I CAVEand end up going over to Dave’s that same afternoon. I’m too needy, a ping-pong ball being batted back and forth between Dave and Chris. Like my self-esteem is tied to one or the other, and I cling to the one who can provide me with some sense of reassurance. It’s lame on so many levels.
In any case, Dave is happy to see me. Usually we hang out on the couch and play video games, which usually segues into other things. Today it’s different, though. I’m not feeling it. I’m too stressed about Chris and how we left things. I hate that there’s friction between us. I wonder if he’s looking me up on his phone right now. I should take myself off the app, but at the same time, I kind of like that he’s semistalking me, and how messed up is that?
“What’s up?” Dave asks, retreating to his half of the couch, perhaps noticing that I’m only half-present (and half-aroused). The other thing about Dave and me is we never kiss. And our touching seems very focused on getting each other off and not necessarily connection. The things I want to do with Chris, I don’t want to do with Dave. Is it possible to only be gay for one guy?
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tell him. “I’m in a funk.”
Dave grabs his bong and packs it. The couch is small, more the size of a love seat, and Dave sits in the middle of it with his legs spread wide so his knee rests against mine, kind of territorial. Chris does that too, takes up the maximum amount of space, even when he’s sleeping. In some ways they’re a lot alike. Alpha males.
Dave offers me the first hit like always, even though I’ve never taken him up on it. I shake my head. “Hugs not drugs, man.”
Dave lights the bong, sucks up the column of smoke as his cheeks hollow out all the way—it’s very phallic. It sounds like sucking through a straw in a mostly empty glass. His cheeks puff out as he holds it in, then releases a cloud of heady smoke that makes my eyes water a little. Chris went through a pot-smoking phase last year, but he hasn’t done it much lately. He says all it does is give him the munchies and make him lazy. I tried it once when we were in Sebastian on a surf trip, at one of the older surf rats’ shithole apartment, and I ended up holding my knees and rocking in a corner, thinking I was dying because my heart sounded too fast and my breathing too slow. Chris talked me down, and I felt bad for ruining both our nights. Later he said I probably just smoked too much, or the shit was too dank. Still, I haven’t tried it since.
I don’t mind it when other people smoke, though. No one gets violent, just goofy. When Dave smokes he gets a faint smile on his face, laughs at whatever I say, and wants to talk deeply about things that probably don’t deserve that much attention. It’s kind of funny.
“When did you know you were gay?” I ask Dave.
He scratches his head and purses his lips like he’s trying to recall it. His eyes are red and glassy, and I wonder if he’s high already.
“Third grade? I tried to kiss another boy in class. On the lips. Peter Bowers—he had the cutest freckles. He wasn’t down with it, though, and it turned into this whole thing with our parents and the school. Counseling. I went underground after that. Didn’t try it again until middle school.”
“So you’ve always known?”
He nods. “More or less. I don’t think I knew the name for it until middle school. Then it was all ‘fag’ this and ‘fag’ that. Where I’m from isn’t as laid-back about it as it is here. I hid it for a while.” Dave takes another hit, holds it in until his face turns red and his eyes start to water. “How about you?” he asks. The words come out with a cloud of smoke, and I think of that caterpillar inAlice in Wonderland.Whoooo are yoooou?
“I don’t know when it started.” I’ve always checked out guys, but never for too long. Seems dangerous. I check out girls too, for that matter, in a more scientific way. I like to study people—the way they move and interact with one other. Chris is the first guy I’ve really been able to study up close, the first guy I’ve imagined naked and fantasized about on purpose. Well, that’s not completely true, now that I think about it. I’ve had fleeting thoughts about underwear models and athletes. Or, like, the weatherman on WXTV, Casanova Guerra. Something about his voice. Partly it’s the name, and also how he always seems to know what’s coming. Like, the chance of rain or if hurricane is going to hit us or pass by. He’s so reassuring about it too.So, board up your windows and stock up on sandbags, West Palm. It’s better to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.
I tell Dave about my crush on Casanova Guerra and what it might be like to have sex with a weatherman, how he’d narrate the whole thing in that calming, even-keeled voice. “Ninety percent chance of an orgasm this afternoon, with the possibility of light flooding. Don’t forget to pack your raincoat.”
Dave cracks up at that, and we take turns making weather predictions that sound like a bad porno flick. It’s kind of hot. Then I ask him, “Have you ever had sex with a dude?”
He looks at me with a halfway serious expression. “Anal?” I nod. “No, but I’m game if you are. Might be a good way to see if you really are gay or if you’ve been faking it this whole time.”
At that I sober up instantly. I probably shouldn’t have put it on the table. It was more a survey than a proposition. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.” Not to mention it involves at least one of our assholes getting pounded, which I’ve heard can be painful at first. Something tells me between Dave and I, I’d be the one getting the raw ass.
I’d do it for Chris, though, if that’s what he wanted. I’d pretty much go either way for him. Sigh.
“Saving yourself?” Dave asks.
I narrow my eyes at him, annoyed at how easily it seems he can read my mind. “For what?”
“Not what. Who.”
I knowwhohe means. I fiddle with the controller where it lays abandoned on the couch between us. “Chris is straight,” I say, though I’m having my doubts. Maybe I should just ask him, but what if he is straight? Then I’ve just challenged his masculinity or something. And me asking kind of reveals myself, doesn’t it? Outside of him telling me himself, there’s no easy way to find out.
“We should come out together,” Dave says. “I could ask you out to Homecoming in a really over-the-top way. Spray paint the BOA with a proclamation of gay love. Rainbows and unicorns and centaurs with really big junk. The works.”
I laugh at the thought of it. My rep would be forever ruined among the skater punks. It shouldn’t matter, but they might not take me seriously if they knew I was gay. I also haven’t thought about what it would mean to be out at Sabal Palm High. I’d just as soon keep it under wraps.
“I don’t think so, Dave.”
“You don’t want people to know you’re gay or that we’ve been messing around?”
“Neither,” I say before realizing how awful it sounds. His face goes slack. “It’s not personal.”
“Feels personal.”
I study him, wondering if I’ve really hurt his feelings or if he’s just using this as a way to manipulate me into giving him a blowjob. Dave’s pretty crafty that way. “You don’t even like me.”
