Gap Year - 76. Chapter 76

March 12, 2004

Malibu, CA

Will

“I hope we didn’t screw up all your plans for this trip,” Marie said sympathetically. She’d called me last night and told me that Bongo and his girlfriend, plus Mike and a friend were coming along. John had also latched onto some new girl at Menlo named Brittany, and he was bringing her with him. With those people in addition to me, Travis, Crawford, Sierra, Marie, Ryan, and John, we were tapping out on rooms.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I got it worked out. We took the study and made it into a bedroom.”

“Clever,” she responded.

“Yeah, the bathrooms are another challenge, but we’ll manage,” I said. “I set it up so that Sierra and Brittany are sharing a room, while Crawford and John are sharing a different room.”

“What happens if John ends up sleeping with Brittany but Crawford doesn’t get together with Sierra?” Marie asked.

“That’s my worst nightmare,” I joked. “If that happens, then I have to figure out a way to carve out another room.”

“What about the guest house?” she asked.

“Kiki lives there now, but she’s taking a vacation for most of the time that we’re there,” I said. “She’s going to hook us up with a bartender and a chef, and they’re going to crash in her rooms while she’s gone.”

“That was nice of her,” Marie said.

“I got the feeling she was looking forward to taking a break, since she really hasn’t done that since Mano died,” I said. “It was weird, though, because she was being pretty mysterious about it.”

“Not much you can do about that,” she said fatalistically.

“No shit,” I agreed. “I’m going to try to bring a laid-back attitude to this whole trip and not let shit bug me.”

“Good luck with that,” she joked. “We’re planning to leave here at noon. You’ll probably have to leave by then to make it to Burbank on time.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, hiding my annoyance. I’d done all this planning and shit, and she was acting like I couldn’t coordinate a simple ride to Burbank. “I have to corral three people here and get them to the airport with me.”

“Well, the people here are super motivated,” she said cheerfully. “Grand asked me to bring some of your mail with me. Is that okay?”

“That’s fine,” I said, wondering why that was something she’d even ask about. That in turn made me suspicious, but I had other things to worry about. “I have to run. I have a phone appointment with Casey.”

“Hopefully he can fix you,” she joked.

“Hopefully,” I agreed. I hung up the phone and stared at the waves. They were awesome today, but it was already 10:00am, so there’s no way I’d have time to enjoy them. I cheered myself up by remembering that this time tomorrow I’d be in Maui.

My phone rang and I answered it. “Good morning, Will,” Casey responded to my greeting.

“It’s off to a good start,” I said cheerfully.

“You sound like you’re in a good mood,” he said. “What’s been going on?”

“Brace yourself,” I joked, then I did my normal deal, where I spent about half an hour downloading all the shit I’d dealt with since he’d last seen me.

“You don’t seem like you’re mad at Zach,” he said.

“You think I should be pissed at him for what he did to Travis?” I asked defensively.

“I didn’t ask you that,” he said, showing me his bitchy side.

I sighed. “I just don’t want there to be a conflict. I’ve seen how this shit can spiral out of control. It’s better if we all move on.”

“Do you think Travis can do that?” he asked. “That was pretty raw for Zach to turn Travis into his bitch.” I chuckled at how Casey phrased that.

“He promised he would,” I said. “I’m going to trust him on this.”

“How will you handle it if he goes after Zach anyway?” Casey asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess my big plan to step in the middle of this whole deal and play peacemaker could turn around and end up with me getting shit on.”

“It could, or it could work out just fine,” he said. “I just wanted you to think about that. I’m guessing you’ll be better prepared in case it does.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “I get to spend a week with Travis, so I’ll have to make sure he’s not planning to go postal on Zach.”

“How are things with the two of you?” he asked.

“They’re good,” I said. “I told him I love him, and he told me he loves me, so that’s pretty awesome.”

“What does that mean as far as your relationship goes?” he asked.

“We started to have the DTR talk, but both times we did there was this other shit going on and we didn’t want to get into an intense discussion and really fuck up our psyches,” I told him.

“How do you want the relationship to be?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, when I’m around him, I’m totally happy, and I don’t want to be with anyone else. At the same time, I don’t want to have some big commitment right now. I’m planning to do some traveling, and if I meet some hot foreign dude, I want to be able to go for it.”

He laughed at that, then got serious. “I’ve been thinking about you and how you handle relationships.”

“You’ve been thinking about me?” I asked in a sultry way.

“I’ve been thinking about your mind,” he said dourly, making me chuckle.

“Damn,” I said, acting disappointed.

“I’ll have to remember not to schedule appointments with you and Matt on the same day,” he said grumpily, which really cracked me up.

“Alright,” I said, my tone indicating that playtime was over. “What did you figure out?”

“It seems like the way you handle relationships and the way you handle love may be thrown off balance by a testosterone surge,” he said in an almost snarky way.

“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked, not a little annoyed.

“When I talk to you, it seems like you compartmentalize your feelings for people,” he said. “It’s like the situation with Connie. You said you loved him. Do you still feel that way?”

“I guess,” I said. “I mean, we haven’t really talked much lately, but I still really care about him.”

“And what about Patrick?”

I smiled. “I have feelings for him too.”

“And Tony?”

“I had a threesome with him and Mason,” I said, chuckling to myself at how he must be reacting to that. “It was hot.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “What I meant by compartmentalizing is that you have these individual relationships with people and your feelings develop for them based on how that connection evolves. It doesn’t seem like those feelings disappear when you find someone new, nor does it seem like those feelings interfere with your new relationship.”

I thought about that. “You’re saying I can love more than one person?”

“I’m wondering if you can,” he speculated. “At the same time, when you talk about relationships, you treat them in a very hierarchical way. It is always a battle to see which guy will win.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” I asked, because he had dived deep into my mind and pulled this shit out, and I was still trying to digest it.

“This isn’t a good or bad thing,” he said. “I’m just pointing it out because I think you’d be a lot happier if those two things were more in sync and didn’t conflict with each other.”

He gave me a minute to contemplate that. With my father, it was always a battle. He had to have the number one spot with whoever he was in a relationship with. That was one of the reasons why Robbie fucked him up when Robbie wanted to go out with other dudes. What Casey was saying was that I was acting like my father, while inside I was probably more like Stef. “I never thought about that,” I finally said, letting him hear how confused I was.

“Then I think you should spend some time and ponder that,” he said. “It seems like you’re trying to fit yourself into a heteronormative model for relationships. You are a bright guy who likes to challenge rules. Maybe this is one you could modify.”

“I guess I do that,” I said, analyzing my attitudes about being with someone. “It’s funny, because the two people I respect the most are in a relationship that is more open, yet I’m modeling myself after my father, and we are so not alike on this.”

He laughed with me. “I’m not trying to discourage you from following that approach and striving to have the Mike and Carol Brady relationship,” he said, cracking me up.

“No, I get what you’re saying. You just opened up a whole new concept to me,” I said, my mind grappling with this. “It’s like there was a line I had that I couldn’t cross, and you just told me I could.”

“If you say so,” he said, teasing me for my analogy. “If you decide you can love more than one person, that will do a lot to curb any jealousy you may feel.”

“I can see that,” I said. I mean, if I wasn’t having internal battles over which guy I liked best, or if he liked me the best, I probably wouldn’t be so freaked out if he was with someone else. “How do you think that would work with Travis?”

“I think the most obvious model for you and Travis is to have a standard, high-school-like romance where you pledge to be together and be faithful,” he said, implying that we were that immature. We probably were, because we were both still in high school, but that just made his comment more annoying.

“I guess we could do that,” I said.

“How does the thought of that make you feel?” he asked. I liked how he gave me time to think about questions like that before expecting me to answer.

“Kind of trapped,” I said. “If I loved Travis, that’s not how I should feel is it?”

“You just did it,” he said. “You just did exactly what I was talking about.”

“What?” I demanded.

“You feel trapped because you don’t want that kind of relationship, but when you go to analyze why, you fall back on this concept that a relationship is all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said.

“I’ve looked at it that way for so long,” I said. “I’m not sure I can change.”

“You’re seventeen,” he said in his snarky way. “It’s not all that long.”

“Whatever,” I said, so annoyed with him. “How do I handle this?”

“I think that you should take this week to think about it,” he said. “If you want, you can talk to Travis about it. He may understand what you’re dealing with.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I said skeptically. “He’s even worse than me as to how he views relationships. He’s still stuck in high school mode.”

“Then maybe that’s a good reason to talk to him about it,” Casey said.

“I don’t think he’s like that,” I said. “I don’t think he can love more than one person. He’s been like that even with his friends, where he tended to have a group around him, and there was a pecking order about who was tighter with him.”

“Where did you rank in the pecking order?” he asked.

I smiled. “I was always pretty high up there.”

“Travis may be doing the same thing you’re doing, and if you tell him that line is gone for you, maybe it will let him think about things differently too,” Casey said.

“It might,” I said. Travis might be open to that because he wasn’t the kind of guy who thought he knew everything. He was generally willing to listen and consider things.

“I just wanted you to think about it,” Casey said. “We can talk more when you get back.”

“I’ll think about it,” I agreed, and ended our call. He had totally blown my mind with this deal. Could I do that? Could I love a dude, then go off and be mellow if he fucked around with someone else? My mind rebelled against it, but not as strongly as it would have before Casey pointed that out. I went out on the deck and picked up the roach in the ashtray and smoked it.

If I could handle that kind of relationship structure, it would be so much easier to be with another dude who looked at things that way too. Was that what he was saying? Was he saying that maybe Travis would feel the same way? I didn’t really think that was his deal. Casey was pushing me to talk to Travis about it, and as I thought about it, he probably had two things in mind. The first was for me to see if Travis was more flexible about relationship rules and, even if he wasn’t, the second was to try to give him a better idea of how I looked at things. That was assuming I looked at things that way, I thought, frustrating myself by letting my mind run around in circles.

I finished getting all my stuff together, then decided to kick back on the patio to wait for the car to get here. I’d just lit up a fresh joint when Kevin walked out. “Looks like I have good timing,” he said.

“You do,” I said, and handed him the joint. We sat there getting high, enjoying the sound of the waves, and saying nothing. When we decided we were stoned, I tapped the embers off the tip of the joint, and that seemed to spark a need in me to talk again. “I had an interesting conversation with my psychologist.”

“Oh?” Kevin asked.

“He told me he thinks I may be trying to cram myself into a relationship like straight people do, when that’s not really who I am,” I said.

“He told you that you can define a relationship however you want, and that you don’t have to follow rules?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said.

“He’s right,” Kevin said.

“I guess he is; it’s just weird to think of things so differently, especially when my deal with Travis is heating up to the point where we have to have the DTR talk,” I said.

“This is the perfect time,” Kevin said. “Kind of happened to me about the same time it’s happening to you.”

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded. “In high school, I was pretty popular because I was hot and because I was a good cocksucker.” That made me laugh.

“You still are, or so I hear,” I teased.

“The rumors are correct,” he responded playfully. “We had this big senior outing, and the dude I was into asked some chick to go with him as a beard. We’d been together on the DL for about 6 months, so I was pretty fucked up by that. The end result was I decided that I wasn’t going to link my psyche to his fucked-up mind. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to be in a committed relationship.”

“Did you do it as revenge, to get back at him, or did you do it because that’s what you wanted?” I asked.

“You think I was that bitchy?” he asked, pretending to be all outraged, but I could tell he was full of shit and we both started laughing.

“Duh,” I said. “I’m thinking of how my father would do that with Robbie.”

“Here’s the big difference,” Kevin said. “Your father wanted to be in a committed relationship, so that was his ultimate goal. When he fucked around on Robbie, he was doing it to piss Robbie off, and to test his options out.”

“Test his options out?” I asked.

“Yeah, to see who else was out there, and what kind of person he could be with if he wasn’t with Robbie,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was exactly right about that, but it would bear future thought when I wasn’t so stoned.

“How’s that different from most people?” I asked.

“If you think of the straight world with a husband and wife, it isn’t,” Kevin said. “But it can be a lot different when you move away from that model.”

“I mean, you ended up in a committed relationship like that,” I said. “You were a free agent until you found Cody.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said definitively. Cody and I have never been exclusive. He’s my soulmate, and my bond with him is on such a high level it almost makes sex irrelevant.”

“Do you think being in that relationship gives you the confidence and security to be with other men?” I asked, thinking of how my father was with Robbie when they were allowed to see other people.

“I’ve never lacked confidence,” he said firmly, which was total bullshit, so I rolled my eyes at him and rephrased my question.

“Alright, then how did you handle things when you weren't in a serious relationship?” I asked him.

“Here’s how it worked for me,” he said. “If I was with a dude, like on a date or something, I was totally focused on him. But when he wasn’t around, I did whatever the fuck I wanted.”

I nodded. “I can see that. It would be an asshole thing to do to just blow the dude off and chase after someone else.” Visions of what Wade had done to Matt when he’d chased Alex in Britain came to mind.

“You know how doctors have that rule: ‘do no harm’?” he asked, getting a nod of agreement from me. “It’s kind of like that. Another dude has no control over me when I’m not with him, but while I’m with him, I try not to hurt his feelings.”

“What if you’re out with a friend at a club or something?” I asked. “Do you blow him off and hook up with someone else?”

“If it’s a date, or a situation where we’re there as a couple, I behave myself,” he said. “If I’m with a friend, then he probably knows I could hook up with someone else, and I know that about him.”

“So he’s your backup plan to get laid,” I joked.

“I never need a backup plan,” he said arrogantly, making me laugh. “It can be like that.”

“No shit,” I said.

“How do you feel about this?” he asked me.

“It feels weird and exciting,” I said. “It feels weird because you and Casey are suggesting that there are really no rules I have to follow. On the other hand, the thought of having that much freedom is a total rush.”

“I found the no-rules deal just as intoxicating,” he agreed.

“One of the things I’ve had to grapple with is that I hate it when other people try to control me,” I said. He just started laughing hysterically, even when I frowned at him.

“At least you’re self-aware,” he finally said.

“Fuck you,” I said, then chuckled with him.

“You know, there’s one person who could really help you figure this out,” he said. I just looked at him curiously, asking him to answer his own riddle. “Stef.”

I smiled broadly at that, because he was right, and because I had Stef as such an amazing resource. “You’re right. I’ll talk to him.” My phone rang and I answered it to find that it was the driver telling me he was here to pick me up. “Gotta run.”

He stood up and gave me a hug. “Have a great time.”

“I’m sure I will,” I said, even though sometimes my vacations didn’t turn out like I’d planned. The driver loaded my bags into the car and we headed over to Travis’s mother’s house. We’d all decided to meet there because parking was easier than it was at my house. We pulled up to her place and I sat there trying to figure out what to do. I could have gone up and knocked on the door, but I opted to stay in the car and dick around with my laptop. I had no desire to get into a conversation with Travis’s mother when no one else was around.

Crawford was the first to arrive, so I got out to greet him. “Hey!” I said enthusiastically and gave him a man hug.

“I am so stoked for Spring Break!” he said.

“Dude, me too!” I responded. “Where’s everyone else?”

“I got out early so I went home to grab some shit I forgot,” he said.

Right after he said that, Travis drove up with Sierra and parked. We went over and helped them grab their stuff from Travis’s truck, then with all our bags loaded, we hopped into the limo for the trek to the airport. “Is your mom home?”

“Not sure, but let’s not stick around to find out,” Travis said. I told the driver to leave, then turned back to our group.

“Let me check on the plane,” I said, and called Stef’s Airbus. I talked to the co-pilot and got their ETA, then compared that to our scheduled arrival. “Looks like we should get there about ten minutes before the plane does.”

“Sounds good,” Travis said, then he got nervous. He and I were sitting facing forward, while Sierra was across from me and Crawford was across from him. “I, uh, need to tell you something,” he said to Crawford and Sierra. That was my clue that he was going to out himself to these two. I sat back silently and watched this unfold.

“S’up?” Crawford asked casually.

“I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone, even after we get back,” Travis said.

“Tell anyone about what?” Crawford asked.

“What I’m about to tell the two of you, dipshit,” Travis said. Sierra and I snickered at that.

The two of them looked at Travis, then at each other, then at me, then back at Travis. “I promise I’ll keep your secret,” Sierra said, and reached out to hold his hand, which was a really sweet gesture.

“I can do that,” Crawford said. Travis made him shake hands, just to formalize things.

“We’re together,” he said to them.

“Together?” Sierra asked, wide-eyed.

“He likes to fuck me,” I said flatly. They stared at me, then Crawford started laughing.

“Seriously?” Crawford asked.

“Seriously,” Travis said. For emphasis, I put my hand on his cheek to turn his face toward me and then planted a really nice kiss on him.

“Seriously,” I said to them as soon as I ended it.

“Dude, fuck whoever you want,” Crawford said. “As long as it’s not me, I’m good with it.” That was pretty funny, so after we were done laughing, Travis turned to Sierra. I could tell that he needed her to be cool with this, and she finally figured that out.

“Travis, you are an amazing dude,” she said. “I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks,” he said, and actually blushed a bit.

“So now that you know the big secret, we have to seal it with a sacrament,” I said, talking like I was a priest. I pulled out my one-hitter, loaded it up, and handed it to Sierra. They were almost laughing too hard to do a hit, but we proceeded to get pretty stoned on our ride to the airport.

“So that’s why you broke up with Shelly Randolph,” Sierra said to Travis.

“Well, that and the way she bitched about fucking everything,” he said. “That bitch is a total diva.”

“No shit,” Crawford agreed. “How long have you been gay?”

“My whole life,” Travis said, rolling his eyes at Crawford.

“No dipshit, I mean when did you figure it out?” he asked.

“Last year,” Travis said. I held his hand to prop him up, because I knew that had brought back memories of the Zuma Beach restroom incident.

“So why are you on the down low?” Sierra asked. “No one at school will give a shit.”

“Craddock might,” Crawford said, thinking of how vicious that little bitch would be when he found out.

“He’s an asshole,” she spat bitterly. “No one gives a shit about him anyway.”

“True that,” Travis agreed. I looked at him curiously. “Craddock has been pretty much sidelined.”

“No one hangs out with him?” I asked. I had a hard time visualizing his total ostracization at Brentwood.

“No one,” Sierra confirmed. It dawned on me that this was kind of like how Ella had once referred to ‘everyone’ when we’d been going to Brendan Shaughnessy’s party in Atherton. When she said ‘everyone’ she’d met the popular group, and this was probably the same thing. Still for Craddock, that would be agony. I smiled when I thought about that and felt no guilt for wishing that guy’s life turned into a total shit show.

“If my father finds out he’ll use that to screw me out of a bunch of money,” Travis said.

“Dude, then why did you tell us?” Crawford asked, getting how high-risk this was.

“Because if I have to pretend we’re not together,” Travis said, gesturing at me, “It’s going to make this trip a lot less fun for everyone.”

“I can see that,” Crawford acknowledged.

“Guess Travis knew he could trust you two,” I said.

Then Crawford did a really cool thing. He took off his seatbelt, leaned forward, and gave Travis a big hug. “I won’t let you down.”

“Thanks,” Travis said.

Sierra did the same thing, only the car hit a bump and it knocked her into my lap. She made to get up but I held her there for a second. “You can stay here. I’m not as gay as he is.”

She laughed at that, shook her head, and sat back in her seat. I was really impressed with how well she seemed to be doing even after Curtis Buck raped her. “I’m happy over here,” she said, pretending to be snarky.

We stopped laughing at that when the car pulled up to the airport. We bullshitted for fifteen minutes until Stef’s plane pulled up to the FBO.