Against the World - 5. Chapter 5

“Dad, just tie it for him,” Matt said, glancing at his watch--his dad’s watch, gold, on loan for the evening. “We don’t have time for you to teach him.”

Van Barber didn’t respond. He was standing behind me in the mirror in Matt’s bathroom, holding two edge of my tie, began tangling them together.

“No seventeen-year-old man should not know how to tie a tie, I don’t care if you’re five minutes late to prom,” he replied. He crossed the two ends over each other. “First you cross the wide end over the thin end, like this.”

“Jesus, Dad,” Matt said. “He’s not your son. We have to go.”

“Hold your horses,” Mr. Barber replied, placidly tying my tie. “And watch your language.”

“It’s fine, Matt,” I told him.

Matt gave a melodramatic sigh, as Mr. Barber continued to narrate tie-tying.

Even with a scowl on his face, fixated on his watch, Matt was James Bond. Black bowtie, black cummerbund, shawl lapel, slickly parted hair.

Dressed traditionally not because of Jenna, but because he was certain he was going to be elected the junior class’s Prom Prince: the highest accolade any social-climbing junior could receive.

And he was vain enough that he wouldn’t want to clash with whoever the Prom Princess was.

He hadn’t said that to me. But I knew him better than anyone.

“There you go, Kev,” Mr. Barber said, looking proud of his work. “Do you want to try it once yourself real quick?”

“Absolutely not,” Matt interrupted. “We have to be at Jenna’s for pictures in literally six minutes.”

“I told you two not to wait until the last minute to get dressed,” warned Lynn Barber, appearing in the doorway to Matt’s room. “Turn around. Let me see how you boys look.”

I quickly finished buttoning up my silver tuxedo vest, and we both turned to face Mrs. Barber. Who produced a digital camera from hammerspace and, without warning, filled the bathroom with a flash.

“Mom!” Matt huffed, rubbing his eyes. “In the bathroom? Really?”

The camera went off again, and Mr. and Mrs. Barber both started cracking up at their son’s expense.

Matt, unamused.

Matt, stunning, in that tuxedo.

“Okay, okay,” Matt said, turning around and heading towards the other door, to his brother’s bedroom. “Three photos in the front yard, but then we’re going to the Hickses.”

“Five,” Mrs. Barber replied, sticking out her tongue, as we all filed into the hallway.

“Two!”

“Oh, I think I forgot to send in your car insurance payment this month,” Mr. Barber deadpanned. “Oops.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Fine. Five.”

Matt was smiling, though. He loved the attention that his parents showered on him, as much as he claimed to have hated it. Maybe he didn’t realize he loved it, but he did.

I thought of how I had left our homestead in Colton, earlier that day. Nicky, disappeared somewhere into the ether. My mom, passed out on the couch from a long day of lifting shot glasses.

I was losing Nicky. I realized that. I was desperate to get him into Las Palomas--told him to sign up for Latin, that he could get a transfer like I did, that I could drive him to school--but he hadn’t budged.

He wouldn’t even start his freshman year at Valencia High School until the fall, but he was already mixing with that crowd--and once he was in with that crowd, the last thing he wanted was to go to a place like Las Palomas.

The crowd J.C. mixed with: the ones that poached eighth graders before they even had a chance to set their foot on campus.

Though. Who was I to talk?

My business associate was a blonde AP student with a brand-new Mitsubishi Eclipse and loving parents and a house in Moreno Valley with a pool, but did that make the two of us any different than the La Cadena gangbangers Nicky was falling in with?

Oh, fuck that: it absolutely did.

Mrs. Barber positioned me and Matt in front of the bougainvilleas near their front walk, an eruption of pink flowers that looked like origami.

Matt had his arm around me. Hand resting on my shoulder, my hand on his lower back, and I thought about that moment when we were really drunk and his parents were out of town, and we jacked ourselves off side-by-side in his darkened bedroom.

And how every time he touched me, no matter how innocent, I thought of that moment. The only moment. Of Matt Barber.

Of course. It was just a picture.

When Mrs. Barber got her negotiated five--plus an extra, snuck in at the end as Matt and I fell away from each other--it was done. Matt beelined for the Eclipse, me following behind him, and Mr. and Mrs. Barber got in their Lexus. And we drove, two separate cars, to Jenna Hicks’s house for photos.

We were the last ones there: our group of five girls, five boys, all of our friends. Matt parked the Eclipse behind the awaiting Hummer limo, and we went out to great our awaiting women.

Lena and I were...

What, exactly?

She said boyfriend and girlfriend. Unilaterally. I would never do that to her, though I hadn’t stopped her.

Regardless. We were not nothing.

I’d started going with her about six months earlier, around Thanksgiving. Mostly because I knew she liked me and she was Jenna’s best friend. Jenna, who had begun siphoning Matt away; now, the four of us moved as a unit.

I liked Lena more than I had expected I would.

On paper, a girl so easy to hate. Pretty and blonde, popular, drove a Lexus. But there was nothing face value about Lena. She liked shopping and Sephora, sure, but Advanced Calculus and Megadeath, did an excellent Eric Cartman impression when she was stoned off her ass. Would paradrop into a war-zone for her brothers, her friends, for me.

She was absolutely earnest in her feelings towards me. Which I didn’t deserve.

Because what a terrible thing I was doing to this girl. This emotional Ponzi scheme.

Lena spotted me from across the Hickses’ lawn, self-conscious smile on her beautiful face. Smiling like she only partially approved of what she was wearing: silver metallic gown, sleeveless and plunging, a slit up the right side almost to her thigh, flirting with the outer limits of the school dress code.

Like Matt, Lena was courting prom royalty. They were running as a quasi-ticket. Jenna and I weren’t quite socially-positioned for that sort of thing.

Jenna. Matt’s Jenna. Standing next to Lena on the front patio: just as attractive, far less flashy. Generally how the two of them could be described in any setting.

Jenna, in a conservative white gown, little cap sleeves because Mormon. Almost like a wedding dress, and I wondered if Matt would wind up marrying this girl.

Matt: by all visible markings an awful Mormon, but maybe he would. Mormons always got married off young.

We exchanged corsages for boutonnieres, lined up for another round of pictures. I held Lena tightly in the line, a human shield in front of the firing squad, parents spraying us the ten of us with camera flashes for five or ten minutes. Not my parents: everyone else’s parents.

Let’s do just the girls. Just the boys.

Matt Barber’s strong hand resting on my shoulder, a second time.

Just Matt, Jenna, Kevin, Lena.

Just Harry, Julia, Hiroshi, Sarabeth. Just Tucker and Yeon-Mi.

Just Matt and Kevin.

His hand. On me. Again.

And so forth. Until the parents had their pound of flesh, and we were released to the Hummer limo.

“Yeahhh, boyyy,” Tucker said, slapping me on the shoulder as the ten of us piled into the limo. “This is fucking sick. Have you ever been in a limo this big before?”

“I’ve never been in a limo at all before,” I replied.

“Pabs, I could’ve sworn you took a limo to school every day freshman year,” Harry said to me, as he rolled up the window separating us from the driver. “Anyone else remember that?”

Pabs. Pablo. Escobar.

Last October, Tucker had declared me and Matt the Pablo and Roberto Escobar of Las Palomas High School, and somehow it stuck. Pabs and Bobs.

“I took a cab twice because my bike was stolen,” I told him. “The hood’s far as fuck, dude.”

“We all know Kevin’s about 90% legend at this point,” Lena said, with a smirk. To me, she added: "Now I’m just picturing you as a little baby-faced fourteen-year-old on a bike.” Leaned over to pinch my cheek, cooed at me. “Big oversized backpack filled with pot, your little legs peddling frantically. ‘Before They Were Famous.’”

“Okay,” Matt said, abruptly. He had a warning look on his face; next to him, Jenna was doing her best not to appear uncomfortable. No one was supposed to mention any of our lawbreaking in front of her.

Jenna knew, obviously, that Matt and I supplied pot to the bulk of Las Palomas students. Not even an open secret, but a shared fable.

But she absolutely did not approve. Even though Matt’s role had dwindled to emotional support animal by this point, albeit still in exchange for his 20% cut.

Lena, like an unexpectedly large segment of upper-middle-class Las Palomas girls, found the whole thing so glamorous, just dangerous enough.

“See, we should’ve gone to Colton to buy liquor,” Harry said. “I bet they’d sell it to, like, toddlers.”

Matt was still staring at him, stiffly. “Weren’t you just bragging about having a flask of Ketel One?”

He had his arm tightly around Jenna. Resting his hand on her little bridal cap sleeves.

“Yes, but it’s diminishing returns, dude,” Harry replied. “My parents drew a line in Sharpie back before they went to Hawaii, and it’s almost half water now.”

“No one share with Harry!” Lena giggled, raising her head from near my shoulder. She unzipped her purse, pulled out her flask, and turned to me. “Real rum this time, Pablo. Since you had such a problem with my Malibu.”

“A woman after my own heart.”

She clutched it to her chest, mock scandalized. “Who said it was for sharing?”

Fifteen flasks were all quickly emerging--everyone but Jenna, the only good Mormon out of the three we had in the limo--and everything was promptly mixed with the sodas the limos had been stocked with.

“A toast,” Matt said, holding up his solo cup. “Carpe noctem, carpe vinum...”

“Cunnus delenda est," I interrupted.

Matt laughed. No one else. Just collective eyerolls, per usual, whenever the extinct, secret language of me and Matt came flying out.

Tucker raised his own solo cup. “Here’s to getting fucked up, and then just plain fucked.” Yeon-Mi slapped his arm with giggling offense. Tucker raised his glass higher. “Cheers.”

“Literally what we just said,” Matt told him.

“Philistine,” I echoed.

We had a forty-five minute ride to Palm Springs, to enjoy the last gasp of acceptable desert weather before the temperature launched itself into the summer stratosphere.

But we were in a race against a different clock: to drain as much booze as we could so we didn’t have to show up to prom sober.

Dinner at the Ruth’s Chris downtown. Mr. and Mrs. Barber had given both me and Matt enough money to pay for our dinners and our dates’.

They didn’t know I had a source of income. Nor did they know Matt had a couple grand in drug money in a shoebox in his closet, left mostly unspent because his allowance covered everything.

I’d never been to Palm Springs before. Spent how many years in the dusty deserts of San Bernardino and Riverside, never ventured across the San Jacintos.

The Marriott Rancho Las Palmas, where the prom was, was by far the nicest place I had ever seen. In a tuxedo, out of a limo, into this place: like royalty, almost.

Not that I shared my amazement with anyone else, who had been staying at hotels like this since birth.

Prom was in a big ballroom, overlooking the lagoon and the golf course--purple lights, a big bandstand, heavily-decorated. The theme was “This Magic Moment,” which didn’t inspire very much confidence—we couldn’t discuss it, even amongst ourselves, because Tucker’s girlfriend Yeon-Mi was on the prom committee--but I hadn’t been expecting something this elaborate.

Which I should have. Las Palomas High School didn’t do small.

I tried to imagine what Valencia High School’s looked like--their prom, that same night back in Colton, in the back room of a YMCA or wherever. Streamers and balloons. No one knew any better.

Nick didn’t know any better--the only reason he wouldn’t let me spring him free.

Four years of Latin was a small price to pay for Las Palomas: for the beautiful girl with the Lexus and the best friend with thousands of dollars idling in his closet. No gangs or pregnant teens, no sad streamers and balloons.

He had to know better. I had to make him know better. I had the summer.

 

“First of all,” said Kaitlyn Ryerson, the chair of the prom committee--a senior cheerleader vastly overrated in the looks department, but of course I was gay, what did I know--from the bandstand. “I’d like to thank everyone for coming out to Palm Springs to the beautiful Marriott Rancho Las Palmas for ‘This Magic Moment,’ Prom 2004.”

We all clapped, blandly. Kaitlyn clapped into the microphone, an enemy air raid on the building.

Matt stared at me, eyes glassy with intoxication. “Pabs, if I don’t get Prom Prince,” he said, gruffly, “I’m going to kill myself.”

“You can’t kill yourself, dude,” I whispered back to him. “I’m crashing at your place tonight.”

“Oh please, my parents like you more than they like me,” he replied. “They’ll probably just give you my room when I die.” He looked back up at the bandstand. “Come on, Kaitlyn. Chop, chop.”

“And of course, I’d like to take a moment to thank each of our faculty volunteers who made this all possible,” Kaitlyn continued. She peered into the crowd. “Coach Walsh, where are you?”

Matt let out a low, glottal groan, like a garbage disposal, loud enough to cause both Jenna and Lena to glance slightly in his direction.

Each member of the prom committee took turns thanking the other thousand people in the room, one-by-one, for about sixteen more hours until Kaitlyn stepped back up to the microphone with a gold envelope and a smile.

“And now, what we’ve all been waiting for,” she said. Matt Barber suddenly perked up, markedly more sober than he had been seconds before. “It gives me great pleasure to introduce the 2004 Las Palomas High School Prom Court.”

Finally, thunderous applause.

Or, at least, thunderous applause from Matt Barber.

Who, despite his enthusiastic clapping, looked panic-stricken.

“Tonight, we’ll crown four members of the Prom Court,” Kaitlyn continued. “From the junior class, the two top vote-getters will be crowned Prom Prince and Princess, and from the senior class, your 2004 Las Palomas High School Prom King and Queen. And we ask that they’ll come up here for their crowns, and then join us for a dance.”

“We know how it works,” Matt snarled, sotto voce, except not quite; Jenna and Lena both glanced over at him again.

Kaitlyn struggled with the envelope.

I could hear Matt Barber’s heavy breathing next to me.

I wanted him to win so badly. I grabbed his shoulder. For luck, maybe. He turned to me, nervous smile.

“Your 2004 junior class Prom Prince and Princess,” Kaitlyn said. “Matthew Barber and Lena Taylor!”

A spotlight showered on us, and suddenly I was standing directly between the prom prince and princess.

I slinked backwards, not fast enough. Heard my name shouted by a couple people, heard someone else yell, “Menage-a-trois!” and a chorus of assorted laughter at that.

“Don’t worry, Pablo,” Matt told me, turning his head towards me, smirking, as he took Lena’s hand. “I’ll try not to steal your girl.”

“Like you could, Bobs!” I shouted after him.

The spotlight followed them away from me, to the bandstand. There was never anyone as happy as Matt Barber, getting his plastic crown and polyester sash. That smile, that could always make me weak at the knees, on full volume.

They announced Prom King and Queen, crowned them, and then all four royals descended to the empty dance floor, as the DJ struck up “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys.

Who would lead if Matt and I were the ones dancing?

Or would we just hold on to each other, lost so deep in the music and affection that we just moved together, one unit, across the dance floor?

There was nothing that wasn’t perfect about Matt. From his neatly-parted blond hair to his broad shoulders and his James Bond tuxedo, his arms, his ass, his legs.

Three years, and he hadn’t gone away.

Not a short-term rental like every other friendship I’d had.

He gave Lena a spin, a goofy smile on his face. Caused a cheer from the crowd that emboldened him to do it again.

It would be ridiculous if the two of us were up there, wouldn’t it? Prom Prince and his gentleman companion?

No. We would look perfect, no matter how we looked to everyone else.

The song ended. Matt hadn’t stopped smiling, stopped basking in the applause, as he and Lena returned to the group.

“Habemus papam,” he gushed, snaking his arm around Jenna’s waist. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

“Might want to finish that poem, Bobs,” I replied.

Matt didn’t get it. But nothing could extinguish the smile stretched across his face at this moment.

Lena came back to my side. “Congratulations, babe,” I told her, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek--but she had other ideas; grabbed my face and rerouted me to her lips, pulling me into a deep and passionate kiss.

One that elicited various howls from those in the immediate vicinity.

When I came up for air, I saw Matt smirking. “What, no congratulations for me?”

I smiled and gave him the finger. Wished I didn’t have to.

 

We were still drunk by the time the limo dropped us all back off at Jenna’s.

Matt said he was okay to drive, despite his tottering, so Lena and I got into the backseat of his Eclipse and waited for him to say goodbye to Jenna. Like a scene from a teen movie: Matt, in his Prom Prince sash and crown, Jenna bustling with nervous energy as they quietly conversed outside her front door.

“They could be a while,” Lena told me, snuggling up against me in the backseat. “Tell Bobs she’s getting closer to cracking.”

I didn’t want to know what that meant. I didn’t want to know, but I asked: “On drinking or sex?”

“Sex,” she said. She snuggled me closer, dropped her hand down to my thigh, and I could see where this was going. “I’m having such a perfect night with you.”

I glanced out the window, silent SOS to the back of Matt Barber’s crowned head.

Lena leaned in to kiss me. One of those kisses that seemed to build momentum as it rolled down the hill--until she had pulled herself up onto my lap, straddling one of my legs with her slit gown.

Vacant, drunk eyes, a sexy smile on her face, as she grabbed my hand, guided it slowly up her bare leg and…

Oh. God.

Too high.

No, no, no. Not touching that.

Certainly not.

“Lena,” I said, breaking the kiss, tugging my hand away as nonchalantly as I could. “You’re drunk.”

She smiled seductively, painted eyelids heavy. “So? You know I’ve wanted this for a while.”

“Not here,” I told her. “Not some quickie in the back seat of a car--I want our first night together to mean something. You’re worth doing it right. You’re worth waiting for.”

It was unpasteurized bullshit. I was desperate.

It wasn’t the first time I’d given one of these speeches to a drunk or stoned Lena, but they always seemed to work: she gave me this drunken doe-eyed look, oh-my-god-my-boyfriend-is-so-sweet.

“One in a million, Pabs,” she whispered to me, holding the back of my head, pulling me back in for a short kiss.

She’s still straddling my leg. And, having failed at getting my hands on her genitals, decided to flip the script--working her way down.

“Well,” Lena whispered, “how about I take care of that?”

That she had done twice before, because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the structural integrity of a vagina but I absolutely wasn’t going to turn down a free blowjob.

She unhooked my pants, pulled the zipper down. I was already half-hard, and usually I’d think about Matt in these situations--close my eyes and think of him--but I didn’t need to this time.

I told Lena I’d keep a “lookout.”

And watched his shoulders, his ass, those legs, standing across the lawn.

Then--shit, Matt turned around and came back down the walk.

“Matt’s coming,” I whispered, and Lena was quick: dropped my dick from her mouth, and flung herself back into her seat, as I quickly tried to zip myself back up.

Matt opened the car door, leaned over the seat, grinning maniacally at us. “Need me to say goodnight to Jenna again, you two?”

Lena was staring out her window, trying very intentionally not to engage on that topic.

“Drive, dude,” I told him.

Matt put the key in the ignition, and stared at it, as if the car might will itself home.

It didn’t. He turned it slowly, seemed surprised that the lights came on, as if he was expecting the car to have as rough of a go at it as he was.

“Why didn’t he just have his parents pick him up?” Lena whispered.

“His parents think he doesn’t drink,” I told her. “Mormons.”

“Bobs, up the hill,” Lena commanded, through fits of giggles.

Matt rounded the corner from Stephenson to Kennedy Drive, dark and desolate at this time of night. Eyes glued open, hands at ten and two, driving about two miles per hour, willing himself to stay in a straight line for the half-mile up the hill towards Lena’s house.

Lena pulled me closer to her. Lips on lips, her lipsticky taste faded by this part of the night.

“I always forget which cul-de-sac it is,” Matt said.

Lena broke the kiss only briefly, glanced out the window.

“I’m on Norfolk,” she said, settling back into my face. “Two more.”

Matt finally got to Lena’s street, end of the street, and pulled the car next to the curb, ish.

Lena and I both got out of the car, and I walked her to her front door. I knew Matt Barber was looking, drunkenly peering out of the car window, and I gave her a very soft kiss, told her I’d call her tomorrow, and she smiled at me.

“I can sneak you in and we can finish up if you want,” she whispered. “My parents are the heaviest sleepers on the planet.”

I shook my head. “The Barbers would flip if we miss curfew.”

A lie--they’d be asleep too. They never suspected Matt of being anything less than golden.

Lena: a sweet smile. A nice girl.

I watched her go inside. And went back to the car, feeling like absolute shit.

I settled into the passenger seat. Matt had turned the car off, was resting his head on the steering wheel.

“You okay, dude?”

He looked down at the key in the ignition. “I need to sober up a sec before I attempt driving down Cactus or Nason, I think. Do you have weed?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s what you need to sober up, dude.”

Matt didn’t listen. He opened the car door, slammed it too loudly behind him, and took off on foot up towards the trailhead at the end of the block.

Lena lived against the top of the hillside; up the trail, maybe five or six minutes, a little cliff that overlooked Lake Perris. Notably, a top spot for privacy--read: drinking or smoking--for the Las Palomas set, because you couldn’t see it from any of the houses in Lena’s development.

Matt and I had never hiked there in rented tuxedo shoes in the pitch black, but muscle memory got us there. Lake Perris below--the lights from the recreation area casting the cliff in a pale light, a notch above darkness.

Matt sat down, in the brown dirt, dangled his legs off the side of the cliff. And I sat down next to him. Staring out at the dark lake. It was a cool night, pleasant. Perfect.

He plucked the joint out of my hands before I had a chance to light it, and stuck it between his teeth, but didn’t actually ask me for my lighter.

He looked down at his PROM PRINCE sash. “You should call me Your Majesty from now on, dude.”

“Yeah, that’s probably going to happen, Bobs,” I told him. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

He started screeching out the chorus to “If I Ain’t Got You,” off-key.

I pulled the unlit joint out his clenched teeth, lit it, inhaled deeply. “You’re going to get the cops called on us if you keep singing.”

“No one can hear us,” he said. He squinted out at the valley, eyes lopsided. “That’s why I love here. It’s like we’re the only people in the world.” Smirked up at me. “Was Lena going down on you in the backseat just now?”

“No comment.”

“Proud of you, dude,” he said. “Jealous. Jenna won’t even do that.”

“We both have good girlfriends,” I reminded him.

Oof. Caught myself. “Girlfriend.”Despite my best efforts, and Matt had heard it too.

“Girlfriend,” he repeated. “You’ve never called her that before. She calls you her boyfriend, but you’ve never called her that.” He paused. “Is she?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Why?”

Because I’m gay, Matt.

How easy would those words be? Four words. A band-aid.

I wince. Maybe. Inwardly.

“I don’t know,” I repeat, instead. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend, I guess. And Lena’s a nice girl but… You know. I don’t know if she’s the one. I don’t know if I’m ready.”

It was a whole mess of different excuses, but Matt didn’t say anything. He nodded. Took the blunt out of my mouth and stuck it back in his teeth, again without lighting it.

“Every girl in our class wants to jump your bones, Pablo,” he told me. “You know that, right?”

I absolutely did not know that. Nor did I actually believe that.

“This is going to sound so stupid,” he continued, “but I was so nervous tonight because I thought I was going to lose Prom Prince to you. Without you even campaigning for it.”

I giggled. I couldn’t help it.

The idea that Kevin Malley--who conned his way into Las Palomas, who sold weed to half the student body; the gay boy from Colton with the dead father and alcoholic mother; who never had a home, never had actual friends--could win a popularity contest was absurd.

“Does that make me an asshole?” he asked. “You’re my best friend, Kevin. ‘If I ain’t got yo-o-ou.’”

It was romantic. Almost. In that homoerotic straight bro sort of way. “Ebrius es, Bobs.”

“I know I’m drunk,” he replied. “Kevin.”

“Matt.”

Matt lay back into the dirt, legs still dangling over the hillside. I lay down next to him.

“This is like after that party,” he whispered. “Except we have clothes on.”

And, oh, God. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t believe this was happening.

We had never mentioned that party--the party where, afterwards, we jacked off together in Matt’s bed.

That was nine months ago, and neither of us had brought it up, because how could I and why would he?

I thought about it. All the time. Every time I jacked off, at least, every time Lena had gone down on me.

What could I say, in this situation, without telling him the truth? That I’d wanted him for three years? I’d imagined this moment, so many times, but I never imagined what I would say.

Instead: “I thought you were blacked out or whatever,” I told him. Quickly added an escape hatch: “I practically was.”

He didn’t say anything at first. We were alone, it was still, but the desert was suddenly loud: the crickets, the faraway coyotes, the wind skimming across Lake Perris.

“No,” he said, finally. “I remember it.” He closed his eyes. Gave a tiny breath of air. I wasn’t used to seeing him like this: unsure of himself. Unsure of what to say. “I liked it.”

I liked it.

He liked it, liked it? Liked it beyond a straight bro right of passage? Liked me, liked it?

“I liked it too,” I told him, quickly, before he could take it back, throw me away. “Doing it with you.”

We lay together, side by side. Our tuxedos, his Prom Prince sash, fading beige in the desert dust.

Above us, stars: the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the North Star.

How did I know the stars? Because Matt taught me them. Smoking up here, at the end of last summer when he got back from camp counseling.

The best gift you can give someone is hope.

I turned onto my side, to face Matt Barber. And he turned to face me too.

Couldn’t tell who drew first.

But, in the dirt, on prom night, I was kissing the best friend I ever had. And he didn’t stop me.

 

“It’s J.D. again,” Ross says, handing me the phone, rolling his eyes. “Is this another booty call? Are you ditching us tonight?”

It’s not a booty call, but I’m probably ditching them for Duncan Rinehart.

I’ve met him exactly four times, only one of which resulted in sex.

Most recently, the fourth time, I’d run into him double-parked outside Le Manifeste the other day, idling in his black Audi, waiting to pick up Sébastien. Chatted for a bit. All surface.

And he apologized for being too drunk on the anniversary of Mark’s death.

Which of course I told him not to worry about. How much worse had I seen.

And he asked if he could call me. Which I agreed to because I’m pretty sure I want to have sex with him.

How I felt so much nothing with the French Torso, and how I want to sing.

Maybe that’s Duncan. Maybe it isn’t. But he’s the only one I can think of in Paris.

The only one on my calling card, like I had been on the anniversary of Mark’s death.

At least I know I won’t want to leave after I cum. And that’s something.

The distraction Duncan has handed me tonight is much appreciated, at any rate. I had spent the last twenty minutes figuring out how to respond to an email from Veronica Tandy:

Subject line: “AMBER ALERT FOR KEVIN MALLEY, WHO HASN’T CONTACTED ANY OF HIS TULANE FRIENDS IN A MONTH.” Nothing in the body.

I sent her back a feeble, “You know I’m bad at keeping in touch, but I’ll give you an update soon. Miss you!”

It didn’t even sound sincere when I smashed it out, but I had to go meet Duncan.

“And on a Saturday,” Duncan says, as he leads me into his living room. “Giving quite a high-profile night to little old me.”

“Well, you unfortunately don’t get the whole night.”

“Big plans?”

“I’m meeting everyone out in the Montmartre.”

“So we’ll hurry right to the booze, then,” he says, heading over to the bar car. “What are you drinking?”

“How about a negroni?”

“Ah, reckon I inspired you,” he says. He begins to make the drinks. “I’m glad I ran into you the other day. I was hoping you didn’t lose interest after we didn’t have sex. I’m so embarrassed; I was quite pissed even when you arrived, obviously.”

“It was a tough day,” I reply. “I’d be drunk too. We’re not drinking to any other tragedy today, are we?”

“I am tragedy-free, cross my heart,” he replies. “I just thought we could talk. And drink. And see where the night takes us.”

“I feel like I might enjoy all of those things,” I tell him. “I like talking to you.”

He stirs the cocktail. “The guys looking for conversation tend to prefer me. The guys looking for not conversation tend to prefer Sébastien.” With a smirk, he adds: “Though Sébastien’s more eloquent if you speak French. Not loads more, but more. I’m sure he’s downright fascinating in his native Hungarian.”

I smile. “He’s a nice guy. You’re too hard on him.”

“He is a nice guy,” Duncan agrees. He’s about to say more, but instead he drinks.

“Does he know I’ve come over?”

“Neither of us tell,” he replies. “He knows I don’t do this very often. If anything, he’s probably frustrated that you’ve stopped giving him the time of day.” He pauses. “Not to be presumptuous. I don’t know if you’re here when I’m not, nor is it my business.”

“I’m not.”

“Good,” he says. “I like the thought of having you to myself. Well, not that I’ve had you, and not that I have you to myself, but you know.”

“It’s been fewer than you’d think,” I assure him. “Though I hooked up with someone after I left here last time. Maybe I was a little bit messy too. And I called my ex. In New Orleans.”

Duncan grins. “Oh, Lord, to be twenty-one again. What happened?”

“With the hookup, or with my ex?”

“Both, clearly,” he says. “Start with the ex.”

“I don’t even know what I said, to be entirely honest. I think I apologized. For breaking up with him. I know I told him I still care about him. It was a short phone call, I don’t know.”

“Do you want him back?”

“He doesn’t want me back.”

“But that wasn’t my question, ay?”

“No,” I tell him. “You said Mark told you that you were home. Becker always made me feel like I wasn’t.”

“I see,” Duncan says. “Then leave him be, and make peace with the fact that you never get over your first love. Not really. It’s all so new. Feeling in love. Feeling like you’ve found your person. And it’s traumatic when it’s snatched away. But you’re not different from anyone else. It happens to everyone.”

“Even you.”

“Oh, reckon you found out in a big way this applies especially to me,” he says. “It’s good to get the first love out of the way, so you can realize perfect man doesn’t exist.”

I look into his eyes, his pale eyes, his sad eyes.

“I wish you had someone perfect.”

His eyes flicker, his smile solidifies. “You keep acting like I’m not happy, but I’m not unhappy.”

“Sébastien.”

“Sébastien is Sébastien,” he tells me. “When you’re young, you think a man is going to complete you, make you love yourself, make you happy. But maybe you find a sexy man that makes you smile, that you don’t mind waking up next to in the morning. And that’s not the worse thing you could have. They don’t write fairy tales about everybody. And it’s a hell of a lot easier than being alone forever, than starting over.”

Sébastien is Sébastien.

Duncan is Duncan.

Becker is Becker.

“I’ve always loved the starting over.”

Another series of moments. The next series of moments.

“Someday, you won’t,” he tells me. “You’ll be settled down with a beautiful man and you two will be sickeningly sweet together. And I’ll just be the story you tell when you talk about your semester in France. Your torrid affair with a dashing doctor when his boyfriend was at work. How perfectly Parisian of us.”

How many Duncans were left in my wake, the dozen times I moved?

The perfectly good people, tossed to history, how perfectly Parisian.

People I had cared about, whose names I can’t even remember.

I put my hand on Duncan’s bare thigh.

Because I want to remember him, not have him namelessly survive in my scars.

“So,” he whispers, his hand on my bicep. “Tell me about your hookup, then.”

I give him a smile. “Nothing compared to you.”

And with automatic movement, he leans into me.

And we kiss.

A slow kiss. Long, passionate. All the time in the world. As if all we have is time.

My hands begin to wander--down his back, cupping his ass. Pulling down his shorts just a little.

He’s on my lap. I’m holding him.

Kissing, harder, rougher, until I slowly lower him down to the floor.

He undoes my belt. Fiddles with my button, and my fly.

I spill out. Already rock hard.

Already ready for this.

“Want me to suck you off?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Get me lube, and a condom, and I’m going to fuck you into the floor.”

Duncan’s eyes love that.

He scrambles up from the floor, he goes to the bedroom--he comes back, in just his underwear, holding a condom and a bottle of lube.

Kneels down on the rug next to me. Grabs my shoulder, pulls me into another kiss.

“Get on all fours,” I tell him. “And get naked.”

He does. Pulls off his underwear, his dick springing into action.

Gets on all fours. Waits for me.

I wait. I’m in no hurry. I like to make him wait.

I rip open the condom with my teeth. Roll it onto my dick. Lube up, and kneel behind him.

Duncan grunts as I slide my cock into him.

Put both hands on his hips, slowly begin to pump into him, slow at first, faster.

And Duncan’s not a loud bottom, usually. But when I’m hitting that spot.

Fuck him harder. And harder. I put my hand on his chest, pull him up towards me, so his back is against my torso.

Grab his head, turn it towards me. Kiss him. Hard. As I continue to pump that ass.

Lower my hand to his dick. Start stroking his dick

He’s moaning, into my mouth, for just a second. Louder. And then shoots cum onto the carpet.

But he doesn’t tell me to stop. So I keep fucking. And he keeps grunting, until I dump a load into his ass.

And we both fall over, in each other’s arms, on the rough pile of carpet.

Duncan’s hand on my cheek.

“That was,” he whispers. He doesn’t have the word.

“Something you’ll be telling people in ten years, how very Parisian of us?”

Duncan smiles. “Twenty years. Thirty years.” He kisses me. “In my memoir.”

I don't know what I feel. The ocean.

 

I didn’t want to fall for Becker.

I feared that’s exactly what I was doing.

Those thoughts bothered me less when I was balls-deep in Ben Farber, so that was where I spent the remainder of Winter 2007.

Specifically avoiding Becker, since that night he:

a) went on a date with a woman after I specifically told him not to,

b) wore me down until I finally agreed to forgive him, and,

c) almost immediately ditched me, literally mid-blowjob, to run a secret errand for his pledgemaster, details of which I was not authorized to know.

All within the span of about three hours.

Peter Adam Becker, the Queen of Infuriating.

Ben was refreshingly low maintenance. Demanded only dick, gave only orifices.

Most notably: did not give me pain.

Whereas Becker would only give me pain, and look: I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what it was going to be like to start hooking up with a closeted friend, to hope that it could be more, to be crushed when it became clear it was never going to be.

You never build love on shifting sands. I had never had a boyfriend before, but I did know that much.

Though he was adorable, in his preppy polos, in his airtight bubble of naive optimism.

Did I miss him when I wasn’t seeing him? Sure. But I would miss him a whole lot more if he broke my heart.

Considering our vast number of mutual friends, I had a good run with avoiding him: didn’t see him until Destin, Spring Break 2007, when we were roommates in the same rented beach house, the one Veronica had snagged for all of us.

Where Becker proceeded to lie in wait, until he was drunk enough and we were alone enough.

Case in point: the second I left the bonfire outside the girls’ house, to head back to our place to get my flashlight. Who was nipping at my heels:

“You owe me a chance to talk,” said Becker, once he caught up to me, down the dark beach.

I absolutely did not. By the way.

I ignored him, and continued to walk towards our house, as if there was any chance that would dissuade him, but he matched my pace, kept coming.

“We fucked around,” I told him, “and now we don’t.”

The words struck Becker like a blow to the face, which was exactly the point.

Did I know it would hurt him? Absolutely. Good.

“Oh fuck you,” Becker said, finally, when he regained his composure. “I’m sorry. Is that what you want me to say? I’m sorry. I want to be with you. Is that what you want to hear?”

I wasn’t sure Becker ever said anything that he didn’t think people wanted to hear.

What did I want to hear from him? Anything? I didn’t want an apology. Apologies were simple. Dead words.

I wanted him to be different. That was what I wanted: to not go down the same road I’d been down before, to know that there wasn’t going to be some absolute calamity of an ending.

“I don’t want to hear anything,” I told him. “I want you to stop ignoring what I want and need.”

And Becker takes umbrage at that. Like I spoke out of turn. It was not an emotion I saw coming from him, and it suddenly puts me on the defensive, which I did not appreciate considering this situation.

“You don’t even tell me what you want and need,” he shot back. “When have you ever told me what you want and what you need? One minute, we’re having some fun, and I actually feel like--” And he stopped. Rage to sorrow. Looked like he was about to cry, but didn’t. “I liked where things were between us. I didn’t know why they needed to be different.”

Really, Becker? Different than ditching me in the middle of a blowjob? Different than pretending to date a girl when you really wanted to be ass up in my bed?

I shouldn’t have had to tell him that.

Anger receded, his face settled back into dismay.

Doe-eyed sincerity.

God, it was like kicking a puppy.

“I stopped it before it fucked us both over,” I told him, my voice more quiet than I had anticipated. “It can’t happen.” We were friends, and he would wind up hurting me because he wasn’t going to be capable of giving me what I wanted and needed.

And my wants and needs were plenty clear, thank you very much.

“I want you so fucking bad.” His voice cracked. This was where he started crying, just a little: his eyes getting more than a little wet, a little glossy. “And I don’t know—I don’t know if I’m ready for anything. And I don’t know if we can make any of this work, but I just…”

His voice trailed off. There was nothing I could say.

Gobsmacked. Maybe.

By the vulnerability that Becker had never quite shown me before.

He did need me--different than Matt, in that way.

Becker: utterly unequipped for a world that demanded complexity and sacrifice, but he was not a teardown. Could be shaped. Could be saved. Could come through.

Could he?

I want you so fucking bad.

Because I wanted him. So fucking bad.

Then we can do this all the time.

What happens to all of us if you leave?

You warped-fucking-lunatic.

And then, Veronica’s voice. Interrupting. “Bonfire still going strong?”

Her voice dragged us both back to the beach. Back to reality. Back to face Dana, Maddie, and Veronica, who were standing on the beach, each carrying a case of beer.

“Forgot my flashlight,” I told them, quietly. “Getting dark.”

“The red one, right?” Maddie asked, patting her straw tote bag. “I got it. Let’s get back to our place before the Iota Chis revolt from lack of beer.”

“Which I’m happy to let you two carry,” added Veronica, to me and Becker, “because I know you’re more polite than the rest of the boys who sent us on a beer run like pack mules.”

We took their cases of beer, followed them back to the bonfire.

And Becker was all I thought of for the rest of the night.

I want you so fucking bad.

He had said.

No other words that really mattered. All of his sins, washed away with one benediction.

“What do you do,” I asked Veronica, once I got her away from the group, the two of us walking along the wet sand in the surf. “When you’re crazy about someone, but think they’ll disappoint you?”

“Disappoint you how? In bed?”

“No. In general. Like, if someone’s sweet but maybe a little selfish. Some red flags. Both sides kind of waffling on taking the next step.”

Veronica smiled. “Who is he?”

“It’s a hypothetical question.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Well, hypothetically, you’d better give me more details if you want my opinion. Because I’m the only person at this bonfire who knows you’re gay. Sellers’ market.”

I flung my head backwards. Defeated by Veronica’s Economics 101 terminology.

“I can’t tell you his name.”

“Okay, so for the sake of simplicity, we’ll just call him,” Veronica said, “Ben Farber?”

“It’s not Ben. This guy’s in the closet. And you don’t know him.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, again, scanning her eyes the catalog of Iota Chi brothers gathered around the bonfire. “So what are you saying? That you like a guy, but he’s kind of an idiot when it comes to being in a relationship? And you think he’s going to flip out if you guys take it from sex to actual romance, he’ll wind up dicking you over just when you started caring about him, and you’ll get your heart broken?”

Veronica: a tactical missile. “Essentially.”

“Well,” she said, “that basically describe every single relationship I’ve ever been in, so that’s depressing. And yeah, dating a guy who’s a dick with commitment issues sucks. But I will say this: getting screwed over hurts less and less every time it happens.” She gave me the world’s most pitying eyes. “I know that’s what your thinking about.”

It was, in fact, what I was thinking about.

And trying desperately not to think about.

I popped open my hand sanitizer, squirted some on my hands.

“Take it from someone who’s well into the double-digits of men who have dicked me over,” she continued. “It’s part of the process, and people always surprise you. Sometimes surprise you. You only need to find one guy who isn’t a dick, and I have it on good sources that he’s out there.”

Becker was not a dick. For what it was worth.

Inconsiderate sometimes, and selfish, aloof, but not a dick. A good heart.

Though who could sort out what was real and what was delusion, when there were emotions involved.

“You can’t find love unless you’re willing to get hurt,” she said. “Part of life. So go for it. And if it goes to shit, I’ll be waiting there with ice cream and vodka to break your fall.”

The night bore on.

Veronica. Eagle eyes. I tried to not to even look at Becker.

Finally, when everyone was far too drunk and the fire was crushed down to its last embers, we all managed to stumble down the beach towards the house.

And once it was still, and dark, I snuck downstairs to Becker’s bedroom. The little closet behind the laundry room, tucked away from the rest of the world. He was sharing it with Tripp, but Tripp had passed out on the couch in the girls’ house. Wouldn’t be coming back until morning.

Maybe Becker knew I was coming. Or hoped I was coming.

He was in bed, with the lights on. Shirtless.

“You got a minute?”

He nodded. Didn’t say anything. Still my turn to talk, apparently, like he had pushed pause on our entire conversation.

I did not want to lie to him. That much I knew.

“The fact is I like you a lot,” I told him. “And I was mad, and I was hurt, and I don’t like being hurt. And it was a hell of a lot easier to make it all your fault than to let myself fall for you.”

Becker was still waiting.

There was a pillow sitting on Tripp’s air mattress, and I thought: how Becker

I reached in my pocket, pulled out my bottle of hand sanitizer.

“So, I’m sorry for that,” I continued. “Is really all I can say at this point. I’m scared of you, how I feel about you, but I don’t want to be so scared that we don’t see where this goes. Because I know I don’t want to lose you.”

Because I know I don’t want to lose you.

I want you so fucking bad.

Becker pulled back the sheets.

Stepped off the bed.

And promptly ruined what would’ve been an incredibly romantic embrace, when he foot caught Tripp’s empty air mattress, and he fell forward onto it, tumbling like debris.

And, God, it was so terrible, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. From laughing at the sheer lunacy of this romantic, or quasi-romantic, moment between the two of us.

“That’s not the way that was supposed to go, was it?”

Becker was smiling. Laughing. Shook his head. I offered him my hand, and pulled him up and into me.

And as quickly as we had started laughing, we had stopped. Because it wasn’t funny anymore. To either of us.

We leaned into each other, kissed. Lips exploring lips, tongues tangling with tongues.

As if it was the first time. Even though it wasn’t.

I didn’t know where Becker fit into the series of moments that made up everything, but he was here and his body was against mine and maybe Veronica was right: probation. Can’t fall in love unless you take a chance.

Because history didn’t repeat itself. Not always. Someone leaving didn’t mean everyone left.

“Lock the door,” I whispered, my mouth an inch from his.

Becker reached around, clicked the deadbolt into place. Sly smile on his face. He wanted it.

We kissed again, this time softer. Pulled him in close with one hand, held his cheek with the other hand.

“Your hands smell like Purell,” he whispered, and I had maybe used half a bottle while waiting outside his door. Figuring out if I wanted to go and finish this start, mind clouded by crippling anxiety.

But I didn’t feel it now. I only felt him. “I have excellent hygiene,” I whispered.

“You’re just scared of germs.”

My lips landed on his earlobe, and for that moment at least, “I’m not scared of anything.”

And I spun him around with my free hand, smashed the front of his body into the door.

He let out an involuntary moan. Knew what was coming. Knew he was getting fucked by someone who may or may not be heading towards a relationship with him.

Did it scare you, Becker? Did it?

It scared the shit out of me, but I wouldn’t let it.

I pulled his underwear down, his pale, beautiful bubble butt was winking back at me. Ready and willing and fuckable.

I undid my belt. Pulled down my pants, and I was already rock hard. Just thinking about Becker. Just thinking about everything.

Kept it holstered between his buttcheeks, leaned into kiss his neck.

“How about a proposition?” I asked. “I fuck you right now.”

“That’s not a proposition.”

“You have--” I grabbed a handful of his taut butt. “--the hottest little ass I’ve ever seen. And I have this huge dick. I mean, you have to put your best foot forward, Becker, you really do. We’ve got to play to our strengths.”

Becker said nothing. He turned around, put his hands on my biceps as if he was going to say something, but didn’t. Instead, led me over to the bed--too tentative, crossing the air mattress, which made me smile.

Becker settled onto his back. Was already rock hard, as he pulled his legs to his chest.

“Go slow,” he whispered. “You’re big.”

I fished a condom out of my pocket, because I knew where this was going. Tore it open, slipped it on my engorged dick.

“They didn’t make you take a dick yet, during pledgeship?” I asked.

“Ha, ha.”

“Five seconds in, you’re going to want me to never leave. Remember last time?”

Becker said nothing. He bit his lip. Grimaced. Waited. As I slowly eased myself in.

“Stop, stop,” he whispered. “It’s too big.”

What a little bitch. He’d taken it before!

“You’ve taken it before!” I leaned in. I kissed him. “Don’t say ‘stop’ unless you mean it. Power through.”

And he did. He looked like he was going to bite through his bottom lip, but he didn’t tell me to stop. And then he had that look of sudden euphoria that all bottoms got when I was all the way in, when it stopped hurting, when it felt full and good and so fucking sexy.

Oh, my God, he was so fucking tight. I could barely move, he was so fucking tight.

So I started off slow. To let us both get used to it. Slowly rocked my hips, and fuck, how sensitive was I.

Becker didn’t really need to get used to it. Dick was already throbbing, leaking gossamer drops of precum, and he was starting to moan. Not loud enough for me to shut him up, but moan, without thinking about it.

So I went faster. And his moans became continuous, louder, so I leaned down and kissed him.

A kiss he was in no position to reciprocate, his brain become mush. I touched his paralyzed tongue with mine, I mashed against his lips, I continued to slam my hips harder, harder against him.

He was jacking now. Furiously jacking.

Couldn’t handle any more of this, but he was going to get it. He was going to fucking get it. I fucked him as hard as I could, still tangling my tongue with his--which I needed because I was about to cum.

I was. Cumming.

Just I felt Becker explode all over both of our stomachs.

I pulled out of his ass, slowly. We were both glossy with sweat. Breathing heavily, a quick fuck but an intense one.

My dick--the entire reservoir tip filled with cum, leaking down the rest of the condom.

“Well,” I told him, “that was good.”

Never eloquent, after sex. Couldn’t come up with a clever turn of Latin phrase, like some other people.

“I missed you,” he told me. “I like you.”

Becker: so naive, but so sweet, so cute, so charming in his own way. So simplistic in how he saw the world. I like you.

I leaned down to his naked, shimmering body, and kissed his cheek. “I like you too.”

“Does it have to be any more complicated than that?”

I wanted to tell him: if it was that simple, everyone would be in love. No pockmarks on your soul because someone was here and you loved them and then they were gone, long before it was time for them to go.

But it wasn’t the moment to tell him that, and I should’ve gone with my gut instinct: You’re absolutely right, Becker, it can be as simple as that.

“It’s way more complicated,” I told him, instead. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Because I should have done that the first time, and I didn’t, and look what happened. “You’re my friend, but everything’s going to change if we do anything more. Things we want, or don’t want, and I don’t want to hurt you.” I didn’t want you to hurt me. “No, it’s complicated as fuck. Trust me on that one.”

“When it gets complicated, we figure it out, but for now: I like you. You like me.”

Then we can do this all the time.

No. I was not going to think like that.

So instead, I smiled and leaned into Becker. “Okay.”

 

I head down to the Metro on the corner, go down the stairs.

Heading to the Montmartre; I had called Aaron’s international cell phone from Duncan’s.

In slightly slurring words, he told me: “I have a big fucking surprise for you when you get here.”

There are not many surprises Aaron Ackerman could give me, but all of them are conspicuously bad. Matt Barber? Fuck--Becker?

Peter Adam Becker secretly flying to Paris on a Saturday in February would, of course, be the most fucking ridiculous thing ever, and probably the most Becker thing he could possibly do.

If he did.

Which he wouldn’t. Because the paper trail.

He couldn’t tell his parents that he was flying to Paris to win back his ex-boyfriend, because that would require conversations that Becker has no interest in ever having with anyone.

He couldn’t even book an Amtrak ticket to visit a “friend” for the weekend when I lived in New York.

And maybe that’s the source of the anxiety. Which I didn’t realize I had.

Because everything was normal, as I walked down the stairs into the Metro station.

I feel rushed, and hurried, and a little awkward that I just came from sex.

And then: I also feel. Sudden.

Pangs of anxiety.

My breathing hastens.

Rumbling in my chest, in my stomach.

No. Not now. It’s in my mind. It’s not reality.

I can see the headlights from the train, further down the tunnel.

My mind, clouded by just one thought: what if I jumped in front of the train?

I’m not considering doing that. I’m not suicidal.

I’m not anything, because these aren’t my thoughts: they’re the obsessive-compulsive thoughts, the intrusive thoughts.

But they continue to wash in. Constant, tidal.

No opinion, no bias, just idle curiosity: what if I jumped in front of the train?

If my legs suddenly take me across the platform, and take one last flying leap?

I fumble in my pocket for my hand sanitizer, with a suddenly tremorous hand. Squeeze a drop and rub together, but it’s not going to work: this isn’t about hands, this is about feet.

I have nothing for feet.

What if I do.

I won’t.

But what if I do.

I begin pacing. Up the platform.

Trying to count my breaths. Trying to count my steps.

Trying not to listen to the sound of the train barrelling towards the station.

Faster, faster. Killing machine.

Headlights. Reflected on the wall in front of me.

I don’t know what to do. This is it.

Oh God. What if I do.

No. I won’t.

But what if I do.

My body is shaking. I don’t know what to do, except grab onto the closest pillar.

Hold on. So I won’t be swept away.

The train.

Louder. Faster.

Please don’t make me do this.

I don’t want to do this. I won’t do this.

What if I do.

And the train comes to a stop.

And I come to a stop.

My eyes flicker open.

Still breathing heavily. Sweating. Like I’d seen the nuclear bomb detonate and wipe out society, but I’m still here.

It’s eerie, still. On the platform.

The train doors open.

Everyone steps inside. I step inside.

Anxiety washed away.

And in three stops, Lamarck metro station.

Short, uneventful trip. Hardly worth having a panic attack over.

So stupid. To let my mind get rankled.

Damn, I can use that drink.

Which I order, once I get to Pichon: a crowded and dark nightclub that seems to go on and on. I push my way through the crowd until I see Aaron.

Aaron: alone, up against a wall in the back corner, nursing a drink and staring out at the dance floor.

“Wallflower,” I greet. “Where’s Ross and Nina?”

Aaron grins. “Well, that was supposed to be your surprise. Believe it or not, Ross and Nina were making out on the dance floor for about an hour and they told me about fifteen minutes ago that they’re going home to bone.”

“And you just stayed in the back corner?”

“And let you wander around the world’s most aggressively straight dance club until sunrise, wondering where the hell we all went?”

“So sweet.”

“I’m a fucking gem of a man,” he corrects. “How was J.D.? Are we still pretending he’s not Duncan Rinehart?”

“Yes.”

“You’re playing with fire.”

“They’re open,” I tell him. “He’s a thirty-year-old French doctor: what, am I supposed to be operating under a delusion that we’re going to ride off into the sunset.”

“I don’t know why you can’t just have casual, meaningless sex like everyone else studying abroad.”

“It’s better when you know the person,” I tell him. “There’s something there.”

“He bottom? Of course he did. You’re not going to bottom.”

“I’ve bottomed before.”

“Let me guess,” he says. “Once? In a relationship? When you were too drunk to be ‘adequate’?”

I don’t say anything, and Aaron throws his head back in a drunken cackle.

“I’m imagining you bottoming for your ex,” he says. “I genuinely cannot see it.”

“You don’t know my ex.”

“Oh, I know your ex,” he replies. “Carver leaks like a sieve. But hey, the boy is cute. Rich parents. You could’ve done worse.” He claps his hands. “Speaking of doing worse, want to go somewhere gayer?”

“What, trawl for some dick?”

“Just because you had sex an hour ago doesn’t mean the rest of us did.”

“Do you even know where there’s a gay bar around here? This isn’t the Marais.”

“How hard could one be to find?” he asks me.

“I mean, pretty fucking hard, considering we don’t know where we are or speak the language.”

Aaron wrinkles his nose. “We’ll find one.”

We didn’t find one. For the record.

But we stop off at a few more bars, a few more drinks, let the night slowly seep away.

Until we’re back in the Metro station, and I hear the train hurtling down the tunnel, and oh God, it’s happening again.

WIth Aaron here.

He’s talking about boots.

I grab onto the side of an advertisement, cling to it, and it seems to work: the idea that I’m not completely untethered. And I know: it’s so fucking stupid.

I won’t jump in front of the train.

But what if I do.

I won’t push someone in front of the train, holy fuckity fuck, where did that come from.

But what if I do.

I’m not suicidal, I’m not evil, I love my life very much. This is coming from nowhere.

He’s still talking about boots.

I grip the edge of the advertisement with a clenched fist, and I hope, I hope, I hope that it’ll hang on, which I know I will because I’m not jumping in front of a train but what if I do.

I fumble with my bottle of Purell and it falls to the ground, skids across the floor to the edge of the track.

And the train is charging. Towards me. Towards Aaron. Towards a dozen or so people that I could get a running start and throw both of us in the path of…

I can’t let go. No.

But what if I do.

No. I won't.

But the Purell.

“Aaron,” I say, sternly, “I need you to pick up my Purell.”

Aaron looks at me like I’m insane, which of course I am, but I don’t have time for this, so I just yell, maybe too desperately: “Pick up the fucking Purell right now!”

“Uh, okay,” Aaron says; and he does it. He just walks right to the edge, bends down, and picks it up, like it’s just a completely nonchalant thing, which of course it is.

When it’s back in my hand. The gel on my hand.

Like a miracle. I can let go.

And rub my hands together and the train slows to the platform, and we casually walk through the open doors and take a seat in the cool plastic chairs.

“Um, so,” he says, because of course Aaron is the type to ask. “Are we going to talk about what the fuck just happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not Becker, I'm not going to entertain your bullshit,” he says. “What happened?”

“I’m obsessive-compulsive,” I tell him. “And not in a cute neat-freak slang sort of way, but in a completely insane way, so can we just leave it at that?”

“Fine.”

Aaron says nothing else. For a whole stop.

Until he turns to me. “Did you know you also lock the door behind you every time you go into a room? Even if it’s someone else’s room?”

“What? No.”

“What, yes,” he replies. “You lock someone else’s door. And you check a second time to make sure it’s locked, and you literally do it without even missing a beat.”

I give him a weak smile. “Wow, stop stalking me, dude.”

“Stop deflecting. Dude.”

“I’m obsessive-compulsive, I told you.”

“Uh-huh,” he says.

Back at the Yé-Yé.

Where there’s a tie on my doorknob.

Aaron looks at me sympathetically.

I push my ear closely to the door, and I can hear the faint rustling of sounds: maybe sex, maybe sleeping, but either way, not something I have any desire to intrude upon.

“Is it just me,” Aaron goes, “or is it super creepy knowing it’s Ross and Nina in there?”

It’s not just him.

Somehow it’s even more troubling than my anonymous sex from a couple hours ago.

“It’s not even your room. Imagine how I feel.”

“My roommate’s in London this weekend,” he says, “if you want to sleep on top of his bed.”

I follow Aaron into his room, and turn lock the door.

“Leave it open,” he says, with an evil glint.

“Fuck off,” I say, locking it and yes, checking it.

And then I move across the room to slump down at the foot of his unmade bed.

Everyone’s room looks roughly alike, cell-like and very temporary, but Aaron has more personal effects than the rest of us: his dresser is crowded with framed photos, of Tulane people, of family. And a big, rusting metal sign, “ZYDECO ZINGER,” that he said he stole from what was left of Six Flags summer after Katrina.

He drunkenly takes a half-full bottle of wine off his bookshelf. “I’m going to put on The Sound of Music, just so you’re warned. Do you want a glass?”

“Because you made me throw away half a drink because you couldn’t wait to leave the last bar?”

“I told you to chug,” he replies, pouring two tumblers of wine. “What kind of Tulane boy are you?”

I accept the cup of wine. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. He sits next to me on his bed, crosses his legs Indian-style, enthusiastically. “Movie time.” He picks up the remote, wobbles it at the TV, and presses play.

Julie Andrews rips into the hillside.

“Is there any reason why we’re watching The Sound of Music?”

He stares at me for a second, as if it should be obvious.

“Prep work for my trip to Vienna next weekend.”

“Isn’t this Salzburg?”

“Doesn’t matter. Same country. Name a movie set in actual Vienna.”

“Amadeus.”

He swats dismissively. “Hard pass. Your mom never made you watch The Sound of Music?”

“You’re making them watch this gay shit again?” my dad would say.

She would put it on but my mom was not, in fact, watching that gay shit again.

Not actively.

She put on whatever movie was longest, because it meant more time before the tape stopped. More time she could be passed out on the couch, eyes flickering only hazily at the TV, even less at us.

Until she came to Jesus, and stopped drinking. Until she started drinking again.

The Sound of Music was three hours. I knew that.

“Sometimes.”

“My mom loves musicals,” he says. “My parents have the same birthday and would always argue about what they got to do: a show at Mahalia Jackson or a Saints game.”

“How sickeningly cute.”

“Well, they’re divorced,” he says. “It’s less cute now that they spend their birthday complaining about how the other person isn’t as broke as they are.”

“I thought your dad was a lawyer.”

“Parish prosecutor,” he replies. “He’s basically the social worker of lawyer. Don’t act like I’m a rich kid.”

I hope to hell Mr. Ackerman’s a prosecutor up on the North Shore, rather than Orleans Parish.

Can only imagine some wiry, graying version of Aaron standing across a dingy courtroom from me, scowl on his face. Staring down the worthless punk who brought drugs into his hurricane-ravaged city.

The People of Louisiana v. Kevin Michael Malley.

I always hate how they make it The People.

Surely there would be someone in my corner.

“Well,” I say. “Come to Colton. Like, gangs and drug deals and stabbings on our block. I cheated my way into a good high school. That’s the only reason I’m here--by cheating.”

Aaron grins. “No! What did you do?”

“Well, I found out you can apply for a district transfer if your school doesn’t offer a class you want to take,” I tell him. “So I pretended I wanted to take Latin, and they let me transfer.”

“Ha. Did they ever catch you?”

“Well, there was nothing to catch, really. I actually took four years of Latin.”

Aaron raises his eyebrows, gives me a toothy grin. “That’s not cheating then.”

“I mean, basically cheating.”

“Yeah, no, it sounds like you used a program exactly as it was intended: to get into a better school.”

I don’t say anything.

He’s wrong, though. It wasn’t checking a box or filling out a form, and it was not at all in the spirit of what the district was trying to get accomplished.

And I didn’t belong at Las Palomas. Everyone had made that very clear to me.

Fratres.

Matt would say. Matt would no longer say.

I only want you here.

I only want you here.

Aaron stares out at the alive hills of antebellum Austria.

“Either way, you wound up at a private school in the ass of someone who grew up with literally everything,” he replies, “so wear that loud and wear that proud.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t, but you should.” He grins. “So you, like, speak Latin?”

“Well, they don’t teach it like a living language,” I tell him.

“Oh, so you didn’t have to stand in front of a class and perform some cheesy dialogue: ‘Pontius, is this the way to the Colosseum?’”

I giggle. “No.”

“Four years well spent,” he says. “Imagine my surprise when my four years of French turned out to be useless even living in Paris.”

“You’re good at French!”

Aaron gives a shrug. “Comme si, comme ca. Je suis plus sexy en hébreu, le vrai langage de l'amour.”

“Uh huh, I’m sure.”

We sit. As the credits roll.

And Aaron looks at me. “So what OCD shit happened on the Metro platform? Because I don’t understand.”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I want to know about it, and the truth always wins,” he replies. “Are you scared of trains?”

And maybe I should just say yes. Yes. I’m scared of trains. The end.

How do I explain that my mind makes me worry that I’m going to hurt myself, or hurt Aaron, or hurt whoever, even though I know I won’t. That it’s a practical joke, that I fall for every time.

“I’m scared of trains,” I tell him.

“I don’t believe you,” he replies, but he drops the topic as the nuns strike up “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?”

“When I was little, I always thought the nuns were such dicks in this movie,” Aaron tells me. “Like, they reprise ‘Have Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?’ on the poor girl’s wedding day?”

“But they save them from the Nazis at the end,” I remind Aaron.

He looks at me with mock outrage. “Uh, spoiler alert!”

“Oh, come on, how many times have you seen this movie?”

“Like two hundred,” he says, with a smile. “Something tells me you’re not a musicals person though. Adam Becker never forced you to watch Hello Dolly or Gypsy or Chicago? What a bad bottom.”

I don’t like him saying those words, saying that name.

Aaron might be a Tulane boy, but he’s not a Tulane friend: he’s a Paris friend, and he doesn’t get to do things like talk to me about Adam Becker.

“Can we not talk about my ex?”

“Why?” He gives me a sly smile. “Are you not over your ex?”

“Maybe we should talk about your exes.”

“I don’t have any exes.”

And for a second, I think he’s being contrary but he’s not lying. I can tell.

“You’ve never had a boyfriend?”

Aaron wrinkles his face, takes a sip of wine, says nothing.

“What about Travis? From high school?”

“Travis was a fuck buddy,” he replies. “He wasn’t a boyfriend. He wasn’t even a friend. I’d suck his cock in the parking lot and he would laugh along when his friends shoved me in a locker.”

He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

He’s not who I thought he was.

“We all have shit in our past, and we’re better for it,” he concludes.

“I don’t think being humiliated in high school is ever a good thing.”

“It made me me,” he says. “But then again, I’m an optimist.” He gives a shrug. “I don’t mean to sound like I was some sad sack in high school. I was pretty popular but, you know, homophobic jerks; it’s still Louisiana.” He grins. “I bet you got all the girls.”

“Lena Taylor,” I tell him. “She was gorgeous.”

But I can still see her eyes at the end of the locker row.

As much as I try to remember her in the silver dress she wore to junior prom.

“Poor thing,” he says. “Gorgeous girlfriends, rich boyfriends, you almost make me ashamed of my nonexistent romantic history.”

“I’ve had one boyfriend,” I tell him. “You’re hardly behind.”

“Well, it doesn’t always happen for everyone,” he says. “Not everyone gets to be Liesl von Trapp. Sometimes you’re just Kurt. You’re just supposed to land a couple one-liners and look fierce in floral lederhosen and then fade away into sad, old-age alcoholism when your six siblings get lives of their own."

“You’re not the Sassy Gay von Trapp, if that’s what you’re saying.”

Aaron doesn’t say anything. At least on that topic. “God, look at that hideous little jacket the nuns put Julie Andrews in,” he says, as she charges down the street to “I Have Confidence.” “It’s worse than the Nazis.”

He hates that he brought this sort of thing up. As he looks at me with tight eyes and a rampart smile. “What?”

I don’t say anything, and he slackens a bit, looks back to the TV.

“I’m just saying, how on earth does that sex god of a captain turn down a bad bitch like Baroness Schraeder for someone in that genocide of an outfit?”

The Holocaust or Kosovo?

“You thought Captain von Trapp was hot?”

“Um, Captain von Trapp is way hot,” Aaron replies. “That whistle? He runs his house like he’d stuff your face in a pillow and make you thank him for it.”

I giggled. “I always had a thing for Rolf.”

“Rolf!” Aaron says. “Rich twink. I should’ve known.” He shrugs. “Rolf’s cute. He would’ve hauled me off to a concentration camp about ninety minutes into the movie, but I’d still let him spin me around that gazebo once or twice.”

“See? Maybe you’re Liesl after all.”

He looks over at me, with a frown. “What, are you going to talk through the whole damn movie?”

 

The cheeseboard came out, along with two glasses of champagne.

‘This is too much,” Becker told me.

I smiled. “No, it’s the appropriate amount. We’re celebrating.” We both picked up glasses. “You being officially a brother of Iota Chi. Pledgeship, over, finally.”

“Don’t forget you,” he added. “Smith Barney’s newest summer intern.”

Were we really celebrating Smith Barney? I faked a smile.

I supposed selling stock couldn’t be worse than selling drugs, on a shadowy ethical level. Not that, as a summer intern, I figured they would trust me with anything more complex than a coffee.

It paid. Slave wages for New York City, but better than nothing.

Becker thought it was a good idea: “You know how you make money?” he told me, in bed the other night when I was still weighing the decision. “You surround yourself with people that already have money. That’s what my dad says.”

I couldn’t imagine there was a time in his life when Senator David Becker (R-Nev.) was not surrounded by people who already had money, but he did own a stake in the Mirage Casino in Vegas, so I figured he knew a thing or two.

And I did want to make money. I didn’t want to sell pot my entire life. I wanted kids who had a Lexus and a shoebox full of superfluous money, prom at the Marriott Rancho Las Palmas.

But. I hesitated to pull the trigger.

Even though my other option was staying down here, waiting tables at Bistro Napoleon, maybe slinging a few bags of pot here and there to the rest of the kitchen staff.

No. Smith Barney. Was the smart choice, the choice that made the most sense.

And New York! Me in New York, Becker home in D.C.

It was the end of April 2007, the last week before finals, and that was keeping me moving forward: that Becker and I would not be separated this summer, so early in our relationship. Bus ride away from each other. Weekends.

And, most critically, the chance to be a real couple, rather than one that was sequestered in my bedroom, like we had to be in New Orleans.

Today, of course, was a celebration, but Becker was still watching the door, even though no one we know would ever do a Thursday lunch at La Petite Grocery. That wasn’t lost on me.

“Well, cheers,” I told him. “Carpe diem, carpe vinum, culus delenda est.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Seize the day. Seize the wine. And don’t forget, your ass is mine.”

“Very poetic.”

“Not entirely mine,” I told him. “I just adapted it for present company.”

Becker smiled. “Cheers, nutso.”

We clinked glasses. It was good champagne, not that I knew anything about champagne, but it was eleven dollars a glass.

I turn my attention to the cheeseboard, begin slicing off a piece of a creamy-looking number.

“Wait, wait,” Becker gasped, eyes open in horror.

I paused. Held the knife. “What?”

“You’re supposed to cut along the wedge lengthwise,” he said. “You can’t point the brie.”

Point the brie.

“Like this,” he said, slicing a bit off the edge. “It’s supposed to be in a wedge that gets smaller and smaller.”

“Oh.”

“I used to hate the rind on brie when I was little,” he continued, sliding the brie off the knife and onto a cracker. “My mom used to buy me the package with just the creamy part. Did you eat the rind?”

I couldn’t have picked brie cheese out of a lineup until this very moment.

“We were more of a Velveeta kind of family.”

Becker said nothing. He kept going. “It was the bitter taste, I think. Saltiness. I didn’t like capers either. My mom would get pissed because she’s find them in the carpet for days whenever she made smoked salmon.”

The similarities between the Beckers and the Malleys: endless.

Capers? The little green balls, weren’t they?

My mom is a vicious drunk, I would tell him, but I wouldn’t tell him that.

“What are you getting?”

“The salmon,” he said.

“No capers?”

He smiled. “I mean, I eat capers now.”

“Just checking,” I told him. “I don’t want to get an angry phone call from the chef, demanding to know why they keep finding capers around our table.”

The waiter came back around, to take our order.

“I’ll start with a glass of the—oh, shit, you have Prairie Chapel?” he said. “I’ll have a glass of the Prairie Chapel pinotage.” He looked at me, as he handed them Philip’s driver’s license. “Do you mind? It’s my dad’s family winery. I’ve never seen it at a restaurant before.”

I caught a glimpse at the wine list. A bottle of the Prairie Chapel pinotage was $72.

Becker perceived money even more abstractly than Matt Barber did. I wondered how much cash he had in his shoebox.

“Let’s get a whole bottle of that, actually,” I told the waiter. “Why not.”

Pinotage tasted like feet, apparently.

The kind of wine I would imagine a wealthy member of Congress making in his spare time.

But I nodded at the waiter, as if I knew anything about what I was drinking, and he poured us both a full glass.

Becker loved every minute of this. The pomp. The service had gotten remarkable better when they found out Becker was a descendent of a $72 bottle of California wine.

“It’s a very small winery,” he was telling me, swilling about twenty bucks worth of this shit in his glass. “Napa. I think my dad winds up buying half of their wine every year.”

What if I took the bottle, smashed it against the side of the table, and beat Becker with the broken glass?

No. I wouldn’t do that.

I cared about him. I wanted to be with him.

Obviously, I wouldn’t do that.

What if I did.

I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.

“Can I have some?” Becker asked, as I squeezed sanitizer onto my hands, broke the fever. “Your charming OCD.”

Monica Geller had ruined obsessive-compulsive disorder for the rest of us. Made it an amusing shorthand for color-coding your socks.

I thought of how I would have explained it to Becker:

You know when you get a song stuck in your head?

And you don’t even like the song or want to listen to it, but it just replays over and over and over, and no matter what you do, you can’t make it stop?

It’s like that. Thoughts about hurting myself or hurting someone I care about. But I’m not a violent person. They’re unwanted thoughts, and I’ve never acted on a single one of them.

The song might be stuck in your head, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to start singing uncontrollably.

Though sometimes in the heat of the moment, when I’m drowning, I can’t stop thinking: what if I do?

Washing my hands does make it stop. Just for a little while.

And I know that’s completely irrational and I know that’s completely stupid, but it doesn’t seem irrational when you’re paralyzed by it. And that’s why it’s a disorder.

I imagined Becker make that face. Pursing his lips and retreating to a conversation topic that didn’t require mess. Don’t point the brie, do it like this.

While inside, he’d have the conversation amongst himself: who is this psychopath from the hood that’s sitting across the table from me?

No, I wouldn’t tell Becker anything about obsessive-compulsive.

I faked a smile. “Yes, it’s one of my many qualities.”