April 6
I woke up this morning with a creeping, sick suspicion that my dad has been avoiding me for the past two months because he's guessed I'm a fag. And since he's a nice guy, really, he's been trying to stay out of my way so I won't notice how weirded out he is around me. If this is true (and I think it is, because it would make total sense) then anyone could have guessed. I could be making it pathetically obvious, actually. It could be that everyone knows, that it's, like, this big unspoken joke with me all oblivious in the middle of it.
I am aware that this is kind of a psychotic line of thinking but panicking is one of my particular skills. I got up and climbed into the shower to take my mind off things. This backfired, which I should have guessed it would--something about standing naked in a hot little cubicle where all you can hear is wet, white noise has always seemed to force my mind to obsess over exactly the sorts of things I had just been trying to take it off of. I emerged rather shakily a few minutes later and stood in front of the foggy mirror, shivering. Bawling before you've even been to school, I thought at my blurred reflection, it's going to be another stellar day.
I managed to dress (does it diminish my emotional turmoil that I was still concerned with looking cute?). I didn't remember what day it was, so I decided the best course was not to bring any of my books. I slid my notebook into my bag, slung that over one shoulder and made a run for the door--I couldn't handle any kind of parental conversation today. It was cool and grey and drizzly outside. The walk to school wasn't long enough.
Turned out first class was calculus, which I understand vaguely to be a kind of math. I don't attend this class very regularly, mostly because I feel that there's not much chance of my passing it no matter what I do, and I don't approve of wasted effort. Seth found me in the hall between classes and said something rude about my comparatively rumpled condition. He also ruffled my hair in a friendly manner so I missed the next few things he said while chemicals caused me to salivate and stare at him freakishly. He is taller than me by quite a lot--perhaps even as much as half a foot, I think. His hair is yellow and longish and wildly, artfully messed, scarecrow-like. His eyes are green. His body is large and angular and athletic-looking, though he rarely does anything athletic with it. This morning, he was wearing a stripy collared t-shirt and a pair of jeans low on his hips and a backpack stuffed with things that were almost certainly not text books. He looked like a demented twelve-year-old. "Hi," I said.
Because he had already been speaking to me, this was a stupid, stupid thing to have said. I realized this just as I was already saying it, just as it was leaving my larynx, becoming audible. I imagined large iron railway-spikes and drove them into my stupid, stupid brain. Seth just smiled patiently down at me. "Good morning, Aaron," he said, "Did you hear anything I just said to you? Christ, you have to remember to drink your coffee before you come to school. Tax-payers' money is totally wasted on you. Now listen this time, okay? I just had class with Kiyo and she told me she has mushrooms and she wanted me to skip school and come trip with her today and I asked if you could come too and she said you could."
Seth was doggishly excited and happy. He bounced a little in place. Having just discovered hallucinogenic drugs, we are somewhat obsessed with them and often find ourselves engaged in long, convoluted quests for mushrooms that take up all of the time we actually have for being stoned on mushrooms and usually end fruitlessly besides. It was a coup that Seth had found someone who was willing to just give them to us. I had a moment of sympathy for the unfortunate Kiyo, who has a huge crush on Seth. Seth never gets it when people have a crush on him, which I am personally glad of, for obvious reasons, but it means a lot of girls get minorly burned by Seth and I like Kiyo, even though I was sure she was cursing my name right about then. Probably I should have told Seth she was interested in him and let him decide for himself if he was interested back. But I am only human. "Excellent," I said, "When do we leave?"
It was even greyer and more miserable outside than it had been when I walked to school. We shrugged into our hoodies and Seth pulled his toque down over his head, squashing the hair a little, and we walked straight across the athletic field, splashing across the muddied turf. Kiyo was waiting for us on the far side of the equipment hut. She jumped up when she saw us and threw her arms around me and said "I'm so glad you guys could come!" in my ear. This was so she could also hug Seth without making it pathetically obvious that she has a crush on him, and she did this, for about four hours longer than she hugged me, but Seth didn't notice. We sat down on the grass, leaning against the stuccoed wall of the hut, and Kiyo divided the mushrooms into three piles. She gave us each what looked like at least two grams and they were all really pungent-looking blue-tinged pieces, too. I began to feel bad for thinking unkind thoughts about Kiyo before. She is really a sweet person, I think. I had a plastic bottle of water in my backpack, kept for the health of my internal organs--an unsuccessful endeavor in that I never drink from the bottle. But water doesn't go stale, does it? We chewed the 'shrooms as best as you can chew 'shrooms and passed around the water to wash them down with.
Several hours later we were bored with laying in the grass and talking about all the wise things we were thinking of as we watched our hallucinations manifesting on the insides of our eyelids. Likewise, we were tired of wandering through the neighborhood laughing at all the people who were not high like us and who were therefore completely not in on the vital thing that separated us from them. We headed to Kiyo's house because dealing with parents would have been impossible and Kiyo's parents were helpfully away.
Kiyo folded the couch out in the den and Seth played with her record collection, restlessly touching album covers until he found one he liked and put it on the turntable at the top of the old-fashioned wood-encased stereo at the back of the room. I stood staring at the mirror over the television, which was not really one mirror but rather a collection of smaller, mirrored tiles. When I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right, my reflection fragmented: one half higher than the other. I looked hideously disfigured. For a few minutes this held my attention, seemed profound.
Seth put on a Built To Spill record, which it surprised me that Kiyo even owned; maybe she was way cooler than I'd been thinking, maybe I was an asshole. Kiyo moaned, over on the couch, but it wasn't an unhappy sound. "It's not like," she started to say. She never finished the thought though, because Seth suddenly surged to his feet and staggered out of the room and this broke Kiyo's fragile concentration. I followed Seth, instinctively, and found him in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, vomiting prodigiously. I put one hand on his back, rubbed between his shoulder blades, rather hesitantly. He moaned, leaning against my legs in the space between bouts of heaving. Encouraged, I gathered his hair with the hand I wasn't using to rub his back, feeling kind of light-headed quite apart from the mushrooms and the proximic nausea.
When the there was really nothing left for Seth to throw up, he sagged against me again, breathing heavily, staring down at his own puke. "Its really pretty," he said, "No really. Like there's a pattern, kind of, see...?" I flushed the toilet, helped him stand, wash out his mouth and face. He put one arm over my shoulders as we walked back down the hall toward the rec room. Kiyo was curled on the fold-out couch, unconscious and drooling slightly. Somehow I managed to push her to one side of the couch, lower Seth down next to her and spread a comforter over them both before I had to collapse myself into the, like, six inches of space that remained. Seth scooted sleepily over to give me more room. "C'mere," he murmured, "Its okay. C'mon, Aaron." He slid one arm under my head, pulled me into the crook of his shoulder. I settled my head just under his angular collarbone. The flesh of his neck was about two centimeters from my face; I could see his pulse fluttering just under his skin. It was quite impossible to breathe. Seth's hand was on my hair, patting me heavily, clumsily. "Let's go to sleep," he said, and did. Slowly, trying not to think about anything at all, I followed suit.
Several hours later, Kiyo woke us, giggling and cooing about how sweet we looked. I sat up too quickly to be cool, panic making my heart pound. Seth just smiled lazily and patted my shoulder and cracked a joke I only halfway heard, not worried because why should he be? He had nothing to hide. I tried to copy his careless self-deprecating humor, tried to appear relaxed. Kiyo did not, in any case, seem to be concerned. I caught Seth watching me though, when he thought I wasn't looking, his face speculative and set. And all the long walk home through the quiet dark I hardly heard a word he said over the sinking feeling in my guts.
*****
April 7
After yesterday, I half expected Seth to totally ignore me when he saw me at school, spent the night trying to work myself up to not bursting into tears when he did. But he was the same as ever greeting me in the hall between literature and the geography class we share, his eyes dark-circled from psylocybin hangover, complaining about the three-day come-down he always forgets he gets after mushroom-taking. I had to work hard not to burst into tears because he hadn't started hating me--this is becoming ridiculous.
After school, Seth came to my house to do homework on my computer, ostensibly. Actually, we got slurpees at Seven Eleven and looked at the most disgusting porn sites we could find until my mom called up to ask what about our homework was so funny, exactly. Everything remained un-weird between us, except that I was starting to feel like Seth was maybe being too careful of me. And that might have been paranoia. Although neither of us was mentioning Kiyo or the mushrooms or really yesterday at all. We erased the computer's history--checking it while I'm not around is totally the kind of thing my parents might do and god knows what they'd think of me then. Seth perused my CD's, took out my new Eric's Trip and said, "Can I borrow this? I'm going to borrow this." I shrugged. There was a comfortable silence, then. Seth looked at the liner notes of the CD in his hand and I read a piece of King Lear, which we are doing in school.
After a while, though, the silence developed a different flavor. Seth flung himself at my bed and lay there, bouncing slightly from the force of his impact, staring up at the ceiling. I glanced up from the play then back down again, hurriedly. He wanted to say something, I could tell, and Seth does this best when no one is looking at him. "My mom hasn't been home for like, three days," he said finally, "She went with this guy, this new boyfriend of hers. I've just been trying to decide if I should call the cops or what." I closed the play, laid it down next to me, on the desk. "Maybe you should," I said. Seth's mom is an alcoholic who has blackouts. This isn't the first time she has gone missing for days. Seth doesn't really talk about it much, but there were times, back when I was first making friends with him, in the eighth grade, when he had to stay with foster parents while they went looking for his mother. He learned not to report her absences as he got older, learned that staying home alone was preferable, usually, to being in care. But he's old enough now to be left to his own devices.
He said, "Yeah," and sighed heavily and put his hands over his face. I watched him intently because I wanted so badly to fix the situation and I couldn't and so all my pent up energy went into silent watching. Seth stood after a moment, and his eyes were red where he'd been scrubbing at them. He smiled ruefully at me. "Yeah," he said, "I guess I should. I'm just going to go home and make sure she hasn't come back first, though."
I stood too, awkwardly. "Come back if you want," I said, "You can sleep here tonight. If you want."
He nodded. "Thanks, Aaron," he said, and he put out his hand, touched my arm, took a step toward me. It occured to me that he seemed to want a hug, like, from me--unlikely as this seemed, his body language was pretty unmistakable. I swallowed stupid fear and held open my arms. Seth sighed again and let me pull him close, put his arms around me. He was really scared, and that scared me, like on his behalf. I rubbed his back, the back of his bent neck. "Seth, you should have said something," I said, "You can always stay here if you need to." He nodded and pulled away, looking at his feet. "Do you want me to come?" I asked. He shook his head. "I'll probably be back in an hour or so," he said. He left out the back door so as to avoid my parents. I spent an hour trying to divorce hugging Seth for so long from any feelings of sexuality or crushedness out of a sense of moral purity or something. Then I wrote this. And now it's been nearly another whole hour and Seth still isn't back yet and I'm starting to think...
Okay. So he came back. Obviously. Fortunately, I heard my mom letting him in at the back door so I had time to stash this notebook before he came upstairs. I met him at my bedroom door and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind him. He looked like hell, his yellow hair standing out at all angles, his eyes even darker rimmed. "She wasn't there," he said, "I called the cops and they said she wasn't missing because she'd just been arrested for I don't know disorderly conduct or something--I think she might have tried to pull a cop's gun out of his holster or something--I'm sure she was just joking around but they take that shit kind of seriously, you know? So they're keeping her overnight and then they don't know what they're going to do with her. Jesus fucking Christ, Aaron. My mom is in fucking jail."
He threw himself on my bed and when he spoke again, his voice was muffled in my pillow. "I am so sick of having no adults in my life, man," he said, "I can't remember a time when I could count on my mom to act like a mom and like, be there when I got home from school every day and spend the money on groceries and know what to do no matter what. I feel like I've always had to be the parent. Like, ever since I was like, three. Fuck, Aaron. I can't even remember a time when somebody was around to take care of me."
I suspected he was crying by then, but I didn't say anything. I stood awkwardly next to the bed and wondered what I would do, here, if I wasn't a big raging homo. Like, was it okay for me to say anything, do anything, touch him? All I wanted to do was give him another hug and tell him it was going to be okay but maybe that wasn't what I was supposed to do. Probably it wasn't. Probably straight guys just punched each other in the shoulder in moments like these, told each other manfully to buck up or something. I felt a panic attack coming on and told myself off for being a selfish bastard.
Seth was not up to noticing my stupid shit right then, thankfully--his face was turned away from me, his eyes closed. "I just want to cry, now, okay?" he said, "Do you mind, Aaron?" I said, "No, fuck, no. Cry." He nodded and buried his face in my pillow. "Do you want me to go away?" I asked. Seth laughed, and it came out half a sob and my heart broke into a lot of little pieces. "No," he said damply, "No, Aaron, could you just stay? Please?" He reached blindly up and grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down next to him on the bed.
And I don't know, I just stopped worrying about whether it was okay or not and I moved down so I was lying beside him on the bed, leaning up on one elbow, stroking his back, letting his hair catch around my knuckles as I pushed it away from his damp face. He sounded like a little kid, crying aloud, his sobs muffled in the pillow. "Seth," I said, a little helplessly. He rolled over, into me, pressed his face against my chest, flung his arm over my waist. Hesitantly, I leaned back against the pillows and put my arms around him, gathering him close. He relaxed against me, weeping quietly, wearily, one hand fisted in the fabric of my t-shirt. I held him there, stroking his head, fearing for my cardio-vascular health.
He was so skinny, all bones and muscles--I felt this overwhelming surge of protectiveness for him, and then another one of helplessness because this wasn't anything I could protect him against. I pulled the comforter up around his shoulder instead and he squirmed closer to me and in the blind swell that followed this, I closed my eyes and bent my head and pressed my lips to his forehead. Which was going too far, obviously, but there was no way to take it back by then; it was done. Seth made a small undecipherable sound and squeezed me, once, hard, with the arm he had around my middle. I waited for something else--for him to pull away, maybe, or smirk at me, or roll his eyes. But unbelievably, there was nothing more.
We were silent for a long time, just lying there, breathing. It had gotten dark a while before. The only light was coming from the computer screen, now, a pervasive blue glow. Pretty much of their own volition, my fingers began to trace patterns on Seth's back, soothe the hair at the nape of his neck. It sounded as though my parents had gone to bed already--I could hear their television bleating softly at the end of the hall. Seth's breathing was even and steady but light enough that I knew he wasn't asleep. His long frame was curled around mine under the covers; his fine hair was tickling my nose every time I drew breath. I was suddenly finding it grimly necessary to think of my grandmother from Regina and the way her breath smells of menthol cigarettes and the way her voice rasps right in your ear when she's hugging you, and still I had reason to be grateful for the thickness of the comforter and the dimness of the light. Seth stirred against me. "Are you... does this weird you out?" he said.
I couldn't answer at all for a minute. When I did, I decided to deliberately misunderstand him. "No, man; I mean, you were upset, right, that's totally understandable..." Seth drew breath to speak, hesitated, decided against it. He lowered his head to my shoulder again. "Thanks, Aaron," he said, his voice already thick with sleepiness. I kicked my sneakers off, settled myself more comfortably in the bed. Seth yawned hugely and fell asleep. A few tense hours later, I gave up on being able to follow suit and I eased out of bed to finish this instead. And now it's like four in the morning, and Seth is sprawled across my bed, his long legs sticking out from under my comforter. I'm exhausted but I don't know if I'll ever sleep tonight. My brain feels fuzzy with too much chemical input. Instead of coherent thoughts, I just keep hearing this one sentence repeating in my head: be careful, there is danger here, take care. Unfortunately, I think my stupid brain is a step behind, as usual. Its way too late for warnings now. I have already fallen.
*****
April 10
Well. Writing that date makes me realize it's only been three days since the last time I opened this notebook and that is sort of inconceivable. Way too much has happened for me to have any kind of hope of setting it all down in a, like, linear and rational way. But I have to try--my head feels like it's busting at the seams and this is the only way I know of to ease that kind of pressure.
I finally did fall asleep that night, slouched over in my desk chair. Seth was awake before I was the next morning, already in the shower. We were kind of extra polite with each other but it wore off soon enough. He borrowed a clean shirt and hoodie from me and made fun of me in an affectionate manner because clothes I swim in were tight on him. My dad was downstairs when we got there, but instead of answering my good morning, he said, "Hmmmm," and left early for work and didn't look at me. Seth squeezed my shoulder on his way to the table; I supposed that early I suck at censoring my facial expressions.
School was a nightmare. I could think of nothing except the way Seth's body felt against mine and that was the one thing I couldn't think about, not ever. Seth was quiet and distracted all day but when I left at two-thirty, having a spare for last period, he asked if he could spend the night at my place again. We were at my locker and I was getting dressed for outside, stuffing books in my bag. Seth was leaning against the locker next to mine, arms crossed over his chest, too-small sweat shirt riding up over his belly. His eyes were deeply shadowed. "Of course," I said, "Bring a movie or something, okay?" He nodded. "Are you all right?" I asked gently. He shrugged, nodded again. "I'll see you later," he said and melted back into the rushing crowd.
And then. Oh hell, I'm still not sure I can write about this without fucking screaming but like I already said, I have to at least try. I went home. And my mom and dad were there, home early from their respective places of work, waiting, it seemed, for me. They were sitting at opposite ends of the kitchen table, their faces arranged into appropriately parental expressions of Caring and Concern. "Hey, Aaron," my mother said, "Could you come in here for a minute?" I crossed the linoleum with my sneakers still on and nobody said a thing. My stomach sank a few stories; I was almost glad to sit in the chair my father pushed out for me.
The two of them exchanged glances. My mom lost, I think. "Okay," she said, in the breezy voice she uses for uncomfortable situations, "Well. We just have a couple of things we wanted to talk with you about, Aaron." I waited. She shifted around uncomfortably, wove her fingers together on the table in front of her. "Sometimes," she said finally, "when people start spending a lot of time together, their friendship can become really...intense. You know? Especially during adolescence, when all those hormones are raging and everything seems so hard to figure out..."
I stared at her. Call me dense but I still had no idea what she was talking about; my mom is so separate from my real life in my head, I just couldn't make the connection. My father saw it wasn't working. He sighed noisily, let his fist gently thump the kitchen table. "I saw you and Seth in your bedroom last night," he said.
There was a moment, then, a single, breath-held instant in which I still didn't know what he was talking about. And then it hit me in a blinding rush, what me and Seth had been doing last night: his bright head on my shoulder, his breath warming my neck, our arms and legs a blanket-covered tangle. A deep hot flush swept up from my chest to the roots of my hair. I fixed my gaze on my clenched hands and tried to keep from hyperventilating. "It's a normal thing for a lot of kids to go through," my mother was saying somewhere far away, "Kind of an adolescent phase. It's nothing you need to worry about or, you know, jump to conclusions about. You just need a little time to think things through, a little space from that, you know, intense friendship so you can figure everything out on your own..."
Something about the wording of that caught my attention. "What do you mean?" I asked, my head coming up of its own accord.
"We're going to look into having you finish out the term at a different school," my father said, "So you'll get a break from hanging around with Seth. He's a really troubled kid. And much as we feel badly for him, we're not about to let him turn you into a... well, into something you're not." I met his eyes. He lowered his gaze under mine, cleared his throat a little. "There are so many other kids you could be spending time with," he told the kitchen table, "So many... healthier kids." I kept staring at the side of his head. My face felt like stone. I didn't think I could remember how to speak. "It's not a punishment, honey," my mother said, "We just think you need a bit of a breather." I clenched my hands into fists, relaxed them, wiped my palms on my thighs. "Is that all?" I managed finally. They exchanged another look. My father cleared his throat again. "Well," he said, "Tomorrow afternoon. Ah-hmm. We've made you an appointment with Pastor Hayes. So you can have somebody you might feel more comfortable talking about all this with."
And that was pretty much that. I shoved my chair back from table and stalked out of the room before I really knew what I was doing, blind fury turning everything around me into a red swell. Somehow I ended up back outside, where Seth himself was just coming through the front gate. "We have to get out of here," I told him. He took one look at my face and closed his mouth on whatever greeting he'd been about to make. "Lead away," he said instead, stepping aside to let me pass by.
We went to the park behind the library, because it was close by and no one ever goes there. The sun had been out for a while that morning but it was grey again by then, the cool wind smelling like rain on the way. Seth climbed up on a park bench, walked back and forth along the back of it like a tight-rope walker. "So," he said, "What happened?" I stuck my hands in my pockets, scowling at my feet. "Nothing. Whatever. My parents are just being assholes."
Seth leapt down to the soggy grass and gave me a grim-looking smile. "Huh," he said, "Must be the theme of the day or something. My mom called when I stopped in at home after school today." I looked up, grateful to be avoiding any further questions about my own parents. "When's she coming home?" I asked. Seth was still wearing that sick-looking smile. He looked really strange, I realized suddenly, and he had since he first walked through my gate. "She isn't," he said. I must have looked puzzled because he gave a humorless bark of laughter and elaborated. "She's not coming home. Like, ever. She says now that I'm old enough to look after myself, she can finally take care of her own needs. Or something. So she's going to live in some rehab house someplace. Which, whatever, is fine by me, right? I mean, Jesus, it's kind of a relief not to have to look after anyone but myself for a change. And if anybody needs that twelve-step shit, it's her."
I tried to smile at him because it seemed like that was what he wanted me to do. He grimaced, vaulted back up on the park bench again, stood there teetering, grinning down at me. It was near dark by that point; his eyes shone with reflected street-light. "Let's do something," he said, reaching up to grasp at a hanging tree branch overhead, to steady himself. "Let's go somewhere. Let's fucking do something." He jumped off the bench, used the branch of the tree to hang from. He looked insane, but I totally knew what he meant; I was suddenly bursting with that same fierce fire.
Without talking about it, we left the park and crossed the bridge into Seth's neighborhood. The wind off the river caught at our clothes, whipped Seth's yellow hair into his eyes. He yelled at it, at the wind, his voice echoing crazily off the water. "FUCKing WIND!" he bellowed, "STUPid GODdamn ASShole WIND!" The only other people on the bridge, an older man and woman out for an evening walk, glanced at us out of the corners of their eyes, gave us a careful berth. I was laughing so hard I thought I would definitely wet my pants, clutching at Seth's sleeve to hold myself up. He grabbed me under one arm and hauled me upright. "Stop it, Aaron," he stage-whispered at me, "You're freaking these people out." Which made me collapsed all over again, of course, but we did get out of there before anybody called the cops.
On the far side of the bridge, we stopped at a Seven Eleven to get supper. Seth gathered up an armload of soda and chips, then stopped next to the cooler where they keep the token healthy stuff. He beckoned me closer. "Steal this," he hissed, pressing something cold and round into my palm. I looked all around, panicked, but nobody was watching. The thing in my hand was a lemon. "Fuck you," I whispered. Seth widened his eyes at me, leaning in close to my ear. "You have to do it," he murmured, "I absolutely dare you. Just put it in your sleeve and go. Now! Go! They're watching us!"
And he strolled up to the counter to pay for the rest of our stuff, casual as anything. The guy behind the counter totally was watching me, too. I rolled the stupid lemon up past the cuff of my hoodie and stiff-legged it to the door. I more than half expected to be yelled at or chased down, but no one came. That outside air had never felt better. I jogged out into the street and waited there for Seth. When he emerged a minute later I had the lemon split open with my fingernails and I leapt at him, trying to mash the damn thing into his face. He shook me off, laughing, and tore off toward the building he lived in. I chased after him, feeling, I have to admit, quite a bit like a superhero.
Seth's apartment was dark and smelled a little stale. He led me straight through to the living room, which also served as his bedroom when he slept here. He pushed a pile of unfolded laundry off his unmade futon and flopped backwards onto it, one long hand covering his eyes. "So what was it your folks did to put you in such a weird mood?" he asked suddenly. I squinted at him. He looked innocent enough, but something about that off-hand tone had put me on edge. "I don't know," I said vaguely, "School stuff, I guess. They think my grades are too low. They're thinking of transferring me."
That long hand lifted enough to allow one sharp blue eye to peer out. "Transfer you?" he said, "Really? You're supposed to graduate in, like, three months." I shrugged, pretending nonchalance, and picked up his backpack from where he'd dropped it on the floor. I dug through it absently, looking to see if he had remembered to rent any movies. He had, as it happened: one of them involved kung fu, the other one was off the list of titles recommended by Seth's drama teacher, who he makes fun of but secretly admires.
"Which one first?" I asked, sitting on the edge of the futon next to Seth so he could look at the video cassette cases I was holding up. Seth squinted at the movies, let his head fall back against the pillow again. I nudged him. He said, "Aaron," and stopped, looking up at the ceiling, and his face was very strange. Suddenly we were back on shaky, unfamiliar ground and my stomach was trying to tie itself in knots again. I swallowed audibly, set the videos on the bed. "What?" I said. I couldn't keep the dread out of my voice.
Seth's hand moved to lightly grip my ankle, which was on the futon next to him. "Aaron," he said again, "Is there... do you want to tell me anything, man?" I stared at him. He stirred uncomfortably under my gaze, shifted his grip on my ankle. "Because lately I've been noticing that something is definitely going on for you and I've been like standing back, waiting for you to bring it up or whatever but then you haven't. And I've been trying to let you know it's okay to talk to me about it but you keep like evading me. And now I know something huge went down with your parents today, and I can tell you're totally shutting me out, and that's bullshit. We need to talk about this. And I could just like say it, or whatever, but I'd really prefer to hear it from you."
I'd lowered my eyes at some time in the middle of that speech and I couldn't make myself look at him for all the world, even though I knew I ought to; I couldn't speak to him either--I seemed to have forgotten how to draw breath. He squeezed my ankle gently. "Aaron, it's okay," he said, "Really. I mean, I'm your best friend for christ's sake... I talk to you about all the shitty details of my life. I thought you knew you could tell me anything."
I stood up and crossed the little room to stand next to the window. I gripped the ledge with both hands, managed to take a long, gasping breath. My eyes were closed. It seemed safer. "Okay," I said. There was a lot of pain in my chest but I was familiar with that, it was just an anxiety attack, I could mostly ignore it. "Oh fuck... Okay. I totally wanted to talk to you about this, what's going on, I mean, like I've been wanting to for months but the thing is I was pretty sure my parents knew and the reception they were giving me wasn't exactly encouraging. Like, my dad was pretending I didn't exist anymore and my mom was treating me like I'd contracted a fatal illness or something and I just couldn't deal if you stopped being my friend, you know? So I was too fucking scared to mention it. So I'm sorry, okay? I should have said this a long time ago. I think I'm a fag, Seth."
I heard him shifting on the bed. "Yeah," he said eventually, "That's what I figured." I couldn't tell what that meant and a fist clutched my guts and I couldn't breathe.
"Seth," I said, "That thing I just said? About not dealing if you stopped being my friend? Listen, the truth is I'll deal, you know, if you're like freaked out or whatever, it's just I'd way rather know, like right now, if that's the way it is. I'd way rather know."
Seth sighed. "No," he said, "God, no. That's not it. I'm totally not freaked out, not about that... I mean, fuck, I figured you were queer since like two years ago or something--you remember when you were all obsessed with that Gus Van Sant movie, with the hustlers? I mean, I'm your best friend and I'm not fucking blind."
There was a small silence. The panic ebbed and I was left so consumed with relief and familiar affectionate annoyance I felt like I might cry. I stared hard at my white-knuckled hands on the window ledge. "Then what?" I said finally and Seth stirred uncomfortably. "It's just... I don't know. You figuring this shit out is a bigger deal than I thought it would be. Like, for me." He didn't sound angry, though - more hesitant, kind of. Nervous.
"I've always known I like girls," he said, "ever since I was a little kid--I was a pervy little kid, you know? And I started fooling around with girls for real when I was like twelve. So I never, like, questioned my sexuality or whatever, like it just wasn't an issue for me." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say to that so I didn't say anything. My hands had finally come loose from the window sill; I used the opportunity to turn around and face Seth. I even managed to open my eyes and look at him.
His eyes were closed. He was lying very still on the futon, his long body taut with tensed muscles. "But, so," he said, "I didn't get that being attracted to girls doesn't rule out being attracted to guys too." The silence lasted the precise length of one theatrical-type beat. Seth sighed explosively. "And now I'm getting it," he said. And in a headlong, dizzying rush, I got it too. I wondered for a moment if I was going to be sick on the carpet; that would have been unspeakably humiliating. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a while, and so I didn't know that Seth had stood up until he was standing right in front of me. I jumped violently and he smiled down at me and his cheeks were flushed, he was blushing. "Come on," he said, "we're having a moment here, I feel like we should hug or something."
I gave a short, somewhat incredulous laugh. Seth wasn't smiling anymore, really. His eyes were all pupil. I stepped in close to him and put my arms around his waist and he sighed and pulled me close. He was shaking, just a little but it was reassuring--that cool was just an act after all. He stooped sweetly so that he could press his cheek against mine. I couldn't believe this was happening, his fingers were pushing into the hair on the back of my head. "What do we do now?" he said, next to my ear. I tightened my arms around his waist, pressing him close. "What do you want to do?" I said. He was silent for so long I wondered if he'd heard me speak; his hand moved all the way down from the back of my head to the small of my back and I had to lean on him, rather. Eventually, he said, "Can I kiss you?" I couldn't speak--my voice was completely gone, maybe forever, which was fine, I didn't care. I nodded.
Seth straightened slowly, brought one hand up to the side of my face, his thumb tracing the ridge of my jaw, tilting my chin gently up. His face was so close to mine all I could see of him was a soft, curving blur. "Close your eyes," he said, his voice all breath, and I did this, obediently. His lips brushed mine, lightly, tentatively. I used the arm I had around his waist to pull him hard against me, a totally inarticulate request but he got it, laughed gently, moved his free hand up to the other side of my face.
That time it was a real kiss, his mouth soft and solid on mine, his hands in my hair, his tongue pushing tentatively into my mouth. I let my head fall back against his arm, opened my mouth to his tongue. He moved his mouth down to my chin, my neck, my ear, his tongue darting made me dizzy. "God," he said, "Aaron..." I was so far from speech, the only reply I could muster was a pathetic-sounding moan. Seth didn't seem to notice. He was kissing my mouth again and this time I managed to kiss him back. Seth stumbled backward until he was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulled me after him with one finger hooked in my belt. I stood shakily between his parted legs, my hands hanging loosely at my sides. I was aching to touch him again but there was a bed involved now. I was out of my depth, it was all I could do to tread water. Seth's long fingers were pulling the edge of my shirt up, sliding over my bare and shivering flesh, raising goose pimples. "Are you okay?" he asked, huskily. I brought myself back down enough to summon a nod and Seth tugged my shirt clean off me.
Fear and insecurity lost out to desire. I had to concentrate on breathing. Seth pulled his own shirt over his head with one economical, utterly unselfconscious movement; he had nothing to be selfconscious about, being inhumanly beautiful. Even though we have shared a phys ed class since we were in eight grade and I'd seen Seth without his clothes on at least once a week for years, that was the first time I didn't have to even try not to stare. He is skinny, lanky, all long bones and angles, but over that is smoothly rounded muscle and tanned, freckly skin. Looking at him then, at that range, I was almost overwhelmed by a ridiculous desire to lick him.
He took my hand, gently tugged me down and onto the futon and then somehow we were lying next to each other and he was leaning over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress. He kissed me slowly, intently, with concentration. One of his hands was tangled in my hair. The other one was doing something intriguing to my nipple, something that almost hurt, except that instead it felt so good I wanted to scream out loud. His leg was between my legs. His skin on mine felt like a benediction. I touched his back, his hard, round biceps, pushed my tongue into the sweet wetness of his mouth. I couldn't make myself believe that I was allowed to do this; some deep part of me would not stop asking, "Really?"
Seth tasted like candy, rainblo gum, which he still favors. His mouth left mine, slid over my neck, slowly, slowly, his teeth more threat than presence until he reached a spot just below my collar bone and allowed himself to bite, gently, then not gently--that will leave a mark, I thought. My hands were caught in his hair, my back unconsciously arching upward, pressing my groin into his. "Ahhh..." I said, cleverly. Seth smiled crookedly up at me and licked the bruise he made, moved downward. When his lips closed over my nipple, I gasped audibly. There are some things masturbation just can't prepare you for. My cock was suddenly, painfully erect between us.
Seth moved back up into my arms and kissed me again. I said, "Mmmn," because I couldn't help it and then I was mortified. Seth lifted his head enough that he could smile down at me, his fingers tugging gently at a piece of my dark hair. "You still okay?" he asked. I nodded. "I like making out with you," he said, kissing the corner of my left eye, "A lot, actually. Like, an amazing lot." I nodded again, mutely, meaning, yeah me too, and I think he got it. He smiled again, anyway, a sweet, slanting smile, and his face was flushed deeply red and he was looking at the hair he was playing with instead of my eyes.
"What I really want to do, though," he said, "Is I really want to fuck you. Like I never wanted to fuck anybody before. But... I'm not really confident in... I mean, I never gave anybody a blowjob before, you know?" I wet my lips, swallowed. "Nobody's ever given me a blowjob before," I managed to point out, "So whatever you do is going to be impressive."
Seth blinked, once, and then was silent for a long moment. "Oh," he said finally, "Yeah. Huh." He opened his mouth to say something else and changed his mind, kissed my forehead instead. I smiled and pulled his head down, kissed him deeply. He leaned into me after a few moments of this, his mouth almost frantic, his hand restless on my chest, my belly, pulling at the buckle of my belt. I pulled him close, closer, pressing my sweat-slick body on his, feeling a wave of sudden, irrational fear as he managed to fumble my jeans open, push them down over my hips and buttocks; I could feel the head of my cock pressing into his belly and I was suddenly terrified, insecure, completely naked with another person for the first time since I was a little kid.
He held me back, as hard as I wanted him to. "How're you doing?" he asked gently. I swallowed once, twice, rasped, "Naked is kind of... weird. For me." He stroked the back of my head. "Okay," he murmured, "Wanna stop?" I closed my eyes. "No," I said, and I was surprised at the vehemence in my own voice. Seth smiled at me. "Okay," he said.
What followed was an unbroken swell of goodness, wet and heat, teeth and breath and spit and rhythm. At one point, I was moaning so loud the empty apartment echoed with it and Seth looked like everything I'd imagined sex to be, his head moving obscenely, lips stretched around my cock. I almost couldn't bear to look at him, and then I gave up because it was all unbearable, it felt so good it couldn't be good for me. That weird vehemence rose up again and I kept going against my better judgement and it turned out I was just coming--it had never felt like this before: breathtaking, all-consuming.
When I came back to myself, Seth was holding me against his chest, our bodies wrapped damply around each other. We were both breathing hard. I lifted my face blindly and he kissed my closed eyelids, my sweaty cheeks, my lips. His mouth tasted like my come. I could have kept kissing him all night but when I rolled on top of him for better leverage I felt his cock swollen and hot against my thigh. I pushed his damp hair away from his face, let my tongue move downward, over his sweet-salty skin with its haze of freckles and its juts of bone; I was not taking my time because I knew there wasn't much more he could handle.
When my chin hit the head of his cock, it was already wet. I splayed my hands on his ass and lowered my mouth on him, taking as much of him as I could all at once. He said something on an exhalation; it could have been my name. His hands were both in my hair, fisted there, pulling. He said, "Jesus," just as I began to move. I tongued the tip of his cock, pushed him in deeper with my hands still cupped around his ass. He came hard, yelling something into the pillow. I grinned, relieved, kind of proud of myself. I wiped my chin on the inside of his already sticky thigh and moved up into his arms. He smiled at me, his eyes heavy-lidded, sated. "Hi," he said.
I kissed him, still grinning. I couldn't seem to make myself stop grinning. I felt full of some excellent drug. "Hi," I said, and hid my stupid beaming face in the joint of his neck and shoulder. He laughed at me and stroked my hot back, his hard, thin arms pulling me down against him. "So," he said conversationally, his voice rumbling just beneath my ear, "Sex is all right, huh?" I laughed (well, giggled, actually, if we're going to be completely honest) and thumped his chest with my fist. He smiled. "Goddamn, Aaron," he said, pressing his lips against my forehead, "I can't believe we actually did this. I'm so fucking happy." I squeezed him hard, my eyes tightly closed, and he pushed one broad hand through the hair on the back of my head. After a minute or so, when my voice was working again, I lifted my head a little. "So, you wanna do it again?" I asked. Instead of answering, he kissed me.
Eventually, when we were able to say more than a couple of sentences to each other without getting distracted, he made me tell him the whole story, about what had happened between me and my parents that afternoon. "Christ," he murmured sympathetically, when I was done. I shrugged. Telling the story naked and sweaty with Seth's body wrapped around mine was really helping me put a positive spin on the whole thing. "So now I have to go see this, like, minister from my mom's church tomorrow," I said, absently drawing concentric circles around Seth's hip with my fingertip, "I don't know why. Maybe they want to put me in anti-fag re-training school or something."
He gave an impatient huff. We were silent for a moment and then he shifted, suddenly, a slow grin creeping onto his face. "So I'll go with you," he said. I peered up at him. "Seriously?" I asked; I could feel a grin of my own coming on, now. Seth kissed my forehead. He looked extremely pleased with himself. "Fuck, yeah," he said, "Absolutely. I don't think I've ever met a real minister before."
So I did make that appointment with Pastor Hayes the next day. I don't think it went as well as my mom was hoping it would, though--not only am I not cured, but I think I might be excommunicated. Me and Seth walked into the pastor's little office, stood right in front of his desk and gave each other a long, nasty, extremely french kiss. Then we took off out of there as fast as our legs could carry us. I haven't quite been able to work up enough guts to go back home since then, but my dad did call this morning. It was sort of tense but I think we're back on speaking terms at least. Maybe one day they'll actually figure out how to live with the reality of who I am. Until then, I can deal. There's lots of room in Seth's apartment, at least until not being able to pay the rent catches up with us and we get ourselves evicted. I'm not worried. Already it's starting to get warm outside and the days are getting longer. School is nearly done for good. And summer's on the way.