“Yeah, that was even worse than your coming-out-of-the-closet joke.”
“Oh, so youdidread those texts and choose to ignore them?” He scolds me with a wicked smolder. Then, he shakes his head. “I don’t mean to. Sometimes I make jokes about being gay to shield myself from the hard parts. I did it for so long with friends and family before I was out, and now, even a few years later, I’m still working on it.”
It’s nice to hear him so self-aware. To know that the seismic waves of coming out are still rippling through him too. I thought I was alone in that. Everyone makes it seem like coming out is crossing the finish line and now you just get to parade around while wearing your medal. For me, it feels more like I’m still winded midmarathon.
“When exactly did you come out?” We’ve missed so much over the years. “If that’s too personal, you don’t need to answer.”
“First semester sophomore year and then again over winter break at home,” he says. The winter break after he abandoned our movie marathon plans. A whole year to come to terms with what he couldn’t wrap his head around. What he felt he couldn’t share with me. “My brothers pretty much knew and my parents took it as well as two Pennsylvanian, tax-obsessed Republicans could.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they smiled, nodded, and then never brought it up again.” He laughs, but I know it’s to cover up something more insidious. “How about you?”
I tell him the tale. This past January, I sent a timed coming-out email to my family and scampered back to campus for the start of my final semester, into the waiting arms of Mateo and Avery, who already knew. They were my soft launch into my identity a year prior when I was still figuring it all out.
I say that as if I’m not still “figuring it all out.” Some days, I don’t even know what “it all” is.
“It would’ve been nice if we could’ve been there for each other,” Derick says in a way that suggests he doesn’t have a Mateo and Avery of his own. That his frat brothers probably treat his sexuality as a diversity checkbox rather than an integral part of his identity.
“Yeah, it would’ve been.”
While I’m contemplating what that alternate reality would’ve looked like, he lifts the lens of the camera I didn’t even see him pull out, and he snaps a sneaky shot of me.
“What was that for?” I’m not used to being on this side of the shutter.
“The light was good.” He inspects the image on the screen. “The subject was good too. Just the right amount of red in the cheeks…”
He’s teasing me, play-flirting at a level ten, the way we always used to. And he’s damn good at it. I’m alight with a thousand twirling, twinkling thoughts.
Friends,I remind myself. Just friends…
“Anyway,” he recalibrates, “you were saying about Alice Kelly.”
“As I was saying,” I echo, flustered and trying not to show it, “her movieChompin’ at the Bitwas a one-night-only love story between a zombie boy and a local girl. It’s supposedly swoony and campy and melodramatic and more than a little bit queer. From what I’ve read, we never quite know if the protagonist, Robin, develops feelings for the zombie, named James, because he’s her only tether back to her dead friend and possible queer crush, Tammy, or if she really wants to kiss him, which she definitely can’t do or she’ll turn undead as well.” My voice pitches up a few octaves with my rising excitement. “So, Alice gets this grant money and finds private investors through her LA connections to fund the film she wrote based on a proof of concept she shot without her husband’s knowledge during one holiday season in the Willow Valley cemetery by our Catholic church.” Before he asks, I add, “Yes, the one where kids go to smoke weed.”
“I’m guessing it never took off considering I’ve never heard of it.”
“I mean, yes, but you’ve never heard of Elaine May, so I’m not sure you’re the best barometer for movie popularity.” He seems half-hurt by my words. “Sorry, that was a little harsh.”
“No worries. So, what happened?”
I tell him the whole story, basically an overview of my entire Rosevale research project. He listens and nods at all the appropriate places. I end by explaining how Peter Borellio went on to direct his own indie-budget film with a supernatural bent right after exorcising Alice from Hollywood. His would be taught in film courses, while hers would not even be a footnote.
“At some point, she donated her copy of the film negative to the archives of the Willow Valley library, but it’s impossible to get your hands on it without her express permission. There were talks that around 2008, they might bring it out of the vault to see if it could amass a cult following, since supernatural romances were big again and the internet can make anything cool, but Alice shot the idea down.”
Derick steals the last bit of hash brown from my bag without asking. Flinging it into his mouth, he asks between chews, “So, how bad is the house we’re working on really?”
I sigh. “Almost as bad as her attitude.”
***
“Oh, perfect. Make my blood sugar skyrocket and send me into shock so you don’t have to do work. Good plan,” Alice says as soon as she opens the door and spies the Dunkin’ Donuts box.
I shoot Derick asee-what-I-meanlook. He laughs under his breath, passing it off as a series of coughs.
“Who’s this infected person? Is he sick? If he’s sick, he’s not stepping foot in here,” Alice says to me after snatching the doughnuts out of Derick’s hands.
“He’s not sick,” I promise.
