While I was pushing John toward the playground, he started chatting. It was easy, friendly talk and I was glad he started in because, the way I was feeling, it would have been very easy for me to tense up, and I’m not the most verbal person to start with. I had been, growing up in Ohio. That was one of the things I’d lost along with my self-confidence as the events of the past few years had been played out.
I had a lot I wanted to say to John and being too tense to even start would have been a real problem. His relaxed and easygoing manner really helped me. He kept the mood light. That made it easy for me to respond in kind, and the trip to the playground was pleasant rather than stressful.
It took us only 10 minutes to get there. The elementary school was a sprawling building only one-story high which looked like most of the elementary schools they had here. In Ohio, schools were usually multistory buildings; here, schools were rarely heated, and so they could be built lower and less compactly. On one side there was an elaborate playground with all the usual equipment plus a couple of very fancy jungle gyms and play centers. Past the playground there was a wide lawn with many large trees and some random picnic tables, most of them well-shaded.
At this time of the day, early afternoon on a Saturday, the playground was mostly deserted. A couple kids who appeared to be about nine were swinging; two younger kids were in the large sandbox, very engaged in whatever it was they were doing. Other than that, we were the only ones in sight.
I pushed John over to the picnic table that was farthest from the playground. He got up out of the chair then sat at the table. I walked to the other side and sat down, facing him.
“John,” I started, “I know I owe you an explanation. Twice now I’ve run away from you. It won’t be easy for me to explain why. I’m going to do it, but please understand that this is hard for me. I’ve been keeping a lot of secrets for months now, and the longer it’s been, the harder I find it to open up. I want to speak openly with you—you deserve an explanation—but it’s difficult. It’s perfectly sensible, you being pissed at me. You have every right to be.”
He was watching me intently. I paused. I was probably hoping he’d tell me everything was fine and I didn’t need to explain. He didn’t. He just sat there looking at me.
I had no choice but to continue. I took a deep breath and did. “The thing is, I had some troubles where I used to live. That’s the reason we moved here. We were leaving the problems I’d caused back home. Terry says that’s nuts, nothing was my fault, but that’s Terry being supportive. Anyway, I decided if no one found out what I’d done, I could just leave it all behind me and start over. But it didn’t work that way. I met Terry and I met you, and the closer I got to both of you, the more questions you guys asked, and the more trouble I had answering them. When the questions got too hard for me, I just panicked and ran. It wasn’t you I was running from. It was my own insecurities and my past. I just couldn’t talk about that.”
John remained silent, apparently thinking about what I’d said. The silence continued a bit but strangely enough didn’t feel uncomfortable to me. We had a lot of time for this and, now that I’d started, I wasn’t so nervous.
Finally he spoke. “You’re saying you caused a lot of problems in the past, so many you had to move? Problems so bad you’re afraid to talk about them? Tim, I don’t know you real well; I’ve only been around you for a week now. But I do know you at least a little. You expect me to believe that only a few months ago, you were this really bad dude who caused such terrible problems you had to move hundreds of miles away to escape the outcome of them? Tim, I don’t know what happened, but come on, that sounds like bullshit to me!”
I looked down at the table. One thing was sure. He wasn’t going to make this easy. I guessed he really was tired of me running away from him. He was going to get to the bottom of this so he could understand it.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “You want to know the details, don’t you?”
“I don’t want you to say anything you don’t want to say. You’re doing the talking. But if you say stuff that just doesn’t make sense, how do you expect me to believe it?”
He had a point. And the whole reason we were having this conversation was so he’d understand why I’d run and, maybe, just maybe, so he could accept me and we could be friends. Or he could reject me. I knew I needed to say more.
“Okay, John. Please just understand, I’ll be having to tell stuff I’d really like to keep buried. I’ll do that, though. Otherwise, nothing will make sense and I doubt we’ll ever be the friends I hope we can be. So, here goes.”
And I told him. I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t go into detail like I did with Terry. But I told him enough. I told him I’d been caught doing sexual things with Jed, without saying what. I told him about Missy catching us at it and having to tell our parents about it. I told him about Shawn and my mother and Ellison. I told him about my parents’ divorce, Shawn’s commitment, Ellison’s trial, and how in the end everything was my fault. My fault because I was gay.
I was looking down at the table when I told him that. I wanted to see his reaction, but I didn’t have the nerve to look at him. So I looked at the table.
John was quiet. He didn’t say a thing and, with me studying the grain on the table so closely, I had no idea what he was thinking. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and looked up.
John was turned on the bench and looking at the boys on the playground. I watched him for a couple minutes. I couldn’t see his entire face, just the profile, and couldn’t see into his eyes at all.
He stayed like that until the pressure got too much for me. I’d just spilled my guts out to him, and I needed to know his reaction. Maybe he was trying to think what to say to me. Probably he was trying to think how to tell me diplomatically he didn’t hang with loser faggots and he was ready to go back to Terry’s now. Or maybe not. But either way, I needed to know.
“John, talk to me. Please. I’m dying here.”
He slowly turned toward me. His face was expressionless. He looked at me for a long time. Well, it seemed long. Then he said, “Tim, that’s more bullshit, but I don’t think you even realize it is.”
I got mad. I don’t get mad easily, but that got to me. I could feel my face get hot, and I know my voice was louder than usual when I responded to him.
“What the hell are you talking about? I just tell you things that tear my guts out, I pour my soul out to you, and you say it’s bullshit? What the fuck is your problem?”
He didn’t back down at all. Terry had told me he was feisty. He was. He just ignored my anger. “Tim, it’s bullshit. That’s my problem, that what you’re saying is bullshit. We’re going to talk about this. You’re going to listen to me for a while. You will not run away!
He glared at me, then spoke. “Everything you said, the things you did, none of them caused the problems you told me about. You were what, 13, 14, 15 years old? You experimented with sex with a neighborhood friend. Probably three quarters or more of all boys in the world do that at one time or another, to one degree or another, and the other quarter wish they could. You liked it, so you decided you’re gay. Well, maybe you are, but then maybe you’re not. Those early teen experiences certainly don’t define you as gay.”
He paused momentarily, maybe to let those words sink in, then went on. “Your mother found out you were supposedly gay, but that problem wasn’t yours, it was hers, caused mostly, I’d think, by her new fundamentalist religion. Those people are the least tolerant people on earth. But you didn’t cause her problems; her religion or her reaction to it did. Those teachings she heard caught her out, or maybe it was just her mental makeup that caused the problem.
“Shawn got caught up in the religion with her, too. It screwed up your whole family. The intolerant, judgmental religion did that, or your family’s mental problems, not you. You were just a kid, doing what kids do. Shawn is in a hospital not because of you, but because of that church and that pedophile Reverend-who-wasn’t or some innate mental deficiency. Your parents got divorced because your mother stopped being a mother and a wife. Her values got screwed up. You didn’t cause that. Hell, I’ll bet you didn’t even screw up Jed. You said his parents liked you even after they knew what was going on. What happened to Jed?”
I could answer that. “I’ve emailed him a few times. He doesn’t do a good job of writing back. But he’s got a girlfriend. He’s playing linebacker on the football team. He’s having problems keeping his grades up. He says Missy has changed, that they’ve gotten closer.”
“So he’s a normal kid. You didn’t screw him up. You didn’t screw anyone up. But I don’t think you can accept that, can you?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, John. Terry and I talked about it yesterday and he said what you said, but I can’t buy it. I don’t think any of this would have happened if I were straight. You say I might be straight, but I’m not. I’m gay. I’m not interested in girls at all. I’m not a sex fiend. I don’t perv on every boy I see, but the kids I find most attractive, the most interesting, the ones that turn me on, all of them are boys. I don’t even check out girls. I do, boys. And I think my mother knew that. I think the reason that church was so attractive to her was she hated my homosexuality. I think the church was the cause of a lot of our problems, but I think my being the way I was, the way I am, was why she went there.”
John looked at me and shook his head but didn’t talk. He turned back to watch the boys play some more. After a couple minutes, he turned back to me. He looked like he’d figured something out.
“You know, Tim, you’re a writer. To be a really good writer, you have to be smart and have insight. You have to look inside people and situations and figure them out. You have to come up with explanations for why people behave as they do, explanations that make sense. The scenarios you write must be ones that your readers will buy into. To be good, your stories have to have your characters acting the way people really act, acting logically and rationally. If you have your characters act uncharacteristically or improbably, the stories won’t work. No one would believe them. The stories wouldn’t be convincing.
“The thing is, you’re not thinking the same way with this situation as you do when you’re writing. Here, you’re letting your emotions do your thinking for you, and it’s messing you up. If you think of the people you’ve been talking about and make them characters in a story, you’ll see that what you’re making them do, the reasons you’re giving them for their actions, aren’t logical. They don’t make sense.”
I couldn’t think about that. For such a long time, I’d been feeling responsible for everything that had happened, and I couldn’t just imagine it any other way than what I had already decided was true.
He was already going on. “You need to write it down, make a story out of it, think about the characters interacting in your imagination. You’ll see the way you’ve worked it out, it isn’t persuasive. But I see another, bigger problem. This is going to be heavy, Tim. It may even hurt. Can I keep going?”
He was still looking at me, and now I saw compassion in his eyes. They weren’t blank and unreadable any longer. I’d never seen compassion in his eyes before.
I had no idea where he was going, but I was willing to listen. It was preferable to him telling me to get lost. I was feeling emotional, though, and couldn’t trust my voice. I simply nodded.
“I think you’re accepting blame for all this because it’s easier that way. It lets you off the hook. I think a lot of this has to do with your mother. You said your mother hates you because you’re gay, right?”
Now he had my complete attention, and suddenly I was feeling very nervous again. I didn’t want him going where I thought he might be going. This was too emotional for me. This was a topic I tried not to even think about myself. I started feeling really upset when my thoughts drifted to this subject, and I always forced the thoughts out of my mind.
“John, maybe we shouldn’t go into that.”
“Tim, we need to look at this. I’m going to talk about it. You can walk away and not listen if you want.” He paused. I sat still. I wanted to walk away. Badly. I had promised myself this morning I wouldn’t do that, however. I’d promised myself I was going to face what was bothering me, not run away from it. I was tempted to run, but I didn’t. It took great willpower, but I stayed.
“Tim, listen to this. If your mother hates you because you’re gay, you can understand that. That makes sense to you, and you can accept that. That’s not really hating you, just hating part of you. But what if that’s not it? What if it’s not the gayness she hates; what if it’s just you? She just hates you for being you. What about that?”
And that was what I hadn’t been allowing myself to look at. When he said it, the fact of it just sat there, staring at me, and I knew that’s what I’d been afraid of. That’s what had been terrifying me for months. I felt my eyes start to water.
John was relentless. “That’s too much to bear, isn’t it? And that’s what’s been eating at you. Because you’re too smart to really think all this was your fault. But it was easier to do that than accept that your own mother didn’t love you.”
Tears were streaming down my face now. I was looking at it, feeling it. How could my mother simply hate me? But she’d started acting odd before she could have had any idea I was gay. I’d been deluding myself all along. She hadn’t known I was gay. She just hated me because she hated me. I was so worthless my own mother hated me.
John wasn’t through. I didn’t think I could listen to any more, but he made sure I did. He reached over the table and grabbed my shoulder with his good hand, then jerked it till I met his eyes. He made sure he had my attention, then continued.
“But Tim, listen to this, it’s important! What’s probably true is, she didn’t hate you. You’ve been telling yourself all along that this happened because she hated you, then made up a reason for the hatred, but that doesn’t make any sense. I know you. You’re this wonderful, caring, smart, cool kid, and no sane mother would hate you.
“The problem is, your mother had issues that didn’t even involve you. You, being a kid, thought anything that happened was somehow due to you. Kids are all egocentric, so it was natural for you to see this problem was all about you. But you weren’t a factor at all in this.
“She had problems, very real problems. I have no idea what they were, but they were so severe she turned to a crackpot religion to get relief from them. Or, maybe, she had her problems and that’s why the crackpot religion was able to get inside her and screw her up even more. In either case, it was personal with her, she had problems, and when she looked to that crazy religion for help, that caused your family’s troubles. It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t your sexuality. You have to stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t you.”
He said that last with such emphasis, it was difficult to maintain eye contact with him.
I was numb for a time, but then my brain did wake up. It took a while, but it did hit me eventually. What he said made sense. My mother had acted strangely the day she’d said she was going to church, the day she first took Shawn and me there. I clearly remembered how she’d been so taken by the place and that Ellison guy, and I remembered it hadn’t made any sense to me at the time. It hadn’t ever made any sense to Dad. The more I looked at it and the more I thought about it, what John said made sense. It sounded right.
And as that worked its way into my brain, as I sat at that table in the park thinking about it, I started feeling a sense of relief. For the first time in ages, I started feeling whole again. I started to believe. It wasn’t my fault. It really wasn’t my fault!
My tears had stopped. I’d been sitting, not really seeing anything, just thinking. When I finally focused, John was still looking at me. The compassion I’d seen in his eyes was still there.
“How long have I been sitting here thinking?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. A while.”
“How did you get so smart?”
He laughed. It sounded so good, I joined in. I couldn’t help it. I suddenly realized I didn’t feel so anxious any longer. I felt calmer, good. Really, really good. Better than I could remember in about forever.
Then I stopped. “John?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“Uh, about that other thing I said? I need to know how you feel about that.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, everything, I guess. I told you I’m gay. Does that bother you? You didn’t run away screaming, so I don’t think you hate me or anything—which, by the way, is great and makes me awfully happy—but I don’t know how you feel about it.”
John paused, thinking. Then he said, “Well, I’ll tell you how I feel, but first, I want to talk about you some more. You’re gay. So, what do you feel about me? I mean, do you just want me for a friend or do you like me or something? You’re gay, so maybe you like me. Huh? Huh?”
He was grinning. Damn him. I’d recovered some of my balance, though, and I could answer with more spirit than I’d had in some time.
“Gosh, John, you’re really putting me on the spot here. That’s embarrassing! You can’t ask me that!” And I grinned back at him.
“Well, I guess you answered the question then. If you just considered us friends and it wasn’t anything more than that, why would it embarrass you to say that? In fact, you’d do that and strongly deny it was anything more than that. So I think that’s all straightened out, you’re gay and you like me. Right? Just so we’re clear?”
His grin had broadened. His sparkling eyes had a challenging glint in them, and I blushed. Terry had told me, right at the start, that John was blunt, that he was forward. He’d been right. And I had to match him now. If he could be blunt and forward, then so help me, so could I!
John wasn’t acting like it was going to be a problem, no matter what I said, and I felt none of the anxiety I’d been wearing like a cloak since forever. I simply wasn’t about to screw this up with some awkward half-truth or outright lie that might come back to haunt me later.
“Okay, John, I’ll lay it on the line. No bullshit. Yeah, I’m gay, and I like you; actually, I like you more than a lot. You’re attractive as hell, probably the most attractive kid I’ve ever met in my entire life, you’re smart and have this incredible strength and honesty, you’ve got this personality that is really appealing to me even when I feel like punching your lights out. I want to know you better, a lot better, and, here it is—I’ve had feelings for you since we met. You’re just going to have to deal with it. There. That straightforward enough for you?”
“Wow!” He stopped to think, looked at me, then looked away for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice was different. It had a softness to it that wasn’t like John. “OK, you were finally really up front and honest with me. So, I’ll do that with you, too. Tim, I’m sure I’m gay too. I haven’t ever told anyone that. Not even my mother, although, well, my mom’s really supportive and there for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s guessed. But, there was never anyone to tell it to other than Terry, and somehow the time never seemed right to tell him. I keep thinking about what I said to you about being gay, that you’re probably not really sure; you’re too young to know. But I’m your age, and I’m sure of myself. I’ve never done anything with anyone. You have, and so you’d be more likely to be sure about yourself than I would. Yet I am sure.
“But, I’m this runty, diseased, closeted gay kid in a wheelchair. Why you’d want to have anything to do with me is beyond me. But I’m so, so happy to hear you say that you find me attractive. If I could do cartwheels, I’d be doing them right now. I’ve been so wanting someone, and for the last week, I’ve really been wanting a specific someone. You. I can’t believe you feel the same way.”
I just looked at him, feeling, well, I don’t know how to describe it. This was incredible. Could this day really get any better? And then it did. While I was just sitting there, stunned by what he’d said and having this awesome feeling of joy just growing inside of me, and feeling things I was at a loss how to express—sort of in shock, really—John leaned over to kiss me. Right there, right in public—being in public if you count four small boys probably 60 yards away from us behind a partial screen of a lot of big trees.
The table was too wide with him unable to stretch across it far enough from his chair. So instead of a kiss, he sat back and said, “You can’t believe how jealous I am of Jed.” Then gave me a wan smile.
I was not going to miss this opportunity. He couldn’t stretch very far, but I could. He leaned forward again when he saw what I was about, and I almost sprawled across the entire width of the table to get to him. His lips felt like nothing I’d ever felt. They were soft and moist and tender and firm and just wonderful. For a boy who’d never done anything, which I assumed included kissing, he sure seemed to know how to go about it. This wasn’t a brief little peck. He kissed me and didn’t pull away. He kept his lips on mine. He started moving them, slightly opening and closing his mouth, sliding his lips on mine, and in about three seconds I was as hard as a rock, even pressed against the unforgiving table.
I reached out and put my hands on his shoulders and held him. The table between us was suddenly the thing I liked least in the whole world.
I’d done a lot of things with Jed, but kissing wasn’t one of them. This was an entirely new experience for me, and I quickly found out what I’d been missing. Jed and I had been all about sex. John and I, well, we were going to be much, much different.
Almost lying flat on the table rather quickly became too uncomfortable, too restrictive, and we eventually both pulled back at the same time. I looked at him, and the look in his eyes almost caused me to tear up again. What I saw in his eyes as he looked at me was unmistakable: it was love.
I gazed back at him—probably with the same awestruck expression in my eyes. Then I said what I needed to say.
“John, you just told me all these things about yourself, and I’m calling bullshit on you. Just like you called it on me on earlier. Bullshit! Let’s see, you said you were, what was it, a ‘runty, diseased, closeted gay kid in a wheelchair’? Except you forgot the most important word.”
“What?”
“Perfect. That’s what you are, John. You’re perfect.”