Honestly Ben Read online

  Me gehrl-a-frind hath faned anow-ther mane-uh

  The ahn-ger thot I fale is oopen-ended

  It feeles like on tha Fass-a-book De-frinded

  The rap had an actual smell. Like rotten citrus. I tried to look as if I was carefully listening to this beautiful story of being de-friended on Facebook, but mostly I was trying not to laugh, because we were pretty close-up and I didn’t want to hurt the hipster’s feelings.

  When he was finally done, Rafe and I shared a look, glanced around to make sure Half-Bearded Guy had left, and burst out laughing.

  Laughing with Rafe made me feel as if it was just like old times, and I was so damn grateful to be back there.

  The next speaker was a Latino guy wearing wire-framed glasses and a Red Sox cap. He didn’t have a boom box, or anything, really. He just grabbed the mic and started talking.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I live my life. Do I live it out LOUD? Or do I live it soft? What do I do when I see a friend, or a stranger, on the street? Do I ignore them because I’m too busy, or do I engage them, because they are me and I am they. Because we are, people. We are one. We are people.

  “And I think what it all comes down to is a simple question, people. Are you in, or are you out? Do you accept that we are all in this together, and do you greet your fellow person with the dignity they deserve? Or do you spurn them?

  “And when they put themselves out there, do you go there with them? Or do you stay isolated and laugh at them because you think they’re a fool?”

  The guy walked out into the audience. He focused on the table next to mine, where four college-aged people sat. I glanced over. Two had cell phones out and were busy texting.

  He leaned in, resting his hands on their table. “Are you in, or are you out?” he asked, his voice booming, his eyes boring directly into the eyes of one of the girls at the table.

  She just stared at him and said nothing.

  The speaker then asked the same question of one of the guys at the table.

  “I’m out,” he said.

  The speaker gently tapped the table and moved on. “You are out. And that is your choice. Continue to live in two places at once. Continue to ignore those standing in front of you while you chat with those far away. That is your choice, to be out.”

  Now he came to our table, and, perhaps sensing that Rafe was the extrovert and I the introvert, he chose me. His dark eyes stared into my own, and he smiled. I held his stare, my mouth trembling into what felt a bit like a smile. I wasn’t sure.

  “You, my friend. You are sitting in a coffee shop, listening to me, as I put myself out there, in the world. Are you, my friend, in or out?”

  I realized I wasn’t breathing. “In,” I mumbled.

  “What? I did not hear you. Are you in or are you out?”

  I looked at Rafe. He was smiling at me, his cheeks reddened.

  “I’m in!” I yelled.

  The speaker’s eyes lit up, and he grabbed my arm and raised it. “Yes! This man is in! This man is part of the human race, ladies and gentlemen, and I am grateful for it. Give him a hand!”

  And people clapped. Seriously. They clapped. And then a really crazy thing started to happen. My eyes started to water a bit, and I wasn’t sure why. But I knew I loved it.

  I was in. And when the slam poetry event ended, I’d forgotten what time it was, and what day it was. I’d actually listened to strangers for however long, and while some of it was more interesting to me than other parts, I’d loved it all.

  Rafe and I drove back holding hands, talking intermittently and also sharing some nice silences. It was nice that we could be quiet together and feel comfortable. To me, that was just as important as good conversation.

  “Thanks for that,” I said. “I wasn’t sure about the slam poetry when we got there, but that turned out to be epic.”

  The sky looked purple to me, with the lights on the highway illuminating everything just right. I wanted to remember it for always.

  “All that stuff about in and out made me think about the GSA,” Rafe said.

  I tensed up a bit, and Rafe noticed.

  “I felt that way at first too. Like, why do I need to align myself with people just based on sexual orientation? But then I went, and I’m telling you it’s been awesome for me. The guys in it aren’t, like, my best friends—well, Toby is one of them, I guess—but they are people who understand what I’ve been through, and we go through it together.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to really focus on what he was saying, but the noises in my head were very loud. I sat in the driver’s seat, thinking that maybe I wasn’t so much in the driver’s seat in life. I mean, if Rafe was out, and if I was dating Rafe, would I have to come out? And as what?

  I took another breath and let the thoughts go. This was a first date. So I squeezed his hand and he squeezed mine back.

  When we got back to Natick, he walked me to my room, and then he asked if he could use my laptop. Was this some excuse? Was he making a move? The idea was so exciting I could barely nod. He did some searching around online and then looked up at me.

  “May I have this dance?” he asked.

  I laughed, and then I stopped laughing because he was serious, and not only that. I was glad he was serious. And yes, I totally wanted to dance with Rafe.

  The song was sung by a woman with a beautiful voice. I’d never heard it before, but then again, I’d never slow danced with a guy before either. Rafe let me lead, which was good because at least that position came naturally to me. The best thing was the way it felt to put my right arm around him, and to rest my hand on his low back, and close my eyes, and feel the heat of his face next to mine. And as she sang about being caught up in the rapture of love, I felt myself getting caught up in it too.

  It was nearly impossible to get through classes on Friday. Every moment I wasn’t with Rafe, I felt it, like a void in my chest. I wanted to watch his mouth as I made him laugh. I wanted to see his face light up with the spark of whatever silly joke there was, and I wanted to kiss him too, and really more than that, which was not a straight thing, I know, but also it was true. I wanted to hold him in bed and I wanted our bodies to touch in every possible way, and I needed him to set me free. Only he could do that.

  I barely paid attention in calculus, which was perhaps not the greatest of strategies with a test that could determine my future just a few days away, but I was powerless over that. Maybe Rafe was a voodoo doctor. He had me, totally, and I just wanted him to have more of me, to give that away to him, the control that always kept me wrapped so tight inside myself.

  The final bell could not come soon enough, and then I had lunch with the team, which was tough, because I kept looking over at Rafe, who was laughing it up with Toby and Albie. I so wanted to be part of that. But I also wanted to keep doing this captain thing, and yeah, there was something to be said for being part of the team. I was liking that too.

  My table’s lunch conversation started with a competition about whose parents had the best car. Truly. Mendenhall took the lead because his dad had a Lamborghini, and Zack was a close second because his dad had two—count them, two—Porsche Spyders, whatever those were. We went around in a circle, and when it got to me, I gave a comically bug-eyed look, and pretty much everyone cracked up.

  “It’s funny because he’s poor,” Zack said.

  I shrugged and laughed a little. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Ben’s so poor he thinks Arby’s is a five-star restaurant,” Standish said.

  “Ben’s so poor he thinks food stamps are a vegetable,” Zack said.

  “Ben’s so poor he needs a scholarship to go to Natick, and someone has to pay his way to Florida, and he wears a brown jacket from nineteen seventy-five,” Mendenhall said, and everyone laughed.

  To my surprise, I laughed too. I couldn’t help it. “You guys are literally the worst.”

  “C’mon,” Mendenhall goaded. “What do ya got?”

  I
rolled my eyes. “Mendenhall is so dumb he stares at frozen juice bottles because they say, ‘Concentrate.’ ”

  He cracked up a bit. “Lame.”

  “Mendenhall is so stupid he dyed his hair blond and his IQ went up twenty points.”

  “Hey, now,” Zack said. “Look who’s waking up!”

  “Zack is so dumb he thinks it’s normal to tan until his face is orange.”

  “No he didn’t!” said Steve.

  “Steve is so dumb he’s friends with Zack.”

  The table exploded in laughter. “Go Ben!” Mendenhall said. “That’s the shit I’m talking about. You take shit too serious. Relax and let that broom handle up your ass go.”

  Someone—I couldn’t tell who—put up a hand for me to high-five, and I stung the shit out of that hand, and it felt great. Some more jokes were passed around as we ate, and then the conversation took a surprising turn.

  “What was it like, growing up on a farm?” Standish asked.

  I chewed the piece of carrot I’d just put in my mouth. “It’s—I don’t know. I don’t really know what it’s like not to grow up on a farm.”

  “Are you going to, like, try to be an investment banker or an entrepreneur or something?” Mendenhall asked. “Like, you don’t have it so you want it?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was goading me or not, so I just said, “Nah. That’s not important to me.”

  “What do you want to be?” he asked.

  “History professor.”

  The guys all looked around, like they were trying to decide if that was funny or not.

  “Huh,” Zack said. “I guess that’s cool.”

  “It is what it is. What do you want to be?” I asked no one in particular, and the answers came from all corners, rocket fast, and I felt this full feeling in my chest because suddenly I was a leader, and I loved it so much.

  I was an also-ran at my afternoon classes, and even at baseball practice I was feeling a little giddy still, so much that Mendenhall even said, “What the fuck, Carver? You on drugs?”

  “Your mother and I, we both are,” I said, and he gave me a middle finger. It was like I was drunk, in a way. But on good alcohol this time. Not the kind that numbs the pain away. The kind that makes you feel every little thing, good, bad, or otherwise.

  Walking back to the dorms after dinner, I realized that I could, actually, have it all. A guy could be serious but sometimes let that wall down. And a guy could joke around even if the jokes were in bad taste, and still go back to his dorm and be himself, and none of it was illegal, and all of it was just so—surprising. I’d never known I could feel this sort of happy buzz down to my toes.

  I felt jittery as I walked by Rafe’s room. I wanted to knock, but I literally could not stand the idea of him not being there. It socked me in my gut, the possibility that I would not see him. Instead I went to my room, sat on my bed, and held my head in my hands.

  I needed to get a grip. But I also felt so freaking incredible that I didn’t want to.

  I went to the restroom to wash up for dinner. Rafe was in there, doing the same. My heart spasmed.

  “Hey, stranger,” he said.

  Hey, stranger. It was such a Rafe, weird-Boulder-kid-at-Natick thing to say. I sighed and laughed, and even though we were in the bathroom, I pushed up behind him.

  “Whoa,” he said, moving slightly forward.

  “Yep.” I moved forward with him, until he was pinned between me and the sink.

  “We’re in the bathroom,” he whispered.

  “I’m aware of that.” I was fully aroused and my heart was pounding, and it felt so magical and so right and even if Headmaster Taylor himself walked in and said, Ben, if you want your scholarship and your award, you’ll back the heck up and behave yourself, I would have said, Screw you and screw that.

  “What is this? Where is this coming from?”

  “It’s you. It’s always been you. I love you, Rafe.”

  He gasped. “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you thought you’d share this revelation in the bathroom?”

  I laughed. “Yup. I love you, man.”

  “You do?”

  “I do,” I said, and Rafe turned around, and our eyes bored into each other’s.

  He gulped. “Right back at ya, big guy. Never loved anyone a quarter as much.”

  And there in the bathroom, not caring who walked in, I leaned forward and kissed him hard on the lips, and then our lips parted, and our tongues touched.

  “Whoa,” he said, when I pulled back.

  “My room. Stat.”

  Rafe’s eyes lit up. “Yes, please.”

  During, I found myself feeling the same kind of protective feeling I’d felt for Hannah, and for once in my damn life, I was light as a feather. And then Rafe protected me, and that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and wow. There ought to be a law. Oh, wait, I think there used to be one.

  And during, I realized that the labels didn’t matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically.

  After, I found myself laughing. Rafe laughed too, and I knew he got it. It wasn’t funny, but it was entirely necessary to laugh, like we had to expel more energy that was still pent up in there. And I wondered why people ever stop having sex.

  So we started up again.

  After again, the laughter had dissipated and we just lay there, exhausted, his head leaning on my bare bicep. I glanced down at his flat chest, where there’d be breasts if he was Hannah, but he was most certainly, definitely not Hannah.

  “You’re flat,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow. It sounded like I thought he had no muscles, which wasn’t true.

  “Nipples. Why do guys even have nipples?” I asked.

  “I know, right?”

  “Nipples. Nipples. It’s such a stupid word.”

  Rafe laughed. “Nipples. Nipples.”

  I laughed back. “It sounds like a clown’s name.”

  “Nipples the Clown.”

  “He’d wear, like, a nipple hat.”

  “Look at me, I’m Nipples the Clown.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. We hadn’t used ours, and I wasn’t sure guys even did. How would I know what guys do? I knew Hannah liked being touched gently there.

  I said, “I mean, with girls. Sexually, um. And anyway, for girls they’re for feeding a child. What do boys’ nipples even do?”

  Rafe sat up and looked down at my chest. We were both laughing a bit, and then we weren’t. I slowly uncrossed my arms.

  Rafe brought his hands up to my midsection. And then higher. He placed the lowest parts of the palms of his hands in the ever-so-slight ridges under my chest. Then he gently pressed forward until each hand was cupping a pec. Then his fingers drummed my collarbone, slowly, thumb to pinky, one time. He pressed his hands forward, and when his hands came to rest and the center of his palms came into contact with the little pink lobes, I gasped.

  And from that moment on, we never had to wonder what a nipple was for again.

  After again again, we talked. A long, long time we talked. I told him every feeling I’d ever had, and he shared with me all his.

  “I don’t know. I still don’t feel like I’m gay,” I said.

  “What a thing to say to a guy after sex!”

  “No, really.”

  “Maybe you’re bi?”

  “I feel like I’m more, like, gay-for-Rafe.”

  He put his hand on his heart. “Sincerely flattered to be a sexual orientation now. Thank you.”

  I laughed. “I’m just going with it now, you know? All’s I know, as Donnelly would say, is that I love you, and you are a boy.”

  “I am.”

  We were quiet for a bit.

  “I guess I don’t really get why you don’t think you’re bi, though.”

  “Well, to me bi means attracted to both boys and girls. I’m attracte
d to girls and Rafe. There’s a difference.”

  He shrugged. “I guess. No. The truth is I don’t actually get that, but I love you and I don’t need to get that. Maybe someday I will.”

  “I hope so.”

  “In the GSA, the guys joke about bisexuality like it’s a gateway to gay. Like that’s a stop on the train for kids who aren’t ready to deal. I don’t actually believe that. I think some people are bi, definitely.”

  “Me too.”

  “I think it’s a continuum.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  He lay back down and placed his head in the crook of my armpit. I was sure there were better places in the world to be, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Is it possible you’re just at the gateway of the gateway?”

  “I truly don’t think that’s it, but yeah. Anything’s possible.”

  I closed my eyes, and I didn’t have to look to know he had too. So we fell asleep like that, together, like two boys against the world.

  Rafe’s overnight disappearances had been duly noted by Albie and Toby. We spent basically all Saturday in my room, and when we arrived at Albie’s room Sunday morning to go to breakfast as a group, Albie and Toby had set up a circle of chairs. They were in two of them, and they wordlessly pointed to two empty seats for us to sit in.

  Once we were all seated, Toby pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “You’re clearly having sex relations with each other, and that impacts me in the following ways,” Toby said.

  Rafe cracked up. “Is this an intervention?”

  Toby nodded solemnly and continued with his reading.

  “One: I would like to be having sex relations, and yet I am not. Two: When you were busy having sex relations, and I tried to walk in on you, your door was locked. This made me think I was unwelcome to be part of your sex relations, which made me feel unwanted. Three: If there truly is something gossip-worthy going on, I would like to know about it.”

  “Toby makes some excellent points,” Albie said, surprising me. “Not about wanting to be part of your sexual relations, because, ew. But in the fact that there is obviously a good story here, because as we are all well aware, you were boinking last Thanksgiving, and then you weren’t, and you weren’t even friends, and then Ben had a date to the dance and the date was female, and then this. It feels as if there’s something you’re not telling us.”