“Why not?” he asked testily.
“Seth, I was giving you head behind the dumpster.At our high school.I mean, that’s kind of gross, not to mention all the broken glass, and if someone caught us, we’d probably get expelled.” I didn’t want to think about my parents finding out—what a disaster that would be.
“We wouldn’t get expelled,” he said like I was overreacting.
“Expelled or not, we can’t risk it.”
“I don’t want other people dictating our relationship.”
I threw up my hands in frustration. “This has nothing to do with other people, Seth. This is what I want.”
“I don’t think so.”
He was being unreasonable, and this was further proof that I needed to stand up for myself. My anger at even having to fight with him about it made me rigid and prickly. I sat up and started putting on my clothes. I couldn’t win against him in an argument, but I was an expert at the silent treatment. My frosty silence was my protest, and Seth, even with his compulsion to be in charge, was getting better at knowing when to back down.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Seth asked as I yanked up my jeans. “We’re in the middle of a conversation.”
“This isn’t a conversation. This is you refusing to listen to me.”
“I am listening, Hiroku, but I don’t want you telling Sabrina or anyone else about the things we do,” Seth said possessively.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of her business,” he said severely. “And because our sex life is interesting, and I don’t want her to influence you with her missionary-only, wait-until-marriage Puritanical bullshit.”
I doubted Sabrina was as much of a prude as Seth made her out to be, and it wasn’t that I wanted to tell her about the mechanics of what we did, more that I wanted to talk to someone else about the way he made me feel. I was a private person, but all of this was new to me, and sometimes I felt like I needed a second opinion.
“Is this normal?” I asked him, trusting him to know because even though I didn’t like to think about it, he’d been with several other people before me. “It feels way too powerful to me.”Hefelt too powerful. I had no control over myself when we were together, and I felt the same way when we were apart.
Seth reached for my hand and pulled me down on top of him. My pants were on but undone enough for him to snake his hand inside and give me a gentle squeeze. He kissed me with fervor, until my frustration with him felt petty and insignificant, and all I wanted was to be held like this, kissed like this, adored by him.
“Why would you want normal, Hiroku?” he asked with his sphinxlike smile. He was so good at putting my questions back at me.
“You know what I mean.” I propped myself on my forearms, still straddling his hips with my thighs.
“I’m liberating you, Hiroku, and purging you of all the heteronormative garbage you’ve been spoonfed your entire life. Our sexuality is the ultimate expression of our art. Why would you want to box yourself in by society’s expectations? The spectacle of who, what, when, where, etcetera, etcetera…”
I gave him a hard look. In the same way Seth was learning when to back off when I felt cornered, I was learning how to sift through his bullshit. I pushed myself off the bed to finish dressing. It was now a lot more difficult to zip up my pants.
“School’s off limits,” I said as the final word. “You can wait until after 2 p.m. to unleash your artistic expression on me.”
Seth winked at me like a scoundrel. “Fine, but only because I love it when you play hard to get.”
“Not that hard,” I fussed at him, which only made his smug smile widen.
NOW
A few weeks into my program at New Vistas, I begin to awaken. Maybe it’s the meds leveling off or the drugs finally leaving my system. Likely, it’s me accepting my captivity in New Vistas as the new normal. In any case, I begin to have cravings for things other than drugs or Seth. Things like ice cream, a song, a splash of color.
Dr. Denovo wants to encourage me, so he adds art therapy to my program. We do finger painting during my first session—about a half dozen of us rehab kids and the instructor—and it sounds childish, but it feels sooo good. Swirling the cold, muddy paint with my fingers, skating over the surface of the blank page, creating new colors, shapes, and textures.
It feels a little silly, but I begin painting my face, my arms, my clothes. Our instructor goes with it, and my compadres join in. Soon enough we’re painting each other’s skin, mixing the primary colors to make purples, oranges, and greens. Laughing, connecting, like some strange rehab Coachella. Most of us leave the paint on our faces for the rest of the day until it’s cracked and peeling and flaking off like a mud mask.
Later that night when I’m taking a shower, I feel such a loss when I finally have to wash it away. Staring at my reflection in the warped plastic that passes for a mirror, I try to figure out why I’m so sad, and I realize that for a few hours, I was unrecognizable.
I wish I could be someone completely different and new.
THEN
