Openly Straight

by Bill Konigsberg

Finally, here it was. My chance for a do-over. Here at Natick, I could be just Rafe. Not crazy Gavin and Opal’s colorful son. Not the “different” guy on the soccer team. Not the openly gay kid who had it all figured out.

Where had Rafe gone? Where was I? The image I saw was so two-dimensional that I couldn’t recognize myself in it. I was as invisible in the mirror as I was in the headline the Boulder Daily Camera had run a month earlier: Gay High School Student Speaks Out.

What Dad didn’t realize, as we sat there eating cellophane noodles and ground chicken wrapped in lettuce, was that I was silently saying good-bye to a part of myself: my label. That word that defined me as only one thing to everyone. It was limiting me, big-time.

As of tomorrow, I was going to have new skin, and that skin could look like anything, would feel different than anything I knew yet. And that made me feel a little bit like I was about to be born. Again.

“This does not bode well,” I said. Dad laughed and came and sat next to me, putting his arm on my shoulder. “Hey. It is what it is,” he said, always the great philosopher. “I know, I know. I get to make my own choices and live with the consequences. I have free rein to make my own mistakes,” I said.

“Love you, Dad,” I said, a little choked up. “I know you do. We love you too, buddy. Go kick some ass, take some names,” he said, nearly tripping on the tipped-over cereal box as he let me go and stepped toward the door. “Find a boyfriend.”

tall, built kid with black hair, blue eyes, and shoulders to die for.

moments of great pleasure. I couldn’t recall any, though, that felt anything like this one. It surprised me. I’d never thought of myself as the kind of guy who wanted to fit in with the jock crowd, but here I was, swelling with pride at being given a nickname.

I realized that not being the gay kid here allowed me more access. I wasn’t supposed to hold eye contact with jocks back in Boulder. It was understood: They accepted me, and I didn’t freak them out with eye contact.

So Claire Olivia and I bonded over horrible names as kids.

When you hurt someone you care about, it’s like a part of you dies inside. If you can’t talk about it, the death goes unnoticed.

I explained what label-free meant to me, and why I’d felt the need to try to start anew.

“Exactly about the types. I am not a type. I am so tired of being a type.”

“I hear you,” he said, exhaling. “I guess at first look I’m a jock, right? Except on the inside, I’m about a million things before I’d even get to the fact that I can throw or kick a ball. Like, who in their right mind would ever label themselves because of something so meaningless?”

We had so much in common and I couldn’t even tell him. I also had done the footwork to get to Natick. I too had come here to shed a label, and been given another one that didn’t fit, and been okay with the mislabeling because at least it wasn’t negative.

I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t surprised. But I did want to know how they knew. “Oh, sweetie,” my mother said. “You’re our son. We know who you are.” We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don’t have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He’s sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he’s not afraid to show his “feminine side.”

Please tell me my mom didn’t just give me a book teaching me how to give a blow job. But of course she did.

One time the previous summer, she got it in her head that I needed more serenity. Serenity is apparently like a great, big fabulous party, except without food or people or talking or fun.

It occurred to me that there were two labels that mattered more than almost any other at Natick: winner and loser. Why did they care so much? And why didn’t I?

That’s when I fully accepted that Clay had come over with a specific purpose in mind, and that purpose consisted of laying one digit on the meatiest part of my thigh for somewhere between twelve and eighteen minutes. I was definitely okay with that.

“Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn’t it? Acceptance, though, what’s that?”

mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less.

“It’s hard to be different,” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.”

“The gay guy won the game!” he enthused, as if that were a question. I froze. We stared at each other for a few seconds until it got uncomfortable. “Do you have anything to say?” a rattled Roger asked. I was like, No, not really, and he went away, and the article came out, and the headline had the word gay in it, as if who I was attracted to had anything at all to do with kicking the stupid soccer ball.

We laughed. I could hear his head move, so I turned my face to the side. Our eyes met. His were literally a foot away from mine, and I got this amusement-park feeling in my stomach, this whirling, tumbling, delightful sensation in my gut. I felt suddenly disoriented, like I was seeing his eyes for the first time. They were pale blue and kind, like a lazy Sunday afternoon nap. I felt at home looking at him from so close, and his eyes, they were open. To me. They were letting me in.

The one comment everyone always makes when they see my mom is that she looks happy.

We’d ordered a large pie with zucchini, garlic, and apple sage sausage. Apple sage sausage tastes sort of like meat, if you think that an apple is a type of animal. Otherwise, it’s just an imposter, and I hate imposter foods.

He was hardly out of the car for two seconds before they both started in. “You love him,” my mother said, her eyes wide and her smile mischievous.

“Oh, I’m so glad. You love a boy,” my mom said. “You’re still our Rafe, underneath this hideous straight disguise….”

And in classic Ben style, he just took it in. He allowed it to be, and he didn’t make a big deal about finding out what was up or why my dad was crying like a baby while he was driving the car. And I have to say, that only made me like Ben more, if that was possible.

“I would never have said I needed that back home, because I didn’t know how much I liked being a part of a group of guys. But I knew I needed something, you know?” “I do,” Mom said. “Now it just feels like this barrier that was up between me and these other guys is no longer up. And I love that,” I said.

As the trees went from fiery yellow and orange to bare, Bryce’s desk became my desk, Bryce’s bed my bed.

It took a second, but soon that goofy, slightly uneven smile of his came back, and I knew for sure that I loved Ben. Any fears I had melted away. Ben. In my house. In my room. Yeah, I could make that work.

I just wanted to get showered quickly and slip away to the dorm, where I could hang out with Ben some more. I guess one difference between me and the real jocks was that I didn’t care enough to get really passionate about a loss.

I was afraid to look at Ben, because my feelings for him were out of control. He was a beautiful, beautiful guy, inside and out.

I thought about the almost-fight with Zack. Something hadn’t felt right ever since. Ben and I had hung out and talked, as usual. Nothing had changed with him. But I felt as if a part of me had disappeared in the altercation in the locker room. Who was I? How could I stand up for gay people while at the same time hiding that part of me?

Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight. Because once, there was something that I was, and it was a difficult thing to be. But at least I was, you know, something. I wasn’t just a guy who stood tall in the shower, standing up for someone else, when really, I should have been standing up for myself.

“I guess I’d like to think of what we have as agape. A higher love. Something that transcends. Something not about sex or brotherhood but about two people truly connecting.”

You know what, Rafe? If I was ever gonna be aga-gay with anyone, it would be you.”

To our right was the Laughing Goat, and on our left was Bud, Bong and Beyond, where my mom got her medical marijuana — something she thought I didn’t know about. I’m not exactly sure what pain she was in, but from the prescription label I saw in her bedside drawer, I’m guessing she sometimes wasn’t in any pain at all.

“Don’t you just love tofu?” she effused, staring at the beast. “You can do anything with it!” You can, but should you? That’s what I was thinking. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ben had been thinking the exact same thing.

All the people I loved were around me, and I felt like I wasn’t even fully there, and for the first time I began to wonder if my decision wasn’t catastrophically bad. I mean, why did it all have to feel so dirty, so fake? How did I wind up this far away from the real Rafe, when my only goal had been to find him?

“Lean forward and head on down the mountain. I like that,” Ben said, and the turned-down edges of his mouth curled up.

As cool as Ben was, as much as he didn’t get caught up in labels, it was pretty clear that they did matter to him too, underneath.

She seemed overjoyed, which was a bit different from what I was feeling. Other than totally in love, what I was mostly feeling was confused.

“Those footsteps. I know those footsteps,”

No words. And thoughts went away for those moments too, and we did what had been in my mind for months.

“I missed you,” he said. “I just missed you.”

And we fell asleep, my chest curled into Ben’s back, and this time, I was able to close my eyes and drift off. I was finally, totally, home.

“I’m in love,” I said. He nodded. “Like, seriously in love. And it hurts.” “Claire Olivia,” he said. “No.” “Someone else?” I nodded. I tried to think about how to explain this all to Albie. “So Ben is or isn’t in love back?” he asked.