Russel Middlebrook: Double Feature Part 9

"So you've been seeing him?" my mom said accusingly.

"Of course," I said. 127 "Russel, that is not acceptable!" my mom said. "Like I said," I said, "I don't see what business that is of yours."

This probably wasn't the smartest thing to say. Whether it was their business or not, they could make it their business, since they were my parents.

Sure enough, my mom said, "Russel, you are grounded! You are not leaving this house for a month!"

In other words, I'd finally made a decision between Kevin and Otto-only now I couldn't be with either one!

CHAPTER NINE.

Could there possibly BE a worse time to be grounded? But the thing is, I'd made my decision. I knew who I 128 wanted to be with. I had to tell him. My parents thought they could stop that by grounding me? Well, in a nutsh.e.l.l, they were nuts. I know I've said all along I was a good kid. But in this case, I simply had no choice except to sneak out of the house without their knowing.

Kevin. That's who I needed to see. I IMed him and told him to meet me at the stinky picnic gazebo. I also told him to give me a few minutes because I needed to build a dummy of myself out of clothes and put it under the covers of my bed. That way, if my parents peeked into my room, they might think that I had gone to sleep early. I'd read about this in a book. I doubted it would work-it hadn't worked in the book!-but the consequences of my disobeying my parents and sneaking out the window were so harsh that I figured I should at least try to avoid them. Lucky for me, my bedroom was on the ground floor, so it was easy for me to sneak out the window.

My bike was in the garage, which was impossible to open without making a ruckus, so I had to run to the stinky picnic gazebo. I was out of breath by the time I got to the park. I could see the gazebo on the other side of the long soccer field. It looked smaller than I remembered, like a piece in some antique Christmas diorama. 129 Kevin was under the gazebo waiting for me. But there was someone with him-a guy with broad shoulders in some sort of overcoat. Was it his dad? I'd never seen a teenager dressed like that before. The acoustics of the park were strange, especially at night, and I could hear the mumble of them talking across that long expanse of lawn, but I couldn't make out anything they were saying.

Suddenly Kevin spotted me. He uttered something to the guy with him, who said something back, then hurried off into the woods.

What was this? I wondered.

I sprinted across the gra.s.s.

When I reached the gazebo, I immediately asked Kevin, "Who was that?" I was out of breath from all that running.

"Huh?" he said. He brushed away an insect.

"That guy I saw you talking to. Who was it? He looked older."

Kevin stared at me hard. "He was older," he said at last. He thought a moment more. "In his twenties. He was. .h.i.tting on me. I've seen him here before."

I was thoroughly confused. "Kevin, what are you talking about? What do you mean you've 'seen' him here?"

130 Kevin slouched. "What do you think ?"

Was Kevin saying what it sounded like he was saying? That he'd been out cruising the parks at night?

"Russel, relax," Kevin said. "I haven't done it that many times."

" 'That many times'? Are you serious?" I admit it: Kevin was shocking me. We were standing under a gazebo, but The Sound of Music this wasn't. I thought I'd known him. Never in a million years would I have thought that he'd be out in parks at night with guys (other than me, I mean).

Suddenly Kevin was impatient. "Look! What'd you want to see me about?"

"Well, I'm confused," I said. "Last week you were all moony-eyed over me. You came out to the whole school so we could be together. Now you tell me you've been out picking up old guys in parks?"

Kevin shrugged, but it was really more of a squirm. "Well, it's not like we were together then. And it's not like that has anything to do with us anyway. That's just s.e.x."

"Kevin!"

"What?"

I didn't know what to say. Was it possible that I had misjudged him so thoroughly? Last summer, before I'd gotten together with Otto, I'd fallen in love with a guy at camp who I'd thought was perfect. And he had turned out to be 131 a complete creep. But Kevin wasn't a creep. Was he? True, I'd known that he was weak-that when push came to shove, he did the easy thing. He'd come out at school, but eight months too late, and probably only to get my attention anyway. And that guy Kevin had been with at the movie shoot? Maybe he hadn't been hitting on Kevin-maybe Kevin had been hitting on him.

"You know," Kevin said, "this is getting to be a real bore. When did you get such a stick up your b.u.t.t?"

I was speechless. I had been wrong about him, just like I'd been wrong about that guy at camp. Boy, was Kevin weak! He couldn't even wait for me in a park without getting it on with another guy? I suddenly felt like I had with my parents when they'd confronted me about being gay, like he was pulling off a human mask to reveal the true monster underneath.

"So it was all lies?" I said. "When you said you still loved me? You were just messing around?"

He squirmed again, like a man in a straitjacket. "Hey, I'm an athlete. It's a game. And this was one game I wanted to win. I lost the first time around, so I wanted a rematch. I wanted to prove I could win. And I did. I got you to pick 132 me over Otto. But that's all it was. Just a game."

I didn't answer. The truth was, I hadn't picked him. I'd picked Otto. That's what had been so obvious when I'd stared in that mirror at school, when I'd seen the reflection of that zombie glaring back at me. Being a zombie was about being dead, about the past, about a life already lived. Kevin was about the past too. He and I had had our chance, but that moment was gone. We couldn't go back-everything was different now. Being human, being a high school student, that was about the future, about promise, about all the life yet to be lived. It was exactly like Declan McDonnell had said. I didn't have a jeweled dagger like Brad, the hero of the movie, but Declan McDonnell had given me the insight I needed to vanquish the past once and for all. The right choice for me was the guy who represented a new life, and the future-Otto, no matter the difficulties.

I'd come here to tell Kevin that he and I really were over. I'd wanted to tell him before I said anything to Otto, because I didn't want any unfinished business when I finally laid it on the line with him. I was choosing Otto with all my heart and soul, and if he didn't want me anymore, fine. I didn't want to keep Kevin as sort of a fall-back boyfriend.

But I didn't tell Kevin any of this. What was the point now, since I was never going to talk to him again? In a way, 133 I was grateful. Because he had made it completely clear that by picking Otto, I had absolutely positively made the right choice.

"Good-bye, Kevin," I said, and I turned to go.

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbled.

And so I just walked away. It wasn't like the last time I'd left him behind in this gazebo, when I really had been torn, looking back at him as I went. Still, when I reached the opposite side of the soccer field, I did look back. I couldn't believe it! Kevin was already back in the arms of the old guy in the overcoat. I'd thought the man had run away, but he hadn't. He must have been hiding in the bushes all the while, listening to Kevin and me. Now he and Kevin were hugging, and probably kissing. Kevin was even weaker than I'd thought.

I couldn't watch. I hurried away. It was the funniest thing, though. As I reached the street at the edge of the park, I swear I heard the sound of someone sobbing. It echoed out above the gra.s.s. I couldn't see Kevin anymore, but I knew it couldn't have been him anyway, because of the way he'd acted. I figured it was just the strange acoustics of the park-that someone in one of the 134 surrounding houses was crying in a bedroom with the window open. I went straight to Gunnar's house.

"Oh!" he said when he opened the door.

"Is Otto here?" I said. "I really need to talk to him." He flashed me a grin. "Oh, good! I was hoping you'd pick him!" I hadn't meant to let him know the reason I'd come, but somehow Gunnar had seen it on my face. Otto stepped into the hallway behind Gunnar.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," he said. "Want to go for a walk? I have something I want to tell you."

"Sure," he said. "Let me get my coat."

As we were waiting, Gunnar leaned forward and whispered, "Don't worry about ticks, Russ. If you get any, they're really not that big a deal."

We didn't go anywhere near the stinky picnic gazebo. That had been the place for Kevin and me. (And I definitely didn't want to run into Kevin and his new "friend"!) Meanwhile, the place for Otto and me was a moonlit lake way up in the mountains. So, thinking we needed some new romantic spot, I took Otto to a different lake-really 135 more of a pond-on the outskirts of town. I'd played there as a kid, but I'd never been there in the dark. It looked completely different at night, all soft-focus and muted lighting, like the Rivendell scenes in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings. It was as if we'd stepped right into the reflection on the surface of the pond, and everything around us was silver and shimmering. The cattail fronds glowed, and above us, the stars and moon seemed to ripple in the air. Surrounding us, a ring of trees, their bare branches protectively intertwined, shielded us from the outside world. The air was clean and wet, and I could smell Otto's musk as well, even from five feet away. It may have been another swamp, but there was no hint of methane here.

"Otto," I said as we walked. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry." "I knew it," he said. "You're breaking up with me, aren't you?"

"Huh? No. No!" I stopped him. "That's not it at all." I took a breath. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being distant these last couple of days. It was just something I needed to figure out. But it was stupid, because you came all this way, and we only had this short time together." I figured there was no reason to tell him about Kevin because (a) it was probably kind of obvious what had been going on 136 with me, and (b) that was all over now anyway.

"You're not breaking up with me?" Otto said. Like the pond, he looked different in the moonlight-lighter, a white marble statue come to life. His scar made half of the statue look rough, unfinished.

"Nope," I said. "You're not getting rid of me that easy. But I did want to talk about what we do next." "What do you mean?"

I explained how I was grounded right then, and that even if my parents didn't find out I'd snuck out without their permission, they were going to do everything they could to keep him and me apart. As hard as it would be to see each other under normal circ.u.mstances, my parents were going to make it much, much harder.

"They might not even let me go to camp next summer," I said. "They know that's where we met. They could even send me to one of those 'ex-gay' camps instead. That's how nuts they are about this."

"d.a.m.n, Russel, I'm sorry."

"Screw 'em! I love you, that's all that matters. But I wanted to let you know all this, and ask if you still wanted to be with me."

Otto rolled his eyes. "Of course I do."

I stepped forward and kissed him. The moment my lips touched his, I was once again living in my skin-the skin 137 on my body, and the "skin" that somehow contained my aura or soul. When we'd kissed before, it had felt like our souls were touching, but tonight I wasn't sure where his soul ended and mine began. Same for his mouth and tongue. I finally knew what they meant when they talk about lovers becoming one.

"So what do we do?" I said, later. It may have been ten minutes, or it might have been an hour-I wasn't sure. "How do we make this work?"

"I'm not worried," he said. "We'll just have to get creative." We stayed near that pond for a long time. In fact, I didn't get home until almost 5 A.M. After all, we only had this one night together in who knows how long?

What did we do in all that time? Let's just say Otto and I made the most of our time together, and leave it at that.

138.

CHAPTER TEN.

Otto went home the next day. I couldn't go with him to the airport, which sucked, but we'd said our good-byes the night before. 139 My parents actually bought the dummy-thing. That meant there was at least one bright side to the whole situation with them: they were smart, but not so smart that I couldn't somehow keep seeing Otto on the sly.

That Sunday, we had a meeting in the family room. "We're very disappointed with you, Russel," my mom said. "Very, very disappointed."

Well, I'm very disappointed with both of you, I wanted to say. Very, very disappointed. So I guess we were even.

"As long as you're living in our house," my mom went on, "you're going to have to live by our rules."

How have I not lived by your rules? I wanted to ask. They'd said Otto couldn't stay at their house, and so I'd made other arrangements-despite how unreasonable my parents' demand really was. It sounded to me like they didn't just want me living by their rules. It sounded to me like they didn't want me to be gay.

"We're a family," my mom said. "And somehow we have to learn to get along. So we're all going to have to make sacrifices."

Let me guess, I wanted to say: your sacrifice will be the almost unbearable burden of having a gay son. And my sacrifice will be to stop seeing Otto (or any other boy, ever, for 140 that matter).

But I didn't say this either.

My mom and I stared at each other. I knew what she was thinking, but I don't think she had any idea what I was thinking. That's the thing about gay people and straight people. We gay people understand them a lot better than they understand us. After all, we have to understand them, in order to live. But most straight people don't even try to understand us. They have no reason to.

Finally, I said, "Fine. We'll all make sacrifices."

I knew as soon as I said it that this was the truth. I was going to be making a sacrifice, but not the one my parents thought. Oh, I was definitely going to go right on seeing Otto, which was my right as a human being. But now I was going to have to lie about it to my parents. In a way, they were just as much about the past as Kevin was. And if I was going to embrace my new future with Otto, I was going to have to vanquish them too. But in this case, my weapon of choice was going to be little white lies.

Anyway, that meant my relationship with my parents was changing, maybe forever. They were still my parents, and I loved them. But I wasn't a child. They still had some say in my life, but not about this. In this case, they were dead wrong. So I guess that's what I was sacrificing: some of my faith in them, and maybe even what was left of my 141 childhood.

But later, to my surprise, my dad knocked on my door. "What," I said.

He stuck his head inside and said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

I was sitting at my computer. I nodded.

He came in and sat on the bed. Suddenly his hands were just the most fascinating things to him. He smelled like Lavoris and Parmesan cheese. "Russel," he said awkwardly. "I just wanted to say that I know how hard this must be for you."

"You do?" I said. I admit it, I was totally surprised. He nodded. "And I wanted to talk about your mother too." "What about her?" I said warily.

"She loves you, Russel. Very, very much."

Oh, sure, I thought. She "loves" me-just so long as I conform to her image of exactly who I'm "supposed" to be. "She'll come around," my dad said. "She doesn't think she can, but I know she will. She loves you too much not too. But I wanted to ask a favor of you. She doesn't know I'm asking, and it's not fair of me to ask you. It's not fair of her to need me to ask you. She's not perfect. Then again, who is?" "What favor?" I said.

142 "Give her some time."

I thought about this for a second. Then before I knew it, I found myself nodding. "Yeah," I said. "I can give her some time."

Was it just possible, I thought, however unlikely, that my parents weren't quite the terrible monsters that I had made them out to be?

Sunday night, Min stopped by. I guess my mom hadn't yet heard that she was bi, because she let Min come in and see me, despite my being grounded. (Or maybe my mom thought that, Min being bi, there was still a chance she and I could get together!) "So," Min said.

"So," I said. I felt bad that I'd been keeping her in the dark lately-that I'd just a.s.sumed she would somehow judge me if I'd told her the truth about Kevin and Otto. So I told her everything.

She listened to it all, but there was something not quite right about her reactions. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was almost like she'd heard it before. Maybe Gunnar had filled her in.

Finally, when I was done, she said, "You've had a busy couple of weeks."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry I haven't kept you up-to-date." 143 "Here's the thing. I haven't exactly kept you up-to-date either."

"You haven't?"

Min nodded guiltily. "Girl problems. It's a pretty complicated story."

"What girl?" I said. "When was this? I had no idea!"

"That's funny, because if it weren't for you, there would be no story."

"Really? Why's that?"

So Min told me. And I have to say, she was absolutely right.

I also realized that I wasn't nearly as observant as I'd thought.

Monday at school, Min, Gunnar, and I were walking down the hallway, and we came across that poster calling for extras for Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies-the one that had started this whole thing in the first place. It was out-of-date now, but no one had taken it down. As for the movie itself, there were still more scenes to be done with the extras, but I was grounded, so I wouldn't be going.

"d.a.m.n," I said. "Something just occurred to me." I turned to Min. "I owe you ten bucks."

144 "What?" she said.

"Don't you remember? When we first saw this poster? You bet that if we did the movie, we'd all have completely different experiences?"

"Yeah," mumbled Gunnar. " Someone was in a bad mood that day."

"The fact is," I said, "you were right." I thought about everything that had happened-my encounters with Kevin, Declan McDonnell, and Otto, not to mention all the c.r.a.p with my parents. "Boy, were you right! Talk about completely different experiences!" I reached for my wallet.