Chapter 26
I
raced to pack up our lunches and to herd Chris and the dog back down
the trail. Chris kept asking where Brian went and I told him he'd
started down the mountain ahead of us. I wasn't sure he'd even be
there when we got to the bottom. I didn't have a clue what to think; I
was stunned.
He was waiting for us when we got to the car. He
was sitting on the hood of my car, looking lost. He didn't say
anything, though, and as we loaded up, he climbed into the car without
saying a word.
During the drive home, the silence between the
two of us was oppressive; it was nothing like the serene quiet I'd
experienced up on the mountain. Chris, being Chris, filled it with a
moment-by-moment review of the the hawks and the rocks and the whole
day. Thank God.
When we got home, we bumped around the house for
a while. Jonah was teaching that night, so I knew he wouldn't be home
until late. If he came home at all.
Chris wasn't ready to be
indoors for the rest of the day. It had rained a good bit earlier in
the week; he literally dragged Brian outside to play in the mud puddles
with him.
They were gone for a couple of hours and during that time I don't think
I had a lucid thought.
I
finally couldn't stand the silence of the house and the white noise in
my brain, so I logged on to Yahoo! Messenger to see if Duane was online.
He was. I double-clicked on his name and opened up a chat box.
"Hey...I have to talk to you about something," I typed.
"Excellent," he responded. "I love to be needed."
I
told him everything about the day, about how great it felt up until the
surprise ending. I told him about the kiss. And I went into
loony-and-incoherent mode, constantly repeating myself, asking Duane,
"Why did he do that? What does it mean?" A loop of dialog began to run
and repeat: I'd ask him, "What does it mean?" He'd say something like,
"I think it should be clear what it means." But it wasn't. Not to me.
Nothing was clear, and it was all scary. It was the mother
of all scary. There had been too much history. Too many feelings had
flamed up, and flamed out, and been suppressed, and tied me in knots.
And, dammit, things had been going so well between me and Brian. I was
managing my way into a place I'd never been with him before. And then this.
I was totally thrown; I didn't understand what Brian was trying to say
to me, why he did that.
After about the fifth iteration of this question-answer cycle, I
started up yet another time:
"Why did he kiss me?"
Duane, clearly exasperated, finally typed back, "You idiot, why do you think
he kissed you?"
I knew what he was getting at, but that was beyond ridiculous. It was
absurd.
I responded, "But he's straight. You're just wrong."
"Obviously not," Duane typed.
"Just stop," I said. "I guess I know him a little better than you."
"Maybe you do," he answered. "But you're being stupid."
"What I am being stupid about?" I typed back, irritated.
"Would you please think," he wrote.
"Think what?"
There was a long pause. Then he typed one word:
"Matt."
It was like being struck by lightning.
Matt. Drew's best friend in high school. In Rip Current
Drew tells the story of how his straight best friend nevertheless loves
him and has an intimate encounter with him.
Somehow I had never even considered the possibility that the best
explanation for what Brian had done was also the simplest one.
But still...could it even be possible? Brian loved me? I
mean, like that? A bolt of panic shot through me.
I
didn't have time to continue the conversation, though. I heard Brian
and Chris come back into the house, laughing and talking. I said
goodbye to Duane, signed off, and met them in the living room.
Chris was covered in mud and grinning from ear to ear. Brian looked and
acted about the same.
"I think we need to get cleaned up," he said, a little sheepishly.
In spite of the rising terror in me, I had to laugh.
They
grabbed separate bathrooms and got cleaned up. We all watched a
little
TV together, and then Brian went with me to tuck Chris into bed.
* * * * * * * * *
After Chris was asleep, Brian and I sat down and watched TV
together for a while. Nobody said a word. I pretended to be absorbed in
the show, but my brain kept returning to the mountain, to the feel of
his lips on mine, to the IM conversation I'd had with Duane.
We
sat there in silence; it was one of the most awkward experiences of my
life. I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what to think.
I
was trying to get absorbed in the TV show, trying to shut down the
noise in my head, when I heard Brian softly say, "I could get used to
this."
I turned to look at him, startled. "Get used to what?"
He smiled a little. "Us."
My brain scrambled again.
I
don't know whether my face looked totally befuddled or totally
panicked, but when he looked into my eyes, he got an expression on his
face that a person might get when he's trying to explain calculus to a
first-grader. He sighed, shrugged, and said, "I wanted that for a long
time."
Still puzzled, I frowned at him and said, "You wanted what?"
"That," he said.
"What's 'that'?" I asked.
"The kiss," he said quietly.
I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. For a whole
minute. Finally, I mumbled, "But you're straight."
He looked deep into my eyes and said, "But I love you."
* * * * * * * * *
I shivered inside. And somewhere deep inside, something that had been
tied up years ago began struggling against its ropes.
I looked at him and repeated, "But you're straight."
"Yes," he said.
"So how...what..."
"I love you," he repeated.
I stared at him for what must have been three full minutes. He just
stared right back into my eyes.
"Brian,
do you realize how completely out of the blue all this is?" I finally
managed to get out. "I never...I mean, all those years...and
you're...well, you're not...I just don't understand."
He put a
hand on my shoulder. "I'll try to say it, Sammy. We have to go way back
if this is gonna make sense. Let's talk about high school."
I nodded, and let him open the door to the past.
* * * * * * * * *
"I guess I've always loved you,"
he began. "From the first day we met. I never put it that way in my
head, but I think it's true.
"You were so special...I can't really explain it. There was this tug
from the start. You're a pretty weird mix, buddy."
I had to respond to that one. "Gee, thanks."
He laughed. "No, it's a good
thing. On the one hand, you were all grown up and calm. You had such a
fuckin' strong will. And you were always so rational, even back then.
But also you were all kind of innocent too. And so hurt.
"Part of me saw all that innocence and hurt and wanted to protect you.
Another part of me wanted to lean on you, needed
to lean on you. My parents were great and I have a great family, but I
always had to do the right thing, always had to take care of my
diabetes, always had to do shit right. So there was a part of me that
just always wanted to say "fuck that" and just escape, just cut loose.
I think that's what got me started with the drinking, and Sammy,
already by then I knew that I made trouble for myself, especially at
parties. You fuckin' saved my life at one of those, remember? And
having you around, man...not only did I have these feelings for you,
you made me better. I wanted you to think of me as a great
guy and I tried to be worthy of you, you know? And sometimes I needed
you just to keep me sane, keep me on the right path." He paused for a
minute, searching for other words. "I guess that sounds stupid; I can't
explain it any better."
He stopped talking, waiting for a response from me. When he didn't get
one, he went on.
"Everybody
liked you," he said. "You were as popular as any of us. You never saw
it, but it's true. You were athletic, you were good in drama, you could
play music, and you were fuckin' brilliant. It was an honor to be your
friend. And I loved it when you started going out with my sister. I
felt like it brought us even closer."
He looked at me and his
face flushed a little. "I knew you liked me in a way...well, not just
like best friends. Like more. It was kinda hard to miss, Sammy. You'd
look at me and blush and stare at your feet. Not all the time, but
enough. Or I'd see you checking me out when you didn't think I was
looking. If I was ever naked around you, your eyes practically popped
out of your head."
Now it was my turn to blush.
"Seems
like I saw you look the same way at Tom and Dave and a couple of
others, but didn't think anything of it. I never thought of you as gay.
And it didn't bother me."
He hesitated momentarily, then said,
"I've done stuff with guys before, and it wasn't any big deal. It
didn't bother me to think that you were interested in me like that."
I was blown away. "What...uh, I mean what...what did you do with guys?"
"Shit, Sammy," he replied. "You know, just kid stuff. With Tom, mainly;
but actually, most
of the football team fooled around a little once in a while. Mostly
just handjob shit, but you know, probably traded blowjobs a few times,
I guess. Just horny fooling-around shit," he said. "It was never any
big deal. It didn't gross me out, but it didn't turn me on all that
much. But you know, I'd done it, and I didn't mind lookin at guys'
dicks and screwing around kinda shit. So it didn't bother me that you
looked at me like that."
I had to smile at the irony; There I
was, back then in high school, aching to have Brian sexually,
occasionally looking at other guys that way, and all the time these
straight jocks are getting more gay sex than I could even imagine ever
having! It was one of those "no justice in the world" moments.
I
put myself back into the present, listening to him talk about the past.
A thought occurred to me: "When I was with Mary did you think I--"
He didn't let me finish. "I told you, I never thought you were gay. I
never gave much thought about what
you were, and I didn't think too much about what you were thinking
about me. I mean, I knew it was more than just liking to look at me. I
just didn't get how much more." He looked off into the
distance. "I knew you loved Mary, it was obvious you were nuts about
her. You'd blush and smile and get all goofy just talking about her. So
with you and me, I didn't think it was more than just a matter of you
maybe liking guys too, or maybe a little more with me because we were
close."
He stroked his chin with one hand and drummed his
fingers on his knee with the other. Trying to decide whether or not to
continue, it seemed to me.
"I swear, Sammy, I never thought you
loved me like you loved Mary. Sometimes when you looked at me like that
I'd think about...well, you know, about doing stuff with you like I'd
done with the other guys, but I figured you'd freak if I ever even
brought it up. Sex things always made you nervous, and I kind of
figured why. I never knew any details about your asshole cousins, but I
knew enough to guess what happened; you were jumpy about being touched
even back then. Still, I'd think about it from time to time."
I looked at him and stammered out, "I don't...I don't know what to
say..."
He smiled and patted my shoulder. "Don't say anything, Sam;
not yet. I have more to say. A lot more."
He stared at the floor afor a minute, then said, "I guess I didn't
think too much about what I was thinking about you,
either."
I
couldn't believe what I was hearing. Everything I'd experienced since
we were up on the mountain seemed to be trying to rewrite history. I
tried to hang in, though. No way was I going to stop him.
"I'd
fucked around with Tom and some of the other guys on the team, but it
was just getting off. You know what I mean. It's like I said: Guys'
dicks didn't gross me out, but didn't really turn me on either. And I
sure as hell liked getting with the girls. I think that's why I didn't
really get what I was feeling."
He looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'd never been in love
before and I didn't expect to fall in love with a guy."
* * * * * * * * *
There it was; he'd said it again. Duane
was right. And he'd felt it years ago.
I
was so floored I couldn't sit still. I got up and began to pace the
room. I'm not sure I even believed it. Even after the mountain. Even
after Duane. Even after he'd just admitted it.
I looked over at him on the sofa and said, "You mean...you mean already
back then you...you were..."
"You
always had me kind of mixed up, Sam," he said. "Always. Part of me
wanted to protect you or something; sometimes I could see so much hurt
in you, it just hit me in the gut.
"But you were so strong, so amazing strong. You'd zip all that hurt up
and keep on going, and I'd just be in awe of you."
He
stood up and walked over to me and, facing me, he said, tenderly, "You
took care of me. You kept me from doing really stupid shit. Do you know
how incredible it was to feel how much you cared?"
He continued.
"There was so much other stuff. I can't count the number of times I saw
you give your lunch, or even your coat, to some random homeless guy. Or
you'd notice some crying kid three streets over and you'd go help. And
you always acted like it was just normal. You really didn't get that
most people don't give a damn."
He went back to the sofa and sat
down. "I was in awe of you. Even back then. I never felt better, never
felt more right, than when I was spending time with you."
For a
while he fell silent. I stood there, staring at his face. I could see
that part of him was far away; far back in time, reliving. I
understood; the memories rushed back to the front of my brain too, and
I felt it all again: the ecstasy of being young, and being accepted for
the first time in my life; and the joy of having a best friend, and a
girlfriend; the pain and the terror of loving them both, and above all
else, the way he was constantly, always, in my heart and in my thoughts.
I
got up the nerve to ask, "Brian...why did it take all these years? I
had no idea. Things might have been so different; why did you take so
long to tell me?"
The answer came out without a second's hesitation. "Tom."
He
sighed. "Oh Jesus, I messed up so bad, Sam. I need to tell you about me
and Tom. I've never told anybody about this, all these years."
He took a deep breath. His body language struck me; I could tell he was
steeling himself for what he was about to say.
* * * * * * * * *
"Tom and I grew up together," he
began, "and I'm talkin' from diapers onward. We were together all the
time. You know how fucked-up Tom's family was. His parents fought all
the time. They lived just around the corner from us, and as he got
older, he stayed with us most of the time just to get away from the war
zone at his house.
"I can't even remember when we first started
screwing around together. It wasn't a big deal to me. Mostly just
jacking off at the same time at first. Hell, it woulda been hard not
to, as much as he stayed in my room. It wasn't like there were a lot of
places to go for privacy; not with all my sibs and just a few
bathrooms. Plus, I have to admit, it was kinda more exciting with
someone else.
"He always suggested doing other stuff. I wasn't
always up for it, but I went along. We jacked each other off sometimes.
And traded blowjobs sometimes. It was nothing major. And, you know, I
was always kinda curious; who isn't at that age? You wanna see how
another guy's dick looks, how his stuff comes out, shit like that. It
wasn't bad, but it sure as shit didn't get me going like girls did.
"In
high school it mostly stopped. Just now and then, mostly when I was
single and horny. I swear to God, I didn't think it meant any more to
him than it did to me. But you know, I have to admit that once I met
you, well...you had kind of crept into those thoughts and I didn't have
a fuckin clue what to do with that. I figured out pretty fast that you
might even want that, but I knew you; I figured you'd shit a brick if
it actually happened.
"I tried not to think about that. It's not
like screwing around with guys is a real thing of mine anyway, and it
was your friendship I really needed, not doing sex shit with you.
"I
wasn't spending as much time with just Tom after you came along; we
continued to mess around sometimes, but it's like you'd gotten in my
head, and doing shit with him made it harder not to think about doing
it with you. So I just stopped doing that kind of stuff with him as
much.
"My feelings for Tom didn't change at all when I met you.
He was like a brother to me, is basically how I always felt. We'd known
each other forever. I had no idea I was hurting him, because I had no
idea he felt different from the way I did. Anyway, it was never like I
pushed him away. But you had kinda come into our circle, and so I
wasn't alone with him as much anymore. And he liked you too. He felt
the same way as I did about you, at least about some things. He was
even more protective of you than me, prolly. And he picked up on how
you felt about me faster than I did...
"He picked up on how I was feeling, too, before I did.
"I'd
been single for a while when we went up the canyon that day, and I was
fucking horny. And I'll admit now that being with you on that trip was
getting me more worked up. I don't know, it's so hard to explain. It's
not even like I'm bisexual, dicks don't really do it for me. But my
feelings for you were so strong, and there was something about the
thought of being with you that way... I couldn't get out of my head. It
wasn't about your dick, you know, it was about sharing this kind of
intimate thing with a guy I cared so much for. Especially because I
knew you'd get off to it as well. But I knew you'd freak out so I never
brought it up. Anyway, I was pretty horny that whole trip, and I
figured Tom and I could take care of that problem when we went to get
water.
"I just assumed it would be okay. I mean, I never even
thought about it. I knew he liked doing it. It had been a while since
we'd done any shit, but not that long. So, you know, we got off by
ourselves, and I start to make a move on him, and he goes, 'what the
fuck are you doing?'"
Brian's face flushed a second
time, replaying the scene in his head. "I was totally fucking lost. I
mean, we'd done shit all the time and it was just fine, and here he
was, pissed as all hell, and it seemed like it came out of nowhere."
He stood up. "I need a Coke; you got any?"
I
didn't answer. It was almost like I was hearing the words from miles
away. My mind was back in the canyon, reliving that trip. The odd way
the two of them looked when they got back. The uneasy silence that
seemed to grow between them.
"Sam?" He looked at me. "Did you hear what I said?
I jolted back into the present. "Uhh...yeah. Uhh...oh, Cokes! Yeah, we
have some in the fridge. Grab me one too, okay?"
He
went to the kitchen and pulled a couple out of the fridge. I sat back
down while he was gone. When he got back to the living room, he handed
me a can and sat down next to me.
"Tom just poured out his guts
to me," he said. "Told me he loved me and he'd loved me forever. He was
angry and he was crying, and he told me I was a fucking idiot for
missing it. He started telling me how it was breaking his heart, how
bad it hurt. He had tried to make himself okay with it, and he had done
okay, because he figured I couldn't feel like that about a guy. But
then he started picking up on the fact that I was having those
feelings. For you. And that made him just die inside.
"He
said, 'You're in love with Sam and you're a chickenshit. And now you
come up to me and you wanna dick around. You're just fuckin' using me.
I don't want you fuckin' touching me to get your damn rocks off when
I've loved you all my life and you're in love with some other dude.'
"
I
watched him stand up again, take a swig of his Coke, and begin to pace
the floor like I had before. "He was yelling at me and crying, and I
was totally freaked out. I wasn't ready to hear what he said. I was so
damn confused about you, Sam. I didn't want hearing it from Tom,
hearing something about me I wasn't even ready to own up to. I didn't
know what I wanted with you but I didn't think it was that. You know,
love. Like, you know, like a guy and a girl.
"I felt like shit
now as I thought back on how he must have felt, how bad I must have
hurt him; but at the same time it threw me so much. It felt like Tom
had changed all of a sudden while I wasn't looking, and it started to
piss me off as we were standing there. I started getting mad that he
hadn't told me before. If he'd told me, I wouldn't have tried any shit
with him that day. I didn't know it would hurt him, I was just horny.
This whole miserable scene felt like his fault. So I fuckin'
blew up at him."
He stood still and looked into my eyes. Misery was written all over his
face. "I was so...I...I was mean
to him. I said horrible things. He grabbed my arm at some point, and I
knocked him away. I told him, 'Get your filthy faggot hands off me.' Oh
Jesus, Sammy, how could I have said something so horrible? My
lifelong best friend..."
He
practically fell onto the couch, crying. "I regretted it the second I
said it. How could I have said that? God, Sammy, you should have seen
his face, the look in his eyes. Every inch was covered over in pain. It
was all you could see.
"I...I couldn't have hurt him worse if I'd taken a knife and started
stabbing him over and over."
I watched Brian's own face cover over with grief and remorse as he
struggled to continue with the story.
"I
said I was sorry; but it was too late. He walked off. He wouldn't talk
to me for days. And to make it worse, I was still pissed that he hadn't
told me before. And I was scared because he'd discovered the truth
about my feelings for you before I even understood them; I wasn't ready
to face those.
"After a few days I got over being pissed. I
started to understand that he's waited so long to tell me how he felt
because he was scared. He didn't want to lose me as a friend. I got it,
and I stopped being mad. But when he finally tried to talk to me, I
didn't treat him much better than I had at the canyon. I told him I was
pissed that he'd lied to me for so long. I actually wasn't; more than
anything, I was scared that he knew I had feelings for you. I was upset
over having to face those. So I let him think I was still pissed off.
"Well,
that made him feel like shit all over again. And after that it just got
hard to fix. He started avoiding me. I was all confused anyway, so I
avoided him back. As the days went by, I think we'd both gotten over
being pissed, but we still hadn't talked."
He took a deep breath, and his eyes drilled into mine.
"And then he was gone."
The
room went silent. Memories of Tom, now that they'd been evoked, hung in
the room's air. I started thinking back on how Brian seemed to fold up
into himself after Tom died.
Lost in thought, I was still aware of the oppressive silence in the
room, and of Brian's steady, quiet breathing.
Finally
he said, "When I heard the news, I just kept seeing his face that day
at the canyon after I told him to get his faggot hands off me. And I'd
replay those words and his face over and over, and it felt like I
was the one who killed him. My oldest friend had died thinking I hated
him because he loved me. I never saw it, never saw how he felt about
me, and I'd totally bailed on him when I met you."
His chest was
heaving and he was struggling to get himself under control, but tears
were streaming down his face. The pain and grief radiating from his
face broke my heart. I started crying too. For poor Tom; for poor
Brian; for me. And for people everywhere who feel alone and
unaccepted because they're wired to love people of their own gender.
"He
thought I hated him now for being a queer and being in love with me.
And he was too embarrassed to come to me and talk it out. I wasn't
embarrassed, for either him or me; and god, I didn't hate
him. I was just confused...confused
about you and guilty over hurting him, over what I'd said to him. Oh
god, Sammy, I wish he'd known I didn't mean it, I wish I'd had a chance
to tell him 'I'm sorry.' If only he hadn't died thinking I hated
him..." He trailed off, crying too hard to continue. I couldn't keep
the tears from running down my own face.
After he'd regained some control, he went on. "The main thing was, I
realized he'd called me out on something. I...things had
gotten different between him and me, and it was because of you. You
came into my life and all of a sudden you were more important to me
than the rest of them guys. More important then Tom, even. Thinking
about that kinda freaked me out. Tom was wrong about me using him, but
he saw something else, and that part bothered me so much I was too
chicken to make things right with him.
"When he died, it tore me up inside and I couldn't shake the guilt."
He paused, and looked at me.
"He
died thinking I hated him, Sammy; I was such a pussy I didn't have the
balls to tell him it was okay...and then it was too late."
He
squinted his eyes shut and took several deep breaths before he
continued. "Anyway, that messed me up for months. I glazed over. I was
like an emotional zombie for a long time."
"I remember," I said quietly.
"Slowly
things got better. And you were my friend through all that. You never
pushed me about things, you were there looking after me. I started
thinking more and more about what was going on between the two of us.
After the cast party, though, you know, the second one where you.
uhh...saw me with Katie, remember? Where you...you heard us...god, we
thought you were asleep, and then...well, then after that you kind of
pulled away from me. And I knew you were probably thinking like Tom
must have been thinking. Feeling that way too. God, I didn't want that.
I didn't want you to think I hated you for liking me like that, and I
felt awful when I knew you heard me going after it with Katie. I just
couldn't quit thinking that doing that in the same room with you was
like doing the same thing I'd done to Tom all over again. Rubbing it in
your face that you couldn't have me.
"I couldn't stand it," he said, "knowing I'd hurt you like that. I got
it in my head that if we...you know, if we did
something, you and me, that would convince you that I didn't mind you
liking me like that. I thought that might show you. You know, I thought
we could get together like that just once and screw around a little.
That way we could both get it out of our systems and go on with our
friendship. I was confused about what I was feeling for you anyway, and
I thought maybe we'd get past all the crazy shit if we did it once.
Then you could put me out of your head like that and focus on Mary, and
I thought it would make our friendship stronger if I showed you it was
okay for you to like me like that. And maybe I'd stop being so damn
obsessed with it myself."
I had to smile at the garbled thinking
behind that naive teenager's plan. Brian saw the smile and said, "Yeah,
I know. Pretty stupid. I guess I didn't think that one through too
good. Anyway, after you pulled away from me after the cast party, you
know, where you saw me...where you...
His face grew dark.
"You stopped talking to me."
He let the words hang in the air; I felt as though I'd been punched in
the stomach.
"It
hurt so bad," he continued; "and then it was like for days, you looked
terrified every time you saw me...and that hurt even worse."
He
stood up. He didn't seem to keep from standing up, pacing, sitting
down, and repeating the process. This whole trip through the past was
putting us both through the wringer.
"I kept after you. I
couldn't let you shut me out of your life, Sammy. And at the canyon,
what I was trying to tell you was I wanted us to do that, I was ready
and willing, and I was just yapping on about us just doing it once so
you'd see I didn't give a shit...
"But you didn't hear a word I
said. It was prolly a good thing; I know you woulda freaked. But it was
like the words didn't even register with you. I guess because you were
so caught up in your own hurt.
He smiled a little. "You just let loose. First of all, you were drunk.
I'd never seen that
before," he grinned. "But it was worse than that. I'd never seen you
that...that emotional before. It scared me some. And anyway, it was
like Tom all over. Fuckin' déjà vu. But ten
times worse.
"Why?
Why was it ten times worse? Why were my guts being twisted around my
fuckin' heart when you went off on me? All of a sudden, it slammed home
to me. I knew, Sammy. I understood. I realized.
Right there in the canyon."
I heart the words coming--he'd already said them tonight--but they
still slammed into me with the force of a freight train:
"I was in love with you."
My brain felt like a boxer's might after taking a hard uppercut to the
jaw. I was dizzy; reeling.
He
sat down next to me. "I couldn't find you after we got home, I had no
idea where you were, so I spend a lot of time thinking instead. Back at
the canyon, I finally got what I was feeling--I knew Tom had been
right--and I realized what a stupid idea it was to just jerk off with
you once or something. I didn't wanna just fuck around with you. I was
in love with you.
"That fucked me up. I didn't know what the
hell to do with it. It had already hit me back when we were at the
canyon, but I didn't really think through what it might mean until I'd
gotten home, and by then Amy had gone off the fucking deep end and told
the world what she'd heard you say to me. Christ, what a bitch; I was
so mad at her.
"I still wasn't ready for what I was feeling; I was a guy,
for fuck's sake...in love with another guy? It wasn't exactly
something you discussed with the neighbors.
"But
I couldn't avoid it anymore. It wouldn't leave me alone. As worried as
we all were about you. And I was having to hide those feelings and deal
with them on my own. When I was talking to Mary about what had
happened, for the first time ever I held stuff back from her, and you
know how close we've always been. I didn't tell her what I was feeling;
I knew what a mess it would make. I mean, how do you tell your sister
that you want her boyfriend?
"Another thing that was haunting
me. I used to talk to Dad a lot about all kinds of stuff. You know how
he is, what a great guy he is. He told me once that I'd know I found
the right person to love forever when that person made me want to be
better. All that came back to me now. But on top of everything else, I
can't tell you how guilty I felt about wanting my sister's boyfriend.
In those hours after the canyon, everything I was feeling and thinking
went against everything I'd always thought about right and wrong. Guys
don't fall for guys. A person doesn't steal his sister's boyfriend. You
don't fall for your best friend. Tom had learned that lesson, and look
what it did to him.
"I knew what needed to happen. I figured the
best way out of all this shit now that Amy had told the whole world you
were gay was for you to get back with Mary, and then all this other
shit would go away eventually. I knew I wasn't gay, and whatever you
were, you weren't gay, so it would just go away."
He laughed a
little. It wasn't a humorous laugh. "But once I had started thinking
about being with you like that, it was hard to shake those thoughts. I
figured I could live without ever...without ever being with you like
that, but I couldn't live with not ever talking to you. And it seemed
like things would get ugly if we ever did anything sexual. It was a lot
more complicated than it was with Tom or the guys. Well, it was more
complicated with Tom than I had known, but even so, with you, this time
I knew there were real feelings involved. With both
of us. I knew it wouldn't be 'just sex' for either of us. So I figured
we should just get past this mess, and you should get back with Mary,
and we should just go on being best friends."
He looked away for
a minute, then looked back at me and said, "Easier said than done. You
know when you live in a house and you sort of don't see it because it's
your house, then somebody comes along and says, 'hey, there's a crack
in this wall,"--well then, every time you look at that wall, it's all
you can see.
"It was like that. Once I really thought about
it--about being in love with you and about...about making love to
you--I couldn't stop thinking about it."
He reached for my hand. I let him clasp in it mine.
"When
we got back, that night you spent in my bed, after your parents kicked
you out of the house...with you lying between me and Mary...I pulled
you into my arms and it just felt so right. I kept thinking
about how everything
felt right whenever I was with you. I thought about all that, and I
just kept looking at you, watching you sleep, and then I'd look at
Mary, and then back at you. You and Mary...you were so good together. I
had no right to be feeling what I was feeling. I knew I had to keep my
mouth shut about my feelings. To tell you would just be selfish. How
could I do that to my sister? How could I do it to you? You
already felt guilty; I knew if I told you how I felt and you chose me
over Mary, you'd crucify yourself over the fuckin' guilt.
"I finally had to leave the bed just to get my head clear. When I got
back I just lay there, watching you sleep."
I
gawked at him as he told this story. Of all the things I'd experienced
that night--of all the things I'd thought and felt--the thought that
Brian loved me like that never even entered my mind.
"When you
woke up," he said, "you looked so lost, and abso-fuckin-lutely
terrified. It ripped my heart out. I tried to hold you but you were so
freaked out; you were shaking from head to toe. Oh god, Sam, I wanted
to hold you and make it okay so fuckin' bad..." He trailed off.
"I
had no idea what you were seeing when you looked at me, what you were
thinking about. I was trying not to let you see how torn up I was. You
were already beating the shit out of yourself and if you'd known how
messed up I was, you'd have felt even more guilty. So I just tried to
suck it up and just be there but not push too hard. It killed
me that I couldn't comfort you, that I seemed to scare you even more
than ever. And I was loving you so much, and more and more, and that
was fucking me up too. I knew what was coming down and how you were
going to have to face this shit in public, and I didn't think any
of us wanted to go through that, so I decided I should shove my
feelings for you back in the box, and I decided you should get back
with Mary, and we could all deny you'd said anything like that to me
and make Amy out to be a big liar, and then just move on down the road
like it had never happened. Part of me knew that was wrong, but I guess
the whole thing just fucked me up. I mean, no sooner do I realize I'm
in love with you than some bitch outs you to the whole town.
"I couldn't deal with it," he said quietly. "I got totally shitfaced
drunk for the next two days."
He stopped talking, and we sat there, together, my hand held in his.
I
let my mind run through that ancient history he'd gone over. I'd been
clueless about everything he just told me. I was having trouble
factoring all this new information into those old memories. And I was
starting to be overwhelmed by feelings. If I'd known all this back
then...wouldn't it have been so much better? Maybe all kinds of things
would have been different. Maybe the thing with Neal would never have
happened; maybe...
I stopped myself. It was pointless to go there. The past was in the
past. What I needed to deal with was the present. But Brian
wasn't finished talking.
He took a breath, and started again.
--------------------------
Thanks, readers, for your ongoing interest in Dan's story. There are
three chapters to go, and as I might have mentioned before, the final
one was written by Dan himself, several months before his death. I'll
be assembling material from his notes and will put together Chapters 27
and 28 in the next couple of weeks. We're into the home stretch, and I
appreciate you hanging with me through this labor of love, this effort
to keep a promise. If you'd like to email me about the story or about
Dan or just to say hi, my email address is aaptx79@yahoo.com.
--Adam Phillips