I was in the library at school working on my column. A boy I didn’t know came up to my table and asked if he could talk to me.
A lot of boys talked to me now that three of my columns had been printed in the paper. I said ‘sure’, and he sat down.
I’ll come back to this, but before I get into it, I want to talk about what happened at the dance.
We’d discovered we’d had no need to worry about what to wear. The dance was right after school ended for the day. Kids didn’t go home; they left their last class and went to the gym, where the dance was being held, wearing what they’d worn all day at school. Tanner danced the first couple of dances with the girl he’d asked. Then I saw him talk to her for a bit before he went and danced with another girl. These weren’t the kind of dances we’d all seen in movies. You know, with old people clinging to each other. No, we just stood in front of each other and wiggled and shook and moved our arms up and down, looking like we had an itch and couldn’t quite reach it to give it the scratch it needed.
After standing on the sidelines watching for a while, I caught up with Tanner after the fourth dance. “How could you do that?” I asked. “You ditched Meredith, then went to dance with other girls!”
Tanner grinned at me. “I may not have told you the exact truth. I didn’t ask her to go to the dance with me. I asked her if she was going to be there, she said yes, and I asked if we could have the first couple of dances together. Then I thanked her and said we should both dance with other kids. She agreed. That was it.”
I was uncertain what to say. I was relieved Tanner wasn’t infatuated with Meredith, if he really wasn’t, but then why did he want to get me all upset thinking he might be?
That made no sense to me, so I did what I always did with Tanner: I asked him why he’d done that.
He looked a little embarrassed for about half a second, then looked at me seriously. “I wanted to see your reaction,” he said. Then, before I could think of how to react to that, he said, “There’s Jason. Let’s the three of us dance.”
He grabbed my arm, pulled me to where Jason was standing and watching everyone else dance, and said to him, “Come on. The three of us are going to show the others out there how this is supposed to be done.”
He took Jason’s arm in his other hand and led both of us out onto the floor. He spaced us in a rough triangle, said, “Let’s give it our best shot,” and began jerking and lurching, swaying and swinging, and after a second, Jason joined in, an expression of joy on his face.
I wasn’t a dancer. I wasn’t very coordinated. But I saw quickly that coordination wasn’t required. Movement was all it took, any sort of movement at all, and I could do that. So, with arms waving and legs bouncing, I joined in. We were all going at it like idiots when I realized most of the other dancers were forming around us, watching. But I was having so much fun that I didn’t even mind.
Finally, the music stopped, and I was shocked when we got a big round of applause.
At some point in the afternoon, Tanner somehow got Jason and me dancing together. We would have been the only boy couple on the floor, but Tanner fixed that. He grabbed another jock and danced with him right near us. That made it all right for Jason, who’d been reluctant till Tanner took his partner onto the floor. That was all Jason needed. I thought he might have had a little crush on me.
So, back to the boy in the library. Sounds like an Agatha Christie murder mystery: The Boy in the Library. But it wasn’t.
He had a tentative look on his face. I couldn’t help but notice it was a very attractive face. Large brown eyes, slightly lighter brown hair that was actually styled, but long and with a slight inward curve on the ends that came close to his shoulder. He had a slight build like most seventh graders, which was where I had him pegged. At school, we got pretty good at telling how old our peers were, and he was my age.
I waited for him to speak and hoped it would be soon and brief as I was into writing my next column and hated being interrupted. The words were flowing, and I hated damming them up.
I saw in his eyes he’d come to a decision. “I’ve read your column,” he said. “I asked around, and you were pointed out to me. I don’t really know anyone very well. New this year, you know?”
No, I didn’t know, but I did know I hadn’t seen him before this year, so it was easy to guess he was new. And it was easy to become beguiled by his oh-so-cute Southern accent.
“I’m Trip Schroder,” I said. “And yes, I’ve just begun writing a column in the school paper.”
“I’m James Lowery. I . . . I’m not sure how to say this, but, well, I’m gay, too. The only ones I’ve ever said that to are my parents. My mom’s okay with it, but dad’s still getting used to it. You seem very comfortable with being out. I’m worried about coming out, but I see lots of guys talking to you, and, like, you have no problems with it. Do you think I can come out and it’ll all be okay?”
I thought he should know I couldn’t answer that, but he sounded sort of desperate for an answer. He probably wanted me to say yes, come on in, the water’s fine. But I took another tack.
“Do you want to come out? Do you want everyone to know you’re gay?”
He fidgeted. This wasn’t easy for him. But I waited.
“I’m of two minds,” he said eventually. “But I think the pros outnumber the cons. You did it. You didn’t get beat up, did you? You’re not being ostracized or shunned. You seem to have survived it fine.”
“Everyone’s different, James. You’re ahead of the game in that your parents know. That’s a huge worry for most guys, and you survived that. Did you tell them, or did they find out?”
“No, I told them. I was feeling desperate. I had to talk to someone, and I didn’t have anyone else. So I did it, and my mom hugged me, and my father, well, he’s coming around, like I said. I know he loves me. That’s big, and it’s what matters most.”
“Well, I can’t answer your question. As you probably knew I couldn’t. This is for you to decide. And you should know, it wasn’t easy for me at school at first. I lost a lot of friends. But I’m getting them back. People have to get used to knowing you’re gay and aren’t a threat. My column has helped them accept me. It’ll probably help you that I’m out. When I came out, no one else at school had done that, so it was just me. My best friend now is a super athlete, a jock, and that helps too. My opinion is you wouldn’t have too hard a time with it. But I don’t know that any more than you do.
“Tell me a little bit about yourself, James. That might help me get a better feel for you and maybe about your decision.”
He smiled. I couldn’t help but notice he had a great smile. I had a tremendous crush on Tanner, and if he’d reciprocate, I wouldn’t look at James twice, but Tanner was a complete enigma to me, making it seem at times that he did like me the way I liked him. Yet, at other times, I was completely sure he was totally straight. I hadn’t come out and asked him specifically if he was gay or straight. That seemed both rude and invasive and perhaps destructive to our relationship. I’d certainly hinted that I’d like to know. He certainly knew how I felt. He’d used all sorts of tactics to not tell me about himself. He’d been ambiguous, hinting that maybe he was gay, but never saying yes or no. I think he liked me in the dark—the ‘tall, dark, handsome and inscrutable at the same time’ syndrome—or maybe he simply wasn’t sure of himself yet.
So having a cute kid tell me he was gay and then smile at me, well, I was only human. A very horny human, come to that. I was thirteen now. I’d heard thirteen was the peak of our sexuality. I didn’t know if that was true, but from how I felt, it could be. And if Tanner wasn’t interested, and this kid was . . .
“We just moved here in the summer, just before school began. We were in South Carolina before, and my dad got transferred. I’m an only kid, and both my parents work, so I’m alone a lot. I hate that. But it gives me lots of time to read, and that’s what I like most. I read any and everything. Sci-fi, biographies, thrillers, boarding-school stories about boys, anthologies—heck, I’ve even read a lot of Shakespeare. Right now, I’m reading The Lessons of History by the Durants.”
Yikes. This kid wasn’t an intellectual lightweight. “Something tells me you’re an A student,” I said, smiling.
“Yeah. Does that bother you?”
“Are you kidding? No, I am, too. So’s my friend Tanner. I told him one of us is going to be valedictorian when we graduate. But the fact is, I intend it to be me.”
He got a broad smile on his face and a spark in his eyes. “Well,” he said, actually sounding smug, “you’d better add my name to that very short list. And, if it’s a challenge you like, I must add, ‘Lay on, MacDuff! And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold enough.’”
I think my jaw actually dropped open, and I could feel my eyes widening. And then I started laughing and couldn’t stop. He looked at me like I’d just gone loony, and I laughed even harder.