How They Met and Other Stories Read online

  Mr. Wright looked pleased. “I didn’t know kids liked astronomy anymore. When I was a child, we all had telescopes. Now you just have telephones and televisions instead.”

  “You couldn’t be more right, sir.” I nodded emphatically, as if I believed for a second that he hadn’t watched television or spoken on the telephone as a child. “A telescope is a fine instrument. And there’s something about the stars….” I paused dramatically.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, there’s something about the stars that makes you realize both the smallness and the enormity of everything, isn’t there?”

  Thom had first told me this as we lay on our backs on a golf course outside of town, too late for the twilight, but early enough to catch the rise of the moon, the pinprick arrival of the stars. His words were like a grasping.

  Now here was his father, agreeing with him, through me.

  “Yes, yes, absolutely,” Mr. Wright said.

  I looked to the keyhole, to Thom’s shadow there. Knowing he was near. Speaking to him in this code.

  Saying to his father what I’ve said to him.

  “Sometimes I wish we could open ourselves up to each other as much as we do to the sky. To the smallness and the enormity.”

  This time, I lost Mr. Wright. He looked at me as if I’d just spoken in an absurd tongue.

  “I see,” he said, looking back at his notes. “And do you have any other interests?”

  Must interests be interesting? That is, must they be interesting to someone other than yourself? This is why I hate these interviews, these applications. List your interests. I wanted to say, Look, interests aren’t things that can be listed. My interests are impulses, are moods, are neverending. Sometimes it’s as simple as Thom holding my hand. Sometimes it’s as complicated as wanting to be able to hold his hand in front of his father. That want is an interest of mine.

  “I swim,” I said.

  “Are you on the swim team?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I like to do it alone.”

  “I see.”

  He wrote something else down. Not a team player, no doubt.

  “Thom is on the swim team,” he added.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Very competitive.” As if that was the marker of a fine activity.

  “So I’ve heard.” I had grown so tired of competitions. Of sacrificing the nights of stargazing in order to make the paper self as impressive as possible.

  “Do you know Thom well?” Mr. Wright asked.

  “We’re friends,” I said. Not a lie, but not the whole truth.

  “Well, do me a favor and make sure he stays on track.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  It had now gone from uncomfortable to downright fierce. He picked up my transcript again, frowned, and asked, “What is the GSA?”

  I tried to imagine him coming to one of our Gay-Straight Alliance meetings. I tried to imagine that he would understand if I told him what it was. I tried to think of a way to avoid his shiver of revulsion, his dismissive disdain.

  Thom had tried to signal him once. Had left the pink triangle pin that I’d placed on his bag after a meeting, and he hadn’t taken it off when he got home. But it hadn’t worked. Mr. Wright had brushed right past it. He hadn’t noticed or hadn’t said. When all Thom wanted was for him to notice without being told.

  “GSA stands for God Smiles Always, sir,” I said with my most sincere expression.

  “I didn’t know the high school had one of those.”

  “It’s pretty new, sir.”

  “How did it start?”

  “Because of the school musical,” I earnestly explained. “A lot of the kids in the musical wanted to start it.”

  “Really?”

  “It was Jesus Christ Superstar, sir. I think we were all moved by how much of a superstar Jesus was. It made us want to work to make God smile.”

  “And the school is okay with this?” Mr. Wright asked, his eyebrow raising slightly, a vague irritation in his voice.

  “Yes, sir. It’s all about bringing people together.”

  “It says here you were on the dance committee for the GSA?”

  I nodded, imagining Thom’s reaction behind the door. “I was one of the coordinators,” I elaborated. “We wanted to create a wholesome atmosphere for our fellow students. We only played Christian dance music. It’s like Christian rock music, only the beat is a little faster. The lyrics are mostly the same.”

  “Did Thom go to that dance?”

  “Yes, sir. I believe I saw him there.” In fact, he was my date. Afterward, we had sex.

  “It also says you were involved in something called the Pride March?”

  “Yes. We dress up as a pride of lions and we march. It’s a school spirit thing. Our mascot is a lion.”

  “I thought it was an eagle?”

  “It used to be an eagle. But then our principal’s kid saw The Lion King and got hooked. You know how these things work.”

  He did not look amused. “Do you march in costume?”

  “Yes. But we don’t wear the heads.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re proud. We want people to know who we are.”

  “It says the Pride March is tied to Coming Out Day.”

  Damn. The transcript might as well have been written in lavender ink.

  I faked a laugh. “Oh, that. It’s another school spirit thing. First day of the football season, someone dresses up as a lion and comes out from under the bleachers onto the field. If we see its shadow, we know the season will be a long one. If not, we know it’s pretty much over before it’s begun. The whole school gets really into it.”

  “I can’t recall Thom mentioning that.”

  “He hasn’t? Maybe he thought it was a secret.”

  “I know what’s going on here.”

  Mr. Wright put down the transcript.

  Now it was my turn to say, “Excuse me?”

  “I know what’s going on here,” Mr. Wright said again, more pronounced. “And I don’t like it one bit.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but…”

  He stood up from his chair. “I will not be ridiculed in my own house. That you should have the presumption to apply to my alma mater and then to sit there and mock me. I know what you are, and I will not stand for it here.”

  I wish I could say that I hurled a response right back at him. But mostly, I was stunned. To have such a blast directed at me. To be yelled at.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t figure out what to do.

  Then the door opened, and Thom said, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”

  Now Mr. Wright and I had something in common—disbelief. But even though I had disbelief, I also had faith. In Thom.

  “If you say one more word, I’m going to scream,” he said to his father. “I don’t give a shit what you say to me, but you leave Ian out of it, okay? You’re being a total asshole, and that’s not okay.”

  Mr. Wright started to yell. But it was empty yelling. Desperate yelling, mostly focusing on Thom’s foul language. While he yelled, Thom came over to me and took my hand. I stood up and together we faced his father. And his father fell silent. And his father began to cry.

  As if the world had ended.

  And it had, in a way.

  I could feel Thom shaking, the tremors of that world exploding. As we stood there. As we watched. As we broke free from limbo.

  And I wanted to say, All you really need to get to know me is to know that I love your son. And if you get to know your son, you will know what that means.

  But the words were no longer mine to say.

  Except here. I am writing this to let you know why it is likely that you received a very harsh alumni interview report about me. I’m hoping my campus interview will provide a contrast. (Thom and I will be heading up there next week.) I do not hold it against your university that a person like Mr. Wright should have received such a poor education. I und
erstand those were different times then, and I am glad these are different times now.

  It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. It is never easy, I’m sure, to conduct a college interview with your closeted son’s boyfriend. And, I am positive, it is least easy of all to be the boy in the hallway, listening in.

  But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

  It’s not the easy things that let you get to know a person.

  Know, and love.

  THE GOOD WITCH

  It was a mistake from the start. I see that now, and the really twisted thing is that I saw it then. But once you utter the words “Will you go to the prom with me?” there’s no way back. The wheels have left the ground and you’re officially over the cliff.

  I asked Sally Huston to go to the prom because I was bored in bio class. There’s no other way to explain it. I was bored…she was sitting next to me…I got to thinking…and that was that. I wasn’t dating anyone—I’d already gone out with this girl Nina for like two years, and once that was over I thought I could coast until college. I didn’t realize I was gay yet, so it wasn’t like I was taking a boy to the prom. I had all these friends-who-were-girls, but I knew that if I asked one of them to the prom, the other six would be bitter. So that left me looking for someone fringe, someone safe, someone who wouldn’t make a big deal about it. Sally and I passed notes all the time, mostly because the alternative was paying attention in class. I knew she wasn’t dating anyone, since she’d broken up with this guy Mark at about the same time I’d broken up with Nina. So I just put it in a note—Hey, wanna go to prom? I don’t even think I bothered to fold it. But the way she reacted, you would’ve thought I’d sent it over on a velvet pillow. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw the sentence. I mean, I wasn’t actually watching as she read the note. But the next time I looked over, her eyes were still lit. She wrote back—Are you sure? And this time I didn’t even bother writing it down. I just said, “Of course I am,” real low so the teacher wouldn’t hear. I was relieved to have the whole thing over with.

  By the time lunch hit, everyone knew. I could tell because now I had seven friends-who-were-girls pissed at me, each in her own special way.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said.

  “You better shut up, because you’re only going to make it worse,” my friend Theresa warned me.

  “But I thought you guys liked Sally,” I said.

  “That is so not the point,” Theresa replied—I think she actually sighed when she said it.

  There were only about three weeks to go before prom, which meant the seven of them had to grab any available guy to be their dates. Most of them ended up with juniors—and not the kind of juniors who act like they’re already seniors, more the kind that you can never remember whether they’re a sophomore or a junior or even a freshman. It was clear that the girls would be the ones to buy the corsages and the boutonnieres. And they were not going to ask me to come along when they did.

  Sally was cool about the whole thing, at least at first. Most of our conversations about it happened in written form, while the respiratory system was being explained. The limo logistics, the cummerbund/gown coordination—we figured everything out. If asked, we said we were going as friends.

  The girls in my group circled their limos and made their plans without me. I didn’t have any real guy friends to speak of—or, at least, to speak to—so Sally and I ended up getting a limo by ourselves. The price of everything blew my mind, but Sally was good about splitting it. She said she knew it was stupid to get a limo when both of us had cars, but she thought it wouldn’t be prom without one.

  The day of the prom, the limo picked me up first. I was wearing my dad’s tux, feeling massively uncomfortable but ready to hang out and have a good time. I rode over to her house with her corsage next to me in its plastic deli container, the big-ass ninja pins stuck through the stems. As I was walking up Sally’s front steps, I felt like something out of a syndicated sitcom, stuck in a lost episode of The Brady Bunch. Sure enough, her dad opened the door and gave me a dad handshake. Her mom fluttered around like she was the one going to the prom. Sally was nowhere in sight. I waited in the front hall, mustering charm for the gushing parents. Then I heard the creak of floorboards. I looked up, and Sally’s dress appeared at the top of the stairs, with her body somewhere in it.

  She looked like Glinda the Good Witch. There’s no other way to describe it. The description hit immediately—I mean, I explicitly thought, Holy shit, she looks like Glinda the Good Witch. And there was no letting go of it. I have never in my life seen so much pink. It was poofing everywhere. She had to turn slightly to the side to get down the stairs.

  This was a girl I’d only seen in jeans before. A girl who used words like fuckbucket in her notes to me. A girl who I knew listened to Led Zeppelin.

  She was wearing pink lipstick. She was wearing so much blush that it made me blush. And her hair was frozen in this hairdon’t that would have made Little Miss Sunshine turn dark. Her mother started snapping photos and her dad looked all misty and I hid every ounce of my laughter behind the broadest smile I could possibly manage.

  “You look beautiful,” I said, when what I really meant was, This is one image I’ll never, ever forget.

  She told me I looked handsome, and then teetered there (her shoes were pink, too, and left her stilted). Her mom shot a look at my hands and I offered up the corsage. The plastic took about two minutes to open, and then I didn’t know what to do. All the places that I would’ve put the corsage were covered with sequins, and since I’d never really experienced sequin-pin interaction before, I wasn’t sure where to attach the damn flowers. To be honest, the pins scared the hell out of me, because they seemed like something from a butterfly collector’s table, and the last thing I wanted to do in front of Sally’s parents was draw blood.

  Mr. Huston, God bless him, came to my rescue, saying, “Honey, why don’t you pin it on? It looks kind of dangerous.”

  I stood there staring, because now I was seeing—no—could it really be?—eyeshadow.

  We took about two hundred pictures—I think we were posed in each room of the house, as well as the backyard and front yard. I figured we might miss the prom entirely, and I can’t say that I entirely minded. Sally had gotten me a boutonniere that was nearly the size of the corsage. It was made of magenta roses. Magenta.

  When her parents were finally secured back inside the house, I half expected and fully hoped that Sally would say, “I can’t believe my mom made me wear this dress! Hold on a second while I get my real clothes from behind this potted geranium.”

  Instead she said, “We’re going to have the most wonderful night. And I’m so happy I’m sharing it with you.” I looked to see if she was using a Hallmark card as a crib sheet.

  The limo driver got out of his car as we approached. When Sally got to the door, he had her lift the front of the dress, bend one knee, lift one leg, lift another part of the dress, turn, squeeze, lift the other leg, lean, and squeeze some more in order to fit it all in. I watched as Sally billowed and twisted, then—once the door was closed without incident—I walked to the other side and squeezed myself in.

  On the way over, we talked about other people’s dates and other people’s plans. Safe ground. Then Sally said, “Isn’t this a great dress?”

  And I said, “It sure is something.”

  Then, from somewhere underneath her linebacker shoulder pads and soufflé sleeves, her hand reached over and grasped mine.

  And I thought, Oh-kay…

  Her thumb slowly stroked my thumb.

  And I thought, Oh no.

  “You’re so cute,” she said.

  “You, too,” I offered. Then I added, “We’re almost there—I’d better fix my hair,” and moved my hand away to do it.

  I was hoping that Sally’s Glindawear happened to be the fashion for our year, that some other girls would dress in a similar way so Sally wouldn’t stand ou
t so much. When we got to the prom, though, I saw this wasn’t meant to be. Yes, there were certainly other girls in pink. And, yes, there were some girls whose dresses looked like they were made of icing. But Sally was the Marie Antoinette of this particular court. And I could’ve been fine with that—I swear I could’ve been fine with that—but when the time came for us to take another round of pictures, Sally not only bought the set of sixty-four, but she also ran her finger over my chin after she straightened my tie, giving me this look that I can only call amateur seductive.

  I knew I was in trouble.

  Luckily for me, tables were five couples each, so Theresa, Liz, and their respective dates had to break off from the rest of their posse to sit with me and Sally. The look on Theresa’s face when she saw Sally was probably the second-most memorable image of the night—I could read Theresa better than I could read myself, and at that moment, she had shock, terror, high hilarity, and a sense of cosmic justice all written across her face. But she didn’t miss a beat. She headed over to us, hugged Sally’s crinoline shoulders, and then, when Sally was turned away, gave me a look that was pure Oh. My. God.

  Theresa’s date was a junior with the unbelievable name of Leighton Noble, a cartoonist for the school newspaper who, in one year’s time, would discover both The Smiths and recreational drugs, letting his hair grow long in the front and his moods grow long in the back, becoming the kind of boy I now wish I had dated in high school. Liz’s date was a junior named Phil—I can’t remember his last name, but he was something like third alternate on the debate team. He spent pretty much the whole night staring at his place card, as if he’d never before realized how fascinating the spelling of his name could be. There were two other couples at the table, but they were couples with each other and not with us, so they stuck to their end and we stuck to ours.

  Sally tucked so much of her dress underneath her in order to fit on the chair that it must have felt like sitting on a phone book. We were served a salad entirely defined by lettuce and a piece of chicken that was cold at the core. There was a band, not a DJ, and at first it seemed like they had mistaken our prom for a thirty-fifth anniversary party; as we ate, the air was awash with songs from our mothers’ daytime soap operas. When the middle strains of “Tonight I Celebrate My Love with You” crescendoed, Sally actually leaned over onto my shoulder. Theresa nearly laughed her lettuce out through her nose.