Best Gay Romance 2011, page 18
Clean, exhausted and back in the bed, I drifted off to sleep in his embrace. I sensed him stir hours later, rise out of bed and begin to get dressed. The activity aroused Inky in the other room, and I groggily stayed awake until Sam was dressed and at the door.
“Good-bye and thanks,” he said, as he left. “I hope you find him.”
I nodded and closed the door, petting Inky and groping my way through the darkness of the apartment and back to sleep. I was by then too tired to miss him, but I knew I would in the days that followed.
HOW BOYS FLIRT WITH OTHER BOYS
Eric Nguyen
Senior prom tastes like salt. It’s because seventeen-, eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds sprawl on wooden floors not made for dancing. Not that anybody’s dancing, not much anyway. Even though this is the last dance of the year, everyone acts like it’s freshman year all over again.
Geeks like Billy Lee—dark eyed, with darker framed glasses—stand against the walls, wondering why they came. He came with a girl, a girl with blonde hair, even though her last name is Chan. There are no blondes in this town. Except her. And now she’s halfway across the room, her hands on some girl, and Billy feels like going home and telling his mom that Laura Chan is a dyke. And that she likes black girls.
Laura Chan would probably get angry, though. As far as Billy knows, she’s always angry. And she’d tell Mrs. Lee, “Well, Billy’s a fag too. He’s been eyeing that Bobby all night.”
Billy imagines the scene in his head as it unfolds, and in it he says, His name’s not Bobby, it’s Robert, and he likes being called Robby, not Bobby, and I couldn’t help but eye him, he plays basketball and baseball, and he wrestles too, and he stayed behind one year, but we’re practically the same age; at some points during this year we were even both eighteen.
Everyone knows Billy’s a fag already except for his mom. But the cool thing is that everyone’s okay with it, for the most part. Okay means they don’t talk about it. They smirk and call him “different” in a tone that everyone gets. Everyone has always treated him this way. Everyone except Robby.
Robby comes up to Billy and asks him how prom’s going.
“So-so,” he says. He leans harder into the wall. He wonders, If I lean back far enough, would the wall fall over? But what he’s really thinking about is holding Robby’s hand and walking around the prom like that and then maybe dancing. The nerve, he thinks. It’s what daydreams are made of. He’s thought about it for all four years they’ve known each other. Walking to class with Robby, Billy thought about letting his hand touch Robby’s, maybe slightly, but he stopped himself. Yet this was the only reason Billy chose the same classes as Robby. Even shop. Thinking back on it, he realizes he could have cut a finger off, and then who would want to hold his hand? Love makes you a dummy, even puppy love, Billy thinks.
Robby says, “Yeah, sorry about Laura. She’s such a dyke.” They both laugh. “She so dykey!” says Robby in his best imitation of how Asians are supposed to talk. He watches Margaret Cho too much, and she’s funny because they’ve never seen Asians talk that way before. Not even Billy’s mother.
“Yeah,” Billy says and waits because there’s always that awkward silence that he can never get used to, even with Robby. “How’s your date?” Billy means Cynthia, who played on the lacrosse team, varsity with the blue shirts, Number 5.
“Cindy’s over there,” Robby says, pointing across the room to a redhead giggling among brunettes. Her hair made her some type of commodity in town. It made her different, but her white skin made her the same, so she was safe to approach and destined for whatever popularity a high school could afford.
“And it’s only nine,” says Robby.
“I can never get used to dances. Not even prom.” Prom was supposed to be important, Billy thought. But without someone—anyone but Laura Chan—it all seems useless, like any other day. Blaring pop music—Lady Gaga on repeat—he could have done this in his room, in his boxers. Heck, he could’ve done it naked. “I need air,” he says.
“I’ll come,” Robby says.
Across from the school, there’s a playground with fake wood chips and a jungle gym colored like a rainbow. Billy says that he doesn’t know why they built it in the first place because it’s not like anyone comes out here. “No one plays on playgrounds anymore. And why near a high school?”
“So kids like us can have one more chance at childhood. Before whatever comes next.” Robby hangs on the monkey bars and the last syllable of whatever comes next hangs between a question mark and an ellipsis. He’s a whole two inches above the ground. “What does come next?” he asks.
“There’s a college. In Maine.”
“Maine?” Robby says.
“Yeah, Maine. What’re you doing?”
“I don’t know, staying here, I guess. Community college, I think.”
“That’s good,” Billy says. He knows lots of kids going to community college, staying in town, and maybe things will never change for them. At eighteen he knows this for sure: things never do change here. His mom works at the cereal-packing plant, she’s been there all his life. His sister puts on too much makeup and spends too much time in front of the mirror, even though the same people always show up at the bar where she works, and she can’t even get on full time. And his father—who knows what happened to him? Mrs. Lee says he ran away with a gypsy, and Billy thinks of Natalie Wood on TCM. But Maine is something: a fresh beginning, a new journey, far away from here. He is partially excited.
“What you gonna do in Maine? Is that where people like you go?” Robby laughs sarcastically, as if questioning Billy’s choice of Maine—of all places!
“No one goes to Maine to be gay,” chuckles Billy. “Stop being stupid!”
“You’re being stupid,” Robby says, “Going so far away.” Robby lets go of the monkey bars and drops onto the ground, his good dress shoes cracking the fake wood chips. They scratch his shoes, so he sits on a metal donkey, the kind that you bounce on, and takes them off. Billy follows, riding a donkey beside Robby, even though he’s too big for it. They’re both too big, more men now than boys.
“They’re my dad’s shoes,” Robby says and wipes one of them with his hand and then the sleeve of his shirt.
Billy smiles.
“What you smiling at, Billy? Keeping something from me?”
He wants to tell Robby that he’s smiling because out here is so much better than in there. Because in there someone keeps requesting the same Lady Gaga song, and it’s too dark to really see anyone or anything, and the disco balls make him dizzy anyway, and Laura is on that other girl and everyone thinks it’s okay, it’s almost hot, and there he was, alone against a cold wall that he wished would crumble if only he leaned hard enough. If only he leaned hard enough, then maybe all the school’s walls would crumble and he could run away with Robby, because Robby is the closest he’s ever had to a best friend, mainly because he never asked him, How did you get that way? Or said, You’re a freak, you know, you’re a walking, talking, breathing freak.
He even got into the habit of calling himself a freak in the morning, as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair.
Robby didn’t say those things, though. Robby was cool. Robby actually sat down with Billy at lunch, at the loser end of the cafeteria where one lightbulb is always out, and that one lightbulb makes all the difference.
“Nothing,” is all Billy says. “I’m not smiling at anything.”
Robby drops the shoes and bounces some on the metal donkey. It makes a rusted sound like the door of an old house. He’s like a kid, definitely like a kid, thinks Billy. He begins to bounce too, as if competing to make noise.
A car passes by slowly; there are two signs at the corner, one displaying running children, another that reads PROCEED WITH CAUTION. The two boys stay silent as the car rolls straight on through, as if they’re afraid someone will find them.
“Can I ask you a question?” says Robby.
“You already did.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
They both pause: because they forgot that it’s okay to smoke at their age, because they still wanted to know that someone was there to give them the “okay” or the “go ahead.”
“Go ahead,” Billy says.
Robby takes a fresh pack from his back pocket. He tears it open at the dotted line and points it at Billy.
“Nah,” Billy says. And that’s the last that is said for another while.
From his donkey perch, Billy watches students leaving and reentering the school, boys running from girls, girls chasing boys, because that’s how girls flirt; it’s in the chase.
How do boys flirt? Billy asks himself. How do boys flirt with other boys? He wonders now, again, about asking Robby, because that’s what best friends are for, advice. And Billy’s always giving advice about girls to Robby—give them lotion, the pink kind, call her back, don’t wait!—as if he knew more about girls than Robby, even though he never notices them. They’re like wallpaper, he wanted to say, they’re there because they are, even though you don’t know what for. He wonders how it would sound to ask Robby about flirting. Flirting has to be the same for everyone. But Billy’s hands are sweaty, as the boys sit, together and alone, in the dark, and he’s waiting for something to happen, anything to happen, anything at all. He hears screaming, joyful screaming, and the sound of high heels on asphalt. “Give me that back!”
He thinks, maybe boys steal each other’s shoes and chase each other around and squeak and squeal like girls. Or maybe it’s all done with notes on last week’s homework, accompanied by a smile from across the room, as if smiles were a secret language. Or possibly they meet in abandoned playgrounds at night, smoking and riding metal donkeys while everyone else is busy someplace else, with someone else.
The one time Robby gave him a note was during seventh period, asking to meet him near the basketball courts after school. There he showed Billy how to roll a joint and smoke it without inhaling it too deeply into his lungs. They got so high they thought they were going to die, or else their parents would kill them, for coming home smelling like dope. So they hid out in Robby’s van the entire night with the sunroof open, counting stars and making wishes. “I wish I were I rich man,” Robby had said. “I wish…” Billy had said. He coughed on purpose to stall. The hot and humid space smelled like salty sweat and armpits, and on the radio Nirvana sang “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Nirvana, because jocks listen to Nirvana, not Madonna.
“Kurt Cobain died on my birthday, you know,” Billy had said.
“Of course I know that, you already told me that,” Robby had said. He had rolled over and they were face-to-face in the back of a van. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he had said, so close that his breath brushed Billy’s cheek and the smell of the weed, the weed that made them think about death, tickled his nose. They thought often about dying.
“I don’t know,” Billy had said, and laughed. Recalling that one time, now, Billy thought he had laughed. It seemed like a laughing moment. He should have laughed.
“I’ll tell you something you don’t know,” Robby had said, leaning in closer, as if this was going to be a secret, licking his lips as if it’d be the last thing he’d ever say….
That was when a teacher banged on the window and told them to go home and clean up, after confiscating their dollar-store lighter and rolling papers. That was their moment, a secret story to tell each other that starts with, Remember when…
And that was why, for the rest of the school year, Robby smiled at him from across the room, a grinning smile with his teeth biting his lips to hold in the laughter, but they both ended up chuckling anyway.
Hearing the laughter over at the school, boys’ deep voices chuckling and girls’ high-pitched voices giggling, Billy thinks back to that moment and wonders what the answer is, what it is that he doesn’t know about Robby. He conjures a list in his head, ranking what he really wants last, because everyone knows you never get to the bottom of lists: Robby once robbed a bank with a ski mask, he ran into the building, telling everyone to get down on the ground or else; Robby’s favorite hobby is knitting, but he only does it on Sundays and only when it’s raining because that’s when he’s bored; when Robby was twelve he killed a squirrel with a BB gun, the squirrel’s name was Pussy, and that’s why he can’t have sex with the pretty girls: because he can only think of Pussy; and: Robby likes me—he really, really likes me.
Billy stops thinking when smooth, wet skin touches his cheek. Lips, he guesses. But it’s not a peck. The lips stay for a long second before the tender suction lets go.
Billy’s heart hiccups in his ears, and he knows his face is turning red. And Robby says quietly that he has something to tell Billy, something he’s been meaning to tell him for a long while.
“I have stuff to tell you,” is what he says.
“What kind of stuff?” Billy says.
“All kinds of stuff,” Robby says, bashfully, breathing through his mouth, baring his teeth—a kid who doesn’t know what to say, a kid whose hands are shaking, a kid whose eyes are twinkling with tears. He falls back on the metal donkey and drops his cigarette onto the fake wood chips or maybe his shoes, who cares, no one notices, because Robby kinda smiles, kinda doesn’t and then says, “This is when I knew…” and sighing smoke into the air and starting again, “This is when I first knew…”
Senior prom tastes like salt and smoke and Robby.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JAMESON CURRIER is the author of two novels, Where the Rainbow Ends and The Wolf at the Door, and four collections of short stories, Dancing on the Moon; Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex; Still Dancing and The Haunted Heart and Other Tales. “July 2002” is an excerpt from his new novel, The Third Buddha.
MARTIN DELACROIX (martindelacroix.wordpress.com) writes novels, novellas and short fiction. His stories have appeared in more than a dozen erotic anthologies, and he has published two novellas, Maui and Love Quest. He lives on a barrier island on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
SHANNA GERMAIN (shannagermain.com) plays chess like a queen but falls in love like a pawn. Her writings on lust, love and leviathans have appeared in Absinthe Literary Review, Best American Erotica, Best Gay Bondage, Best Gay Erotica, Best Gay Romance, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Lesbian Romance, Dirty Girls and more.
DERRICK DELLA GIORGIA (derrickdellagiorgia.com) was born in Italy and currently lives between Manhattan and Rome. His work has been published in several anthologies and literary magazines.
DAVID HOLLY’s stories have appeared in Best Gay Romance, Best Gay Erotica, Surfer Boys, Boy Crazy and many other publications. Readers will find a complete bibliography at gaywriter.org.
TYLER KEEVIL grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and moved to Wales in 2003. Since then, his work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Front & Centre, Inter-zone , New Welsh Review and On Spec. His first novel is titled Fireball.
JAY MANDAL comes from southern England. He has written three novels: The Dandelion Clock, Precipice and All About Sex; and three collections: A Different Kind of Love, The Loss of Innocence and Slubberdegullion. He also has a collection of short stories and another of flash fiction awaiting publication.
DAVID MAY (bydavidmay@comcast.net) is a Hawaiian national living in Seattle with his husband and two cats. He is author of two fiction collections, Madrugada and Butch Bottom & the Absent Daddy; a collection of nonfiction, A Nice Boy from a Good Family and an advice column, “Cum What May,” for M4Mkink.com.
ANTHONY MCDONALD lives in England. His stories have appeared in many anthologies, and he is the author of three novels: Adam, Blue Sky Adam and Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet.
TOM MENDICINO spent six raucous years eking out a living in the sales departments of several New York publishing houses before attending the University of North Carolina law school. Since 1994, he has practiced as a health-care lawyer; his debut novel is titled Probation.
EDWARD MORENO has finally settled down in Melbourne after years of wandering aimlessly in search of pleasure. A native of New Mexico and a one-time San Franciscan, he now calls Australia home. He studies writing and Spanish at the University of Melbourne. His work has been published in Best Gay Erotica and at blithe.com.
ERIC NGUYEN (youfightlikeannerice.blogspot.com) is a writer from Maryland.
SIMON SHEPPARD (simonsheppard.com) edited the Lambda Award-winning Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica and Leathermen; wrote In Deep: Erotic Stories; Kinkorama; Sex Parties 101; Hotter Than Hell and Sodomy! and has been published in more than three hundred anthologies.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
RICHARD LABONTÉ dropped out of university in 1970 to work for a daily newspaper in Ottawa, Ontario, left professional journalism in 1979 when his then-lover asked him to help open the first branch of A Different Light Bookstore in Los Angeles, and left bookselling (and San Francisco) in 2000 when the then-three bookstores, in West Hollywood, New York City, and SF were sold to new owners. He returned to Canada in 2001, imported his husband Asa in 2003 (Canada: legal marriage!), and this century has worked as a freelance editor and book reviewer, cobbling together more than thirty anthologies for Cleis Press and Arsenal Pulp Press and syndicating a queer book review column, “Book Marks,” for a decade. Bowen Island, British Columbia, rural population more or less 3,500, is now his home, where he’s happy to see more deer than people most days of the week.
