Openly Straight

by Bill Konigsberg

May you live in interesting times.” “Thanks, I think,” I said.

Oh Rafe,,,,

“I want to be just a human being,” I said, with great urgency in my voice.

No, you come out because you want to find love.

Huh. That actually tells me a Lot about his motivations

And if he did, here was someone who was actively lying about who he was. Did he feel like he had to? What did he think would happen if his buddies Steve and Zack knew about him and Toby? And why didn’t he come out last year, after the college football player came and talked? I looked over at him, and it was like I could see inside him, inside his rib cage, all the intricate muscles and veins and bone and the same heart that everyone else had. Was it twisting in there? I felt sorry for him.

I can't even begin to talk about how ironic this is, considering what Rafe's doing

and I smiled, grateful I had a friend who didn’t need me to be someone I was not.

RAFE!!! BABY!!! PLEASE!!!!

I know, I’m gay. I’m your gay son. But could you just give me a fucking break for two minutes so I can be just me too? God.”

Theres a lot i want to say abt this line and not enough time. Basically: its interesting that he says this when hes... Pretending. Like yeah, he's Real Rafe sometimes w the jocks, and sometimes w Ben, and sometimes with Albie and Toby, but for the most part it's a facade. Which calls into question the idea of self and constructions of personalities: what truly IS the real Rafe? But hiding and actively lying about being gay definitely isn't truly him, though I really do think this was necessary for him in that he needed to exist Beyond that in order to become truly comfortable with it

I could see he didn’t understand that knowing a person is about more than knowing whom they fantasize about. That’s the small stuff, actually. Not the big stuff. The big stuff is lying next to a guy on the floor and locking eyes and having deep conversations about philosophy. The big stuff is letting a friend know your hopes and your fears and not having to make a joke about it. That’s what matters.

He could have lunch in peace. Why couldn’t I?

Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight.

This may not be the best writing you’ve done this semester, but it certainly feels the most authentic.

Don’t think so much about how it will read to your audience.

It looked real, unless you got up really close to it. Then you could see: It was very much not.

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? And how could I get back to myself without any major damage — not to Ben, and not to me?

And I wasn’t that. I felt like that tofu pig, grotesque and in the spotlight and horrible, dishonest in a way that felt so basic that it hurt me behind my eyes to think of it.

Because my parents were so cool with me being gay, I guess in some ways I decided I was too.

You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.

“Straight people don’t have to think, every time they talk, about whether they are coming out. We do. That might be hard, but that’s also why we have to come out. If we don’t, it’s pretty much impossible to have a conversation about anything beyond the weather without lying. We really have no choice, do we?”

No one had really been looking at me all the time. Other than me.