Openly Straight

  “That’s two of the rules of comedy right there,” Albie said, picking up the bowl he’d emptied of cereal, lifting it to his mouth, and slurping the vodka. “One: Nuns are always funny. Two: Segways are always funny. That’s comedy gold.”

  “I’m a regular Tosh.0,” I deadpanned.

  Toby laughed. Albie frowned. “He relies on profanity and sex innuendo,” Albie said. “Very much in violation of the rules of comedy.”

  “Albie loves rules,” Toby said, rolling his eyes. “Rules and of course survival shows on television, and thinking up new ways to abuse and humiliate jocks. Present company excluded.”

  “I never get to use them, though,” Albie said. “I don’t like being killed.”

  I looked at Albie, who was not looking at me, and I realized he was nervous about being around me. His bravado and humor aside, here I was, this supposed jock he was rooming with. He had no way of knowing that I’d been anything other than a jock all my life. I felt bad for him, so I decided to say what the old Rafe would say. Pre-Natick Rafe.

  “I hear ya. In Boulder, my best friend and I used to come up with ingenious plans about how to make the FBITs pay.”

  “FBITs?” Albie asked.

  “Frat Boys In Training.”

  He looked at me, sized me up again. I could tell he was sort of thinking I was one.

  “We call them Jockheads,” Toby said. “Rhymes with blockhead?”

  “Yes, I got that,” I said. “Extremely clever.”

  This made Toby laugh.

  “Well, anyway, this school is all FBITs,” Albie said.

  “I had dinner with them a few times over the weekend. Steve and Zack?”

  Albie raised his eyebrows. “Impressive,” he said. “I mean, in a very unimpressive way.”

  “I like them,” I said.

  “I gotta piss like a racehorse,” he said. “And by that I mean while galloping.” He galloped out of the room.

  So there we were, me and Toby, alone in the room. I crossed and uncrossed my legs. Toby kept eating his Frosted Russkie Charms. He had an earring in his right ear, and he wore a tight white T-shirt. His voice wasn’t effeminate, but he was definitely different.

  “I guess if you’ve talked to the Jockheads already, they probably told you about me,” he said, squirming in his seat. “I’m gay. Everyone knows and I’m fine with that.”

  I swallowed. “No,” I said. “They had not told me that.”

  “Oh,” said Toby. “Um … awkward.”

  All summer, I’d gone over every scenario in my mind in terms of gay stuff at Natick. I had firm plans in place. I was going to be label-free. Don’t ask, and I won’t tell. The only way I would actually lie was if I were asked directly, “Are you gay?” In that case, I’d say no. But even then I wouldn’t go on about being straight. I didn’t want to lie; I just wanted to not be the guy whose main attribute was liking other guys. Been there, done that. So anything less than a full-on, direct question would receive a deflection of some kind.

  If people assumed I were straight — they call that heterosexism, I’d learned in my Speaking Out training — I’d let them. I wouldn’t go on and on about it, but I’d let them.

  If someone asked if I had a girlfriend, the answer was no.

  If someone asked if there were some girl I liked, or if they tried to set me up with some girl at a party, the answer was “I’m focusing on getting into a good school.” That way, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be interested, but also I wouldn’t be saying no, which would obviously make people wonder.

  If something came up about someone else being gay, I’d go for Liberal Boulderite. That’s cool, I’d say, totally unconcerned.

  I’d say as little as possible about sex and focus on other stuff.

  I’d even thought about what I’d do if another gay kid told me he was gay, so I was ready for this. I was ready for anything.

  “I had gay friends in Boulder. I’m definitely cool with that,” I heard myself say to Toby, and held back a grimace. How many times had people said that kind of thing to me? Like I’d be so grateful to know they liked other gay people. Gee, how awesome of you, I’d always thought when people said shit like that.

  He smiled. “Good. Although I have to say,” he said, and suddenly he got a little coquettish, his eyes batting a touch. “I was hoping maybe you were, you know.”

  I blushed. My “don’t ask, I won’t tell” plan didn’t have a contingency for a follow-up question. I tried for another deflection. “Must be tough to be gay here,” I said, averting my eyes.

  Toby just stared at me. He wasn’t buying my deflections. This was not good. Not good at all.

  Oh, well. So much for no lying. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not.”

  He sighed dramatically. “All the cute ones are straight or married,” he said, looking away. I laughed, though I’m not sure if and when my blushing ever really stopped.

  Albie neighed and threw his head back as he returned to the room. When he sensed the awkwardness, he turned to Toby. “So you told him?”

  “Ya,” Toby said.

  “Your team, or my team?”

  “Yours,” Toby said, mock dejectedly.

  “Oh, well. Sorry, little buddy. Someday your prince will come. C-O-M-E, I mean, because I’m not about the sex innuendo. That’s the lowest form of comedy.” Then Albie appraised my mood. “You are not extremely uncomfortable.”

  “I am not,” I responded.

  “I thought maybe you would be.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  Albie seemed to digest this. Then he got mock serious, sticking his hand out at me and lowering his voice. “Welcome to the squad, young man. Good to have you, good to have you.”

  “Um, thank you. Thank you very much,” I said, mimicking his lowered voice. And then we all laughed, and I wondered if these guys might actually be great friends to have.

  In the comfort of our room, anyway.

  “Now don’t kill me,” I said when the voice at the other end said hello. “I know it’s been too long. I’ve been really busy settling in.”

  “Who is this?” Claire Olivia said. “I don’t recognize the voice.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “Damn right it won’t. What’s with not calling me back for almost a week? What am I, chopped liver?”

  “Are you still going for the whole Jewish grandmother thing? Because I thought we’d talked about this? You’re Irish, girlie girl. It’s not working.”

  “All I know, Seamus Rafael Goldberg, is I haven’t heard your sweet voice in way too long! What’s going on, Shay Shay?”

  “Oh, you know. Got married. Divorced. Became a drunk. Moved to Reno.”

  “You are NOT getting away without giving me a full report. I’ve MISSED you, Shay Shay! Seriously. You cannot not call like that. I’m having Rafe withdrawals!”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I hate that I’ve been such a suck-ass friend. What’s wrong with me?”

  “We do not even have time for you to get all self-pityish. We have way too much to cover. After all, my life is going to serious hell.”

  I lay back sideways on my bed and kicked my legs up against the wall. I knew Claire Olivia well enough to know that I was about to hear a drawn-out story. And I was glad. It had been too long, really. “Tell me, tell me,” I said.

  She took a dramatic breath. “Thank God. I absolutely have to tell someone who will actually understand. So I’m with Courtney and her boyfriend, Sam, and You-Know-Caleb at the Laughing Goat.”

  Claire Olivia called this guy Caleb “You-Know-Caleb,” because that’s how everyone mentioned him to me. He was the only other openly gay kid in our grade at Rangeview. If I had to describe him, I’d say he was, well, bitchy. I hate to stereotype, but he was. Anyway, almost every day someone said to me, “You know Caleb?” — like we must be close, since we shared a sexual orientation. It made me a little crazy. We definitely didn
’t hang out.

  “So this is like Monday, after school, first day. And we’re just hanging out, and this serious cutie is with his friend, he’s wearing a burnt-orange ski hat and has the most insanely beautiful blue eyes and cheekbones up to the ceiling, and he keeps looking over. And it’s like, at me. I mean, he’s looking. So I smile at him, and Caleb, of course, you know he goes over….”

  I looked at my skinny legs and then studied the ceiling. I was used to Claire Olivia going on and on; that was our thing. I did it sometimes too. It was just that so much had happened since the last time we’d done this. Back in Boulder, it wasn’t unusual for me to go weeks talking only to my parents and her. Now I had a lot of people in my life whom I talked to, and it felt different. I imagined her on a raft at Barker Reservoir, floating off into the distance, floating, floating.

  “… And so that night we text a hundred times, and it’s obvious that he likes me and I like him, and he finally says, ‘Wanna hang out Friday?’ And I didn’t even play coy, because it wasn’t needed. I just wrote yes. And he’s like, ‘Cool. I’ll call you.’ And then Tuesday and Wednesday, no calls, no texts. And I finally text him on Wednesday night with something appropriately snarky, like, ‘Are you dead?’ And get this: no reply.”

  I suppressed a yawn. How many boyfriends had I been through with Claire Olivia? How many bad dates? And that was the thing. How many had she gone through with me? I hadn’t said much to her about the only so-called dates I’d ever had because, frankly, there was nothing much to say. And now I had lots to tell her, and, granted, it was my fault she didn’t know some of the stuff that was going on, but even if she had known, would I have gotten the chance to go first? Or would we be having this same one-way conversation?

  “… And I call Caleb and we talk about it for an hour, and even he’s like, ‘Enough, you’ve known this guy like a day,’ and I said, ‘But we texted,’ and Caleb is like, ‘Two out of three psychologists say that texting is not an actual date.’ But, anyway, the guy totally blows me off.

  “So, like, Friday, yesterday, after school we go back to the Goat. It’s me and Courtney and You-Know-Caleb again, we’re like this trio now that you have ABANDONED me. We go there and we’re having Italian sodas and guess who walks in?”

  There was a pause, and it occurred to me that it was my line.

  “The guy,” I said.

  “The guy,” she repeated. “Whose pathetic name is Pete. Pathetic Pete. And he’s all smiles, and he comes and sits with us.”

  “Wow,” I said, trying to straighten my legs to be at a ninety-degree angle with my torso.

  “… And he says, get this: ‘I’m just not into you in that way. But you’re a really cool chick. Can we be friends?’

  “Um, no! So I told him in no uncertain terms that we could not. Okay. That’s a lie. I said I had to go to the bathroom, and then I waited in there until Courtney came, and she totally was there for me and she said she’d make sure he was gone before I came out. She’s a really cool girl. You would have liked getting to know her better if you had NOT ABANDONED ME HERE.”

  “Have you sold the film rights?” I asked.

  “I know you did not just say that, Shay Shay.”

  “Tee hee,” I said. And the thing was, I was only half kidding. It was a decent story, but we hadn’t talked in over a week, and I was at a new school. Surely if our roles were exchanged, I would not have gone off on a pointless story like that, would I have? And then having that thought made me feel a little guilty, because it was Claire Olivia, and she was my best friend in the world.

  “That guy is a jerk,” I said, hoping it would make up for my snarky comment.

  In the slight pause she gave, I could sense that she got that our connection was a little off. “I know, right?” she said.

  “Totally,” I said.

  “So other than my catastrophic life, what’s going on with you in Rhode Island?”

  “I’m in Massachusetts, girlie girl,” I said, a little irked.

  “I know, Shay Shay. But to be honest, I’m pretty sure the East Coast is not really a place. I think it’s all a Republican plot to create this make-believe liberal place so that they can claim the rest of the country and be like, You have your place. So given that it doesn’t exist, I refuse to believe in state lines and artificial boundaries. So I’m going to call it Rhode Island or North Carolina or Delaware, or whatever occurs to me at the moment. ’Kay?”

  “’Kay.”

  “So what’s going on in Vermont?”

  “It’s cool. I really like it here. I’m having a blast.”

  “Have you met any guys?”

  “It’s an all-boys school. I’ve met tons of guys.”

  “No. I mean, like, dateable guys.”

  “They’re all dateable for someone.”

  “Evasive much? You’re pissing me off.”

  “I’ve met a lot of great people,” I said. “I’m not looking to date right now. I just want to hang out, you know?”

  She was silent for a while. So I was too.

  “I miss hanging out at the Laughing Goat with you,” she said.

  “Me too.” I did. I missed sitting in a diner with her and deciding which of the patrons had been in prison, and which guys were wearing women’s underwear, things like that. I didn’t have that easy relationship with anyone at Natick.

  “You’ve changed, Rafe.”

  “Have I?” I said, a little anxiously. The truth was, I hoped I had changed. And I wanted her to tell me exactly how.

  “I don’t know if I like it.”

  “Just give me some time, okay? I’ll be back. I promise.”

  I could hear the sulking at the other end of the line. I imagined her lying on her bed just like I was, her legs above her head, her stockinged feet against the wall.

  “But you won’t be back.”

  What would that be like? I thought. To never return to the person I was before. To never again have to stand out as different, to fade into the crowd, to be this new, uncomplicated Rafe forever? The idea made me shiver.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, and my voice cracked a little as I said it.

  “You won’t be the same,” she said.

  “Maybe not,” I replied.

  Sept. 17

  My name is Rafe, and I have insane parents.

  (Hi, Rafe.)

  I don’t use this term lightly. Well, actually I do, but so far as we agree to define insane as seriously unusual rather than in need of hospitalization, my parents are indeed insane.

  My mother does naked yoga. In the summer at our home in Boulder, when I hear either John Lennon music or the Moody Blues pouring from the outside speakers, I know that I need to close my window shades, unless I want to see a show that no son should ever see. She says that naked yoga allows her to get in touch with her “inner priestess.” She talks like that. It’s horrifying.

  On the plus side, before you start thinking I’m stereotyping her, she glows. Her skin always has a sheen of something shiny on it, and I am convinced that it’s not sweat, not grease, not suntan lotion, but something inside shining through to the surface of her face. Mom is one of the happiest people in the world, and I’m pretty sure that’s because she holds nothing in. When she feels something, she’ll let you know it. It can be off-putting. When she told my friend Claire Olivia that she thought her favorite pink blouse was trashy and “beneath her” this summer, I thought Claire Olivia was going to freak. But while she was taken aback, she appreciated my mom’s candor and now regularly asks her for fashion advice. Claire Olivia is on the same Hippie Chick path as my mom.

  My father raps. Karaoke raps. When he’s not boogying. Yes, he uses the word boogying. He teaches at CU Boulder, in the English Department, and at their annual picnic last June, he got up and did karaoke to Eve’s “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” You have not lived until you’ve seen your father rap, “Drop yo’ glasses, shake yo’ asses,” in front of a bunch of English professors.

  I so wish
I was kidding. And what’s even stranger is that people go along with it. The head of the English Department, who is maybe sixty and my dad’s close friend and happens to be African-American, stood up and sang the chorus with him even though he’s not, well, a singer. At all. It was odd.

  My dad does these sorts of things all the time. When we drove across the country to school here, we went to this cheesy restaurant that serves crab legs in Moline, Illinois, and when the waitresses started doing a line dance to the annoying song “Come On Ride the Train,” my dad got on his feet and leapt to the center of the floor and danced with them, even though he didn’t know the steps.

  I wanted to die. This is not something I could ever do in public. I’d be afraid everyone would laugh at me, and I was sure they’d laugh at him. But by the end of the song, everyone in the restaurant was on their feet for him. And I felt like, what would it take for me to be that comfortable in my body, to express myself like that? Even once? I’m pretty chill, I’m pretty comfortable, but there’s a difference between normal comfortable and being forty-something and shaking your backside to a bad hip-hop song in an Illinois restaurant full of strangers.

  At the bottom of the page, it read:

  B+. See me.

  I went to Mr. Scarborough’s office during my free period and sat across from him. I threw the essay onto his desk, maybe a little arrogantly.

  He picked up the essay, scanned it, grinned once, and put it back down.

  “Good start,” he said. “You are a bit all over the place, but the voice, it’s intriguing.”

  No one had ever told me that my writing was all over the place. I could feel heat spread across my face and into my ears. Take away my labels, fine. Take away part of my identity, fine. Just leave me the things I know I am, like being a good writer.

  “I was trying to be amusing,” I mumbled.