Thanksgiving meant going home, and going home meant I-25 in the other direction. South. Down. There were other things that were “down,” other things that were the stuff of my nightmares.
I drove down on the Wednesday, more than a week before Thanksgiving, because school let out early. I started in the morning because my mom already said she wanted me there for lunch. She knew my location from my phone, I couldn’t lie, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t lie to my mom. The half-truths and the 👍 that had protected me so far couldn’t compete against modern technology.
Two hours south, the foothills sliding by on my right this time instead of my left, everything I’d driven away from in September coming back up to meet me mile by mile. I made sure I drove the speed limit, or just below. I took some back roads but it only bought me a few minutes. I’d been making progress, but somewhere around Castle Rock I reached up and put the cross back on, outside my collar where it showed. I honestly can’t say I decided to do it so much as my body chose to do it. Whether out of habit or self-preservation I don’t know. When I stopped to get gas, I changed clothes. Out of the brighter colors, out of the sweat pants, and into khakis with a belt, a white t-shirt and a button-down long-sleeve. By the exit, I was the old version of me, fully reassembled, like I’d never left, like the whole fall away had been a thing I dreamed in a strange bed.
And the part that kills me a little inside is that part of me almost believed that it had just been a dream. That I was back. Closed. Pretending to be what they wanted, pretending to be what they thought was theirs.
Home was exactly itself. That was the worst part – was it the worst part? I’m not sure now – nothing had moved. My mom cried a little when she hugged me, happy, and my dad shook my hand and then pulled me in, and my little sister had gotten taller, and the house smelled like it always smelled. And of course they had, God help me, saved my seat. Literally. At the table and at church both. Like the prodigal son had returned and would pick up exactly where he’d left off.
Everyone asked about my campus fellowship, the Thursday-night one, the bunch of nice guys that I prayed with. I told them the guys were great, it was really feeding my soul, and they glowed at me over the mashed potatoes. I performed the son they’d saved the seat for so well that I scared myself. The half-truths (10%-truths?) weren’t even hard anymore. That stone was so smooth it slid out without a sound. I sat in my old pew on Sunday between my parents and sang the words I’d sung my whole life, and Pastor Dale found me after and held both my shoulders and said “we sure have missed you, son,” and I felt the cross hanging on the outside of my shirt like a dog tag. It was like proof of life – proof of a life – and I thought about Levi’s plant and couldn’t breathe right for a second in the lobby of my own church.
My old room was the same too. Same quilt, same verse cross-stitched and framed over the desk: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.” The crosses hung in every room, only now instead of something to save me, I saw them as a curse, something unbearable that was suffering. If Jesus had been killed with an AR-15, would we wear AR-15s around our necks and decorate our walls with them?
I lay in the bed I’d grown up wanting things in and felt the old architecture close back over me like water, the locked door, the running tap, the list of things to think about after. My parents through one thin wall. When I closed my eyes, I saw Tav, Jasper, Levi, and even Nik or Darius ... I saw me smiling at a party, I saw me with other men, laying in a sin I’m not sure I believed in anymore.
My mom knocked once while I was in there, the second night. It was just to say goodnight, and out of pure reflex I locked my phone and sat up straight before she’d even got the door open. It was 18 years of training, the body hiding before the mind knew what it was hiding. She only wanted to say she loved me. She sat on the edge of the bed and pushed my hair off my forehead like I was 9, and told me she prayed for me every single night, by name, that she just knew God had big plans for me. That God always has a plan.
I wanted to scream at her, “If He had planned this, if He made me this way, why did He put me in this oppressive home so I can’t be who I am?”
Instead, I just said, “I know, Mom, thanks.”
I had never in my life felt so far from a person who was 6 inches away. She’d have driven two hours on no information, too, just like Levi’s parents. They all would have. The whole church would’ve gotten in the car, like a bunch of clowns to save me.
I don’t know why I was so bitter. I honestly don’t. I felt like the Springs were trying to shove the toothpaste that was me back into the tube and I was paying lip-service to it but refusing to budge. That’s what I carried back up the interstate, heavier than the cross: that I was loved exactly that much, and the love and the knowing were never going to be allowed in the same room.
I couldn’t tell them. I could never tell them. And that they would never know the real me was what made me pull over just north of Monument and cry for a few minutes into the steering wheel on Sunday afternoon, after church. I left the cross on for the drive.
I made the mistake of going to see Levi before I’d put myself back together.
He could see it. Of course he could. Probably anyone could see it. He made the coffee, he looked at me a while, and then he did the thing he’d never done, that thing we’d both spent two months not doing. He reached. Not with his hands. With a sentence.
“Hey,” he said. It was so quiet. Then the neck rub. “Can I ask you what we’re doing? You and me. Because I think it’s a thing, and I’d rather say so and be wrong than keep pretending I don’t know what it is. And if I’m wrong, that’s fine, I just ... I’m not good at this and I want to know.”
Every alarm I owned went off, and the cross burned at my chest, and I couldn’t do anything but stare into his eyes, bordered by his scruffy face, and want so hard for it to be “yes.”
Instead, I did the cruelest available thing, which was to make it small. I shrugged. After 11 full days back home, I couldn’t go where he wanted, and I said something like, “I didn’t think we were doing anything, I thought we were just hanging out,” and my voice sounded so bored like I was secretly saying, “you misread this, that’s embarrassing for you.”
I watched him take it in the chest and keep his face still, because he was from the Springs, too, and he also knew how to keep a face still, and that was almost the worst part, that I knew exactly how much it cost him to look like it hadn’t cost him anything.
And then I left, and I did the thing that I’d learned to do to cope with feelings now.
There was a guy from a party, a name I didn’t bother even learning, I just had him in my phone as PPG (PHIL1001 Party Guy), and I texted him on the walk and went over, sober and clear-eyed and completely, deliberately absent. I used him the exact way I’d used Marcus back in October, to not feel a thing that was too big to feel. It worked even less well than it had the first time. I knew the trick was hollow going in and I did it anyway, which is its own kind of new low. It felt good – physically. He reached for my lips to kiss and I shifted my head, so he went for my neck, and I looked at his wall, then down at his shoulder, and then on his head when he lowered it to kiss my torso after he lifted my shirt. I moaned when my body said it felt good, I let him take my shirt off and felt his chest when he took off his. He sucked my penis and it felt good, and for just a moment things caught, and I almost went soft as I panicked. But I didn’t. My fingers were in his hair when I told him I was about to cum, and his head stayed down and he swallowed me, licking it clean, and he literally popped off and went to kiss me. I let him this time.
And I left.
And I didn’t feel any better. It was like I had come so far, and now I was back to where I was, and I wasn’t being fair to anyone, least of all myself. Or Levi. He deserved better.
I’d gone and poisoned the one thing that had started to smell like being okay.
He texted me the next day, after classes. He wasn’t angry. Levi didn’t do angry, which was worse. I wanted him to scream at me, to yell at me, because that might make me get out of whatever this was. Instead, he asked if we could talk. I went, because not going was a cowardice even I couldn’t stomach, and we sat in his room with two coffees going cold between us and the plant on the sill behind him, and he looked at me with those steady eyes and he didn’t rush it.
“I’m not mad,” he said. His eyes shifted quickly, like they were studying my face. I didn’t – couldn’t – react.
“I want to be clear about that. You don’t owe me a thing, that’s real, I’m not Nik, there’s no rule here.” He paused. “But I think you felt it too. I think you went and found somebody that same night so you wouldn’t have to feel it, and that’s ...” his hand was on his neck again before he continued, “that’s allowed, you’re allowed to be scared. I just.” He stopped. “I just need you to tell me which one this is. Is this the real thing you’re running from, or am I making it up? Because I can do either. I can’t do not knowing. And you don’t owe it to me. But I think you owe it to yourself. And if shit happened while you were home for Thanksgiving, I get it. If you need time, just say so. If you want to talk about last week in the Springs, just tell me.”
He picked up his mug, and then he put it down without it reaching his lips. “Please.”
I didn’t answer him. I looked at the table. I let the silence be the answer, which was the most honest thing I did all day. And, I also knew it was the most cowardly.
I wanted to say it. I really did.
I couldn’t. I sat there staring at the coffee, the steam long since finished wafting away. I knew the corners of my mouth were twitching, I couldn’t control them. My throat burned desperately to say something, my eyes drier than sand because I forced it. I looked up when I saw movement.
He was still looking in my eyes. And he nodded, slowly. Like I’d told him something. Which I had. And I knew he understood.
That, and that alone is what kept me going.
Authors' Note: Okay, I know this one is a bit darker. This is about as dark as it goes. I wanted to make it realistic, and I felt like this was the right move for the character.
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