Inclination (16 page)

“So, like,
Anthony gets to beat on
me
?”
Rinaldo
seems to take the possibility of a physical beating
in stride. But I’m shaking my head before Father Joseph has a chance to answer.
Assaulting anyone mercilessly is not exactly my style.

“We do not
subscribe to the ‘eye for an eye’ theory,
Rinaldo
.
Anthony needs to be satisfied in other ways. We will bring
him
justice. You need to express your sorrow and regret as you
have, but you need to communicate with Anthony. You need to consider where your
actions have left him and do what you can to repair his new situation.”

“Like, how have
my actions affected you, Anthony?” It seems like
Rinaldo
really wants to know. He sniffs, rubs his face with his palms, and then again
asks, “Like how?”

“I don’t know—I
mean, I’m fine now. You can see for yourself that my face is almost better and…
and, uh…I don’t know.” I shake my head.

Father Joseph
directs his attention toward me. “You do not get assaulted by a person who you
long regarded as a friend without having some residual feelings. Please be
honest with us.
Rinaldo
is not here to further hurt
or torment you; he is here to repair what damage he did.”

I take a deep
breath and realize that, along with the truth, I will also be handing
Rinaldo
a sword he can use to cut out my heart, if he so
chooses. “Sometimes… like sometimes when I’m alone, maybe outside, or maybe in
the hallway at school, I think somebody might come up behind me and beat on
me.”

“You’ve been left
with a fear for your physical safety that you didn’t have before.” Father
Joseph restates my answer with eloquence.

I nod and glance
at
Rinaldo
. He appears to be genuinely wounded by my
words.

“What can you do,
Rinaldo
, to help restore Anthony’s sense of safety
and
well being
?”

“Geez, Del
Vecchio
, I sure am sorry I made you feel that way.” He sobs
once, and the agonized sound surprises us all. When he is calm enough, he
continues. “
Alls
I can say is, I’ll meet you before
school in the parking lot and we can walk into the building together. I can do
the same after school, if you want. And I can stop by your locker during the
day to make sure you’re doing okay.”

“I don’t need a
babysitter.”

“No, you don’t
need a babysitter, but
Rinaldo
is offering to provide
you with a little bit of his strength,” Father Joseph interjects. “Seeing you
two together, will also send the message of his regret to the members of Our
Way. Now, the second thing you must do,
Rinaldo
, is
go to confession. You have already confessed your guilt to Anthony, but you
will also need to receive the sacrament of Penance at church.” Father Joseph
stops speaking in order to let the full effect of his words sink in. “And my
son, I think you need to take this a step further. Who else can you confess to,
so as to let them know that you behaved inappropriately?”

“I could confess
what I did and how wrong I was at an Our Way meeting, Father J. Lots of the
kids don’t think I did anything wrong, you know,
cuz
since Anthony’s gay, they say he had it coming to him.” All of the adults again
grimace. “But I know that’s wrong now.”

“Nobody deserves
to be assaulted. Whoever says that is sorely mistaken,
Rinaldo
.
Is it okay with you if he apologizes to the youth group, Anthony?”

I shrug.
Why not?
How much worse can things get?
“I guess.”

“And finally,”
Father Joseph continues, “is contrition. You need to repent and find your way
back to God. You need to seek God’s
forgiveness—recognizing forgiveness for the gift that it is—and come back in
fullness to Him, to school, to youth group. You told me you’ve missed a great
deal of school and all of the youth group meetings since this incident. You
need to find your way back—and make up all of the work from your absences, as
well.”

We all stare at
Father Joseph, slightly overwhelmed by this model that he has set up for
Rinaldo
to follow.

“Anthony, you
have expressed that you are feeling better physically, and that you are willing
to work with
Rinaldo
.”

“I forgive him
already, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That is
wonderful, Anthony. Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself, as well as
the person who wronged you. Now, as a group,” he glances around at the adults,
“we all promise that we will walk with you until you feel that you are fully
restored to your old self, or at least as much as you can be. And we will walk
with
Rinaldo
as he seeks to reconcile himself to God
and to you. Now, let us pray.”

We bow our heads
and say The Lord’s Prayer together, and then we get up to leave. My mom,
however, asks if she can have a word in private with Father Joseph.

And that was all
she wrote, so to speak. Just like that I have forgiven my enemy and left the
church of my childhood.

Out in the
hallway,
Rinaldo
waits while his mother puts on her
coat by the hall closet. I make an effort not to look at him as I figure we’ve
said what we’d come here to say.

It seems that
Rinaldo
feels differently. He walks across the waiting
room, awkwardly putting one enormous foot in front of the other, and stops when
he’s about five feet from where I’m leaning against the wall, waiting for Mom.
And since Dad went to get the car, I’m alone with him. Suddenly I feel stripped
naked and vulnerable.

“I sure did screw
up with you, Anthony.” He looks at me more directly than he did in the priest’s
office. “Wish I could take it back.”

Being a guy of
few words, I offer him none.

“Always liked
you. You weren’t never one of those loud-mouthed, in-your-face asshole types.”

Feeling that his
compliment, of sorts, requires some type of response, I say, “Thanks.”

“You being gay—in
ain’t
no problem for me. Never
woulda
been if it weren’t for my dad.”

“Cool.” Another
safe response.

“
Wanna
hang out sometime?”

His words shock
me. I feel like I’m about to have a head-on collision and I’m not even sitting
behind the wheel of my car. I can only gawk at him.

“Maybe we could
catch a movie or go bowling.”

Rinaldo
is reaching out. It’s time to
find out what I’m made of—it’s time to turn the other cheek. “Not bowling, I
don’t think. But maybe we could catch a movie on a weekend.”

If Jesus can
forgive the big stuff, I can forgive this.

The snow on the
courts is still melting, but that doesn’t mean the Wedgewood Boys Tennis Team
gets out of doing conditioning drills, because we don’t. Coach Phelps designed
an elaborate series of workout stations, or so he calls them, throughout the
high school building that we have to endure each day from three until five PM.
These workout stations include the “stair climb” (jogging twenty-five times up
and down the main stairway in the school entrance), the “hallway hopper
challenge” (hopping and jumping and high knee jogging through the Language
Arts/Health and Family Living wing), “serve
yo
’ mama”
(serving drills in the cafeteria), “callisthenic counting” (dozens of push-ups,
lunges, straight leg lifts, squats, crunches, and calf raises in the hallway by
the custodians’ office), and “lapping Wedgewood’s bottom”, (I know,
ewwww
…it sounds
gross, but just involves running laps around the bottom floor of the school
from the math wing to the arts loop, through the library, into the cafeteria,
and finally sprinting to the gymnasium). Once we get to the gym, we actually do
tennis-specific warm-ups.

And I’m certain
it’s not a pretty sight—twenty-two boys hopping gracelessly past the home
economics room—but it gets us moving and sweating and that is Coach Phelps’
goal. I’m a little nervous to use the showers with the other guys after practice
since the word has spread that I’ve come out as gay, but it doesn’t seem to
phase
anyone but
Laz
.

My
former
best pal, Lazarus Sinclair, isn’t
doing well at all with my new gay identity. I assume that the main reason for
this is because he’s not allowed to hang around with me as long as I “choose to
act
that way
”, as his parents say,
and I get a distinct feeling
Laz
believes I cooked up
this whole gay story to avoid hanging out with him.

Which is
preposterous, all of my suffering considered.

But this fact
doesn’t stop
Laz
from treating his former sidekick,
Anthony Duck-Young Del
Vecchio
, like he’s subhuman.

It’s at the end
of the third day of indoor practice, when we all stagger, completely exhausted,
to the locker room, strip off our sweaty clothes, grab our towels, and head to
the communal showers, when
Laz
makes his big move.

“Get your homo
eyes off my ass, Duck-Young.”

Normally,
Laz
is a rather goofy, distracted, and overly active guy,
but when he has it out for someone, he knows how to focus. I’ve seen it a few
times before.

“Huh?” Yes, I
know. Brilliant.

He says it
louder. “Eyes off my ass, Duck-Young.” The nickname that has long been used in
a fun and playful manner is suddenly a weapon.

“I wasn’t looking
at you.” My voice sounds whiny. I probably
should have ignored him.

“You need to
shower in that far corner. And face the wall.” He points to the corner
showerhead that nobody ever uses. “How else are we
gonna
be safe from you
checkin
’ out our
assets
?” He chuckles, pleased that he’s
made “a funny”, which is what he always calls his goofy jokes.
Laz
then checks around to see if anybody else is ready to
join in, but thankfully, no one contributes to his laughter or his taunting.
The other kids on my team simply watch us with wide eyes, waiting to see how
this will unfold.

“I’ll shower where I want.” I’ve never been a
major target of bullying, but being small of stature has taught me a thing or
two about not backing down at school. I proceed to clench my jaw tightly and
steel my expression, as if this verbal attack perpetrated by my longtime best
friend is nothing to so much as sneeze at. Inside, though, I’m cringing and
cowering and shivering. I’m hurt and afraid and…and I want to quit the tennis
team, here and now, without even finishing my much-needed shower.

I’ve never been
much of a fighter. I always cruise along, flying low under the radar, avoiding
trouble like a pro. And
Laz
, he isn’t as much a
fighter as he is a guy who wants attention. In specific, he wants
my
attention. And he’s always been the
center of my world, especially in terms of my social life. But I know
Laz
will settle for negative
attention if he can’t get the good kind, which reminds me a lot of Lulu when
she’s having a very naughty day.

After a brief and
stressful shower, I pull my towel around my waist, walk back to my locker as
slowly and seemingly relaxed as I can, and without even drying off, I pull on
the clothes I wore to school. Then I spin around and head toward the door to
the hallway, and freedom, dreaming of being cloistered inside the safety of my
Chevy Malibu, where I can drive a few blocks from this torture chamber and… and
freak out. There, I can decide if maybe I should take a year sabbatical from
the tennis team and get a part-time job bagging groceries with my new free time
after school. But once again,
Laz
is in my face,
standing in front of the doorway, blocking my speedy exit.

“You want me to
disappear off the face of your new queer earth, don’t you, Duck-Young? Well,
I’m not
gonna
do it.” He leans down and speaks in a
low tone, directly into my face. “It just doesn’t work that way.” The skin on
my arms and my chest break out in patchy goose bumps—a physical result of the
thrill of terror his words engender.

“How
does
it work then, Lazarus?” I force
myself to look at him directly.

“You change back
to how you used to be—meaning,
straight
.
And we go back to how we used to be—meaning best bro’s.”

It’s my turn to
chuckle, although this situation is the polar opposite of funny. “Even if I
could ‘change’ my sexuality and ‘go back’ to being straight, which I can’t,
mainly because I was never straight to begin with, I wouldn’t go back to being
friends with
you
.”

Laz
tilts his head and his eyes get round
as he’s clearly stunned by my statement. His jaw drops, too. Finally, he
stutters, “J-jeez, Ant-man, can’t you take a joke?”

And I’m surprised
at the harshness of my words. “Some joke, Sinclair… I hate to quote such a worn
out expression, but I will because it fits so well. Ever hear this one? With
friends like you, who needs enemies?”

He nods slowly,
catching my drift. “Tony…
bro
?”
Laz
has changed his tune from bullying to anxious and
regretful, but it’s too late.

“I’m not your bro
or your dude or your man or your buddy, Duck-Young. You can call me Anthony,
but I’d really prefer you didn’t call me at all.” I step around him and sparks of emotion—maybe
a toxic combination of the fear of getting beaten up again, a buzz from
speaking up for the first time in my life, and the predicted abundance of
adrenaline that goes with these things—shoots through my veins like a super
strong energy drink. I feel the stares of the other guys, who are now starting
to get dressed, fasten onto us with a Velcro grip. Not taking the time to
assess whether the rest of my teammates are smiling in support of me or gaping
my way in horror, I exit the locker room, trot down the hall, run through a
patch of new grass instead of along the walkway like I’m supposed to, and
sprint across the parking lot to my car.

By the time I
open the driver’s door, I’m sweating more profusely than I did at practice. And
I realize that as I sprinted across the parking lot toward my car, I’d noticed
a person—a huge guy, olive-skinned and athletic—running parallel to me in the
same direction, about two rows of cars away. And it wasn’t Lazarus Sinclair.

It was
Rinaldo
Vera.