Stag: A Story (3 page)

“I’ll do it when I’m ready, Boyd, so leave me
alone.”

I turned toward the chicken-wire windows and
put my elbows on the sill. I was face to face with my own awful
reflection. This time shadows of wire criss-crossed my skin but
they might as well have been Micah’s handwritten name. I closed my
eyes tight and counted. Before I hit three something yanked me back
toward the dance floor, a yank that closed my throat. Tyson was
pulling me by my tie.

“Come, Ollie,” he said, as though to him I
were an obstinate dog. He dragged me a few feet, past a few dancing
couples, before my struggling outweighed his commitment. And when
he released me my instinct wasn’t to punch him or scream, but to
straighten my tie and get everything back to normal. No one could
see how much my throat hurt or how much my heart weighed, but they
could see my tie.

Then Boyd, from behind, grabbed my shoulders
and started steering me toward Taylor. I stretched my legs out
stiffly to brace myself but he was bigger than I was, and stronger.
My rubber-soled shoes scuffed jerkily across the tile; the
squeaking wasn’t audible over the music but I could feel the rigid
vibrations rattling painfully up my bones.

“Boyd!” I yelled, half crying. “Leave me
alone!”

I wrestled out of his grip near the center of
the dance floor and we stood there beneath the mirror ball,
breathing hard, looking at each other, and I hated him. I hated him
so much.

“Whatever,” he said, lights playing over his
face. “But see those tears?” He pointed to where Taylor was
standing, though now she was facing the wall, unable to bear
watching a boy resist so strenuously the possibility of being near
her. “The last song is coming up. You better fix this.”

“Fuck off.”

I smoothed my tie and looked around. Tyson’s
face was red and Michael had glasses-magnified tears in his eyes.
He rubbed his chin helplessly. I spotted Jessica Parson dancing by
herself, dancing like she had dodged a bullet. I put my head down
and walked out into the hall.

There was a bulletin board out there that
usually showcased school news and activities but tonight had been
covered over with a giant sheet of white paper, beckoning
autographs and notes from our class of graduates. I stood in front
of it, hands in pockets, reading while I waited for my heartbeat to
slow. Dwight was drawing a Ninja Turtle in the bottom corner, had
been for a while. He hadn’t seen any of the fight. He hadn’t really
been in the cafeteria since dinner. Why was he excused from it and
I wasn’t?

All around his drawing people had written
things like
Best night ever
and
Paul hearts Melissa
and
LMS Class of 93 4ever
. Happy things, evidence of an ease
I couldn’t imagine for myself. Out of all the messages only one
resonated with me:
I’m so sad I feel like crying
, a T.C. had
written. Beside it was a heart with a sad face. I closed my eyes.
It’s your fault, Taylor, I thought. You did this. I was minding my
own business. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.

I leaned against the board. A handful of
other kids were hanging out in the hall, bursts of elegance against
the blue brick walls. Two girls examined their makeup in a compact
they were sharing.

“Last song is coming up, Ollie,” a voice
bellowed. I turned and saw Erika at the second set of doors farther
down the hall. “Are you really not going to dance with her?!”

I only shrugged, and hoped it carried across
the distance.

“What is wrong with you, Oliver Wade?” she
yelled. “Are you a faggot or something?”

My vision blurred. Shadows of people around
me raised their heads. Dwight stopped doodling and looked up at
me.

“No!” I said. To me I sounded precisely like
what I was, though: a person offended to be called out on a lie. “I
just— don’t— like to
dance
.”

Erika let out a ragged sigh and disappeared
back into the cafeteria.

*

Outside the night air was cold on my face.
The parking lot was amber-colored and silent; behind me music
throbbed dully. I was shaking, my heart was pounding. I lowered my
bum to the curb. I opened and closed my fists—my hands felt funny,
twitchy, prickly; a numbness went up my arms, a numb buzzing. I was
afraid I was having a heart attack. I had seen old people in movies
grabbing their arms before keeling over. Superman’s father. A sure
sign. I grabbed my forearm, tried to squeeze away the buzzing.
Please don’t die, I whispered. Please don’t die. Then it occurred
to me that things might be easier if I did.

I rubbed tears out of my eyes with the back
of my hand. I mocked the little yelps I couldn’t contain. Stupid
baby. Stupid fucking baby. I tried to get a handle on my breathing.
I counted to ten, then twenty.

Would it always be like this?

*

Cars started to arrive. Parents sat idling.
Some smoked, some got out and chatted among themselves. The music
went silent. Behind me the school doors sprang open, placing me at
the bottom of a rectangle of light that stretched a long shadow of
me across the pavement. I was a dark form in a glowing box; silly,
I had always dared to imagine it was the opposite.

Around me suited legs dashed past, gowns
brushed against my shoulders, a river of eighth-graders high from
dancing. Two legs stopped. I looked up. Boyd sighed.

“They’re saying you don’t even like girls,”
he said.

I didn’t want to know who. “I like girls,” I
said. My throat was sore from holding back. “I just don’t like to
dance.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” He laughed, but it was a
fake laugh. “Ollie, next time? Just go stag, man.”

I looked up but didn’t say anything.

I wanted him to apologize for pushing me, but
he didn’t. He smacked the back of my head and ran to the red
minivan that was pulling into the lot. A moment later my mother
arrived.

“Well?” she said cheerily as I slipped into
the car and shut the door. “How was it?”

I shrugged and she frowned and we were quiet
for a while. I pressed my mouth into a shape that might keep me
from crying. My forehead bumped against the cool window. We waited
in the traffic of exiting families. Ahead of us a bright red
stoplight glowed.

“Did you not have fun?”

Again I only shrugged.

She sighed. It was an angry sigh. I could see
in the reflection that she was looking at me, but I didn’t look
back.

Finally, as if having mustered it, she said,
“It’s your own fault, Oliver. What did I tell you? You decided a
long time ago not to have fun and guess what? You have no one to
blame now but yourself.”

I raised my eyes to hers in the reflection.
She really didn’t know? She really had no idea? No, she thought I
was just being a grouch. A curmudgeon. It seemed a good trade to be
viewed that way. Better certainly than whatever she’d think if she
knew about Micah. But how long could it last? There could not be
many more reprieves, I knew that now. People, a whole world of
people, who used streamers and confetti to celebrate about
themselves the very thing that in myself I most wanted to
hide—these people would never stop pushing notes into my locker;
they would never stop asking who I was taking to the dance. I
couldn’t keep closing my eyes to it. No. But when they asked, I
could lie. I had done it tonight. First to Erika, then to Boyd. If
someday my mother asked, I could lie to her too.

For a while we idled.

By the time the light turned green, I knew
what the scariest part of this new lying life would be: that it had
a flip side.

On Monday amid grade-wide debriefings, a few
kids demanded half-heartedly to know why I acted so gay at the
dance. But the days were too short for genuine umbrage, and that
was as far as it went.

After the great social cleansweep of summer,
when debts were cleared, in-jokes retired, and storylines dropped,
not even my friends ever mentioned it again. Not even Boyd. Not
even Dwight.

Through high school the memory of me being
dragged toward Taylor Corgan became one for me alone to tend. Me
and, I presumed, Taylor herself—though in four years of hallway
passings we never talked about it. We didn’t speak again until
after all of high school had happened, when we were wearing robes
and square hats and saying goodbyes. I spotted her after the
ceremony—she was posing for pictures with her family, holding high
her diploma. I waited until they were done.

“Taylor,” I said, closing some of the last
few feet between us. “Congrats today.”

“Oh, you too, Ollie.” She still had the long
eyelashes but her hair was swept back, bangs-less. Lovely in a way
I could recognize but not appreciate. Perfect for a version of me
who could do both. “It all went by fast, didn’t it?”

“It did,” I said, and standing with her here
it was easy to imagine that no time had passed. That we were still
at the dance. Not much had changed, after all, at least not for me.
I was no more truthful. I was no less scared.

Nearby someone launched a party popper and
streamers and confetti soared across the room. Taylor laughed—that
was different; she hadn’t laughed at the dance. And maybe I was
different too. Not as different yet as I wanted to be, but
different enough to have walked over here without being pushed.

“You know, before we take off or whatever,” I
said, taking a breath, “I wanted to apologize for my behavior at
the Grad Dance.”

“The grad—?”

“In eighth grade,” I said.

“Oh.” She smirked. Had she forgotten? To me
it was still so fresh. “Yeah. That was quite a night, wasn’t
it?”

“I just wanted you to know that it didn’t
have anything to do with you, Taylor. It was all me.”

“Yeah,” she said after a pause, “it was.” She
smiled, and I liked her for not letting me off the hook. It eased
my conscience to be blamed. “But don’t worry about it, Ollie. I
hardly ever think of it anymore.”

Anymore
. It stung me to know she’d
thought about it at all.

An older woman, a grandmother maybe, with a
camera in hand signaled to Taylor. She started to turn away from
me, then stopped.

“I hear Mike Alonso is throwing a big grad
party later,” she said. She seemed to think a moment before
continuing. “Do you happen to have a date?”

I looked at her for a long time. How fitting,
how poetic and sweet if she were the first person I told the truth
to. But I wasn’t different enough for that, not yet. Instead I
remembered a word. It no longer felt like a weapon, or a shield. It
wasn’t the truth, but it was a step.

“Nah,” I told her, and smiled. “I’m going
stag.”

Dear Reader, if you liked this story I hope
you’ll leave a review on whatever site you got it from, or on your
Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Goodreads, wherever—reviews are worth
their weight in gold for self-published writers like me. And if you
want to read more about Oliver Wade, you’re in luck; I’ve got more
short stories planned. In the meantime he also appears (briefly, in
adult form) in
The Painting of Porcupine City: A
Novel
.

Brazilian graffiti artist Mateo Amaral is
looking for his heaven spot, the one perfect place to paint. His
coworker Fletcher Bradford is looking for a heaven spot of his own,
and his is even more elusive. Out since age 12, Fletcher’s been
around more blocks than Mateo has ever painted. He’s dated all the
jerks, all the creeps, all the losers in between. At 26 he’s
decided the only way to meet a nice guy is just never to give him a
chance to prove otherwise. When he’s introduced to Mateo, Fletcher
expects to add another notch to his bedpost. But Mateo is
different—and from him Fletcher will rediscover a long-lost
feeling: surprise. What Fletcher finds in the trunk of Mateo’s car
will change his life in ways he never imagined—and may help him
find what he’s always wanted.

From the author of
The Cranberry Hush
comes an epic story spanning years and hemispheres and miles of
painted walls. At times sexy and sweet, gritty and gut-wrenching,
The Painting of Porcupine City
takes readers along with
Mateo and Fletcher on an adventure through the subways of Boston to
the towers of São Paulo. Are you in?

ALSO BY BEN MONOPOLI

The Cranberry Hush: A Novel