Have A Little Faith In Me (9 page)

“Huh.  I never thought about it like that.”  Alex was so smart, he thought.  So…self assured.  His small body had so much righteous anger in it, like a V8 engine had been put in a little VW.  He watched Alex’s face in profile, the set of his jaw, the way his mouth moved, his hair flopping over one eye with that new, whatdyacallit, Emo hairdo.  He was so handsome, really. 

He blinked. 
Whoa.  Was I just checking out a guy?  No.  No, I’m just stoned and tripping.
 

“So,” he said hesitantly, “what did you write in your abstinence paper thing that pissed them off.”

Alex laughed. “Oh, that.  Yeah, I said that I wasn’t really sure yet, but I might like guys, and if I saved myself for marriage, well in that case I’d never have sex, because gays can’t get married.”  He bent over laughing.  “You should have seen the look on Mrs. Parsons’ face when she handed me back the paper.”

Dex felt something strange, unfamiliar – an excited dread, a thrilling terror.  He’d walked home from school with Alex, laughing, joking, putting him in a headlock or just throwing his arm around his shoulder, just buddies, messin’ around.  Now suddenly every physical contact he’d had with Alex took on new meaning. 
Did he…did he get excited when I touched him?

Dex recoiled from the idea.  Somewhere deep inside himself, he was recoiling not from Alex’s gayness, or even his own, but from the primal terror of becoming the outcast. 
What if people knew Alex was gay?  What would they say if they saw me…touching him?  They’ll think I’m gay, too.

“Are…are you gay?”

Alex hesitated.  Dex had asked the question to the wall, not looking at him.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.  Don’t knock it till you tried it, right?”

“It’s a sin.”

Alex sighed.  “What isn’t?”

Dex turned to look at his friend, to see his face full on, to see…to see what he wanted to see, didn’t want to see.

And it was there.  Alex was looking at him with this open, plain, intense gaze that said, yeah.  I would, with you.

All Dex had to do was lean in.  Put his lips on Alex’s soft, sensitive mouth.  Then he really would be in another universe.

Then the hammer came down in his head.  GAY.  Then he’d be GAY.  He’d lose his friends and his family and his life, he’d have to trade in all his clothes for a neon green Speedo and spend the rest of his life gyrating wildly on top of a parade float.  He’d have to talk like those queers on that new show, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” that his mom and his sister Cassie loved to watch.  Yeah, they watched, and they laughed, at the flamboyant queens who camped it up to entertain people like them.  People who’d burn ‘em at the stake as soon as look at ‘em if they weren’t dancing and singing for your entertainment.

“I gotta go.”  He jumped up, grabbed his baseball hat and clamped it low over his face.  “I’ll see you around.”

Outside, his stomach knotted in pain.  What had he done?  What had he said?  “I’ll see you around,” as if Alex wasn’t his best friend, as if he wasn’t going to see him tomorrow, the next day, every day. 

I can’
t.  It was that simple, and that complex, and that clear and that painful. 
I can’t.
 

But
I can’t lose Alex!  I can’t lose my only real friend.
  That hit him like a truck.  He had buddies, guys he’d grown up with, hung out with, shot the shit with.  But they didn’t play music, they didn’t read, they didn’t think, they…didn’t move him like Alex, either.  They were safe.  Yeah, because they’re fucking boring idiots.

Something he’d heard once came to his rescue.  “It’s a phase, you’ll grow out of it.”  Alex hadn’t said he was gay, had he?  He’d said, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.  That was just the marijuana loosening his gears for a minute. 

That wasn’t so bad.  He could live with that.  He could stand by his friend till he grew out of this phase. 

His whole body loosened up as the stress left it, a huge sigh of relief expelling it. 
I can’t lose him. 

He let a small voice whisper it, around a corner where he could pretend not to hear it. 

I need him.

Dex was flat out on his bed that Sunday morning, staring at the ceiling.  He was dressed for church, and just killing time until his Mom was ready to go.

He looked around the room, thinking about the posters he’d put up on his wall since meeting Alex.  There were no normal teenage boy pictures of supermodels up there.  They were pictures of guitarists – sure, posted for inspiration, but they were still all guys.  Good looking guys.  And why did he have that poster of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, huh?  Because none of them had shirts on? 

“I can’t be gay,” he said just barely out loud, mouthing the words with even less force than he dared to muster for singing.  Four words that had so many meanings.  He couldn’t be gay, because it wasn’t allowed, he’d be despised by everyone he ever knew.  He couldn’t be gay, because real gays are flamers, queens, that guy Jack on “Will and Grace.” 

He hadn’t gone to Alex’s house yesterday, after his early morning shift at the warehouse.  For weeks now, he’d been getting off at 11 and meeting Alex for breakfast.  He snorted to himself, his dark sense of humor still with him, anyway – how gay was that, fucking
brunch?
 

Yesterday he just…didn’t show up.  Didn’t call and cancel.  Couldn’t face his friend, and couldn’t face telling him he couldn’t face him.  Couldn’t stand to lie, and couldn’t stand to tell the truth.

His adolescent feelings were on spin cycle now.  The relief he’d felt thinking about Alex “growing out of a phase” had been replaced by a gnawing anxiety, an anxiety in the back of his mind that he didn’t dare to let wander into his brain’s speech processing center.  Because then it would form into words, and words would arrange themselves in to a question, a question that even asking could be his doom.

What if I’m the one who’s gay?

Sexual feelings weren’t new to him, of course.  He’d been masturbating like a pro for years now.  He got a raging boner, and he took care of it.  The feeling itself was so good, and the boners so automatic, that he didn’t need any fantasies to get one. 

He thought about a day a few weeks ago when he’d hung out with his old friends, one of whom had just gotten a fast Internet connection.  They’d gone to some porno site, where they couldn’t see much without a credit card, but there were enough little clips for free to give you the idea of what lay behind the paywall. 

Sure, he’d gone home and jerked off afterwards.  But was it to the women he’d seen onscreen, or to the looks on his friends’ faces, the loose slack faces of young men in lust?  Had he spent more time looking at them looking at women than he’d spent looking at the screen himself?

He hadn’t thought about it at the time, had just…run home and serviced himself.  When the others asked him if he’d jerked off, he’d said “Hell, yeah!” with all the enthusiasm he could muster.  He even got in on the joke after they high-fived each other, saying slyly, “I just jerked off with that hand aha hahaha!” and everyone freaked out.

But he wasn’t gay.  He’d just proved it.  Right?

Laycee had been after him for a year now.  She flaunted herself in the halls, rubbed up against him as he passed, and even managed to get her locker assigned near his this year – he didn’t want to think about how she’d done that.  She’d made a project of “gettin’ him,” and failure was not an option.

Dex had always tried to be real nice to her.  He hadn’t yet discovered that sometimes, being real nice could only encourage someone to get the wrong idea.  He was put off by her forward ways.  Repulsed would be too strong a word, but there was something about her wanton sexuality that seemed just…wrong to him.

But on Saturday, in a blind haze, he’d finally called her, and asked her if she wanted to go out that night.  His mom was so thrilled that he was going out with a girl at last that she let him borrow the car. 

It didn’t take long for them to skip dinner, and the movie, and park in the woods and have at it.  Dex was so aflame he probably could have fucked a sheep at that point, and only once did the image of Alex enter his mind.  That was when he’d put the condom on, of course, and just as the attempt was making him soft, the memory of him and Alex talking about sex ed brought the face, the body, the eyes, the heat of Alex into his mind, and suddenly he was hard as a rock again…

She seemed a little disappointed that he used a rubber, Dex could tell.  But there was no way he was putting his baby batter in a girl.  No, the odds against him leaving this town were bad enough, without him getting stuck with a kid.  Then he’d never, ever leave.

Dex was no fool.  As he lay there on the bed, he knew what would have happened without the thought of Alex.  He would have gotten soft and looked into his date’s blurry, expectant eyes, and made his apologies.  It was Alex he’d gotten hard for.

But he’d lost his virginity, to a girl!  That made him straight, right?  No matter what he had to think about to accomplish that.  Right?

He heard his mother shouting downstairs.  “Come on, Mike, dammit.  You never go to church anymore.”

“Hell no I don’t go,” his father shouted back.  “It’s fuckin’ football season.”

“Football ain’t on till noon for a reason, you know.”

“You want me to miss the
pregame show?”

“DEX!  Let’s go!”

Dex rolled off the bed, looked in the mirror, adjusted his tie, and clamped his Dallas Cowboys ball cap on his head.  He’d have to take it off at church, but he was damned if he’d take it off before then.  Just because he didn't want to play football didn't mean he didn't love watching it.

He had to laugh.  What kinda queer would be a Dallas Cowboys fan, right?

They had a special guest speaker at church that day.  Pastor Neil Panko was a leading force in the movement against gay marriage…oh wait.  That’s not right.  He wasn’t
against
anything.  No, he was “for traditional marriage.”  Smile, smile, put a happy face on your hate and call it love... 

The old verbiage about how gays were “hellbent on destroying marriage” was reserved for the pre-election flyers to the faithful, mailed by groups with Orwellian names like “Family Research Council” or “National Organization for Marriage.” These frenzied letters, marked as EMERGENCY ALERTS on the envelope, warned about what the gays were up to now, at the end of which they asked, “Won't you please consider making a generous donation of $35, $50, $100, $500 or even $1,000 if God has given you the means to help us elect marriage champions?” 

Karl Rove had engineered the upcoming 2004 election to be a referendum not on George W. Bush, not on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not on the stumbling economy, but on gay marriage.  If you could get enough Christians to the polls to vote on constitutional amendments against gay marriage, well, of course they’d also vote for Dubya.

In Mississippi, Amendment 1 was on the ballot this year.  “Marriage may take place and may be valid under the laws of this state only between a man and a woman.”  And Pastor Panko was beating the drum around the state to make sure it not only passed, but passed overwhelmingly – to “send a message.” 

Dex was at church today, as he was so rarely anymore since he’d met Alex.  He was here because he thought it would help.  If God could take away these thoughts…just…take them away, well then, He surely existed no matter what Alex said.

The Pastor was a good-looking man.  So many preachers were so buttoned-up, so…waxy.  Their faces were tight and shiny and yeah, Alex was right, they had “Devo hair” – so much hairspray on their perfectly parted coifs that it looked like a plastic shell on their head, a life-size Ken Doll wig.

But Pastor Neil was different.  He was athletic, lean, a little bit of five o’clock shadow already accenting his jaw.  He had an animal energy as he left the pulpit, taking the microphone with him, leaving the stage and walking among the people.  His dark eyes shone, and he often ran his hands through his dark hair, pushing it out of his eyes.  He kind of looked like Alex, Dex thought, if Alex would ever be caught dead in slacks and a tie.

“Now there are so many people out there who say this is all about hate.  Well, it’s not.”  He shook his head to a chorus of ‘amens’ from the usually quiet parishioners. “It’s not.  If you love something, and you defend it, that doesn’t have to mean you hate the people who are attacking it.  No!  And I’ll tell you something.  I don’t hate the gays.  I don’t want to change them.”

He was coming down the aisle towards Dex now, and their eyes met.  Dex’s body responded to the heat in his eyes.  “I love them and I forgive them.  And you know what?” he asked Dex directly, standing only a few feet away.  “I don’t think you choose to be gay.”

The crowd murmured, shocked.

“I don’t.  I think maybe you’re born that way.  But some people are also born with murderous rage in their hearts, too, but they don’t go kill anyone.  Some people are born with a thirst for liquor, a genetic predisposition to it.  But they don’t drink.”

“Yes!” the crowd said, behind him now.

“But you can control it.  You can refuse it.”  His eyes bored into Dex’s, as if seeing everything Dex had ever thought, ever wanted.  “You can’t pray away the gay.  But you can pray away the urge to sin.”

“Amen!”

Pastor Neil walked away, and Dex shivered with the shock of it.  The man’s eyes had said it plain as day –
I know you, because I’m just like you.

He waited till the crowd receded before he went up to Pastor Neil.  “Thank you for that,” he said, extending his hand.

Pastor Neil smiled, knowingly, not taking his hand.  “You’re welcome, son.  Did that help you some?”

Dex dropped his hand.  “Yeah.  I think so.”

“You can fight this,” Pastor Neil whispered.  “I’ve fought it, and I’ve won.  Now see,” he smiled, “I would love to shake your hand, young man, or put a consoling hand on your shoulder, but I know what that would do to me.  So I avoid it.  That’s the way you control it.”

“I screwed a girl last night,” Dex blurted for no reason he could fathom.

Neil smiled.  “That’s good.  If you can do that, that’s good.  You’re gonna…” He looked around, made sure nobody was in earshot.  “You’re gonna have lust in your heart for men,” he whispered.  “But you can fight it.  If you can redirect it, that’s good.  Get married, son, have kids.  Hell,” he laughed, scratching the back of his head.  “I don’t know anyone with a couple of kids who hasn’t given up on sex anyway.”

Dex laughed, thinking about how many years it had probably been since his own parents had done it. 

In the car on the way home, he was surprised to discover that his sense of blissful relief was short-lived.  All he could think about was trying to shake Pastor Neil’s hand, and being rebuffed.  This, the idea that he’d never even touch a man again…it filled him with a profound sadness and sense of loss he couldn’t even describe.

“Let me out here,” he blurted.

“What?  What for?”

“I forgot, I told Alex I’d come by.”  He got out of the car and nearly ran to his friend’s house.

Alex opened the door, surprised.  “Hey.”  He didn’t ask Dex about Saturday.  He didn’t need to, Dex could see. 

“I gotta talk to you.”

“Sure.  Come on upstairs.”

In Alex’s room, Dex took the desk chair for the first time, instead of taking his usual place on the floor, against the bed, next to Alex.

“I’m not gay.”

“Okay,” Alex said, a neutral statement, designed to encourage Dex to go on.  His parents had taught him that, of course, not the school system.

“And I wanna be your friend.  But…nothing gay, okay?”

“Sure.  Friends.”  Alex stuck his hand out.

Dex hesitated.  But he couldn’t do it, couldn’t go as far as Pastor Panko.  Couldn’t retreat into a shell that thick, that cold. 

He took his friend’s hand.  “Best friends.  Forever.”

“Yes,” Alex said simply. 

Their senior year passed like the wind.  Dex broke up with Laycee in January of ’05.  She’d started calling him “my boyfriend” around school, and his buddies had stopped ragging him about boning her on the sly, and he could feel it – the world, closing in on him, the expectation that he’d settle down, “go steady.”

And what would that lead to,
he thought glumly,
other than me getting drunk one night and fucking her without a rubber, or the rubber breaking, and there it is, a baby, and the next twenty years of my life set in stone.

He knew the pattern.  He’d hang out with Alex on Saturdays, get baked, play music, and talk, about everything in the world other than what was maybe the most important thing in his life.  Then he’d go out with Laycee. 
Alex had to know, didn’t he
, Dex thought. 
That I can only fuck her after I’m with him.  So close to him I can practically fucking taste him…

Getting on the Internet, especially with all this gay marriage stuff in the wind, he couldn’t avoid seeing certain pictures.  Pictures of gay couples, happy, smiling, handsome, together. 

And they filled him with…rage.  Blinding rage.  Not because they were sinning, but because they were happy, because they had what he could never have.