Brandon Smiling: From the Billy Chase Chronicles (2) - 11. Entry 11

Wednesday

Oh, Holy Hell!

I woke up this morning with a frigging ZIT coming up on my face! Not only do I have to stress over school, and Billy, and making sure my Dad isn’t working himself to death, but now I have to get a goddamn zit too?

Just when things were starting to look up between Billy and me, my hormones decide to completely betray and flake on me! It’s so not fair! Now, no one will be able to look at me without their eyes going directly to this gigantic red pock mark on my diseased face! Billy won’t be able to take me seriously now!

Arrrrgh!

I need to detox…that’s what I need to do! The Zit Lady on TheTube said that’s why we get pimples. Our systems are out of balance and we need to ‘detoxify’ ourselves! Only, what is ‘detox’ and where do you buy it? Ohhhhwwwh! I wish I wasn’t so stupid about this stuff!

Somebody else said to drink a lot of water. That’s what I’ll do then…I’ll drown that zit! That might work, or maybe I’ll get some of those OxyClean things at the drug store. Those are supposed to work fast! I need fast! I need to knock this thing out before it gets worse! Only, do I even have enough money saved from my allowance to get any OxyClean? It’s way expensive! Maybe I should ask my Dad…No! No, he has enough problems right now!

Hmm, baking soda? We have that in the house! Someone says it dries zits out! Maybe, I’ll do that after school! That might do the trick…I hope. Unfortunately, I have to go to school with this thing bare on my face with no help except keeping my face washed. I guess I’ll be doing that today…

~

I’m always surprised at Billy. He only noticed my zit when I brought it up! He thought I was acting crazy about one little zit! He doesn’t understand, I don’t get zits and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna start now! They spread, ya know! It starts out as just one and then poof - you’re a pizza face! No way, Jose! Nu-uh!

Ah, but the day wasn’t an entire bust! It actually was, kind of, a jackpot kind of day! No zit can mess up how happy I am right now!

Billy asked me over to his place! This Friday - with his mom out of the house!

He was so adorable about asking me. So unsure! So…shy and here I thought I was the shy one here!

He was like, “Well...maybe, if you want, we can hang out sometime at my house.” He said it so low I barely caught it, but I did catch it and now…I have a DATE with Billy! Yeah, yeah…I know it isn’t really an ‘official’ date since he’s not Out or anything, but one never knows what can come of things like this! I still remember my sleep-over with JOEseph that one night a time or two ago. If I hadn’t been such a doofus about that I’d have had my first boyfriend even before coming to High School!

Well, I’m not going to be a doofus this time!

I’ve got to play this cool! I’ve got to let things just…happen! Naturally! Let Billy make any first moves that need to be made. Be open to…anything! Wide open! Maybe this way, Billy’s riddle can finally be solved.

Is he or isn’t he Gay? If he is, are the feelings I’ve been vibing off of him really for me or are they for Jimmy? If they are for Jimmy, I’m sure Billy will bring him up in conversation.

Please don’t let them be for Jimmy!

I’m so amped about this!

I’m going to BILLY CHASE’s house and be with him all alone!

Oh, please ignore my zit, Billy! Please, please do something so that I can just say ‘Yes’ to it!

This is Brandon the zit infested lovesick un-doofus!

Thursday

I woke up in a weird mood today.

I can’t explain it, really. I just…needed some alone time. I feel kind of run down and tired. Maybe, it was due to my lack of sleep last night. I’m seriously nervous about going to Billy’s house tomorrow!

I thought I’d be so happy about it…and I am…sort of. But, I really don’t want to screw this up! I don’t want to move too fast or too slow. I don’t want to push too hard and scare him away. But, then, I also don’t want to come off so shy that he loses interest in me - which could totally happen! We’ve been, um, opening up to each other a lot lately and maybe…a little too much. I don’t know.

This is a big deal going on right here! Like I said, I really don’t want to screw this up. I wanted to talk to Chandler about it, but could only leave messages. I left him a couple. I didn’t want to leave anymore…which I could have done easily today! I feel I’m a big enough annoyance as it is so I don’t want to make myself a worse annoyance by annoying Chandler anymore than I’m sure I already do.

As it is, I think I’m fucking this up already!

Poor Billy!

He was trying so hard to get me to interact with him today and I was so out of it that I wasn’t much to talk to. What he wanted to talk about was strangely encouraging, though. It was obviously his fact-finding mission to feel me out. I have a feeling he’s as anxious about tomorrow as I am! He kept talking about other guys in school and what I thought about them. He talked about Bobby and Jimmy a lot. He wondered if I’d talked to them lately and wondered what I thought about them. My answers were mainly shrugs. Not that I didn’t have any feelings about them, they just…don’t matter as much to me as Billy does. So, I haven’t much to say about them.

I barely know Jimmy, even though I tried to save his butt in gym class that time…quite literally. I was really sad about his suicide attempt as you would know after reading my blog a bit. I am, secretly, envious of his coming Out and being embraced so warmly by most of the student body for it. I figure that’s, partly, a ‘decent’ reaction to anyone who’s attempted suicide. It doesn’t matter who or what the person wants to be so long as it isn’t dead, I guess.

My situation with Bobby is on and off. I think he’s a cool guy, really, but I do get that he might want more from me than just friendship. That feeling has made me keep my distance from him. I mean, if I’m going to have a Gay relationship with anyone it’s going to be with Billy…or no one! I’m just not interested in Bobby in that way.

But, I really didn’t have words for Billy to talk to these things. Any one of these conversations would have led to my getting Outted to him. I think Billy knew that too! My favorite word ‘sussing’ - if you remember I was trying to suss out Billy a couple of weeks back in this very same way by asking pointed questions, etc. I guess, I was giving the same kind of answers to Billy today as he gave to me back then - noncommittal ones. Billy was really trying to suss me Out today! I simply wasn’t ready to cooperate, just like he wasn’t back when I was asking the questions.

The encouraging thing for me about all of this, of course, is that Billy wants to know if I’m Gay or not! I think he wants to know for the very same reason I want to know if Billy is Gay or not! Is he really into to me like I’m into him? That’s my hope of hopes! Only…is that what’s really going on here? Is this my dream coming true or is this a setup for something awful? Is this a prelude to a devastating nightmare? I just…don’t know.

Am I ready to take the plunge and make this a reality? Can I trust Billy enough to finally come Out to him? Then again, why does it have to be me that is the first to come Out at all? Why can’t he be the one to do it?

In other news, Jamie is silly. You know what he did? I kid you not, I was, like, bent over at my locker today. Usually, I try to squat to get all my books and stuff, but I was just bent straight over and BOOM - I felt a pinch right on my ass! I grabbed it (my ass) and turned around to see who could have ‘violated’ me in such a way (half hoping it was Billy himself) and there was Jamie giggling himself red with one of his buddies next to him doing the same thing.

“Hehehe! Brandon, you should see your face! Hahaha!” Like I said, Jamie was being incredibly silly today.

I was kind of embarrassed, but, after shaking off the shock of the goosing, he got me to crack up too! It forced me out of my bad mood, actually! How could it not? Jamie…touched my ass and I liked it!

This is Brandon being goosed by Mr. Blond Bombshell himself!