I had really mixed feelings about not going with them to Montana. I knew Chris, of course, and I liked him a lot. I hadn't really done that much with him, though, like Kyle, Jus, and the others had. The bottom line, though, was Tyler wanted us to go on vacation together. Tyler was shaping up to be a really incredible guy. He was a whole lot like Clay, and I was beginning to realize that Clay wasn't the only person I could ever love. I still loved him, of course, as I always would, but he was gone. Tyler was there. Ty wanted us to live together, and I figured a two-week vacation, where we were together constantly, would help me sort that out. I was right. "Did you have fun tonight," Tyler asked me. We had just made love after a night at several gay clubs in South Beach in Miami. "I had fun because I was with you, but I would have had more fun with you holding me, watching TV, and eating that treat stuff Kyle makes back in Emerald Beach," I said. He squeezed me. "I was hoping you'd say that," he said. "We're pathetic. We're both home-bodies, aren't we," I said. "Yeah, we are, but what's pathetic about that? That's what we enjoy," he said. "It's not really pathetic. I was just joking," I said. "I think most guys our age like the club scene, though." "Yeah, and I think we do, too, in moderation. I mean, a pitcher of lemonade in my house when I was a kid was a celebration." I laughed. "We weren't quite that subdued, but it was close," I said. "Jeff, there's something we have to face and deal with, dude," he said. I didn't like the way he said that. I was leaning against his chest, so I couldn't see his face. "What, Ty," I asked. "Jeff, the fact of the matter is, I'm in love with you. Head over heals, man. You're everything I ever want." That made me gasp for breath. It was at that moment that I knew I felt the same way about him. "Me, too," I said. "What?" "I'm in love with you, too, Ty. I hadn't formulated it mentally that way until just now, but that's what I am. I'm in love with you. I love you." "Don't tease me, now. Don't say 'got you last,'" he said. "This is no 'got you last,' Ty," I said. "I mean it. I love you, and I think it's probably for good." He squeezed me tight. Then he kissed the top of my head. "Probably?" "Well, definitely, if you live, but given my history . . . " He laughed. "I'm going to live, dude," he said. "I know. Will we live together?" "Jeff, nothing would make me happier than living with you. Loving you every day. Seeing you there when I came home from work. Oh, man." "I've got money. Did you know that? Did you know Gene Goodson pays me every month as a manager trainee? I thought he did that as a kind of scholarship or something, when I was at the University of Florida, and I thought it would end in May, when I actually went to work for him. But it didn't end. I still get a check every two weeks, plus what I make as a bellhop." "Who signs the check," Ty asked. "Kevin," I said. "Duh!!! What the fuck, man?! Mr. Goodson doesn't even know you're still on the payroll. It's Kevin, man. He's the one giving you that money every month." "Yeah, I guess." "You guess?! Kevin knows Mr. Goodson wants you taken care of, Jeff. He's doing it, man." "I told you that about the money to say I think we can live together in a nice place, if you want to," I said. "Are you really willing for us to live together," he asked. "Yeah, I am," I said. "Jeff, that is a done deal, just as soon as we get back to Emerald Beach. This makes me so happy," he said. "It makes me happy, too." We kissed, and we made love again. (Alex's Perspective) I couldn't believe they let me stay at their house while they were gone. I would have loved to go to Montana with them, or anywhere, really, but I couldn't afford it. Plus, I didn't know the guy they went to see, and I would have felt like a third wheel on a bicycle. I went to work that morning, as usual, and Mr. Rooney caught me as I was clocking in. "Alex, come into my office, please," he said. My stomach did a flip-flop. I had no idea what he wanted. "Alex, I'll get right to the point. Seth Mathews quit, as did Kyle Goodson. I'm sure you knew that." "Yes, sir, I knew that." "I want you to work in the bell service. What do you think?" "Yes, sir, I can do that," I said. "Good. I think you can do it, too. Let's go talk to Jason, the Bell Captain." That's how I started. I didn't expect that, but I was ready. To my surprise, Mr. Rooney had already talked to Cody about becoming a bellhop. He was a valet parker, which wasn't a bad job, except that you had to be outside so much. Being outside might sound pretty good, but when the temperature's 95 degrees, with 95% humidity, it's not that good. They would let the guys come in to cool off, but they basically had to be outside. Jason the Bell Captain told me I had to shadow Stephen for a day or so to learn what I had to do. I knew who Stephen was because he had been to a party at Kevin and Rick's house, but I didn't really know him. Stephen was pleasant enough, and he actually knew who I was from having seen me at the party. He told me what I had to do, and I went with him when he made three or four room calls, including room service. It wasn't very difficult, that was for sure, and Stephen had the kind of personality that let him talk freely with the guests. I think he probably got better tips because he was so friendly. "You're ready to be on your own," Stephen said, after a few hours. "Cool," I said. "Let's grab some lunch, and then we'll talk to Jason," he said. Cody was in the serving line right in front of me. He was his usual cheerful self, and you couldn't help liking him. He had one of the nicest smiles I had ever seen, and he was really very good looking. "Are you missing Seth," I asked Cody, once we had found a table. "Yeah, sort of," he said. "I've had email from him every day since he left." "What's he up to," I asked. "Well, his dad bought him a weight set, and he joined a gym, too," Cody said. "You probably don't know this, but he gained ten pounds while he was here. He really got into the physical fitness stuff." "How long was he here," I asked. "Just six weeks. That's pretty amazing, don't you think?" "I don't know. I'm not really into body building and weights and all," I said. "That's a lot of weight for just six weeks," Cody said. "Have you heard from Kevin and Rick or anybody?" "Yeah. Kevin called last night to check on me. They're camping, but they had gone into a store to buy food or something. He called me from there. They're having a great time," I said. "I miss going over to their house," Cody said. "Well, come over after work. I've been pretty bored there by myself. I watched all the porn videos Kyle has, and TV doesn't interest me that much. They watch baseball all the time, and that bores me, too. But having them all there is always fun," I said. Cody followed me to Kevin and Rick's house after work. I was driving Justin's truck, and most of the other cars were there. Rick's SUV was at the airport, though. "Do you want a snack," I asked. "Yeah, but I'll get something later. I'm not exactly a stranger here, you know?" "True. You feel like swimming?" "Sure," he said. I had spent hours and hours with Cody when he and Seth were dating, and I thought I knew him pretty well. That was in a group, though. When it was just the two of us, I felt a little self-conscious. We went out to the pool area and stripped on the patio. We had done that a hundred times, and I had seen every inch of Cody before. That day, though, my eyes felt drawn to his body. His pecs, in particular, interested me, and his ass was an eye-magnet, as far as I was concerned. "You like what you see," he asked, jokingly. I'm sure I blushed. "Sorry," I said, and I looked away. "It's okay. You can look all you want, as long as I can look at you, too," he said. We both laughed, and we dove into the pool. We fooled around, swimming some, splashing one another some, standing talking some, too. "Tell me about those porn videos," he said. "They're actually pretty good. No plot, of course, or barely one, anyway. They're in German or Czech or some language like that, so you really couldn't follow an elaborate story, even if there was one. Lots of hot skin, though," I said. "You're bi, right," Cody asked. "Not really. I thought that when I first came here, but I know I'm gay," I said. "Not that I've had any experience either way." "Well, I think you're cute as hell," he said. I blushed some more. Why was he making me feel so strange? He wasn't doing or saying anything out of line, but I just felt sort of weird around him. I wasn't uncomfortable, exactly, and I sure didn't want him to leave. It was just unusual. "I didn't have any experience when I met Seth," he said, after a longish pause. "Really?" I knew that was totally lame, but I felt like I had to say something. I mean, he was only eighteen, same as me, and if I didn't have any experience, why should he necessarily have any? "Do you find me attractive? I mean, in a sexual way," he asked. Get right to the point, why don't you, I thought. Of course I find you sexually attractive, I thought. Do you think I'm blind? "Er, . . . " "You don't have to answer that," he said. "That was way too forward of me." "No, that's okay," I said. "Let's get out and get a snack," he said. Phew! I thought. Good plan. We dried off, but we didn't get dressed. The custom was to hang around in the nude after a swim, if you felt like it, and I really wasn't interested in putting my sweaty uniform back on. There wasn't a whole lot of food in the place. Kyle had made up a big batch of that stuff they called Tick Supreme, with raisins, peanuts, and M & M's, before they left. He had wanted to take it, but at the last minute they decided it was too much trouble to try to wedge it in somebody's suitcase. They left it. "You want a beer," I asked Cody. "Yeah, that'd be good," he said. We took our beers and the jar of Tick Supreme out to the patio. It was still afternoon by the sun, even though it was a little after six o'clock. We sat at a table, and I poured some of the treat out into a bowl I had brought out. "This stuff is so good," Cody said. "I know," I said. Then, after a pause, "Are you and Seth still boyfriends?" "No," he said with a sigh. "We're still very good friends, though." "It would be pretty tough being boyfriends so far apart," I said. "That's what he said. I know he's right, but he was my first one ever. I cried a good bit when he left." "Were you in love with him?" "I love him like a good friend, or a brother, even, but we weren't really in love with each other." "Do you mind talking about this," I asked. "Not at all." We hung out for a while. Eventually, we shot some pool, and Cody went home around nine. I went up to my room--Brian's room, really--and surfed the Web a while. I read a couple of stories from the Nifty Archive, and I ended up jerking off. No surprise there. What did surprise me a little, though, was I kept seeing Cody's face in my mind's eye as I was doing it. * * * The next day at work Cody asked me if I liked to bowl. "Sure," I said. "I'm not real good, but I like it." "You want to go bowling tonight?" It was a Friday, so we didn't have to get up for work the next morning. "Yeah. That sounds like fun," I said. "I'll pick you up around six, okay," he said. "Cool," I said. He picked me up right on time. We had both showered and put on shorts and tee shirts. That was pretty much the uniform of Emerald Beach, along with deck shoes and no socks. "You smell good, man," he said when I got in the car. "Thanks. I kind of rummaged around a little bit in Justin and Brian's bathroom and found some aftershave." "Did you shave?" "Not tonight. I did this morning, though. I just splashed it on to smell good," I said. "Cool." We went to the little bar and grill where we always went. One of the waiters that I had noticed a few times before waited on us. "Do you think he's cute," Cody asked after he had taken our orders and left our table. "Yeah, I think he's cute. Do you?" "Yeah. Very." "Do you think he's gay," I asked. "Yeah. Very." He said that with exactly the same intonation he had used to answer my first question. I laughed. I felt much more at ease with him than I had the night before. Maybe having clothes on made the difference. "Do you think he thinks we're gay," I asked. "Only if he saw me doing this." Saying that, he ran his hand up my bare inner thigh, and the feeling was electric. "You're going to make me stiff, if you don't stop," I said. "And being stiff would be bad because . . . " He was grinning, and I grinned back. "Because it'll make my shorts get all wet," I said. We both laughed. "You're too vain," he said. "I find a wet spot on a guy's shorts pretty interesting." He took his hand away then, and the waiter delivered our salads. That boy grinned at us. "See, he saw," I said. "So what?" "So nothing." After a pause and a few bites of salad, I asked, "Are we on a date?" "Well, I thought we were. Do you want us to be?" "Yeah," I said. "Have you ever had a date with a boy before," he asked. "No, this is the first one," I said. "But you've had dates before, haven't you? With girls, I mean?" "Well, sort of, for school dances and stuff like that. Never just to go out with a girl because I was interested in her, though," I said. "I just never did that." "I never did it, either," he said. "And I know what you mean about dances and proms and stuff like that. You sort of had to do it, and I always had a good time, but my good-night kisses were speed record-breakers." I laughed, and he did, too. "I know what you mean," I said. As the meal progressed, we joked around more and more. I felt whatever self-consciousness that was left over from the night before melt away. When the check came, I said, "This may be a date, but it's going to be Dutch treat, okay?" "Oh, I never thought I was paying for both of us," he said. "You shit," I said, and we both laughed. On the way to the bowling center, I asked Cody to stop at a convenience store. "I want to buy a pack of cigarettes. Do you mind if I smoke?" "I'll tell you what. I'll pay half so I can smoke some, too," he said. "So I guess you don't mind," I said. We laughed. We had fun bowling. He was pretty good, and I was awful. Naturally, we were in a lane right next to a man and his two sons, who must have been eight and ten. Those little boys were awesome, and the man was fantastic. I, of course, threw gutter balls almost as often as they threw strikes, and every time I did it the younger kid would look at me and grin. He was a little shit. A very cute little shit, but a little shit, nevertheless. When we finished bowling and went outside, the heat was almost overwhelming. It was around ten o'clock, and it must have been close to ninety degrees. Cody and I both took our tee shirts off. "You want to ride around a while," he asked. "Sure," I said. The Strip, as they called it, was bumper-to-bumper, and we rarely got up over ten miles an hour. There were as many people on the pedestrian areas as there were in cars, and people kept darting between the cars to cross the road. "This is the first time I've been out here on a Friday night," I said. "I haven't really done much away from the house and away from work since I've been here." "So you really haven't sampled Emerald Beach night life, have you," he asked. "Not really. Kyle and Justin and those guys go out, but it's always with their boyfriends or with other friends. I just haven't felt real comfortable tagging along, you know?" We were passing what appeared to be a huge nightclub. There were a million cars parked in a gigantic parking lot and all up and down the street, too. "What's this," I asked. "This is Club La Vela, supposedly the largest nightclub in the country. Next door is Spinnaker, and next to that is Pineapple Willy's. These three clubs, and a couple of slightly smaller ones a little way down, are the center of what's happening on the beach at night," he said. "Do you want to go in?" "Will they let us in?" "Yeah. You just have to be eighteen to get in. Twenty-one to drink, but my cousin works the door here, and he'll give us a twenty-one wrist band." "Yeah. Let's go in. I've never been in a place like this," I said. We saw some people leaving, so we followed them to their car. False alarm. They were just out to smoke pot. We followed another group, and they actually left. We got their parking place. We walked up to the entrance, and there was a crowd trying to get in. Cody sort of snuck us around to the side to find his cousin. He spotted him, but he was busy. "Champ," Cody called out. He said it two or three times, a little louder each time. After a couple of times, I could tell the guy had heard him, and he looked around. "Champ! Over here, man," Cody screamed. He definitely heard that, and his face broke into a huge grin when he saw Cody. He told one of the guys who was working with him to pick up his slack for a few minutes, and I could tell the guy wasn't any too happy about it. Champ came over to us. "What the fuck are you doing here," Champ said. "We want to get in," Cody said. "This is my friend, Alex Stewart. Let us in." "You can't get in here, asshole. Gimme a hug." Cody and Champ hugged. "What do you mean we can't get in? We're both eighteen," Cody said. "Bullshit. You ain't eighteen," Champ said. "What do you mean, I ain't eighteen. You were at my fucking birthday dinner and at my fucking graduation. Don't you remember?" Champ got this sort of far-away look on his face. "Shit, I been smoking way too much. I remember now. Did I give you a present?" "Yeah. You gave me two presents, in fact. One for each. Really nice ones, too," Cody said. Champ got this strange look on his face again, like he was trying to solve a serious problem, and it was just beyond his grasp. "Your brother told me you turned queer. Is that right?" "I didn't turn queer. I've always been queer. I just came out to the family, that's all," Cody said. "Oh, is that all? Will you still be my friend?" "Champ, you are fucking wasted, man. Of course I'll still be your friend," Cody said. "I know. I've been smoking so much, and doing lines and shit. Don't tell the rest of the family, though, okay? Promise me, Cody." "I won't tell anybody. Just let us in, okay?" "Okay." He grabbed two wrist bands from the table, and he snapped them on us. They were both a sort of coral color. I saw a sign that said "Green=Teen," "Blue=New (18)," and "Pink=Drink." "How much," Cody asked. "Just a big hug, Billy," Champ said. "Billy's my little brother. I'm Cody, remember?" "Shit! Of course I do, buddy. Get your asses in there. And have fun," he said. "Whoa," I said. "I know. He's had way too much Emerald Beach summer," Cody said. The lobby was crawling with people. I read the dress code, and shorts and tee shirts didn't quite make the code at night. That's not to say half the people we saw weren't dressed that way, though. I read another sign that said that place had 48 bar stations, 10 theme rooms, 3 band stages, and 14 dance floors. The official capacity listed by the fire marshal was 7,000. A couple of theme rooms were for teens between fifteen and eighteen. I didn't know anything about nightclubs, but that seemed really big to me. Like maybe it really was the biggest nightclub in the country. "This isn't officially a gay club, but there are supposed to be a couple of rooms where gay guys congregate. Do you want to find them?" "Sure," I said. We found one pretty quickly. We went in, and it was mostly guys, but there were some girls in there, too. Cody asked me if I wanted a beer, and I said I did. The music was way too loud to talk, though. There was no hope of sitting down. There were tables, of course, surrounding the dance floor, but they were all taken. There was a shelf on the wall around the room, and we found a relatively empty place on that shelf. "Do you want to dance," Cody asked. "Sure," I said. We set our beers on the shelf and took off our shirts. We draped them around our cups of beer to mark them as ours, and we danced. I basically had two left feet when it came to dancing, but Cody was really good. Nobody cared if I could dance or not, though, and I got caught up in the general mayhem of the place. I was soon sweating like a bull, but everybody else was, too. It was like this sea of hot, sweaty male bodies, and I knew that's where I belonged. For the first time in my life, guys were checking me out openly and flagrantly, and I was doing the same to them. It was totally liberating. After we had danced for a long time, and had drunk a couple of beers, Cody said, "Let's get a snack. You want to?" "Yeah," I said. We each got a sandwich and one order of nachos to share. We switched from beer to coke. "What do you think of this place," Cody asked. We were out on an enormous deck overlooking the Gulf, at a table, and we could actually hear one another. "It's pretty unbelievable," I said. "I've never been to anything like this." "I know. It's so big, and there are so many people. They open at ten in the morning, and they stay open until four in the morning. And there is a crowd of people here all the time. This was the headquarters of MTV during Spring Break." "Do you think Kevin and Rick come here," I asked. "I'm sure they've been here, but this doesn't really seem like their style, you know?" "I do know. They're sort of like family guys." "Yeah," I said. "I think they'd rather be camping in Montana than bustin' loose on that dance floor." He and I both laughed because we both knew that was exactly what they would rather be doing. "Let's walk around a little bit more and then go home, okay," he said. "Okay," I said. (Chris's Perspective) When Kyle called to say they wanted to come see me, I just about had a fit. The time I had spent with them in Emerald Beach was absolutely the best time of my life, and I loved them a whole lot more than I did my dad, at that point. My parents divorced when I was like one year old, or younger. They had been sweethearts in college, and they had gotten married on their own, without a big wedding or anything. I was born ten months after they married, and I think they probably realized they had gotten married too young. My mom never said anything bad about my dad, the whole time I was with her. I knew she didn't really love him anymore, if she ever had, but she didn't hate him, either. I don't really have any recollection of not being in a wheelchair, but there must have been a time when I wasn't. Mine had been a very difficult birth, and it had ended up that I was born by caesarian. That meant they had to cut my mother open to get me out of her. That happens a lot, but the doctor might have waited just a few minutes too long, in my case. That might be why I had Cerebral Palsy. Anyway, that wasn't something to dwell on. I mean, I was the way I was, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. When I lived in Florida with my mom, I went to lots of doctors, of course. They all pretty much said the same thing. Half of my body was moderately screwed up, and the other half was only a little screwed up. I started going to physical therapy when I was little, but then the funding for that dried up somehow. When I started pre-school, I started back on therapy, but it was only once a week or so. I don't know if that did any good or not, but it satisfied the law that the public schools had to follow. About ten years later my mom got cancer. It was the bad kind, and she went down, down, down, real fast. My grandparents, her parents, looked after me, but her medical needs came first. I mean, I wasn't sick at all. I was real healthy, in fact. I was just gimped up with CP. They didn't know I needed more than I was getting at school. Finally my mom died. My grandparents loved me to death, and I knew that, but I also knew they couldn't really take care of me. My grandmother had a stroke, and they had to put me in foster care until my dad could come get me. That foster care was the time in Emerald Beach, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found myself in the home of a gay couple who had a bunch of gay boys living there. I knew I wasn't gay, or at least I thought I knew that, but those boys were so incredibly nice to me, I would have cheerfully turned gay if I could have. I actually fell in love with them. I don't mean that in a gay, sexual way, because that wasn't part of it at all. They were my brothers to the core, and if one couldn't take care of me like I needed, the other one did. They teased the hell out of me for being a crip or a gimp or whatever, but they did that out of love, not meanness. You can always tell the difference. I teased them a lot, too, though, and I got them last as many times as they got me last. My favorite was Kyle, but Justin, Tim, and Brian were very close seconds. Justin was sort of the most unusual one because of his accent and his dead-pan approach to everything. He and Kyle were best friends, and those two boys went after each other tooth and nail. But it was always in fun. Always. Tim and Brian were younger and quieter. They were best friends, too, and sometimes they played with me without Kyle and Justin being there. Kyle and Jus always wanted to do physical stuff, like swim or ski or shoot pool or play basketball. Tim and Brian would play board games with me or just watch TV. And TV wasn't always a baseball game, like it was with Kyle and Justin. It was news or sitcoms or movies. The three weeks I spent in Emerald Beach were probably the happiest days of my life because of those boys. When I came to Missoula, my dad and Betty, my mom now, and David, my brother, made me feel welcome. The third day there, though, they had me at the doctor's. That guy spent three hours with me, uninterrupted. He and my dad were friends, so I guess I got better treatment than most, but there wasn't an inch of me he didn't test for something. And yes, he examined that, too, and, yes, it did get hard. My dad was in the room with me when that happened, and he got embarrassed. It had happened so many times with the boys in Emerald Beach that I didn't even think twice about it. That's when I got into therapy. The doctor said I hadn't been given the therapy I needed. A lot of what I thought was CP was just from the lack of working me out. He said on that very first day that he thought I should be able to walk, and he said I would have to show courage and determination to do it. He told me it wouldn't be easy. I wanted to do it, though. I wanted to one day be able to walk down the street with Kyle, Justin, and the others. And by God, I was going to do it, or die trying. (Brian's Perspective) Going to Montana was a real adventure. Chris and I were very good friends, and I guess you could say he and I loved each other as friends do. I guess I somehow missed the fact that he had a brother, though. The rest of them seemed to know that, but it came as a surprise to me when they met us at the airport. David was almost exactly my age. I had a couple of weeks on him, but that was all. He and I were almost the same size, too, and we both had dark hair and dark eyes. He didn't have much of a tan, though. None of them did. He was a really nice guy, and he and I sort of hit it off. Everybody was making a lot over Chris because he was our friend, and I did it, too. But I also wanted Dave to feel comfortable with us, so I made it a point to be friendly to him. Our days at Glacier National Park were really great. We were tent camping, and Tim, Dave, and I were in the same tent. We had canoes, and one day Dave and I went canoeing together. "What's it like to be gay," he asked out of the blue. "I'm not too sure I understand what you mean," I said. "I'm not too sure I know what I want to know," he said. "Do you feel different?" "Different than what," I asked. "I've always only ever been gay. I don't feel strange or anything, if that's what you mean. That might have to do with living in a gay household, though." "Okay, let me put it another way. Do you feel out of place with guys who aren't gay?" I had never really thought about that before. Did I feel out of place with straight guys? Hmmm. "I'm in the Boy Scouts, and those guys are all supposed to be straight. They all aren't, though, so maybe that's not a good example. Five of the nine Eagles in our troop are gay," I said. He and I both laughed. I thought some more. "I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I felt out of place because I was gay. I've felt out of place sometimes because the guys were older or younger, but that's about it. I don't think most people think I'm gay when they just meet me casually," I said. "Oh, definitely not. Nobody would know that any of you guys are gay, just meeting you. I knew it before I met you, but I started having doubts that it was true when you guys got here," he said. I figured I knew what those questions were all about. "Do you think you might be gay, Dave," I asked. He was very quiet for a few moments. Then the tears welled up in his eyes, and I knew. "I think I might be, Brian," he said, "and it scares me to death. I've never told that to anybody before. Anybody. Not my dad or my mom. Not even Chris. Please don't tell, okay?" "That's not for me to tell, Dave. You know, I didn't chose to be gay, and I probably wouldn't have if I had had the choice. In fact, I definitely wouldn't have. But if the fairy godfather came to me and asked me if I wanted to change, I'd say no." He chuckled at my pun. "You guys joke about being gay all the time, don't you," he said. "Yeah, I guess we do. I mean, I know straight people don't joke about being straight like we joke about being gay, but I think it's the fact that we're a minority. There are only three or four black kids in my school in Emerald Beach, but when I lived in Tampa there were a lot of black kids. They used to joke and tease each other a lot about being black. We never joke and tease about being white because white people are the majority. But I think minority groups do that as a way of protecting themselves, sort of," I said. "I don't get what you mean," Dave said. "Okay, let me see if I can explain. Kyle, Justin, and Rick are the biggest teasers in our family. Sometimes they call somebody a faggot or a fruit or something like that to tease. If they call me those names, it can never offend me because if I am, they are, too. But if somebody else calls me a name like that, I don't bow up or go to pieces because I've heard it so much from them. Am I making any sense?" "Yeah, I think I see what you mean. You've sort of beaten the other guy to the punch." "Right. About two months ago, in June, anyway, Tim drove his new Jeep to the hotel where Justin and Kyle and another one of our brothers, Jeff, worked. Some guy went berserk and spray-painted the word 'faggot' on Timmy's car. I wasn't there, but I know just what happened. Kyle got so angry they had to hold him back so he wouldn't beat the guy to death. Kyle wasn't angry because the word was 'faggot.' He would have reacted the same way if the guy had spray-painted 'angel' on the car. Kyle was mad because the guy had violated Tim's car. He had only had it for a month at that point, and Tim was so proud of it." "Shit," Dave said. "Do you guys get harassed like that a lot?" "I'm not saying this very well. That guy didn't do that because he knew, or thought, Tim was gay. He did it because he was mentally ill. We don't get harassed at all," I said. "Are you guys out at school," he asked. "Kyle and Tim are, but I'm not. I mean, I probably am, since I'm with them all the time, and all, and with some other gay friends, too," I said. "Do Kyle and Tim get picked on at school?" "Kyle was elected student body president for next year by a huge majority. Over twelve hundred votes," I said. "No, they don't get picked on." "No shit??!" "No shit," I said. "Kyle's a down-home, normal, quality guy. The other guy was a pompous prick. Everybody knew Kyle was gay, too. To his credit, the other guy never made an issue of it, but it wouldn't have done him any good, if he had. The principal has a gay son who is very out in the community, and she would have probably kicked his ass if he had talked about it. But maybe he's just a fair individual, too, you know?" "When did you know you were gay," he asked. "When I was twelve. Looking back, I guess I always knew I was different, but that's when I decided I was gay," I said. "Isn't that pretty young," he asked. "I don't know. That's when I was in puberty. I guess I still am in puberty, but you know what I mean. How old were you when you first thought you might be?" "Maybe I was a little older than you were. Did you start having sex when you were twelve?" I chuckled. "Just with this," I said, raising my right hand. "Justin's the only person I've ever had sex with, and we're going to have our first anniversary in November." He was quiet for a few moments. "Brian, do you believe in God?" "Yes." "Do you think God hates you because you're gay?" "Where did you get that? Your parents didn't tell you that, I know," I said. "No, not my parents. They wouldn't care if I was gay. I know that. But you hear people say stuff like that. On TV and all," he said. "Don't believe that stuff about God hating gays. He made us gay. Man, that belief is so anti-religion . . . " "That's what I thought, too," he said. "What time is it?" "Damn! It's after five. We need to get back to camp. Brian, thank you so much for talking to me. You are such a cool guy, and I feel so much better," he said. "Do you know what you and Chris need to do?" "No, what?" "You need to come to Florida to live with us for the whole summer next year, dude. You've got a houseful of brothers down there, Dave, and I know Kevin and Rick would roll out the red carpet for you guys," I said. "We'll see," he said. "Guaranteed jobs, and good jobs, too. A beautiful house to live in, and some pretty neat guys to be your friends. You probably don't realize this, but they're never going to let Chris go. That's just a fact. We can't be up here all summer, but you guys can sure be down there with us. Think about it." "I will." He was quiet for a few moments. "Brian, what would you say if I said I love you?" "I'd say I love you, too, and we're going to be friends for life." Tears trickled down his cheeks. Happy tears. |