Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (17 page)

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Authors: Carrie Jones

Tags: #flux, #teen, #carrie jones, #need, #gay

BOOK: Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend
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Emily and I have never had a hard time getting guys, not since we passed that awkward stage in seventh grade where pudge made its home throughout my body and Emily resembled a mutated granola bar with braces and stringy hair.

She’s a chocolate torte now. She’s yummy with her super-model chestnut hair and her flirt eyes.

When you read “chick lit” you always find a hottie friend and a not hottie friend. One friend is always the ooh-la-la girl who everyone gravitates toward. The other is looked over, ignored, fading in the background while the other gallivants through French kissing hordes and muscle-man hands.

That’s not how it ever was with us.

We always knew what guy would like which one of us. We’d split it up. Emily got artists, runners, metal heads, red-haired men, football players, Greek men. I’d get musicians, writers, Arab men, African-American men, soccer players. And gay men. Did I forget gay men? I did, didn’t I?

Those lists are not all-inclusive of course. Shawn is a soccer player. One of my boyfriends freshman year was a runner. So, we mixed it up a bit.

“Everybody’s got a type,” Emily said once, after an Arab guy at the Bangor Mall ran after me, proposing.

I turned him down, blushing.

“They just like you ’cause you blush,” she said. “It’s so cute.”

She made smooching noises at me. I socked her in the arm and we went and bought shoes. She took pictures of our feet in every pair.

Now, I’m wondering, what if I don’t have a type anymore? What if I go to this stupid dance thing and Shawn and Emily rip it up and I stand on the wall, staring at everyone else in couples, two by two going into the sex ark and I’m alone, alone, alone.

Or worse, what if my type is gay men trying not to be gay? What if the only guys who like me, like me as a last resort, the final shot at heterosexuality? What if I really am a beard? I’m obviously not a fag hag, but maybe I’m just someone people use for a disguise?

This is what I’m thinking when we pass Dylan in the hall. He’s wearing a giant pink triangle on his black t-shirt, the universal symbol of gayness.

My breath whooshes out of me. My hand grabs Emily’s arm.

Dylan waves at us and I walk up to him thinking, Breathe. Breathe.

“Dylan?”

He smiles at me and shrugs. “I figured it was time to just come out.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Emily says. “Somebody’s going to slam you.”

“Dylan?” I say and in his name is all my worry and fear, rushing out of me like a broken guitar chord, like a sad, sad, song.

“I can handle myself.” He just shrugs again. His green eyes burn into me. “People already know, anyway. How about you, Belle? You okay?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

He reaches out and touches my cheek, then drops his hand. “I know this is hard for you.”

“No—it’s . . .” My words flee. People walk by us. They turn their heads to stare.

“We’re still friends, Belle,” he says. “I still love you.”

Emily throws up her hands. “Oh, Jesus! Give me a break.”

She yanks me away, tearing me down the hall. “What is this, some kind of Danielle Steele novel?”

Behind us, someone calls Dylan a fag.

I can’t tell who it was. Maybe it was everyone.

No, no, from the way he’s glaring and the jutting of his chin, I think it was my neighbor, Eddie Caron. Or maybe, it was Colin Troust, that sophomore boy who lives up on Alton Ave. I don’t know for sure. I don’t know.

I glare at them both. They both glare back. Really. Eddie glares back. I shake my head. I do not know who anyone is anymore. And that’s the problem. You spend all your life growing up in this hick place thinking you’ve got everyone all figured out. Anna is a jock and she’ll be a real estate agent some day. Eddie is a neighbor boy, stupid but harmless, still hurting over what happened with Hannah. Dylan is my one true love, a hot, straight guy with golden hair and a bright smile.

Yep.

And what about me? What does Mr. Allen who runs the blueberry plant think about me? Or my mom’s boss at the hospital, Mr. Jones? Or even my mom? Do they think, “There’s Belle, she’s got seizures but she’s a damn good singer and she plays a fine guitar. Smart girl. She’s got it together.”

Is everyone as wrong about me as I am about them?

Dylan? I think Eddie called you a fag, which is derived from the word faggot. Do you know what a faggot is? It’s the bundle of wood they used to burn gay men with during medieval times. They’d burn people like you, Dylan. They said people like you were demons. Some people still say that. They’re wrong, obviously. You’re no demon.

They used to burn people with seizures too, said the demon got to them. They said that people with seizures were witches. Some people just call us freaks.

Go figure.

Maybe we were an appropriate couple after all. Five hundred years ago we’d have both died, not from the looks of people in the halls, but from the hands of people in our lives.

Burnt.

Before Emily and I part ways, me to German, her to PE, I grab her arm.

“I don’t want him to get hurt,” I tell her, my eyes watering.

She hugs me, my sister twin, my second body. She hugs me and murmurs, “I know.”

I’m almost in the door to my German class when I hear someone mutter it.

“Fag hag.”

I whip my head around, scan the kids moving speed-walker style past the tall, grey lockers. They’ve got books in their hands, not torches. Nobody’s looking at me. They’re all staring straight ahead, feet walking, mouths talking, eyes moving, hair in place. Good little soldiers, all.

Fag hag.

“Shut up,” I say to all of them. “Shut up.”

Nobody answers. They just goose-march ahead. One after the other after the other.

Then Anna says, “Did someone actually just call you fag hag?”

I scan the sophomores around me and whisper, “I think so.”

Anna puts her hands on her soccer-goalie waist and says, “Whoever the hell just said that better shut the hell up.”

I gasp. I’ve never heard Anna swear, not even when we lost Eastern Maines with a corner kick in the final three seconds her junior year.

She grabs me around the shoulders and says, “Freakin’ idiot.”

Then she kicks me in the shin and nods. “Stay tough, girl.”

I nod. I’ll stay tough.

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