Russel Middlebrook: Double Feature Part 2

And then he was the one walking away from me.

So Kevin wanted to get back together with me, so much so that he was willing to come out at school. Or so he said. It remained to be seen if he would ever actually do it. I had my doubts, especially now that I'd turned him down flat (more or less). The last time Kevin had had to choose between me and his own popularity, he'd chosen his popularity-to the point where he'd even actually stood there with his jock friends calling me names for being gay. That was a hard thing to forget.

I headed off in the opposite direction from Kevin. But the pit in my stomach, the one that had first opened when I realized my parents knew what they knew, hadn't gone away. If anything, it was even bigger than before.

When I got home that night, I slipped in the back door. I could hear my parents talking in the kitchen, but I some31 how managed to creep past them. I felt like the main character in some monster movie, trying to get out of the house before the creatures realize I'm there. Only in my case, I was just trying to get to my bedroom.

Once there, I immediately IMed Otto. I was well aware that he should have been the first person whom I told about my parents. I felt guilty, like I'd cheated on him, which I guess in a way I had.

My user name was "Smuggler" (for no reason I can explain). Otto's was "OttoManEmpire" (because, well, his name is Otto).

Smuggler: Hey you. Big news. My parents found out about me.

OttoManEmpire: No WAY! How? I explained it all, but I didn't mention that it was the magazine he had sent me, because I didn't want him to feel responsible.

OttoManEmpire: How do you feel? Are you okay?

Kevin had asked me the same question. I had to think about it before I could answer Otto. How did I feel? So much 32 had happened in such a short period of time, but none of it made much sense. I felt like a leper examining myself for injuries that I knew were there but that I couldn't quite feel.

Smuggler: I'm not sure it's. .h.i.t me yet. OttoManEmpire: Yeah, I felt that way too at first. He had told his parents in August, a few weeks after he'd got home from summer camp. They had been surprised and concerned, but they hadn't called him disgusting.

Smuggler: What's it like with your parents now? OttoManEmpire: Okay. I told them, and then they never talked about it again. So things basically went back to normal. It's never come up.

Smuggler: Figures.

OttoManEmpire: What you need now is support. Someone you can talk to in person (and who'll give you a hug!). Min or Gunnar around?

Smuggler: I already talked to one friend.

I felt guilty that I hadn't specified that that "friend" was Kevin. At least I hadn't let him hug me. 33 OttoManEmpire: That's what helped me. The support of my friends. Otto hadn't told just his parents he was gay-he'd also told all his friends, and even come out at school. My meeting him that summer had changed his whole life, which was cool, but it made me feel strange too. Responsible.

OttoManEmpire: Do your parents know about me? Smuggler: No. But they might figure it out. They know you're coming for Thanksgiving. Otto was coming to visit me over the break the following week. We'd been planning it for a while now. I'd already told him about Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies, and even picked up a form to mail to him so he could get it signed by his parents and be an extra too, at least for a day or two.

OttoManEmpire: Do you think I should still come visit? Smuggler: YES! I really really really still want you 34 to come!

I also sent him six "party face" emoticons. And I wasn't lying with my answer. I really did want him to come. My parents' learning I was gay and Kevin saying he wanted to get back together had left me all confused and my emotions jumbled. But I wasn't confused about my feelings toward Otto. I still remembered Otto's and my last night together, at camp that summer. We had snuck out onto the lake in a rowboat after dark, and we'd cried and kissed and held each other, and told each other how much we were in love. My feelings for him then had been stronger than anything I'd ever experienced, even stronger than what I'd felt for Kevin all those months ago.

OttoManEmpire: But what will your parents say? Especially if we sleep in the same bedroom.

He sent me a "winking face" emoticon.

Smuggler: Who cares? This is my house too! This was, of course, a gross oversimplification. But I fig ured I could deal with all that later. 35 Smuggler: Otto?

OttoManEmpire: Yeah?

Smuggler: I love you. You know that, right? OttoManEmpire: Of course. And I love you too.

Smuggler: No! I mean I really, really, really love you!

This was absolutely true. There was nothing that I wanted more than to see Otto again, to spend time floating on the calm, moonlit water in the quiet little rowboat of our love. I want to kiss him, and rest my head on his chest, and smell his hair, and ma.s.sage the muscles in the back of his neck. I knew it wouldn't change what had happened with my parents, but for as long as we were together, the world would at least feel right.

But as absolutely true as all this was, in the back of my mind was this nagging little feeling that, even now, I kind of wanted to kiss and rest my head and all the rest with Kevin too.

The next day at school, I told Min and Gunnar all about what had happened with my parents. They were very sup 36 portive and said all the right things, just like I knew they would. I didn't tell them about Kevin. Which felt weird. It was like I'd spent all day lifting weights with my right arm, but not my left. I felt out of balance.

Why didn't I tell Min? Partly it was because I knew exactly how she would react. She would say go tell Kevin to take a flying leap. And she would have a point. Kevin had treated me pretty badly all those months before. Min also had her own issues with Kevin. She'd wanted him to stand up for this kid that everyone was bullying, but he never had.

Anyway, this new situation was more complicated than how Min would see it. She was great, but she could be kind of, um, uncompromising. This is not necessarily a bad thing. She was the kind of friend who calls you on your c.r.a.p. Everyone should have a friend like her.

But that's not where I was right then. I was still working things through in my mind. Meanwhile, I knew that Gunnar wouldn't judge me. He'd made mistakes too. He was more human. So he just seemed like the better friend to talk to-safer.

On nonrainy days, Gunnar and I rode to school together on our bikes. I decided to tell him about Kevin on the way home.

"It's really incredible the number of big directors who got their start on horror movies," Gunnar was saying as we rode. 37 "James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone. Even Steven Spielberg!" Needless to say, Gunnar was still obsessing over the making of movies.

"Oh," I said.

"But it's not surprising. Horror really lends itself to lowbudget filmmaking. The stories are pretty straightforward, and a lot of what makes a film scary is the camera work, and what's implied on-screen, not what's actually shown. Audiences are also more forgiving of technical flaws, at least if the film is scary. Plus horror is one of the few genres where you can get a distribution deal and promote the movie even with no stars."

"Ah," I said.

Gunnar looked over at me. "Sorry. I'm going on, aren't I? You're still freaked about your parents, aren't you?"

Gunnar acted like he had OCD and ADD, but that didn't mean he was completely clueless. He might not have been as observant as I was, but he did okay in a pinch.

"It's not that," I said.

"Then what?"

I sighed. "Kevin."

"Kevin Land? What does he have to do with anything?"

"He wants to get back together."

38 "You are kidding me!"

"No." I explained how I'd run into him at the movie meeting, how he'd e-mailed me afterward, and how we'd met by the stinky picnic gazebo.

"That must be kind of flattering," Gunnar said. "To have him coming crawling back to you and everything."

I laughed. "Yeah. I guess it is. But it's not just that. Kevin told me he's decided to come out."

Gunnar knew why I'd broken up with Kevin, so he knew exactly what this meant.

"Yikes," he said. "Do you think he really will?"

"He might. What do you think I should do?" "About Kevin?"

"Yeah."

He stared at me for a second. "You're really asking my opinion?"

"Of course," I said. "Why not?"

"Well, it's just that no one's ever really asked me for relationship advice before. Why would they? What do I know about relationships?"

"Well, you do have a girlfriend now, you know."

"I know! Sometimes I still can't believe it." Gunnar thought a second longer. "If Kevin did come out, would you want to get back together with him?"

That was the million-dollar question. Gunnar had 39 zeroed right in on it. Maybe I'd been wrong not to ask him relationship advice earlier.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"So it's kind of a possibility?" Gunnar asked.

"Maybe."

We kept riding. Our bikes squeaked. My b.a.l.l.s needed readjusting, but I couldn't do it without losing my balance.

"What about Otto?" he said at last. There was no judgment in his voice, just like I'd thought.

"G.o.d, I love Otto. I really do. No doubt about that."

"But?"

"But he lives eight hundred miles away!" I said. "And I'm almost seventeen years old. If he were here, there would be no question that I would stay with him. But what kind of relationship can we have living that far apart? I'll see him a week or two every year, at most. That's not a relationship, it's a pen pal. And we can stay friends. And maybe someday we'll live closer together, so we can pursue a real relationship. There's nothing to keep that from happening. This thing with Kevin, it's not really about Kevin. It's about me. About where I am in life."

"But?"

"But I do love Otto. And Otto loves me. And meeting 40 me, it's changed his whole life. If I broke up with him, he would be devastated. I'm sure he'd think it was his entire fault. It might be forever until he trusted someone again. And why would I really be breaking up with him? Just because there's someone who lives closer ? What kind of c.r.a.ppy reason is that ? Maybe I'm just making excuses so I can get back together with Kevin."

"But?"

"But I can't stay with someone out of guilt or obligation. I'd just end up resenting him in the long run, and that's not doing anyone any favors. And if I'm making excuses to get together with Kevin, maybe that's because I want to get together with Kevin."

Gunnar fell silent. Sometimes-very rarely, but sometimes-he knew when to stop talking.

"Maybe you'll see things more clearly when Otto visits next week," Gunnar said at last.

"This is true," I said.

"And Kevin might not come out at all. He said he would, but who knows if he will? If he doesn't, you don't have a problem. You don't have to choose."

"I know," I said. I'd already thought about this. In fact, I put the odds of Kevin actually coming out at less than fiftyfifty.

"But if he does?" Gunnar said. "What are you going to do? Who are you going to pick?" 41 "Gunnar," I said, "if this were a book, I just might skip ahead to the end. Because right now, I have absolutely no idea."

That afternoon after school, I tried doing the sneak-in-theback-door thing again, but my parents were once again waiting for me in the living room. My dad got home from work at sixty-forty every night. I had never known him to come home early, not even when our washing machine overflowed. So I knew this was a very big deal.

Great, I thought. This was just what I needed. "What," I said. Notice there is no question mark. "Russel," my dad said. "We need to talk."

They needed to talk? Well, I sure hoped they were going to start by apologizing for calling me disgusting! Even so, I wasn't going to sit down on the love seat across from them. For one thing, I felt no love whatsoever. So if they wanted to talk, I would do it standing up.

"We want to understand," my dad said. "This is hard for us. It's a shock."

I guess this made sense. I'd had my whole life to get used to the idea. They'd barely had twenty-four hours.

I stared at my parents, trying to figure out what to say. I couldn't help but notice that there was dirt under my 42 mom's fingernails. She'd probably been out back fiddling with her bonsai trees-her way to work out stress. "This is just who I am," I said at last. "I know it's upset ting to you. But most of what you hear about gay people, the stereotypes you see on television, that isn't true. Most of us are just normal people."

"h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a sin," my mom said.

Oh, so now I was a sinner too? This was their idea of "talking," of trying to understand? By calling me a sinner?

"Russel," my dad said, "we know that adolescence is a very confusing time."

Yes, I thought to myself. And my dad had gone through a "gay" phase. We'd covered this yesterday.

"I'm not confused," I said. "I'm really not. I know this is new for you, but it's not for me. I've thought about it a lot.

I know what I feel. I've known for years." I'd said all this to them once before, but maybe they needed to hear it twice. "We still think you should talk to someone," my dad said.

"What?" I said. "Why?"

"Because h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a sin!" my mom shouted. "To help you sort out your feelings," my dad quickly interjected. "To help you make sense of it."

Apparently when my parents said "talk," they meant 43 they wanted to talk to me, but not listen to a single word I said in response. Did they really think that would work? If so, well, in a nutsh.e.l.l, they were nuts.

"I told you before," I said. "My feelings don't need sorting out!" Well, okay, maybe they did, but about Kevin and Otto, and how to deal with my parents not listening to me. But not about being gay.

"Just talk to him," my dad said. "Is that too much to ask?"

"Who?" I said.

"Father Franklin."

"Our priest?" My family was Catholic. We went to ma.s.s every Sunday. But to tell the truth, the whole "religion" thing had never really worked for me. I considered myself spiritual, and hopefully somewhat moral. But being moral because someone gives you a list of rules to follow (and warns you you'll be punished if you don't), well, that always seemed to me to kind of miss the point. And how can anyone honestly believe that their religion is the "right" one when 99 percent of people just adopt the religion of their parents? But I knew the Catholic thing was important to my parents, so I had always played along.

Still, I wondered where all this talk of sinning and reli 44 gion was coming from all of a sudden. My parents hadn't mentioned any of this when they'd first found out about me. Then they'd just been worried about what people would think. It's like they were upset because of the way it made them feel, but now they were retroactively applying religion to it, to justify their preexisting feelings.

I'm not saying my parents were hypocrites. I'm just putting it out there, okay?

"Russel, you can't be gay!" my mom said, erupting again with a regularity that was suddenly not unlike Old Faithful. "What would our friends say?"

I give up: it's true, my parents were hypocrites.

"He'll help you," my dad interjected. "Father Franklin? He's good at this kind of thing."