“I’ll try,” I told Mai at last. It was the most I could promise her.
She smiled in the firelight and then gazed up at the steep canyon walls surrounding us on all sides.
“I can’t believe you convinced me to come all the way down here,” she marveled.
“Belly of the beast,” I said. I’d always been attracted to the extremes. This place offered them in spades. My sister went for moderation, for guys like Terrance. A steady companion. No surprises and no thrills. She didn’t have a bad wolf to feed. She didn’t go looking for trouble.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, more texts from Seth. I powered it down. If Seth asked, I’d tell him the battery went dead.
NOW
I think a lot in here about the paths not taken. Perhaps because the path I took was so bleak.
In one of these alternative futures, Seth never cheated on me. He found a medication that leveled out his moods without destroying his creativity. He quit the hard drugs. We’re still together and in love, and we’re planning to tour the world with Petty Crime after I graduate from high school. Then we’ll settle down somewhere bitchin’ where he can be a rock star and I can go to college. The sex is good, as always.
The most heartbreaking thing about that future is that it could have happened. We weresoclose. But maybe our ideas of forever were just different enough that they could never be reconciled. Perhaps to him, I was just another facet of the machine, making demands and trying to conform him into something he wasn’t. The old ball and chain.
In another future, I broke up with Seth for good that summer. I focused on improving myself. I rose to the top of my class, and now, instead of rotting here in rehab, I’m touring Ivy League colleges with my dad. Every once in a while, during our trip, he’ll glance over at me and give me that closed-mouth smile that says he’s proud of me.
But neither of those scenarios will come to pass. Instead, I sit across from my parents in a hard, plastic chair during their scheduled weekly visit. My dad won’t speak to me, won’t even look at me, so my mom fills the strained silence by asking me logistical questions about my lodgings and food and what types of activities we do as a group, which I can only partway answer because if my mom knew even half the shit I know about the people in here, she’d pull me out in a heartbeat, and even though I absolutely hate it here, I know there’s no other place for me right now.
I’m safe in here.
Safe from Seth. Safe from the drugs, and most of all, safe from my own destructive impulses.
So, I tell my mom what I ate for dinner last night, which is a random dish I’ve eaten at some point during my stay, but I can’t recall if it was last night because the days all tend to run together.
I tell her I’ve made a friend, but I leave out the part where I blew him and earned myself a single room as a result, though they probably know about it in some capacity because singles cost more than doubles.
I tell them therapy with Dr. Denovo is going well, that we’re making real progress, but I don’t tell her how I snorted Ryan’s antidepressants or how I spend most of my time in our one-on-ones crying.
I tell her I’m feeling better. I don’t tell her I still hate myself.
I tell her I look forward to coming home. I don’t tell her I’m terrified of leaving.
And that’s how I get by. That’s how I’vealwaysgotten by. By telling selective truths. Like Mai said, I’m not a liar; there’s just so much more of me that needs to be hidden. Because when you expand my folds, it isn’t a lovely depiction of a cherry blossom that’s revealed, it’s something ugly and selfish and dark.
Did Seth bring that out in me, or was it there all along?
THEN
Emboldened by my talk with Mai at the Grand Canyon, I came out to my parents that summer. Or tried to. It didn’t go over well. My dad dismissed it as an adolescent phase and told me never to speak of it again. He also insisted I take a martial arts class. He didn’t say it outright, but I believe he thought that by learning a fighting technique I might improve upon my otokorashi-sa, or masculinity. My mother didn’t say a word in my defense, which kind of crushed me. Perhaps she too was hoping I would, as my father insisted, “grow out of it.”
That messed with my head. I began to wonder if Seth was only a phase for me and if I might venture back to the land of the straights now that our relationship was over. It also didn’t help that I couldn’t masturbate without thinking about Seth. Was my entire sexuality dependent upon one person?
I dealt with my confusion by trying to stay busy.
I bought some free weights and worked out in the garage. I played basketball with the neighborhood kids. I finally got good at it. I’d grown taller my freshman year and even more so that summer. My mom told me I should go out for the school’s basketball team. I considered it. As I said before, Hilliard was an arts school, so I’d probably make the team.
I still texted with Seth, but I didn’t make plans to meet up with him. I didn’t sneak over to his house in the middle of the night either. I made excuses as to why I couldn’t see him. I had jiu-jitsu or a family thing. I wasn’t feeling well. I was tired and going to stay in that night. Mai wanted to go see a movie. The last one was usually true. Mai was leaving soon, and good old Terrance was going with her, which meant she devoted most of her remaining free time to me.
I thought Seth would give up on me. Move on. I told myself that was what I wanted, but if that were true, I wouldn’t continue to text him back or answer his calls. We had a lot of arguments about my unavailability via FaceTime. He still insisted on seeing my face. It seemed safe enough.
Finally, fed up with my latest round of excuses, Seth asked the question I’d been asking myself. “How long are you going to punish me for this?”
“I’m not punishing you,” I said reflexively.
His brow furrowed in consternation. Seth never bought into my bullshit.
