Authors: David Levithan
"He knows me so well!" Joni replies. I wonder whether that's really what she'd planned to order.
What have you done with the old Joni, you imposter?!
"That sounds good," Tony says. Our waitress arrives and we are freed from one another's conversation for a minute or two. After she leaves, we stick to non-controversial topics like school and homework. It is all terribly boring, which is not something our diner excursions used to be.
Of course, I blame Chuck. And Joni, for being with Chuck.
I can see her trying to watch Ted without appearing to watch Ted. I know she can read the back of his head like the rest of us can read a facial expression.
We make it through the meal. Tony becomes voluble about a church retreat his parents are threatening to send him on.
"That's just plain wrong," Chuck declares, spearing a french fry.
After we finish eating, we head to the pinball machines at the back of the diner. Let me tell you--nothing can compare to putting the entirety of your fate in a small metal sphere that bounces across light, sound, and plastic. The machines still only cost a quarter, and each of us has our superstitions. I always play best when I use a Georgia or Rhode Island quarter. Tony is partial to Pennsylvania and Maryland. Ted, I know, has a stack of Connecticuts in a drawer at home; sometimes we swap in the cafeteria to build our own caches.
Tony and I always take turns off the same machine, decked out in gold lights and Elvis. It plays "Love Me Tender" if you break 10,000. "Can't Help Falling in Love" greets you at 25,000. A losing shot ends with "Heartbreak Hotel."
Chuck commandeers his own machine--sometimes he splits flippers with Joni, sometimes he chooses to go it alone, with her cheering him on.
About fifteen minutes after we start playing, Ted and Jasmine come over.
"What are you gay boys doing?" he asks me and Tony.
"Who are you calling a gay boy, loser?" Chuck shouts out.
"Uh, Chuck?" I say. "He was talking to me. And Tony."
"Oh."
But Ted isn't going to let it pass. He slaps a Connecticut quarter onto Chuck's machine.
"I got next game," he says. "You better make this one good."
Since it's Tony's turn on Elvis, I fade back a little. As Ted hawk-eyes Chuck's game," Jasmine steps beside me.
"What are you up to?" I ask her.
She smiles flirtatiously. "Who says I'm up to anything?"
Jasmine has always been a little bit after me, if only because she knows I'll never go for her.
"Are you and Ted a thing now?"
"Hardly. He just needs someone to talk to. He doesn't need anyone to talk
about
--he's already got that."
We both look over and see him glaring at Chuck and Joni. Chuck is clearly uncomfortable with this, but he doesn't know how to handle it without looking like a brute (which clearly won't go over well with this crowd). He plays a tense game of pinball. And as anybody knows, a tense game of pinball is a
doomed
game of pinball. He barely hits 8,000 before guttering out his last shot. He looks a little stunned at the score, then moves to the side of the machine so Ted can get his play.
I already know Ted is going to win. He's damn good at pinball. And he wants it bad.
Joni looks like she's waiting for someone to pull an alarm. She knows what's going to happen, too. She puts her hand on Chuck's shoulder, already near the comforting zone.
Ted sees this and plays harder. Tony's game ends at a respectable 16 749- It's my turn to move. We're all watching Ted now.
Usually Ted's a yeller, shouting at the ball to hook left or bounce right. Now, though, he has a Zen-like calm. A casual observer might say that he has become one with the ball, that he has made himself the ball.
But I know the truth.
Chuck is the ball.
And Ted plans to wham the heck out of it.
Bumper to bumper, save after save -- the numbers escalate. Six thousand. Seven thousand.
Chuck leans in from the side and looks at the score.
We may never know whether it's the lean that does it or whether it's Ted's reaction to the lean that causes the ball to angle a little into the narrow alley between the flippers. Ted's opinion is loud and clear.
"You tilted me!" he shouts, slamming one hand on the pinball machine and poking the other one at Chuck.
"It was all your fault, buddy," Chuck shouts back. He knocks Ted's hand away from him.
"Don't do this," Joni says.
"Stay out of it," Chuck snaps.
"Don't tell her what she can or can't do!" Ted argues.
Chuck shoves Ted away from the machine. Ted pushes back and knocks Chuck's baseball cap off his head.
Then Tony steps in between them and starts singing "If I Had a Hammer" at the top of his lungs.
I can't believe it. I once told him that the best way to break up a fight is to step between the two people and start singing ancient folk songs. But I'd never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing.
It works. As Tony's voice cracks, hammering out justice and warning and love between the brothers and the sisters all over this land, Ted and Chuck back off. Joni grabs Chuck's arm and pulls him away from the pinball area. After a beat, Jasmine does the same with Ted, wrapping her arm around him only after Joni turns back to look.
"Nice job," I tell Tony.
"It was either that or 'Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.' "
We look at the couples in our midst and decide it's time to take a break from everyone else.
Tomorrow we'll hit the mountain.
Hitting the Mountain
Tony and I figure the best thing a straight boy with religious, intolerant parents can do for his love life is tell his parents he's gay. Before Tony's parents discovered he was gay, they wouldn't let him shake hands with a girl. Now if he mentions he's doing something with a girl--any girl--they practically pimp him out the door.
Jay and I wait in a Laundromat parking lot a couple of blocks from Tony's house. Tony tells his parents that he's going on an outing with Mary Catherine Elizabeth from school. The
'rents immediately have visions of Immaculate Connections and press spending cash into Tony's hands. He leaves his house dressed for repressed flirtation. When he gets to the car, I throw him a duffel and he changes into some hiking gear. Jay drops us off at the local water supply reservation and we hit the mountain.
It's not a mountain, really. Not in a Rockies or Appalachian sense. Any serious mountain climber would call it a hill. But Tony and I aren't serious mountain climbers. We're suburban teen gay boys who need a place with nature and walking paths. I relish the anonymity of the trees. I've been here so many times that I don't mind when I'm lost.
I first came here with Tony. It's his place, really. We'd been hanging around for a few weeks by then, grabbing movies and surfing the mall. He told me there was a place he wanted to show me, so one Friday after school I hopped over to his house and we walked an hour to get to this reservation. I had passed it a million times before, but I'd never been inside.
Tony knows the names of trees and birds. As we walk around, he points them out to me. I try to record them in my mind, but the information never holds. What matters to me is the emotional meaning of the objects. I still remember which rock we talked on the first time we came here. I always salute the tree I tried to climb on our fourth visit--and ended up nearly breaking my neck on. And then there's the clearing.
Tony didn't explain it to me right away. On our second or third visit, he pointed through a thatch of trees and said, "There's a clearing in there." A few times later, we poked our heads inside--sure enough, there was a patch of grass about the size of two trailers, guarded on all sides by branches, trunks, and leaves. It wasn't until we'd been coming to the mountain for a month or two that Tony told me that he'd lived in the clearing for a week--the week after his parents found out he was gay. His mother had decided to swap his winter clothes for his summer clothes and went through his drawers while he was at school. She found a magazine folded into a flannel shirt--nothing raunchy, just an old issue of
The Advocate
that Tony had bought on one of his city trips. At first she didn't understand-- she thought
The Advocate
sounded like something a lawyer would read. Then she sat on his bed, opened up to the table of contents, and Tony's secret wasn't a secret anymore.
They didn't kick Tony out of the house, but they made him want to leave. They didn't yell at him--instead they prayed loudly, delivering all of their disappointment and rage and guilt to him in the form of an address to God. This was before he knew me, before he knew anyone who would take him in and tell him he was all right. So he kipped together a tent and some clothes and pitched his life in the clearing. He still went to school and let his parents know he was okay. Eventually, they reached a collect-call truce. He went back home and they promised to hold back their condemnation. Their prayers were quieter, but they still filled the air. Tony couldn't trust them any longer--not with the gay part of his life. Now he keeps the few love notes he's ever received in a box at Joni's house, and borrows my magazines instead of buying his own. He can only do e-mail at school or a friend's house; his family's computer now screens its sites.
I know Tony still goes to the clearing every now and then, to think or to dream. I give it a silent salute every time we pass. We never sit down there together. I don't want to trespass on his solitude-- I want to be around when he chooses to step out of it.
"How are things with Noah?" he asks me now, as we set off on our hike. As usual, we have the path to ourselves.
"Good. I miss him."
"Do you wish he was here now?"
"No."
"Good."
We walk a few more steps, then Tony asks, "So how are things with Kyle?" I love Tony dearly because there's no judgment in this question.
"I don't know what's going on," I tell him. "He loved me, then he loved me not. Now he needs me. I'm sure pretty soon he'll need me not.
We walk along for a few minutes in silence. I know Tony hasn't lost the subject, though.
"Are you sure that's- healthy?" he asks at last.
"I think it's good he's opening up," I say.
"I don't mean for him. I mean for you."
I'm confused. "He's the one asking for help. Why would it be unhealthy for me?"
Tony shrugs.
The thing is, I m not vulnerable this time, I explain. 'It doesn't mean everything to me."
"Did you know you were vulnerable last time?"
This one I can answer in confidence. "Yes. Of course. That's what falling in love is all about."
Tony sighs. "I wouldn't know."
The part of me that misses Noah right now has an equal part in Tony. The difference is that his longing doesn't have a name or a face.
"Someday your prince will come," I assure him.
"And the first thing I'm going to say to him is, 'What took you so long?'"
We reach the mountain's steepest incline. We pick up fallen branches to use as walking sticks--not because we really need them, but because it's more fun-to walk that way. We start talking in our own language
("Sasquan helderfigglebarth?" "Yeh sesta." "Cumpsy!"),
then stop when Tony hears a birdcall that interests him greatly. (The only birdcall I know is the Road Runner's
BEEP BEEP.)
Tony's sights alight on the highest branches. I can't see a thing, but after a moment, he looks very pleased.
"A bohunk. Not native to this area. But that makes it more mysterious."
I nod. I can go for mysterious.
We continue walking.
"So what's up with you?" I ask.
"Not much."
"And how are things?"
RRRRRRRRR.
I make a loud game-show-buzzer noise. "I'm sorry," I say, "we don't recognize
'fine' as an acceptable answer. We see it as a conversational cop-out. So please, try again."
Tony sighs again, but not that heavily. He knows he's been snagged. If I ever say "fine" to him, he reacts the same way.
"I've actually been thinking about life lately, and this one image keeps coming to me," he says. "Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there's a DON'T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there's always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don't continue moving, it will all be over.
That's how I feel a lot of the" time. I know I'll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming."
He gives me a low smile. "You know, sometimes I wish I had your life. But I'm sure I wouldn't be much good at it."
"I'm not that great at it myself."
"You get by"
"So do you."
I try.
I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral--these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, "I loved him. We all loved him so much." I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word,
love,
could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.
"You know I love you," I say to Tony now, not for the first time. "You are really one of the greatest people I know."
Tony can't take a compliment, and here I am, giving him the best one I can give. He brushes it off, sweeping his hand to the side. But I know he's heard it. I know he knows it.
"I'm glad we're here," he says.
We switch to another language--not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further into the woods and up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us space to think and move. We can be both here and elsewhere at the same time.