He is tall, brawny, particular. Every time I saw his room the clothes were neat, folded or in a dangling laundry bag in the closet. He lined up his sneakers under the edge
of his bed: this one's Nike, this one's Reebok, this one's Converse. It was routine for him
but thoroughly awe-inspiring to me. His mother told me once, in hushed tones, that he was
gay. I said that I didn't think so, but she hushed me. "He is!"
Tim laughed when I told him, told me that his mother was crazy. I said that I had
suspected as much, and he laughed some more. "She's just so...� he paused, searching. Since the last few weeks, when we had grown so close, I seemed to constantly want to finish his sentences, darn his socks. I wanted to say "pragmatic" but he followed it up with "convenience-obsessed", which really described it a lot better.
"She's so willing," he continued, "to believe something that is obviously false, just so it's easier for her to remember and tolerate." He looked at me, puzzled.
I had first nodded appreciatively, and then I decided that it was too hanger-on girlfriend to do that, so I slowly let doubt and contradiction soak into my gaze. And then I got worried again, so I put on my neutral face. I probably looked like some kind of four year old.
He paused, deliberately.
"I'm _not_ gay, Trina."
I said, "I know." but I let the disbelief creep into my mind, little by little. He never touched me if he could help it. I doubted that if I fainted, he would catch me. Even if I fell onto him. His eyes didn't look at girls. He thought that the school librarian (a man, with wet-looking hair and an apologetic nose) had pretty eyes.
The next time we sat on my roof, he looked at me for a long time without saying anything. It felt almost nice. He put a hand on my shoulder and I watched it like it was a rattlesnake. What was this?
We crawled back into my house without saying anything, and I knew what it was.
It seemed to get bigger with time, this strangeness. As though every word out of our
mouths had a gravity that other words didn't. We relished things, mulled and sat in
delicious slowness. It felt right, and it felt disgusting. Every day Alison talked about--
plans, and teachers and anger, and all I would have was the last word Tim said to me, or a
phrase from three weeks ago that rang in my head. Alison was on a different plane, a hasty
one.
We went to a concert together. I can't remember who the group was, but they were
slow and disjointed, angry and subdued, or at least that's how it felt at the time. We hid
in the back and said things of no meaning.
I don't remember what the first thing was, but after that concert, everything went
downhill. We would try to do what had worked before, but everything he said sounded
wrong, so stupid. Pretentious, almost, and he called me an airhead and a Barbie and
everything just got worse. He was a snake, and he called me an idiot, and I knew he was a
fag, and
time
just
stopped.
He turned sharply, like a Marine and walked away.