- Apply for college
- Read more
- Listen to more music
- Go on a trip (maybe at least go camping—with Dante?)
- Write in a journal every day (try anyway)
- Write a poem (stupid)
- Make love to Dante
I crossed that out. But I couldn’t cross it out of my mind. You couldn’t cross out desire when it lived in your body.
Six
I GOT TO THINKING ABOUT Dante and how he must have been so afraid when those assholes jumped him and left him there on the ground, bleeding. What if he had died? They wouldn’t have given a damn. And I wasn’t there to protect him. I should have been there. I couldn’t forgive myself for not being there.
Seven
I FELL ASLEEP READING A book. Legs was lying next to me when my mother woke me. “Dante’s on the phone.”
“What’s that smile?” I said.
“What smile?”
“Mom, just knock it off.”
She shook her head and raised her shoulders in that What? kind of body talk.
I walked into the living room and grabbed the receiver. “Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
“I fell asleep reading a book.”
“What book?”
“The Sun Also Rises.”
“I never actually finished that.”
“What?!”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Yes. But it’s that kind of making fun that you only get to do if you like someone.”
“Oh, so you like me.”
“You’re fishing.”
“Yup.” I could picture him smiling. “So, aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing?”
“I was getting to that.”
“Well, I was just hanging out with my dad. He’s such a dork. He was telling me about all the famous homosexuals in history.”
“What?”
Yup, we were both cracking up.
“He’s trying to be all cool about this gay thing. It’s, like, totally sweet.”
“That would be the word,” I said.
“He said I should read Oscar Wilde.”
“Who’s he?”
“He was this English guy. Or Irish. I don’t know. Famous writer in the Victorian age. Dad said he was ahead of his time.”
“And your dad reads him?”
“Sure. He’s a literature guy.”
“It doesn’t bother him—this—you know—this—”
“I don’t think the idea of someone being gay bothers my father. I think he might be a little sad—because he knows it’s not gonna be so easy for me. And he’s curious about everything, and he’s not afraid of ideas. Ideas won’t kill you. He likes to say that a lot.”
I wondered about my own dad. Wondered what he thought. Wondered if he was sad for me, wondered if he was confused.
“I like your dad,” I said.
“He likes you too.” He was quiet for a moment. “So, you wanna hang out? Any minute now, school’s gonna start again.”
“Ah, the cycle of life.”
“You hate school, don’t you?”
“I kinda do.”
“Don’t you learn anything?”
“I didn’t say I don’t learn anything. It’s just that, you know, I’m ready to move on. I’m over hallways and lockers and assholes and, you know, I guess I just never fit in. And now, well, I’m really not gonna to fit in. Shit!”
Dante didn’t say anything on the other end of the telephone. And then finally he said, “Do you hate all this, Ari?” I could hear that hurt thing in his voice.
“Look, I’ll be right over. We’ll hang out.”
* * *
Dante was sitting on the front steps of his house. Barefoot.
“Hi.” He waved. “Are you mad?”
“Why? Because you’re not wearing shoes? I don’t care.”
“No one cares about that except my mother—she likes to tell me what to do.”
“That’s what mothers do. And why? Because she loves you.”
“Correcto. Isn’t that how you would say it in Spanish?”
“Well, that’s how a gringo would say it.”
He rolled his eyes. “And how would a real Mexican say it? Not that you’re a real Mexican.”
“We’ve had this discussion before, haven’t we?”
“We’ll always come back to this topic because we live in this topic, a fucking no-man’s-land of American identity.”
“Well, we are Americans. I mean, you don’t look like a Mexican at all.”
“And you do. But that doesn’t make you more Mexican either. We both have giveaway last names, names that mean some people will never consider us real Americans.”
“Well, who wants to be?”
“I’m with you on that, babe.” He sort of smiled.
“Are you trying that out, the ‘babe’ thing?”
“I’ve been trying to work it into the conversation so, you know, so you wouldn’t notice.”
“I noticed.” I didn’t exactly roll my eyes. I just gave him that look that said I was rolling my eyes.
“What do you think?”
“I mean, I’m a babe,” I said, “but ‘babe’?”
“Just cuz you’re a babe doesn’t mean you have to get cocky.” He had this tone when he was amused but also annoyed. “So, ‘babe’ doesn’t work for you. What am I supposed to call you?”
“How about Ari?”
“How about ‘darling’?” I knew he was just kidding.
“Oh, fuck no.”
“How about ‘mi amor’?”
“Better, but that’s what my mom says to my dad.”
“Yeah, same with my mom.”
“Do we really want to sound like our mothers?”
“Oh, hell no,” Dante said. I loved that he brought so much laughter into what was once the pathetic-melancholy-boy thing I used to do all the time. And I wanted to kiss him.
“You know, Ari, we’re screwed.”
“Yup, we’re screwed.”
“We’ll never be Mexican enough. We’ll never be American enough. And we’ll never be straight enough.”
“Yup,” I said, “and you can bet your ass that, somewhere down the road, we won’t be gay enough.”
“We’re screwed.”
“Yeah, we are,” I said. “Gay men are dying of a disease that doesn’t have a cure. And I think that makes most people afraid of us—afraid that somehow we’ll pass the disease on to them. And they’re finding out that there are so damned many of us. They see millions of us marching on the streets in New York and San Francisco and London and Paris and every other city in the whole world. And there’s a whole lot of people that wouldn’t mind if we all just died. This is serious shit, Dante. And you and I, we’re screwed. I mean. We. Are. Really. Screwed.”
Dante nodded. “We really are, aren’t we?”