That Feeling - 2. Perfection

But I’m not depressed or anything, okay. It’s not like I’m going to kill myself. I don’t cry all the time and lay in bed and not move like a vegetable. I’m not a complete loser, okay. I’m just a fake and dead and I hate everything about my life and sometimes I just want to quit it all, but not by actually dying. Maybe just by living in some random cave in Nunavut, alone, and never coming out. Ever. Wait, there was no pun intended. Or maybe there was. Freud would say there was and that I’m super repressed and I need to analyze my dreams or some shit. I can’t even remember most of my dreams, except a lot of them involve naked men and me...doing stuff. Which, if I’m honest, means I’m gay. Which I’m still denying, so Freud was obviously nuts.

The funny thing is though that right now I am lying in my bed not moving, about to cry. Because the truth hurts so much and the truth is I can’t stop thinking about Knox and how much I want to kiss him and hold him and probably even see him naked. Even though it can never happen, ever, because I’m supposed to be straight and in love with Avery and that’s the way it has to be. And that’s really why I’m crying now because my dad is downstairs and he is so proud of me because I’m not a screw-up like Adam and not a complete freak like Cassie and if he knew I was like this I’d just be another screwed up kid of his and it just can’t be like that, because he thinks I’m perfect. And I could be perfect if I could just keep pretending, but it’s just so freaking hard to be somebody you’re not when you don’t even know who you really are. Sure, I know who I could be. I could be this out and proud gay teen fighting for marriage equality and pinning rainbow flags to my backpack and marching in gay pride parades in a leopard print thong, but that just isn’t me. At least I feel like that isn’t me, but how the hell should I know?

I just can’t understand it all. Maybe it would be better to just be really dead, because now I can hear Cassie’s crazy music and it really makes me want to just quit everything, because how can I let my dad down by being gay when Cassie is right over there being something my dad doesn’t want already? But I love Cassie even if she is a freak. I love her because she’s honest and real and doesn’t let anyone tell her she’s not who she is supposed to be, and she’d love me too, I know it. She is one-hundred times better than me because she just doesn’t care and I wish I didn’t either. But I care about everyone and everything and I just can’t get past that. And what if I never get past it and I’m always stuck here being fake? And that makes me think I’d rather just be dead.

But I can’t die! I know everyone would be sad, because I know people love me, even if they only love the fake me, and that’s better than nothing, right? So I’m stuck lying on my bed, crying, listening to the music coming through my walls knowing it’ll never really change unless I do something about it. I know that much. But I just can’t. Everything’s in such a fragile balance of belonging and meaning. It’s all piled up on top of each other like garbage at a dump, and just moving that old rusty toaster can make everything, even the old wooden bed frame with Barbie stickers on it, fall apart and make a mess no one wants to even think about fixing, because that’s really what life is, just a big heap of old garbage that we keep piling up on top of each other and call memories or experiences or some bullshit that makes us think it means something and then hope to God that it will mean something as long as it doesn’t all fall apart. And me being gay would be like pulling that toaster out from the very bottom and upsetting the whole, huge mound of garbage. It would be a mess no one would want to deal with, especially me.

So I’ll just keep on pretending. Except it isn’t as hard when you’re lying in bed crying, because there isn’t anyone around you have to fool, except maybe yourself, but I gave up trying to fool myself about anything a long time ago, because it’s obviously useless. Because even if you try to hide from yourself there is always something that finds you out, like that mirror in the boy’s bathroom, just sitting there waiting to expose me to my worst enemy, which has always been myself.

Someone is knocking at my door and I know it is probably my mom telling me it’s time for dinner and here I am crying and what am I supposed to do?

“Caleb?” She asks though the door.

“Ma’am?”

“Dinner’s ready, honey.”

“Okay, Mom.”

She moves on without coming in, which is for the best because if she sees me crying she’ll think the world has probably just ended because I’m never emotional and she’ll ask me questions that I just can’t answer or even think about right now. I hear her talking to Cassie. She doesn’t like her music so loud and wants her to turn it down, but I don’t want her to. I want it to stay on because it makes me feel better to hear people so angry and sad with life because it means I’m not alone. But I have to get up and go to dinner without the music because we like to play the perfect family even if we’re ripping at the seams, so I drag myself out of bed.

I share a bathroom with Adam, which is really like having my own bathroom, because who knows where Adam is or if he’s even alive because he’s never home, except occasionally when he comes and begs for money or needs to crash here because he burned another bridge with his “friends.” I can’t look upset at the dinner table, because my mom has razor eyes and can detect even a hint of emotion and she loves to ask questions about even the most mundane things. And my dad doesn’t even believe in crying, or at least I’ve never seen him cry, so what if he sees me crying and then just knows and hates me? But I don’t really believe that, not the hating part anyway. I don’t think my parents would ever hate me. But there is a huge gap between hate and love that I could easily fit into if necessary. I just don’t want to test it. So I wash my face in cold water and put a little baby powder around my eyes. I blow my nose, but it’s still stuffy. Maybe if I seem happy enough I can pass it off as allergies or a cold or something. I’ve done that before. But what if Mom decides I’ve been sick too much lately and takes me to the doctor and they can’t really find anything wrong, so they do some kind of blood test that shows that I’m gay because of some deformed platelet that is swimming along with all the normal platelets just waiting to be found? What if that happened? But I know that’s impossible and I’m just paranoid and I hate that, just like I hate everything else. But how can I stop being this way? Not necessarily gay, although that would be good too, but just so damn paranoid and fake. Of course I know the answer, doesn’t everyone, but that isn’t an option so I need other answers. I’ve heard about those closeted gay guys who get married to a nice, oblivious girl and have two-point-five kids and the white picket fence and all, only to get fucked on the side by people they meet in sketchy parks or public restrooms or maybe even on Craigslist. I looked at Craigslist once, just to see what the people on there were like. Most were desperate old men who were in town on business and wanted a quick fuck free of the hassle of their married life back in Indianapolis or Cleveland or whatever Mid-Western hellhole they came from. Was that to be my life? That really depressed me more than thinking about Knox and how much I wanted him, but couldn’t have him, because Knox was here and now and it hurt, but that life of shady backdoor fucks when the wife wasn’t looking meant I’d never not be fake, it’d always be an act and that just seems so fucking exhausting. The act is hard enough at sixteen, what about when I’m forty and I have to fool a whole lot more people even more convincingly because once you’re married and have a job and a family, wouldn’t it be just that much harder to keep it all together without the whole damn thing just tumbling down around you?

But this is just too much to think about now, and besides it’s time to go to dinner before my mom comes looking for me again. I walk through the hall to the stairs. I can hear my dad over everyone. It’s just the four of us, so we’re eating in the kitchen and that’s okay anyway, because I hate eating in the dining room because that table is so big and it feels empty even when it’s full. That’s the problem with living in a big house, you always feel alone, even when someone is right next to you because the dead space of the house outweighs any life we can actually bring into it. Not that our house it really dead, my mom fills it with things that try to give it life. There’s always the lingering smell of sugar cookies (even if it is the artificial smell of chemicals engineered to smell that way) and soft jazz music playing (or sometimes classic rock, depending on her mood) and huge overstuffed chairs to get lost in and beautiful art that she payed way too much for hanging on the walls or propped on shelves. All sorts of stuff that just makes me sick, because it all feels so staged. My mom is a freelance interior designer, and so our house is constantly on display, and everything has to be perfect. Even our family. Not that Cassie or Adam care much, they seem to not care very much for anything my mother or father want. As I come around the corner into the kitchen, my dad is sitting there, talking to Cassie. She’s fourteen and has dyed her hair red this week, and it’s cut pretty short, a look I’m sure Mom doesn’t approve of. I want to be like her, not caring what was expected of me and sitting there contentedly talking to my dad. He didn’t seem to be complaining about anything. Actually, he seemed happy. That was the thing about my dad, he was either happy or upset about the most inane things; no middle ground with him. I walked past my mom at the sink doing something and sat at the opposite end of the table from my dad.

“Caleb! There you are!” My dad faked surprise. I made myself smirk even though I just wanted to puke. He thought he was funny even though he is the corniest, dumbest person on the planet.

“Hey, Dad.”

“How was school today?” Should I tell him how crappy it was? I played what I would say in my head: ‘Horrible, Father, I am in love with this beautiful blonde boy who I want to see naked and am constantly fighting the urge to leap on him and kiss him and then proceed to rip off his clothes, all in the middle of the freaking hallway, because I’m a big faggot.’ That would go over well. Instead I say, “Good” and look at the food on the table instead of his face. I grab a roll from a basket and preoccupy myself with tearing it apart. I glance over to Cassie who looks at me with a funny smirk, but I ignore her because I’m doing it, covering it all up and finding that place where everything is numb just so I can put on a happy face and get through dinner, because like I said, it’s all so fragilely stacked and I can’t afford to break any of it. I’m just not prepared for all that garbage yet.

“That’s good. Football going well?”

“Yes, sir. It was rough today, though. A couple of the guys were goofing around so we had to run stone-mountains.”

“That is rough. But you’re off this Friday, right, no game?”

“Oh...yes, sir. This is the off week. I almost forgot.”

“So, how are you going to spend your night as a free man?” Dying from desire, I wanted to answer.

“Oh, um, I think Avery and I are supposed to go to Carson Newman’s lake house, just a few people and maybe watch movies or something.”

“Isn’t she Joey Newman’s sister? The red-headed girl?”

“Yes, sir. That’s Carson.” My mom was listening intently; she liked Carson because her parents had lots of money and had hired her as the interior decorator of their mansion over by the river last year. She liked me to have friends on tap whose parents could be future employers.

“She’s such a lovely girl. Her parents were telling me that she’s into fashion. Are Avery and she still close?” By this, my mom was really asking was Avery still friends with Sara, who she wasn’t fond of because she’d heard from Avery’s mother that she was ‘promiscuous,’ which is true but it really isn’t any of their fucking business.

“Yes, ma’am. Avery, Sara, and Carson are all really close.”

“Oh, sure...I don’t know why nice girls like Avery and Carson insist on hanging around that Sara girl. Patti told me that she had a pregnancy scare last year. If my fifteen year old daughter thought she was pregnant...Lord, I don’t even know what I’d do.”

“Yeah, Sara’s very...sexual.” Will she take the bait?

“Caleb! We’re at the table! Mind your manners...Anyway, you just better remember what I’ll do to you if you ever get a girl pregnant.” Yep.

“Yes, ma’am.”

But she really doesn’t have to worry about that. And then there was a silence as we ate, with my mom occasionally asking my dad questions and him answering. My mom was like that, full-on all the time and I hate it. I just wanted to be but it was always something with her, and my life was no exception. I swirled around whatever recipe of the week my mom had found, chicken marsala something or other, but Cassie kept glancing over at me, giving me weird looks, which at this point in our lives was her modus operandi when addressing me. She knows something, she always knows something. I know she knows something because she always knows something before I do, and it’s just the worst because of those damn looks. I start to get nervous, because all of a sudden I know if Cassie knows, it’ll all be over because she’d have to say something about it to me and wouldn’t just let it go and I think I’d just fall apart. I can feel my face heating up and I start to feel sick with the thought.

“May I be excused?” I blurt out.

“Is there something wrong?” My mother asks.

“No, ma’am. I’m just full and have some homework I need to do.” Lies.

“Okay, honey. Just put your plate by the sink.”

I get up and do as she says. Resistance is futile anyways, obedience is the norm and I’m all for the norm at this point. Once I’m in my room a strip down to my underwear and stair at myself in the full-length mirror on my closet door. I’m really quite pitiful. I’m fit enough, I guess, but not really muscular. I’m too lazy to put the time into working out that a really toned physique would require, which is whatever, I can’t complain about it if I am not willing to do it. I poke at my belly. There isn’t any fat, really, unless I pinch it. But it’s pale and hairless. My whole chest and abdomen is pale, white, and hairless and you can kind of see the blue veins through my skin and I think that is kind of disgusting. I have a few moles on my chest that I always try to scratch off, even though I know they won’t move, but it’s the thought of being able to that I want more than anything. My thighs are huge from football, which looks odd with my thin waist and it kind of freaks me out. I run my hands over my thighs and feel the tiny hairs that cover the otherwise pale, white, smooth skin that I just want someone to caress and know. Then, of course, I think of Knox caressing my thighs and me licking that crease in his neck, because that’s all I really want to do. And now I’m hard. I can see the reflection of the bulge in my black trunks in the mirror and I so want to slide them off and see it, but seeing it now would somehow make it all real and I can’t handle the guilt right now because I’m really just an ugly piece of shit. I grab a pair of gym shorts from my dresser and throw on a baggy t-shirt and fall onto my bed. On the bed everything seems safer and maybe I’m not so ugly if I really think about it and it doesn’t matter anyways because I have a girlfriend who loves me and it isn’t like I need to be impressing anyone else…..But who am I kidding? Of course I want Knox or Jake or Joey or any other cute boy to look at me and feel something and then maybe I could face it all if I just knew someone was there next to me, but I could never do it first, I could never take the lead because I’m a wuss and I’ll always be a wuss and I hate that. But it’s not like that will ever happen anyways. They aren’t interested in me. And I should focus on trying to like Avery more and forget about them anyways. But I can’t forget about Knox. He is always right there in my mind, his stupid face causing my heart to fall apart and pull itself together every five seconds.