’t look at them that way. I did with you. And it got so in gym, wherever I’d look, there you’d be. Which bothered me, and pleased me. But I got to expect it, and so, when you weren’t in the locker room with me, I noticed. And it made me wonder why you’d always disappear then. I sort of regretted it. And I was also happy you weren’t there, all at the same time. You confused me, Kevin. I didn’t know how I felt about you.”
“Wow! So what I felt was right? You really weren’t upset with me for what I was doing?”
“I was and I wasn’t. It made me angry, mostly because I didn’t want other kids to notice, and I liked it. As I said, it was really confusing for me. I know I was mad at you when I pushed you down playing Duck Duck Goose, and I was instantly mad at myself as soon as I did it. I hated myself that I’d hurt you. And I hated the fact that I liked you. Not like you liked me, I don’t think, but maybe a little of that, too. I still don’t know what to think about all that. I still don’t understand my feelings about you. But I knew, as soon as you started being mad at me, that I wanted you to go back to being like you’d been before. I wanted you to be my friend, and I hated it that you were mad at me. I wanted you to like me.”
I wasn’t looking at him. It was hard to meet his eyes just then. I’d said what I wanted to say, what I was scared to say. Now I was waiting for a response from him.
I didn’t have to wait long. “You liked me? You like me now?”
“Kevin, I told you, I’m confused. I like you. Maybe a lot. But I’m not gay. I think I just find you attractive, and don’t really know what that means. I’m not gay, I don’t want to be gay. But I feel something when I look at you. What I want, I decided, was that I wanted to be your friend. I’m hoping that’s what you want, too.”
“It is. I want more than that, but I want that first. What you just said is more than I thought I’d have.” We were lying right next to each other. He reached over and laid his hand on my arm.
We lay like that with neither of us talking for a few minutes. I liked the feel of his hand on my arm. I liked it a lot. And didn’t know what that meant. But I had the idea I was going to have to figure out just where I stood on this gay business a lot sooner than I’d thought I would.
When we’d both been quiet for several minutes, both thinking our own thoughts about what we’d both heard that day, something occurred to me. I sat up.
“Kevin, I need to ask you something. Two things, really. First, I need to call Becky. She said she’d kill me if I didn’t call her and tell her how our conversation went today. I didn’t tell you, but we’ve been talking about you. She’s been encouraging me to get together with you. I’ll tell you all about it, but I need to call her. Don’t be jealous. All she is is a friend, but she’s the only one I had, before you, and I don’t want to piss her off. She isn’t a girl you want to piss off. And Kevin, she’s very, very much on your side. So, can I call her? Actually, can I invite her over? Please.” I gave him my hang dog, pleading look. He broke out laughing. My hang dog look is not intended to evoke laughter.
“Do what you have to do, Matt. If we’re going to be friends, I guess I’ll have to learn to get along with her.”
“You’ll like her, Kevin. Maybe more than like her. She’s got something of the same personality you do. Just wait. Oh, and the second thing. While I’m calling her, try to remember something. When you were telling me about yourself and were just getting started, you said you were hoping what I would say something that would make it easier for you, but I hadn’t done that. What were you talking about?”
I got up and went inside. I called Becky. She answered before the first ring had ended.
“Hello?”
“You weren’t waiting for a call, were you?”
“Finally! Is everything okay? Is he still angry? What did he say? Are you all right?”
“Becky, he hit me with his cast and broke my nose. I need you to come over. No one’s home and I’m bleeding to death here. I need you to be my nurse and stop the bleeding.”
“You liar! If your nose was broken, you’d have a really nasal sound, and you don’t. You’d also sound really depressed because you’d lost your true love, and you sound happy.”
“Stop saying things like that! He’s not my true love. I don’t know why I called you. Jeeze! Anyway, against my better judgment, I called to invite you over. Bring you bathing suit, unless you want to go skinny dipping with us.”
“Yes! He’s still there? Everything’s okay? I’ll be right there! And skinny dipping? Thank you, thank you, thank you! Now I’ll get to see it! Both of you!”
I started to say I was just kidding about the skinny dipping, but she’d already hung up.
I went back outside, taking two cans of DP with me. Kevin was still lying on the lounger. He’d removed his plastic bags. He looked up, and then grinned when I handed him the pop.
“Did you think about my question?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can tell you. I told you I’m gay. You sugar coated it a few minutes ago, saying, ‘You’ve already told me you might be gay.’ That wasn’t what I said. I told you I’m gay. I am gay. I’ve accepted it. I was really hoping when you talked about yourself, you’d tell me that’s the reason you were by yourself so much, that you were gay. If you’d said that, it would have made what I had to say so much easier. It was hard to tell you I’m gay without you saying it first. For all I knew, you hated gays. But I’d promised I’d tell you what was going on. The worst that could happen would be you’d tell everyone at school, but since I never saw you actually talking to anyone at school, that didn’t seem likely. Anyway, that was what I meant.”
“You really trusted me, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. But I think I know you a little by now. I don’t think you’re mean, and it would be mean to out me to everyone. I suppose I’ll have to put up with you outing me to Becky. Can I trust her? Do you trust her?”
“You want to know the truth?”
“Sure.”
“The truth is, Becky outed you to me a few days ago.”
“Huh?”
“She told me you were gay and liked me. See, we spent a lot of time talking about why you were so angry with me. We were trying to figure it out. She came up with some theories, and then some plans to prove or disprove them. Remember when we ran home together in the rain, and I took off my shirt to keep your cast dry. That was her Plan A. Well, her Plan A as modified. The original was for me to wave my dick at you.”
“What?!”
I laughed at his expression. “Yeah. I told you you’d like Becky.”
“Wave your dick at me?”
“Well, she wanted me to flash you in the locker room to see how you’d react. What I ended up doing was taking my shirt off in front of you. But I never saw any reaction because I was looking at wrapping it around your arm instead of seeing you going goggle-eyed over my masculine and very studly chest.”
He ignored that—and I’d thought it was pretty funny!— still apparently enthralled with the idea behind Plan A. He said, “That was her idea? Really?”
“And that was only her first plan.”
“My God, you guys really were talking about me, weren’t you?”
“Actually, Kevin, you’re about all I’ve thought about since I broke your wrist. And actually, even before that.”
He looked at me, and slowly a smile spread across his face. After a moment or two, I said, “What?”
“Nothing. Well, actually, I was thinking about us in the rain, and you taking your shirt off.”
I blushed just a little. Then curiosity got the better of me. “Becky was mad at me that I didn’t watch you face. Did you react at all?”
“I don’t know. I do know I looked. I do know it excited me. But whether I made that apparent or not, I have no idea. But I looked and liked what I saw, your naked torso all wet and glistening with the rain running off it.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so didn’t. I lay back down on the lounger and just enjoyed being next to him and feeling I’d gotten my wish. He wasn’t angry with me, and we were both wanting a friendship to work. I felt very content at the moment. I’d felt a lot of stress for some time now, and suddenly, just like that, it was gone. I thought about what was to come. I thought about how my life had changed. I didn’t only have one friend now, I had two. I wasn’t sure what to make of Kevin yet. I still didn’t want to be gay, but my mom had made me understand that I had to be myself, had to trust myself, had to be open to my own heart. My dad had told me I had courage. Why had he said that? I needed to ask him that. But it sure seemed to be appropriate at the moment, to mesh with what I was going through right now. I didn’t know if I believed him, but I wanted to.
I thought of everything I’d gone through recently. The confusion, the anguish, the crying, the changes. Things hadn’t been very good for me for quite a while, and now, almost before I knew it, my life had changed, and things were so good. I felt so happy I could hardly lie still.
I sighed, just thinking about that, and about how much better things really were. I had Kevin, I had Becky, and having those two with me made all the difference in the world.
Kevin looked over at me, probably wondering what the sigh was all about. I didn’t know if I could put it in words if he asked. Then, I didn’t have to. The doorbell rang. Becky was here.