Boy Meets Boy

But I remain quiet, because now it’s a quiet night and Tony is already walking back to the parking lot.

“What’s a Kiwanis?” he yells over his shoulder.

I tell him it sounds like a bird. A bird from somewhere far, far away.

“Hey, Gay Boy. Hey, Tony. Hey, folkie chick.”

I don’t even need to look up from the pavement. “Hello, Ted,” I say.

He’s walked up just as we’re about to drive out. I can hear Tony’s parents miles away, finishing up their evening prayers. They will expect us soon. Ted’s car is blocking us in. Not out of spite. Out of pure obliviousness. He is a master of obliviousness.

“You’re in our way,” Joni points out from the driver’s seat. Her irritation is quarter-hearted at best.

“You look nice tonight,” he replies.

Ted and Joni have broken up twelve times in the past few years. Which means they’ve gotten back together eleven times. I always feel we’re teetering on the precipice of Reunion Number Twelve.

Ted is smart and good-looking, but he doesn’t use it to good effect, like a rich person who never gives to charity. His world rarely expands further than the nearest mirror. Even in tenth grade, he likes to think of himself as the king of our school. He hasn’t stopped to notice it’s a democracy.

The problem with Ted is that he’s not a total loss. Sometimes, from the murk of his self-notice, he will make a crystal-clear comment that’s so insightful you wish you’d made it yourself. A little of that can go a long way. Especially with Joni.

“Really,” she says now, her voice easier, “we’ve gotta go.”

“You’ve run out of chapter and verse for your study group? ‘O Lord, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt, at least let me wear a Walkman…’”

“The Lord is my DJ,” Tony says solemnly. “I shall not want.”

“One day, Tony – I swear we’ll free you.” Ted bangs the hood of the car to emphasise the point and Tony gives him a salute. Ted moves his car and we’re off again.

Joni’s clock says it’s 12.48, but we’re OK, since it’s been an hour fast since Daylight Saving Time ended. We drive into the blue-black, the radio mellow now, the hour slowly turning from night-time to sleep.

Noah is a hazy memory in my mind. I am losing track of the way he ran my nerves; the giddiness is now diffusing in the languid air, becoming a mysterious blur of good feeling.

“How come I’ve never seen him before?” I ask.

“Maybe you were just waiting for the right time to notice.” Tony says.

Maybe he’s right.

Paul is Gay (#ulink_87a25705-c42c-54ad-a83d-b4db340eb309)

I’ve always known I was gay, but it wasn’t confirmed until I was in kindergarten.

It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS A VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF.

I saw it on her desk one day before nap-time. And I have to admit: I might not have realised I was different if Mrs Benchly hadn’t pointed it out. I mean, I was five years old. I just assumed boys were attracted to other boys. Why else would they spend all of their time together, playing on teams and making fun of the girls? I assumed it was because we all liked each other. I was still unclear how girls fit into the picture, but I thought I knew the boy thing A-OK.

Imagine my surprise to find out that I wasn’t entirely right. Imagine my surprise when I went through all the other reports and found out that not one of the other boys had been labelled DEFINITELY GAY. (In all fairness, none of the others had a VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF, either.) Mrs Benchly caught me at her desk and looked quite alarmed. Since I was more than a little confused, I asked her for some clarification.

“Am I definitely gay?” I asked.

Mrs Benchly looked me over and nodded.

“What’s gay?” I asked.

“It’s when a boy likes other boys,” she explained.

I pointed over to the painting corner, where Greg Easton was wrestling on the ground with Ted Halpern.

“Is Greg gay?” I asked.

“No,” Mrs Benchly answered. “At least, not yet.”

Interesting. I found it all very interesting.

Mrs Benchly explained a little more to me – the whole boys-liking-girls thing. I can’t say I understood. Mrs Benchly asked me if I’d noticed that marriages were mostly made up of men and women. I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing. Now Mrs Benchly was telling me something much bigger. Some sort of silly global conspiracy.

“But that’s not how I feel,” I protested. My attention was a little distracted because Ted was now pulling up Greg Easton’s shirt, and that was kind of cool. “How I feel is what’s right…right?”

“For you, yes,” Mrs Benchly told me. “What you feel is absolutely right for you. Always remember that.”

And I have. Sort of.

That night, I held my big news until after my favourite Nickelodeon block was over. My father was in the kitchen, doing dishes. My mother was in the den with me, reading on the couch. Quietly, I walked over to her.

“GUESS WHAT!” I said. She jumped, then tried to pretend she hadn’t been surprised. Since she didn’t close her book – she only marked the page with her finger– I knew I didn’t have much time.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m gay!”

Parents never react the way you want them to. I thought, at the very least, my mother would take her finger out of the book. But no. Instead she turned in the direction of the kitchen and yelled to my father.

“Honey…Paul’s learned a new word!”

It took my parents a couple of years. But eventually they got used to it.

Besides my parents, Joni was the first person I ever came out to.

This was in second grade.

We were under my bed at the time. We were under my bed because Joni had come over to play, and under my bed was easily the coolest place in the whole house. We had brought flashlights and were telling ghost stories as a lawn mower grrrrred outside. We pretended it was the Grim Reaper. We were playing our favourite game: Avoid Death.

“So a poisonous snake has just bitten your left arm – what do you do?” Joni asked.

“I try to suck the poison out.”

“But that doesn’t work. It’s spreading up your arm…”