She clutched the soy sauce to her chest, twisting it in circles. “Okay. Okay. So there’s a guy. Just one?” I nodded, keeping my vigil over the counter. “So, you’ve thought about one man?” She laughed then, expelled a relieved and frustrated breath and placed her small hand over mine. “It’s normal, Austin. That’s normal.”
“It’s not normal. It’s all I’ve thought about for three days.”
“It’s one person. You’re not gay for thinking intimately about one person, Austin. You’re just panicking like you always do and searching for something. We’ll wait it out and see.”
“One person the last three days.”
“So?”
“I focused all this energy on him I think because…I didn’t want to think about the other ones,” I said quietly. She was back to hugging the soy sauce.
“You’re right. We can’t talk about this. I’m going home.” She snatched her purse up, still gripping the bottle. “Don’t touch me.” She jerked back when I reached a hand out. “What did you think was going to happen, Austin? Did you think I’d bring out the PFLAG buttons and march in the gay parade for you? Why can’t you end a relationship like a normal person?”
“I don’t—”
“It always has to be some dramatic ending. Something sure to drive her away. Sleep with her best friend, her mother, her sister. But you swore to me it wouldn’t happen with me. You swore we’d talk about it!”
“That’s what I’m doing, goddammit! That’s what I’m fucking doing.” I had never raised my voice to her. Not once in ten years. Not even when I was bitching about my father.
“Well, I can’t talk about this! It’s patently ridiculous. I can’t talk about this eight weeks before—” She was halfway to exiting when she finally stopped her whirlwind departure. I thought she might add something but two seconds after the pause she was out the door, slamming it hard enough to shake the glass figures on the mantle.
And she took my only bottle of soy sauce.
It’s Easy To Be Brave When No One But The Dead Can Hear
Leaving dinner to rot on the counters, I climbed upstairs. I sat on the bed, pulling off my tie while staring at the dark lines between each wooden slat on my floor. Maybe she was right? Maybe I wasn’t gay, and this was just the anxiety of a groom-to-be. The stress was a familiar feeling. Not just the stress, but the doubts and the pressure. I could trace them all the way back to ninth grade.
So many students. The halls reek of bubble gum gloss, cheap hair products, and teenage sweat. Everyone, save me and a few random kids, are in jeans or casual wear. Skinny, newly acne ridden, awkward and short, I enter freshman year a mere shadow of my eighth grade self. Puberty has smacked me up and down the ugly tree and then dropped me on my face. I compound all of these problems by wearing the uniform required at my old school.
It isn’t that I prefer to wear these clothes. I watch television. I know what kids dress like. But my father insists I dress “properly”, even in public school. And what Desmond Glass Sr. wants, Desmond Glass Sr. gets. And what he gets is his son tossed in a locker before second period.
I press my head against the cool metal door, my fist pounding against it. “I’m Austin Glass! I kissed Mitzi Baylor for three and half minutes. Mitzi. Baylor. She was seventeen! I broadcasted pictures of my dick to the entire biology class. I’ve been kicked out of four prep schools. I’m the guy that spiked the headmaster’s tea with X! I don’t belong in a locker. Fuck!”
A pound on the other side of the door knocks the metal into my forehead, not hard enough to do more than take me by surprise. “What’s your combo?” The voice on the other side is laughing.
I rattle off the numbers and then stumble out of the tight space. “Thanks.”
“Mitzi? Is she even real?”
I cup two hands out of my chest and make a show of how ‘real’ she is. “Her tongue felt real.”
“Dave,” my savior says, holding out his hand.
“Austin.”
“Well, Austin, do you have any cash?”
“You’re going to shake me down now?” I tilt my chin up, mouth agape. He’s taller than me. Same mousy brown hair as mine, same brown eyes. Loads better looking, but not much heavier, considering he’s about four inches taller. I’m debating whether I can take him.
“I’m going to take you to buy some clothes. Can’t keep pulling you out of lockers all day. Got classes.” His grin is infectious. For a second I think about using my multitude of credit cards.