Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (10 page)

It was such a pain having to hide everything about who and what you were just to survive and having to go through such total subterfuge just to be able to send a friend an e-mail or a text message or to be able to call them. Not for the first time, I dearly wished that the world, even for a day, could flip so that being gay was the normal thing and being straight was seen as “wrong.” I’d like to see how all of those supposedly tough guys reacted if they had to hide a core part of their very beings, a core part of their identities, from all the world and live a fictitious life just so no one else could ever guess who they really were. I’d like to see them try to live that life and survive, let alone be happy. If I had a magic button that would allow that switch to happen, I think I’d push it in a heartbeat just to let the bullies get a taste of their own medicine for even twenty-four hours. I’d like to see them be the minority, for them to be the scared ones, for them to be forced to live a lie. That night I fell asleep with that thought, feeling both pleased and down about the idea.

The next morning, I planned to pass the phone to Bill and tell him what I was doing and why. When the time came to leave the house, I hesitated, not knowing how in the world I should make the pass, so to speak. How could I hand something to him without the world noticing and asking questions?

At the last minute, just before leaving for school, I took the phone out of its original packaging and carried it in my backpack without the original box. A simple iPhone was a lot easier to pass to somebody without attracting too much attention if it was just the phone and not the phone in its original box, even though it was an artsy, tasty box that someone had spent a fortune to design. I’d give him the box later. I had to get the phone in his hands first and then quickly tell him how I thought it would all work.

Fortuitously, I happened to pass Bill in the hallway early in the day. I took a chance and said, “I need to talk to you sometime today.” I didn’t elaborate. At lunchtime we could eat in the cafeteria or go outside anywhere on the grounds of the school. If you were willing to push it, you could even walk just off the school grounds to the local McDonald’s, but only people with money did that. I didn’t fall into their camp.

Bill and I agreed to meet at lunchtime and go outside. Our cold weather had warmed up a fair amount, and the snow we had gotten was now mostly gone. If the snow was still on the ground we’d have been severely limited in our options. Leaving the building by separate doors and taking separate routes to a remote part of the “campus,” I arrived first and waited for Bill. He arrived looking all around like I had to make sure that no one saw us together doing anything questionable.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I quickly pulled the phone out of my pocket and shoved it toward him. I answered his questioning look with a quick explanation of what I had in mind. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or pissed. Remind me never to play poker with the man. What the hell was he thinking?

He looked down for a moment. His hand was touching and feeling the smoothness of the telephone I had given him. When he looked up, he didn’t have to say a word—there was a tear in his eye. I had all I could do not to just reach out and throw my arms around him. I cursed the world for making a circumstance where I couldn’t offer even a friendly gesture without causing massive chaos and upset. I so wanted to simply reach across the space between us and simply wipe the tear from his eye. But the rules of our society prohibited that.

“It might appear to be generous, but it’s actually quite selfish. I’m loaning you this phone because I want more of you than I can have at the moment.” Looking around quickly to make sure that we were still alone, I said, “I want to be able to sleep with you every night. I want to be able to lick you on that spot on your neck that makes you arch your back each time. I want to practice making your eyes roll back in your head. And I want to just lie in bed in the dark next to you. I want to lie with my head on your chest and simply listen to your heartbeat. We can’t do those things right now, so I’m trying to find something we can use as a temporary substitute until we find a way to do the other things. So, I’m doing this because I’m selfish.”

Bill gave me a tiny hint of a smile. “You’re very special to me. Please know that.”

“Ditto,” I said.

“Ditto? Ditto?” he joked. “How romantic is that?”

“You want romance, press 3 now.”

We shared a laugh. By the time I gave him a crash course in how the phone worked and how to text or e-mail or call, we were both freezing our cojones off and needed to get inside. It might have warmed up enough to melt the snow, but it was nowhere near summertime warm temperatures.

T
HAT
weekend my dad somehow talked my mom into going out—yes, after dark!—for dinner for their wedding anniversary. Once a year he pushed her out of her envelope of safety to go out and have food someone else prepared and brought to them, and maybe even to dance. The instant I heard of their plans I immediately texted Bill and asked him if he could come over for some quality time: MSTR UNTS GOING DNNR SAT. COME EAT W/ME? I kept it generic. What I really wanted to say was: “Dude! Come over and we’ll hump like rabbits until we can’t see straight.” Sigh. Oh, to live in a world where I could do what others did without giving it a second thought.

While my classmates were making plans to go out on dates with one another, that was a luxury we were not afforded. We couldn’t go to dances. We couldn’t go to basketball games together. We couldn’t hold hands in public. Hell, we couldn’t even risk being
seen
exchanging two sentences together in public! It made me so damned mad I wanted to hit somebody. I wanted to hit them and hit them and hit them over and over and over again so that they felt like I felt—so frustrated.

But I digress. Bill came over in late afternoon on Saturday, arriving before my parents left for their evening. My mother seemed more comfortable with me having someone there to keep me company while they were out. She left food which we sort of inhaled the minute they left. Approximately four-point-two-five minutes after they left we were naked and in bed trying to lick each other’s belly buttons from the inside.

“I don’t ever want to leave this bed,” he whispered to me.

“Deal,” I whispered back to him.

We fell asleep sometime before my parents got home. I don’t really know what time they came home, but I know that I slept better than I had ever slept before. I was wrapped around the man of my dreams who was asleep by my side. And he was naked—and
hot
! What man wouldn’t sleep the sleep of champions?

A
LL
too quickly our short time together was over and Bill had to leave to go home. He never talked much about home, and whenever I asked questions his answers were minimal. I didn’t think much about it at the time since I was distracted by his presence. Who wouldn’t be? He was one of the hottest things on two feet.

Monday came again, faster than seemed possible, and it was back to the weekday grind. I didn’t spot Bill in the morning, and when I saw him in calculus he looked—well, something looked wrong. He kept his head down and seemed withdrawn, wrapped up in himself, almost like he was trying to curl up into a fetal position while sitting at a desk in class. Something was definitely wrong. He wasn’t looking up. He wasn’t paying attention. Something was very wrong. It took just about every ounce of focus and concentration I had to not simply get up and walk across the room to find out what had happened. Usually I was on guard to keep myself from staring at him for fear that someone might see. Today, though, I forgot and kept staring.

After what felt like a lifetime, class finished and people started to leave, some quickly and others more slowly. Bill started to close his notebook. I had noticed that he hadn’t written anything in that notebook anytime during class. Nothing. Usually he wrote nearly constantly, trying to get everything to be able to go over it later. Today, nothing.

He stood when about half the class had left. Caution be damned, I walked right up toward him. And he ignored me. He walked away, or rather he tried to. I wanted to see his face. Why wouldn’t he look at me? What the hell was going on? When he tried to slip around me without looking at me, I grabbed his arm. He shook my hand loose without looking and left the classroom.

If he thought that was going to stop me, he was sadly mistaken. In the hallway I moved in front of him and stopped directly in his path. “What the hell, dude?” I said, choosing my wording very carefully to use words I’d heard others use.

He quickly looked up at me for a split second—and I gasped. “
Jesus! Bill! What happened to you?
”

“Nothing. Get out of my way and leave me alone.”

“Bullshit!
What happened
?”

“Mind your own goddamned business!” he said more at me than to me.

I was shocked. His beautiful face was a mess. His right eye was black and blue and swollen. His upper lip was split and had clearly been bleeding.

“Who did this to you?” I said in my most threatening, demanding voice. “
I’ll kill the son of a bitch!
” I shouted.

But I was getting nowhere with him. He was shut down and was retreating more inside himself with each second. He pushed past me and shoved me aside. I stood there with a dumbfounded look on my face. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to comfort him, I wanted to know who the hell had beat the crap out of him. Where had any of this come from? Why hadn’t I seen any evidence of what he was enduring before this? Was I totally blind to anything beyond the end of my dick?

“Damn!” I swore aloud, but mostly to myself.

Some girl I had seen around but didn’t know had a locker pretty much where our “conversation” had taken place. She had been at her locker while Bill and I “talked.” Like mine, her code seemed to be keep your head down, pretend you’re a turtle, and pull inside your shell. She looked at me. Without intending to, I looked at her. Apparently the look on my face was a mix of horror, uncertainty, concern, fury, and a whole bunch of other stuff as well—pretty much everything I was feeling on the inside. And she spoke to me. “It pisses me off—the way he’s treated.”

I looked at her. “Who did that to him?” I said, since she seemed to know more than I did.

“His dad,” she said. “He’s a miserable, sorry excuse for a human being. Can you believe anybody that would treat their own
child
like that? It makes me so mad when this happens.”

“This has happened before?” I said in disbelief. She had to be making this up.

“Not all the time. And this time is worse than usual—a lot worse.”

“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.

“I live just one farm over from where his family lives. I really wish something would happen to that miserable SOB,” she said as she slammed her locker closed and walked away. I was so stunned, shocked, speechless. I simply stood there in the hallway not even noticing when everybody else drifted away to wherever they were supposed to be.

The next thing I knew, I was standing alone in the hallway in the exact same position. Damn! What the hell should I do? I had to do something? I wanted a gun. I’d never fired a gun in my life. I’d never held a gun in my life. But I wanted one now. A very big one. I didn’t know what Bill’s father’s name was or even what he looked like, but I wanted to find him and make him suffer unspeakable pain and humiliation.

There was no way that I could focus on anything other than Bill, so I pulled out my cell phone and pressed one of my pre-set numbers. When the phone was answered, our conversation was briefer than brief. I said one word, “Help!” Apparently my tone of voice in that one word conveyed more than a thousand words ever could. I couldn’t have said anymore anyway because I found myself quietly fighting tears that seemed to be winning.

Ten minutes later my mom pulled up in front of the school and I jumped in her car. The tears I had been fighting to hold back broke loose and cascaded down my face. “Drive! Please!” I begged. “Get me out of here!”