Out of Position (13 page)

 
And damn him, I can’t get his words out of my head, all the way back to my place, as I change, and all the way to the restaurant.
Really invested in ensuring your civil rights now that you’re getting fucked regularly, aren’t you, slut? All cramped in your closet.
I think about how I had to talk Dev into having this dinner at a restaurant rather than my apartment, about how reluctant he is to be seen with me in public, even at our harmless lunches.

I try to remind myself of the progress he’s made, tell myself that it’s a slow and steady course. It doesn’t help. I’ve conveniently pushed aside the fox I used to be, the activist with noble goals, for the fox I’ve become, hiding my head in orange-and-black striped sand. And Brian, with a friend’s perception and his own unique cruelty, has plucked that out of everything else and thrust it in my face so I can’t ignore it any longer.

If it weren’t the last day of the semester, if I weren’t leaving tomorrow for holidays which suddenly feel meaningless, I would cancel the dinner with Dev. I know myself well enough to know that in the mood I’m in, I’m likely to say something that hurts him. I start to wonder if I’ve perhaps learned too much from Brian over the years. Can’t be helped, though; I need to see Dev, and I damn well need to make sure he has a good time, so I’m going to have to watch my muzzle carefully.

Chez Jacques is an upscale place, but it’s college-upscale, meaning it’s something I can actually afford my share of, if I fill up on bread and have a salad for dinner. Dev picked the place; that was part of our deal. I insisted on a restaurant, but he got to choose it.

He’s already waiting when I arrive. “Hi,” he says, and looks a little bit surprised. Usually when we go out, I dress up in drag. This time, spurred by Brian’s words, I’ve dressed up in a nice formal outfit. With pants.

“How do I look?” I goad him deliberately, already losing my battle with myself.

He meets my eyes and smiles, guilelessly. “You look nice,” he says. “How about me?”

He’s gorgeous, in a spiffy grey checked suit and red tie. He’s even got a suit vest on underneath. “You look nice too,” I say, calming a little. “How long for our table?”

“Just waiting for you,” he says, and signals to the maitre’d, a fussy skunk who comes over and hands us off to a ferret waiter. The ferret weaves through the tables, guiding us to a little two-seater in a dim alcove beside a curtained window.

The restaurant itself is beautiful, a study in deep maroon with brown and gold accents, soft plush carpets, paintings that are interesting without being pretentious, and recessed lighting that gives the place a soft, romantic glow. All of the couples I see are male-female, with one exception that looks like father-son. My activist brain, like some atavistic reflex, twitches once before I tell it to shut up.

The table is lovely, too, with linen napkins, a red candle burning in an elegant silver candleholder, and six pieces of silverware at each place. I pick up one of the three forks and twirl it. “My Uncle Rob used to say that he never wanted to eat at a restaurant nice enough to require a different fork for every course.”

Dev grins at me. “Well, the Sizzler was all booked up.”

“That was Uncle Rob,” I say, replacing the fork. “Dad thinks he was adopted.”

“So this is okay?”

I snap my jaw shut on my first response when I realize he’s not asking me if this dinner is enough payment to buy my values. “It’s great,” I say, and he relaxes, relieved.

It is, too. Dev asks me to order wine, and my resolution to stick to bread and salad vanishes almost immediately, as I pair a dry chardonnay with a salmon tartare appetizer and order my salad anyway, baby spinach with caramelized walnuts and blue cheese. I’m going to order an entree, too, I know. I’m too hungry not to. I’ll just have to ask for money from the folks when I get home.

The salmon is amazing. We eat it in respectful silence before Dev starts talking about his Christmas vacation. Dinner and caroling, tree and presents, and maybe he’ll actually have a nice holiday this time. He’s got parental and sibling issues, but his performance this football season has raised his status in their eyes, and it seems likely that he really will have a good time this vacation. I sure hope so.

“What about you, Lee?” We’ve gotten our salads. The sharp cheeses and pleasantly sour dressing make my tongue tingle. I don’t get to eat out like this very often, not without my parents.

“Oh… the usual,” I say. “Our turn to host the relatives. I think my cousin’s pumped out another cub in the past year, so there’ll be three of them running around. I’ll stay in my room and try to ignore everything except for a token appearance on Christmas for presents and dinner. At least with them around I won’t have to sit through the home movies.” If I’m lucky.

“Aw, Lee,” he says, “don’t you like the holidays?”

I shrug. “I used to.”

We’ve talked about Dev’s family, but not so much about mine. He knows my parents came to see ‘Square Room’ once, but not what they thought about it. He knows I’m out to them, but not what they think about that. He doesn’t know I spent the Christmas after my sophomore year with Brian, in an off-campus apartment belonging to one of the seniors in FLAG who probably assumed we were just going to screw all week, when in reality we watched TV, got mildly drunk, cooked the worst Christmas dinner ever, and had incredible amounts of fun; nor that my parents made me feel so guilty about missing the holiday that I didn’t dare miss the next one.

“I don’t either,” he says, “but I still try to have fun over the holidays.”

“Because it’s important to them, right?” I say, violating my rule to think about my words twice before letting them out.

“Yeah,” he says, his ears sinking lower, eyes narrowing a bit. “Because I care about them.”

“Even though they don’t really care about you?”

“They care about me,” he says, but there’s a note of protest rather than affirmation. “You don’t even know my parents.”

“I know what you’ve told me,” I say, and then I take a drink of wine and let the flavor and the warmth overwhelm me for a moment. It’s good wine. He’s starting to respond, but I cut him off. “Listen, forget it.”

The waiter takes our salad plates away. Dev takes a sip of wine and peers over the table at me. “What’s wrong?” he says simply. He looks a little annoyed, but I guess the wine is working on him too.

I start to snap that he doesn’t have to worry about it, that it’s not his job to make me feel better. But this time, I manage to catch myself. “I’ll be okay,” I said.

“I didn’t ask that,” he says, more sharply. “I asked what was wrong.”

And now I’m caught in another trap; having talked to Brian about Dev, I find myself reluctant to talk to Dev about Brian. I don’t know why, but while I’m sorting it out I give as good as I’m getting. “I know what you asked,” I say.

“You sure didn’t act like it,” he retorts. “Do you have so much trouble believing that I really do care?”

“Not as long as we’re in our apartment with our clothes off, I don’t,” I say back, which is not really the right thing to say anywhere in public, let alone a fairly quiet restaurant, but I keep my voice pitched low and I don’t think anyone else can hear me.

“I brought us here, didn’t I?” he says, his ears flattening.

“That wasn’t your first choice.”

“No, but…” He snaps his mouth shut, and his look is all wrong. He’s not mad, he’s hurt, and he’s hurt more than he should be.

I remember vividly going on a field trip to a museum when I was ten. We split into pairs for the day, and my partner and I—I can’t even remember his name now—just wandered through the museum having a great time. When we got to the classroom the next day, the teacher started calling on us to talk about the things we’d seen that related to the lesson, and my partner and I stared at each other in horror as we realized that we’d both missed this critical instruction and had basically sent the whole day goofing off. My fur prickled and my ears laid back and flushed as I slowly understood what was going on and that I’d missed something important that I should’ve caught.

I have that feeling now. My ears flush, and my fur prickles. “But what?” I say.

“It’s nothing,” he waves a paw.

“Oh, please,” I say. “Don’t sit there with your ears back, your eyes down, your tail drooping, and tell me it’s nothing.”

“You can’t see my tail,” he says.

“I don’t have to. Even your whiskers are sad.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he says.

And I get another sort of revelation then, that I can’t ask him to tell me what’s wrong with him if I won’t tell him what’s wrong with me. Yeah, he’s a big dumb jock, but first of all, he’s not as dumb as he looks, not by a long shot. Second, he’s my big dumb jock. So I say, “Fine. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

His golden eyes flicker up, meeting mine. He pauses, long enough that I know he’s serious about whatever it is, that he wasn’t just putting this on to get me to talk. “All right,” he says quietly. “You go first.”

I can’t rightly refuse that. “I talked to Brian today,” I say, getting it out right away. “I told him about us.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “It didn’t go well?”

“It went about as I thought it would,” I said.

“So, not well?”

“Not particularly. But it’s better than not talking to him, I guess. At least now I’m not hiding anything.”

Yeah, that last statement was a barb, and he catches it. He growls, “You think this is easy for me?”

I take another drink of my wine, because I’m not liking myself very much right now. It gives me the time to toss aside my first response and replace it with, “No, I know it isn’t. So what was bothering you?”

“It’s really not worth…” he starts, and I stop him.

“Come on, you promised.”

He looks away. “Well,” he says, hesitating and a little growly still, “you know, the reason I suggested having dinner in your apartment was… I guess part of it was just that it was easier than going out, but I am glad we went out… but it was also that… I was going to try to cook a dinner for you.”

I’m spared having to respond by the arrival of our food, which is a good thing, because I’m feeling like a total ass. The roasted chicken in a light citrus glaze smells great, but I can’t bring myself to take a bite of it. Dev digs into his steak, still watching me, and says, “Lee?”

I push my chair back, choke out, “I’ll be right back,” and walk away as quickly as I can without running. I find the restrooms and push into the men’s, dart into an unoccupied stall, lock the door, sit down, and start crying.

I wasn’t ready for that unexpected warmth from my tiger, not after the chilly meeting with Brian. And I didn’t expect to start crying. I just got that blossom of warmth in my chest and the pressure down my muzzle and I knew if I didn’t get up from the table, I’d end up making some kind of scene. I’m sure the wine had something to do with it, but not all of it.

For the past several months, I’ve been struggling to figure out who I am. I thought I knew. Running around with Brian, I was so sure of it, and so proud, in many senses of the word. For Brian to come back and cut like he did hurt me, and part of what hurt, of course, is the realization that he is right. I am more concerned with getting laid than with advancing the cause of gay rights everywhere.

And what Dev did, just now, is take all that selfish behavior of mine, that betrayal of my Fellows of the Pink Triangle, and make it right.

Because that’s what being gay is about. No; that’s what being alive is about. It’s love. Whether we articulate it or not, what we’re fighting for is the right to love whom we want in the manner we’re born to. Sometimes we lose sight of that, in all the politics and symbolism we get caught up in. Dev just reminded me of it. This dinner, the look in his eyes, the night in the hotel in Chikewa Falls, it’s all because I chose him over the movement. It’s the reminder that my betrayal isn’t really a betrayal. It’s the exercising of the rights we are fighting for. That he came from where he did to the point where he can express affection—love—for me, that is a gift, and a victory.

What hurts and touches me is that that gift came to me as I was at my worst (or, well, heading in that direction). He took me in my crappy mood and still loves me, even if he won’t say the words. So I sit and press my muzzle into my paws, dampness slowly leaking out into them. I can’t let Dev see me like this, I just can’t. The funny thing is that he probably has no idea what he just did. He’s probably worried that he offended me, and I should go back and rectify that. That thought is the one that makes me take a couple deep breaths and pull myself together.

I sniffle and wipe my nose across my paw. Some toilet paper helps wipe my muzzle clean, dries my eyes, and prepares me to get back to the table.

He looks up as I approach, and as I’d feared, his ears are folded back. He looks up at me and tries to snap, “Where did you go?” But there’s no authority to it, and he doesn’t even wait for me to reply. “I’m sorry, Lee,” he says. “I know I did something wrong. I’m not real good at this yet.”

“Oh, shut up, stud,” I say, only barely able to restrain myself from hugging him right there in the restaurant. I sit down and give him a big smile, full-on, perked ears and bouncy whiskers and all.

He brightens a bit. “So you’re okay?”

“More than okay,” I say, and dig into the chicken. “Stop worrying so much and let’s finish dinner so we can get back to my place, hm?” He’s got his tail curled under the table, and I flip mine underneath to rest on his.

He looks up, chewing a piece of steak, and deliberately chews it slower, curling his tail up against mine. I flick it back and forth and go on eating my chicken, matching the slow bites he’s taking. We make small talk and finish our meal, tails still touching.

Back at my apartment, we do our traditional slam-the-door-and-dive-into-each-other’s-muzzles dance. This time, though, I don’t shove my paws down his pants. He’s got me pressed back against the door, hard, so he can’t get his paws anywhere but my pants, but I slip mine around his back and just hold him, savoring the reassuring weight of him and the warmth of our tongues playing together.