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for Tony
(even if he only exists in a song)
Contents
Title Page
Now Away We Go
Paul is Gay
The Homecoming Queen’s Dilemma
Pride and Joy
Hallway Traffic (Complications Ensue)
Finding Lost Languages
Dangling Conversations
Painting Music
Chuck Waggin’
A Walk in the Park
Please Rewind Before Returning
Things Unsaid
Pinball
Hitting the Mountain
Everybody Freaks Out
Elsewhere
Boy Loses Boy
Dealing with the Club Kids
More Than, Equal To, Less Than
To Bring You My Love
A Very Late Night Conversation With Ted
Meet Me at the Cemetery Gates
Tony
Possibly Maybe
Instinct and Proof
Flicker
One Small Step
What I Will Always Remember
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Now Away We Go
9.00 p. m. on a November Saturday. Joni, Tony and I are out on the town. Tony is from the next town over and he needs to get out. His parents are extremely religious. It doesn’t even matter which religion – they’re all the same at a certain point and few of them want a gay boy cruising around with his friends on a Saturday night. So every week Tony feeds us bible stories, then on Saturday we show up at his doorstep well versed in parables and earnestness, dazzling his parents with our blinding purity. They slip him a twenty and tell him to enjoy our study group. We go spend the money on romantic comedies, dimestore toys and diner jukeboxes. Our happiness is the closest we’ll ever come to a generous God, so we figure Tony’s parents would understand, if only they weren’t set on misunderstanding so many things.
Tony has to be home by midnight, so we are on a Cinderella mission. With this in mind, we keep our eye on the ball.
There isn’t really a gay scene or a straight scene in our town. They got all mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best. Back when I was in second grade, the older gay kids who didn’t flee to the city for entertainment would have to make their own fun. Now it’s all good. Most of the straight guys try to sneak into the Queer Beer bar. Boys who love boys flirt with girls who love girls. And whether your heart is strictly ballroom or bluegrass punk, the dance floors are open to whatever you have to offer.
This is my town. I’ve lived here all my life.
Tonight, our Gaystafarian bud Zeke is gigging at the local chain bookstore. Joni has a driver’s licence from the state where her grandmother lives, so she drives us around in the family sedan. We roll down the windows and crank the radio – we like the idea of our music spilling out over the whole neighbourhood, becoming part of the air. Tony has a desperate look tonight, so we let him control the dial. He switches to a Mope Folk station and we ask him what’s going on.
“I can’t say,” he tells us, and we know what he means. That nameless empty.
We try to cheer him up by treating him to a blue Slurp-Slurp at the local 24-7. We each take sips, to see whose tongue can get the bluest. Once Tony’s sticking his tongue out with the rest of us, we know he’s going to be OK.
Zeke’s already jamming by the time we get to the highway bookstore. He’s put his stage in the European History section, and every now and then he’ll throw names like Hadrian and Copernicus into his mojo rap. The place is crowded. A little girl in the Children’s section puts the Velveteen Rabbit on her shoulders for a better view. Her moms are standing behind her, holding hands and nodding to Zeke’s tune. The Gaystafarian crowd has planted itself in the Gardening section, while the three straight members of the guys’ lacrosse team are ogling a bookstore clerk from Literature. She doesn’t seem to mind. Her glasses are the colour of liquorice.
I move through the crowd with ease, sharing nods and smiling hellos. I love this scene, this floating reality. I am a solo flier looking out over the land of Boyfriends and Girlfriends. I am three notes in the middle of a song.
Joni grabs me and Tony, pulling us into Self-Help. There are a few monkish types already there, some of them trying to ignore the music and learn the Thirteen Ways to Be an Effective Person. I know Joni’s brought us here because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore. So we dance. Tony hesitates – he isn’t much of a dancer. But as I’ve told him a million times, when it comes to true dancing, it doesn’t matter what you look like – it’s all about the joy you feel.
Zeke’s jive is infectious. People are crooning and swooning into one another. You can see the books on the shelves in kaleidoscope form – spinning rows of colours, the passing blur of words.
I sway. I sing. I elevate. My friends are by my side and Zeke is working the Huguenots into his melody. I spin around and knock a few books off the shelves. When the song is through, I bend to pick them up.
I grasp on the ground and come face to face with a cool pair of sneakers.
“This yours?” a voice above the sneakers asks.
I look up. And there he is.
His hair points in ten different directions. His eyes are a little close together, but man, are they green. There’s a little birthmark on his neck, the shape of a comma.
I think he’s wonderful.
He’s holding a book out to me. Migraines Are Only in Your Mind.
I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my heartbeat. I am aware that my shirt is half untucked. I take the book from him and say thanks. I put it back on the shelf. There’s no way that Self-Help can help me now.
“Do you know Zeke?” I ask, nodding to the stand.
“No,” the boy answers. “I just came for a book.”
“I’m Paul.”
“I’m Noah.”
He shakes my hand. I am touching his hand.
I can feel Joni and Tony keeping their curious distance.
“Do you know Zeke?” Noah asks. “His tunes are magnificent.”
I roll the word in my head – magnificent. It’s like a gift to hear.
“Yeah, we go to school together,” I say casually.
“The high school?”
“That’s the one.” I’m looking down. He has perfect hands.
“I go there, too.”
“You do?” I can’t believe I’ve never seen him before. If I’d seen him before, it would have damn well registered.
“Two weeks now. Are you a senior?”
I look down at my Keds. “I’m a sophomore.”
“Cool.”
Now I fear he’s humouring me. There’s nothing cool about being a sophomore. Even a new kid would know that.
“Noah?” another voice interrupts, insistent and expectant. A girl has appeared behind him. She is dressed in a lethal combination of pastels. She’s young, but she looks like she could be a hostess on the Pillow and Sofa Network.
“My sister,” he explains, much to my relief. She trudges off. It is clear that he is supposed to follow.
We hover for a second. Our momentary outro of regret. Then he says, “I’ll see you around.”
I want to say I hope so, but suddenly I’m afraid of being too forward. I can flirt with the best of them – but only when it doesn’t matter.
This suddenly matters.
“See you,” I echo. He leaves as Zeke begins another set. When he gets to the door, he turns to look at me and smiles. I feel myself blush and bloom.
Now I can’t dance. It’s hard to groove when you’ve got things on your mind. Sometimes you can use the dancing to fight them off.
But I don’t want to fight this off.
I want to keep it.
“So do you think he’s on the bride’s side or the groom’s side?” Joni asks after the gig.
“I think people can sit wherever they want nowadays,” I reply.
Zeke is packing up his gear. We’re leaning against the front of his VW bus, squinting so we can turn the streetlamps into stars.
“I think he likes you,” Joni says.
“Joni,” I protest, “you thought Wes Travers liked me – and all he wanted to do was copy my homework.”
“This is different. He was in Art and Architecture the whole time Zeke was playing. Then you caught his eye and he ambled over. It wasn’t Self-Help he was after.”
I look at my watch. “It’s almost pumpkin time. Where’s Tony?”
We find him a little ways over, lying in the middle of the street, on an island that’s been adopted by the local Kiwanis Club.
His eyes are closed. He is listening to the music of the traffic going by.
I climb over the divider and tell him study group’s almost over.
“I know,” he says to the sky. Then, as he’s getting up, he adds, “I like it here.”
I want to ask him, Where is here? Is it this island, this town, this world? More than anything in this strange life, I want Tony to be happy. We found out a long time ago that we weren’t meant to fall in love with each other. But a part of me still fell in hope with him. I want a fair world. And in a fair world, Tony would shine.
I could tell him this, but he wouldn’t accept it. He would leave it on the island instead of folding it up and keeping it with him, just to know it was there.
We all need a place. I have mine – this topsy-turvy collection of friends, tunes, after-school activities and dreams. I want him to have a place too. When he says “I like it here”, I don’t want there to be a sad undertone. I want to be able to say, So stay.
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
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…”
“So I take my axe and chop off my arm.”
“But once you chop off your arm, you’re bleeding to death.”
“So I pull off my shirt and tie it around the stump to stop the blood.”
“But a vulture smells the blood and comes swooping down at you.”
“So I use my right arm to pick up the left arm that I cut off, and I use it to bat the vulture away!”
“But…”
Joni trailed off. At first I figured I had her stumped. Then she leaned over, her eyelids closing. She smelled like bubblegum and bicycle grease. Before I knew it, her lips were coming near mine. I was so freaked out, I stood up. Since we were still under my bed, I crashed into the bottom of my mattress.
Her eyes opened quickly after that.
“What’d you do that for?” we both yelled at the same time.
“Don’t you like me?” Joni asked, clearly hurt.
“Yeah,” I said. “But, you know, I’m gay.”
“Oh. Cool. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
There was a pause, and then Joni continued.
“But the vulture pulls your left arm out of your hand and begins to hit you with it…”
At that moment I knew Joni and I were going to be friends for a good long time.
It was with Joni’s help that I became the first openly gay class president in the history of Ms Farquar’s third-grade class.
Joni was my campaign manager. She was the person who came up with my campaign slogan: VOTE FOR ME…I’M GAY!
I thought it rather oversimplified my stance on the issues (pro-recess, anti-gym), but Joni said it was sure to generate media attention. At first she wanted the slogan to be VOTE FOR ME…I’M A GAY, but I pointed out that this could easily be misread as VOTE FOR ME…I’M A GUY, which would certainly lose me votes. So the A was struck and the race began in earnest.
My biggest opponent was (I’m sorry to say) Ted Halpern. His first slogan was VOTE FOR ME…I’M NOT GAY, which only made him seem dull. Then he tried YOU CAN’T VOTE FOR HIM…HE’S GAY, which was pretty stupid, because nobody likes to be told who they can (or can’t) vote for. Finally, in the days leading up to the election, he resorted to DONT VOTE FOR THE FAG. Hello? Joni threatened to beat him up, but I knew he’d played right into our hands. When the election was held, he was left with the rather tiny lint-head vote, while I carried the girl vote, the open-minded guy vote, the third-grade closet-case vote and the Ted-hater vote. It was a total blowout, and when it was all over, Joni beat Ted up anyway.
The next day at lunch, Cody O’Brien traded me two Twinkies for a box of raisins – clearly an unequal trade. The next day, I gave him three Yodels for a Fig Newton.
This was my first flirtation.
Cody was my date for my fifth-grade semi-formal. Or at least he was supposed to be my date. Two days before the big shindig, we had a fight over a Nintendo cartridge he’d borrowed from me and lost. I know it’s a small thing to break up over, but really, the way he handled it (lying! deceit!) was symptomatic of bigger problems. Luckily, we parted on friendly terms, Joni was supposed to be my back-up date, but she surprised me by saying she was going with Ted. She swore to me he’d changed.
This was also symptomatic of bigger problems. But there was no way of knowing it then.
In sixth grade, Cody, Joni, a lesbian fourth grader named Laura and I formed our elementary school’s first gay-straight alliance. Quite honestly, we took one look around and figured the straight kids needed our help. For one thing, they were all wearing the same clothes. Also (and this was critical), they couldn’t dance to save their lives. Our semi-formal dance floor could have easily been mistaken for a coop of pre-Thanksgiving turkeys. This was not acceptable.
Luckily, our principal was cooperative and allowed us to play a minute or two of I Will Survive and Bizarre Love Triangle after the Pledge of Allegiance was read each morning. Membership in the gay-straight alliance soon surpassed that of the football team (which isn’t to say there wasn’t overlap). Ted refused to join, but he couldn’t stop Joni from signing them up for swing dance classes twice a week at recess.
Since I was unattached at the time, and since I was starting to feel that I had met everyone there was to meet at our elementary school, I would often sneak out with Laura to the AV room, where we’d watch Audrey Hepburn movies until the recess bell would ring and reality would beckon once more.
In eighth grade, I was tackled by two high school wrestlers after a late-night showing of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at our local theatre. At first I thought it was a strange kind of foreplay, but then I realised that their grunts were actually insults – queer, faggot, the usual. I wasn’t about to take such verbal abuse from strangers – only Joni was allowed to speak to me that way. Luckily, I had gone to the movies with a bunch of my friends from the fencing team, so they just pulled out their foils and disarmed the lugheads. (One of them, I’ve since heard, is now a drag queen in Columbus, Ohio. I like to think I had something to do with that.)
I was learning that notoriety came with a certain backlash. I had to be careful. I had a gay food column in the local paper – “Dining OUT” – which was a modest success. I’d declined numerous pleas to run for student council president, because I knew it would interfere with my direction of the school musical (I won’t bore you with the details, but let me just say that Cody O’Brien was an Auntie Mame for the ages).
All in all, life through junior high was pretty fun. I didn’t really have a life that was so much out of the ordinary. The usual series of crushes, confusions and intensities.
Then I meet Noah and things become complicated. I sense it immediately, driving home from Zeke’s gig. I suddenly feel more complicated.
Not bad complicated.
Just complicated.
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