Superhero (8 page)

Vince would no longer meet my eyes. I should have stopped there, but I got a little nasty. Maybe it was the residual fear talking.

“And as for anybody worrying about me getting off on wrestling, I’m not the guy who pops wood on the mat, am I?”

Vince had been starting to cool down but now his red flush came back with a vengeance. He glanced at the others, embarrassed. We all knew it happened, but as part of our macho code of honor we didn’t talk about it. I really didn’t think it was a big deal, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to use it. Fortunately, it never happened to me, maybe because I’m so focused on my moves, on finding any tiny advantage. Besides, if I did like guys at all, they’d be lean guys like Jordy, not big, sweaty wrestlers like me. But I’d seen Vince pop wood a few times.

“F-friction,” Vince stammered. “Everyone knows it’s normal.”

I patted his arm. “Yeah. Well, if there ever comes a day when you need to worry about me, I guess it will be obvious, won’t it?”

I turned and walked away.

T
HAT
night, when I got home, my parents were in the kitchen. It was clear from their faces that they’d heard. Somebody must have called them.

It had been a really, really bad day. Besides that little show of love from Vince, I’d had another half dozen “conversations” with teammates and people who thought, for some reason, that my life was public property. Even the coach talked to me, giving me a wandering, supposedly supportive lecture about not risking my chances of fulfilling my dreams and getting a scholarship and all that. I told him, as politely as I could, that I wasn’t gay, there was no problem, and I wasn’t going to risk anything. He patted me on the shoulder like we’d reached an understanding.

I felt awful. I just wanted to go to my room and check out for a while, go to sleep. But that didn’t appear to be an option.

“Come and sit down,” my dad said, leading me into the dining room. Mom had some cookies and three cups of herbal tea set out, so that gave me hope they weren’t going to crucify me.

They looked at me while I ate a few cookies.

“Guess you heard,” I said, just to get it over with.

My dad looked at my mom. “We need you to talk to us.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Jordan came out at school today. Yes, he’s gay. Yes, he’s always been gay. Yes, I knew it. No, I’m not gay.” I wrapped my hands around my mug. “Any other questions?”

“Don’t get smart,” my mom said.

“This is serious business,” said my dad.

I didn’t say anything.

“We just want you to think about how this is going to affect your wrestling career,” my mom said.

I groaned. “Why is everyone worried about that? Jordan is just a friend. He’s not me and I’m not him. I have a girlfriend. I’m the number one wrestler for my weight class in the state. How is this going to affect my wrestling career?” I was trying to keep a handle on my anger, because I didn’t talk to my parents like that. But I was getting really sick of having to defend myself. You’d think I was the one who’d come out with all the grief I was getting.

My parents looked at each other meaningfully but didn’t say anything.

“Please don’t tell me you want me to stop being friends with Jordy,” I said, ready to crack. “Please tell me that you haven’t loved Jordy like he was one of the family since we were seven years old and now, suddenly, he’s not welcome here.”

My mom looked guilty. She put her hand on mine. “Of course Jordan is welcome. We know how close you are, and we’re not asking you to stop being friends. Just consider spending more of your time with other people, that’s all.”

She glanced at my father. He nodded. Clearly they thought they were being amazingly open-minded. But I could sense a strange tension in them, something in the gazes they sent back and forth that I didn’t like, at all.

“Spread yourself around a little more. Spend more time with Emily,” Mom said brightly, as if that was a hidden bonus to this whole stinking mess.

“And no more sleepovers,” Dad added firmly.

I stared at him. “
What
? We’ve been having sleepovers since elementary school. Do you think he or I are any different now? We’re the same as we’ve always been.”

“It
is
different, bucko,” my dad barked. “
I’m
different. I’m going to look at things differently now that I know Jordan is… that he prefers boys.”

“Do you think we’d let Emily sleep in your room?” my mom countered.

I put my head in my hands. Actually, they probably
would
let Emily sleep over in my room, I thought morosely. Especially now, as long as I had condoms. They’d probably be relieved if they thought we were having sex.

“That’s a bad analogy,” I said, “because—” I was going to say
because
Jordy and I have never done anything
. But that was a lie.

To be honest, Jordan and I hadn’t had a sleepover since Halloween, the night
that
had happened, which was the longest time we’d gone without one, ever. I’d made excuses—homework, my parents wanted to watch some show together, I was tired. But we both knew I was avoiding it. The truth is, I didn’t understand what I was feeling, and I didn’t trust myself. Still, I hadn’t planned on avoiding it forever. I missed it, him. And I figured we’d return to the old status quo soon. Plus, I was a teenager. I wasn’t going to let any privilege go without a damned good fight.

“That’s not the same thing because I like girls,” I said, not bothering to go any further with that sentence. I looked up. “We don’t have time for many sleepovers anymore anyway, but
when
he sleeps over, we’ll set up the camping cot and sleeping bag in my room.”

My mom and dad looked at each other. My dad tapped his finger on the table.

“Door open,” my mom said.

I gave a grunt of exasperation. “We play video games and stuff—you guys hate the noise. Door unlocked, and you can come in any time,
like always
.”

My dad frowned. I knew I was losing him. I threw in another bone. “
And
before we go to sleep, I’ll open the door. Look, either you trust me or you don’t.”

My dad looked down at the table where he rubbed a thumb over a seam. But he relaxed.

“Does Jordan have a boyfriend?” my mom asked brightly, which seemed like a change of topic but wasn’t.

I shrugged. “No. But I think that’s one reason he came out. He’s hoping to meet someone.”

“That would be nice.” My mom took a sip of tea. I knew what she really meant was,
then
he’d start hanging around someone else, and people would know you aren’t gay
.

I went to my room and lay down. I felt like I was covered in some invisible disgusting substance. Yeah, I was. It was called ignorance. It sucked. The day had been eye-opening, that was for sure.

Jordan would be fine. He was an artist. At the end of the day, who really cared if he was gay?

But there was absolutely no iota of doubt what people expected from Owen Nelson.

Jordan

T
HINGS
got very weird very fast, but it could have been worse.

Word spread like crazy and everyone stared at me in class and in the halls. A few people, people I was sort of friends with, asked me—
is it true
? I said it was. Mostly the people who actually asked were okay with it. The ones who weren’t just stopped acknowledging that I was on the face of the Earth, like I was the invisible man.

I told my parents. I don’t think my mom was surprised. My dad was pretty rattled, though. He clammed up and didn’t talk about it, ever. It became a hanging sentence in our house: “So I’m gay. And your thoughts about that are….” Nobody ever finished that sentence. I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t worse; they could have disowned me or shaved my head and sent me to boot camp. Hung me out on the clothesline to be picked over by crows. Took away my crayons. Hey, I was counting my blessings.

They still adored Owen, maybe more than ever.
Owen’s coming over? Great!
I think they held out hope that his manliness would rub off on me somehow. Oh, how I wished.

During lunch, Owen and Emily and I sat in our usual spot. We tried to act like we always did, but it was clear they were supporting me with their presence, like barricading the door. I appreciated it. I was so, so lucky to have friends like them.

I got muttered at in the hall and restroom—
faggot, fairy, homo
. You think you don’t give a shit, but it stings when random people hate you. But I also had a few people, even people I didn’t know, come up to me and say they thought I was brave and good luck and all that. There was even this one cheerleader who seemed to take it as a personal challenge—she’d never looked at me before, but now she couldn’t walk by me without winking and licking her lips. What was up with that? Extra points for nailing the gay boy? I ignored her.

Some asshole left used condoms in my locker. The thought of him trying to push them in through the vent with his fingers was actually sort of hilarious, even though they were disgusting and made a mess. Maybe he finally figured out that he was getting the worse end of the prank, because he stopped doing it.

I didn’t tell Owen about the condoms or any of the stuff people said. It wasn’t worth having him confronting the jerks, and he would have. He was like my own personal bodyguard. He stuck closer to me in the halls for a few weeks, until it became clear it wasn’t necessary.

He seemed kind of stiff and worried for a while. I hoped he wasn’t pulling away because he was ashamed of me or, even worse, of what we’d done. But he always seemed to know when I was worried about that, and he’d give me a warm smile or a ding on the arm or bump against my leg to let me know things hadn’t changed between us.

After a while, it just became the norm, like so-and-so is pregnant and so-and-so has rich parents and Jordan Carson is gay.

I noticed that Owen was even more touchy-feely and kissy-face with Emily than usual. It made me feel like puking, so I tried not to look. I told myself it didn’t matter. He was with her, not me, so the degree of “withness” was irrelevant. And anyway, I knew my coming out had probably put pressure on him. I couldn’t blame him.

Wrestling season came, and Emily and I went to all the matches. We wore our crazy team jerseys, painted our faces and screamed. Some of the wrestlers glared up at me in the stands once in a while, as if to say
What are you looking at, faggot
?, like I was so hot for their bodies. But at least they didn’t seem to give Owen a hard time. He was more focused and fierce than ever. He was on fire. He won almost all his bouts. By the time February rolled around, he was number one in individual rankings in his class in the state, again. But that year he came in first overall in rankings in our division—all grades, all weight classes. That was seriously major. Only one more year of high school wrestling to go. It didn’t seem like anything could stop his dreams now, and I was happy for him.

As for me, the “for sale” sign was in the window. It wasn’t like I was flooded with offers or anything, but there was a guy in my art class named Matt who started smiling at me a lot more.

Hey, he was no Owen Nelson, but then, nobody was. I smiled back.

Owen

W
E
WERE
finally seniors, Emily, Jordan, and me. Things were crazy busy. Jordy and I were studying to take the SATs in October. Emily had done hers early and scored super high, so we teased her that we were going to beat her, even though neither one of us thought we had a prayer of doing that.

Jordy and I visited UW Madison in August and got the campus tour. I was pretty familiar with the campus from visiting my brother, Charlie, but seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff was different. The wrestling coach met us personally and took us through the sports facility. He was a really nice guy. He’d been to three of my matches, as had coaches from a lot of other schools. He was already talking as if I were on the team, which made me feel great. I wasn’t too worried about getting offered a scholarship, but nothing’s for certain until it happens, right? I still had my senior year of wrestling to get through. Jordy and I were applying to three schools, just to be safe, all of which had top wrestling teams.

We also toured the art department. They didn’t have the exact program Jordy wanted, comic book art or cartooning, but the professor who talked to us assured him they could slant the program that way on the graphic arts degree. He was really impressed with Jordy’s portfolio. Of course he was. Jordy is brilliant. Some of the work he was doing now on
Pin Man and Pencil Boy
was as good as a lot of the DC and Marvel comics we bought. People on tumblr loved him. He’d done some fan art for
Teen Wolf,
too, and it was insanely good.

We found out that Jordy and I could room together in the freshman dorm if we put the request in early enough. I was really happy about that. The idea of the two of us being on our own away from our parents was so fan-freaking-tastic. I couldn’t wait.

Emily had no interest in UW Madison. She wanted to go to Smith, a highly ranked women’s college in Massachusetts. A lot of her heroes had gone there, and she wanted to double major in government and gender studies. Her goal eventually was to go to law school and be a human rights advocate. Yeah, that was heavy stuff for the girlfriend of a wrestling jock from Jefferson, Wisconsin. But Emily was scary smart, and she’d always been her own person. That was one of the reasons why I liked her.

Emily and I didn’t talk a lot about what that move would mean for us. There was some loose talk like “Well, I’ll be home at Christmas” or “Next summer we could….” but I think we both knew that our time was running down. We’d been great friends, all three of us, but Emily had her own life to live, and it clearly was on a different path than mine.