How They Met, and Other Stories

It was different now, bearing the brunt of his father’s disapproval.

I understood. Not all of it. But a little more.

“…too many of you students ignore economics. You dillydally. You spend your time on such expendable things. Like Thom. You know Thom, right? No focus. He has no focus. He wouldn’t be right for this university. You show more promise, but I have to say, you need to make sure you don’t spend time on expendable things….”

And suddenly I was sick of it.

I looked to the door and saw something. A shadow in the keyhole. And I knew. Thom had never left me. He was on the outside of the door, holding his breath for me. Trying to keep quiet. Staying quiet, because his father was around.

I was sick of it.

The economics lecture was over. Mr. Wright didn’t alter his tone when he asked, “What are your interests?”

“Your son in my room,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“The sun and the moon,” I said. “Astronomy.”

Mr. Wright looked pleased. “I didn’t know kids liked astronomy anymore. When I was a child, we all had telescopes. Now you just have telephones and televisions instead.”

“You couldn’t be more right, sir.” I nodded emphatically, as if I believed for a second that he hadn’t watched television or spoken on the telephone as a child. “A telescope is a fine instrument. And there’s something about the stars….” I paused dramatically.

“Yes?”

“Well, there’s something about the stars that makes you realize both the smallness and the enormity of everything, isn’t there?”

Thom had first told me this as we lay on our backs on a golf course outside of town, too late for the twilight, but early enough to catch the rise of the moon, the pinprick arrival of the stars. His words were like a grasping.

Now here was his father, agreeing with him, through me.

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Mr. Wright said.

I looked to the keyhole, to Thom’s shadow there. Knowing he was near. Speaking to him in this code.

Saying to his father what I’ve said to him.

“Sometimes I wish we could open ourselves up to each other as much as we do to the sky. To the smallness and the enormity.”

This time, I lost Mr. Wright. He looked at me as if I’d just spoken in an absurd tongue.

“I see,” he said, looking back at his notes. “And do you have any other interests?”

Must interests be interesting? That is, must they be interesting to someone other than yourself? This is why I hate these interviews, these applications. List your interests. I wanted to say, Look, interests aren’t things that can be listed. My interests are impulses, are moods, are neverending. Sometimes it’s as simple as Thom holding my hand. Sometimes it’s as complicated as wanting to be able to hold his hand in front of his father. That want is an interest of mine.

“I swim,” I said.

“Are you on the swim team?”

“No.”

“Why is that?”

“I like to do it alone.”

“I see.”

He wrote something else down. Not a team player, no doubt.

“Thom is on the swim team,” he added.

“I know,” I said.

“Very competitive.” As if that was the marker of a fine activity.

“So I’ve heard.” I had grown so tired of competitions. Of sacrificing the nights of stargazing in order to make the paper self as impressive as possible.

“Do you know Thom well?” Mr. Wright asked.

“We’re friends,” I said. Not a lie, but not the whole truth.

“Well, do me a favor and make sure he stays on track.”

“Oh, I will.”

It had now gone from uncomfortable to downright fierce. He picked up my transcript again, frowned, and asked, “What is the GSA?”

I tried to imagine him coming to one of our Gay-Straight Alliance meetings. I tried to imagine that he would understand if I told him what it was. I tried to think of a way to avoid his shiver of revulsion, his dismissive disdain.

Thom had tried to signal him once. Had left the pink triangle pin that I’d placed on his bag after a meeting, and he hadn’t taken it off when he got home. But it hadn’t worked. Mr. Wright had brushed right past it. He hadn’t noticed or hadn’t said. When all Thom wanted was for him to notice without being told.

“GSA stands for God Smiles Always, sir,” I said with my most sincere expression.

“I didn’t know the high school had one of those.”

“It’s pretty new, sir.”

“How did it start?”

“Because of the school musical,” I earnestly explained. “A lot of the kids in the musical wanted to start it.”

“Really?”

“It was Jesus Christ Superstar, sir. I think we were all moved by how much of a superstar Jesus was. It made us want to work to make God smile.”

“And the school is okay with this?” Mr. Wright asked, his eyebrow raising slightly, a vague irritation in his voice.

“Yes, sir. It’s all about bringing people together.”

“It says here you were on the dance committee for the GSA?”

I nodded, imagining Thom’s reaction behind the door. “I was one of the coordinators,” I elaborated. “We wanted to create a wholesome atmosphere for our fellow students. We only played Christian dance music. It’s like Christian rock music, only the beat is a little faster. The lyrics are mostly the same.”

“Did Thom go to that dance?”

“Yes, sir. I believe I saw him there.” In fact, he was my date. Afterward, we had sex.

“It also says you were involved in something called the Pride March?”

“Yes. We dress up as a pride of lions and we march. It’s a school spirit thing. Our mascot is a lion.”

“I thought it was an eagle?”

“It used to be an eagle. But then our principal’s kid saw The Lion King and got hooked. You know how these things work.”

He did not look amused. “Do you march in costume?”

“Yes. But we don’t wear the heads.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re proud. We want people to know who we are.”

“It says the Pride March is tied to Coming Out Day.”

Damn. The transcript might as well have been written in lavender ink.

I faked a laugh. “Oh, that. It’s another school spirit thing. First day of the football season, someone dresses up as a lion and comes out from under the bleachers onto the field. If we see its shadow, we know the season will be a long one. If not, we know it’s pretty much over before it’s begun. The whole school gets really into it.”

“I can’t recall Thom mentioning that.”

“He hasn’t? Maybe he thought it was a secret.”

“I know what’s going on here.”

Mr. Wright put down the transcript.

Now it was my turn to say, “Excuse me?”

“I know what’s going on here,” Mr. Wright said again, more pronounced. “And I don’t like it one bit.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but…”

He stood up from his chair. “I will not be ridiculed in my own house. That you should have the presumption to apply to my alma mater and then to sit there and mock me. I know what you are, and I will not stand for it here.”

I wish I could say that I hurled a response right back at him. But mostly, I was stunned. To have such a blast directed at me. To be yelled at.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t figure out what to do.

Then the door opened, and Thom said, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”

Now Mr. Wright and I had something in common—disbelief. But even though I had disbelief, I also had faith. In Thom.

“If you say one more word, I’m going to scream,” he said to his father. “I don’t give a shit what you say to me, but you leave Ian out of it, okay? You’re being a total ass**le, and that’s not okay.”

Mr. Wright started to yell. But it was empty yelling. Desperate yelling, mostly focusing on Thom’s foul language. While he yelled, Thom came over to me and took my hand. I stood up and together we faced his father. And his father fell silent. And his father began to cry.

As if the world had ended.

And it had, in a way.

I could feel Thom shaking, the tremors of that world exploding. As we stood there. As we watched. As we broke free from limbo.

And I wanted to say, All you really need to get to know me is to know that I love your son. And if you get to know your son, you will know what that means.

But the words were no longer mine to say.

Except here. I am writing this to let you know why it is likely that you received a very harsh alumni interview report about me. I’m hoping my campus interview will provide a contrast. (Thom and I will be heading up there next week.) I do not hold it against your university that a person like Mr. Wright should have received such a poor education. I understand those were different times then, and I am glad these are different times now.

It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. It is never easy, I’m sure, to conduct a college interview with your closeted son’s boyfriend. And, I am positive, it is least easy of all to be the boy in the hallway, listening in.

But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

It’s not the easy things that let you get to know a person.

Know, and love.

THE GOOD WITCH

It was a mistake from the start. I see that now, and the really twisted thing is that I saw it then. But once you utter the words “Will you go to the prom with me?” there’s no way back. The wheels have left the ground and you’re officially over the cliff.

I asked Sally Huston to go to the prom because I was bored in bio class. There’s no other way to explain it. I was bored…she was sitting next to me…I got to thinking…and that was that. I wasn’t dating anyone—I’d already gone out with this girl Nina for like two years, and once that was over I thought I could coast until college. I didn’t realize I was g*y yet, so it wasn’t like I was taking a boy to the prom. I had all these friends-who-were-girls, but I knew that if I asked one of them to the prom, the other six would be bitter. So that left me looking for someone fringe, someone safe, someone who wouldn’t make a big deal about it. Sally and I passed notes all the time, mostly because the alternative was paying attention in class. I knew she wasn’t dating anyone, since she’d broken up with this guy Mark at about the same time I’d broken up with Nina. So I just put it in a note—Hey, wanna go to prom? I don’t even think I bothered to fold it. But the way she reacted, you would’ve thought I’d sent it over on a velvet pillow. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw the sentence. I mean, I wasn’t actually watching as she read the note. But the next time I looked over, her eyes were still lit. She wrote back—Are you sure? And this time I didn’t even bother writing it down. I just said, “Of course I am,” real low so the teacher wouldn’t hear. I was relieved to have the whole thing over with.

By the time lunch hit, everyone knew. I could tell because now I had seven friends-who-were-girls pissed at me, each in her own special way.

“It’s no big deal,” I said.

“You better shut up, because you’re only going to make it worse,” my friend Theresa warned me.

“But I thought you guys liked Sally,” I said.

“That is so not the point,” Theresa replied—I think she actually sighed when she said it.

There were only about three weeks to go before prom, which meant the seven of them had to grab any available guy to be their dates. Most of them ended up with juniors—and not the kind of juniors who act like they’re already seniors, more the kind that you can never remember whether they’re a sophomore or a junior or even a freshman. It was clear that the girls would be the ones to buy the corsages and the boutonnieres. And they were not going to ask me to come along when they did.