When He Remembers Joy

East Carmel was certainly not the smallest town in Indiana, and Paul was well into his twenties before he knew it had a reputation for being racist, or indeed that every small town in Indiana had that reputation. How could he have known? He had never met anyone who wasn’t white until he was nineteen. There were the Mexicans who did field work and sent their kid to the high school, but they were seen more than talked to.

It is odd, Paul thinks over thirty years later, that he could have believed he was sophisticated when at sixteen he didn’t even think he lived in a small town. A fairly new school with a great football team had been built a few years back, and Paul was in drama and choir. He had ideas of New York. His father had made the offhand comment that he was turning into a queer and once, coming out of choir, laughing with his friends, some members of the soccer team walked by and muttered, “Fucking faggots.”

It was time to find a sport.

Paul’s father wasn’t easy to talk to, and he would have been embarrassed to ask his mother, so he went to his little sister, who was only seven, and said, “Claire, what’s a good sport?”

The little girl was pale with bright red hair, and she put down the Barbie doll she was beheading with a butter knife, looked reflective, and then said, “You’re good at running. Every time those boys chase you, you sure can outrun them.”

It takes almost thirty years to remember this clearly because for a very long time it was just too painful, and Paul conceived of himself as the constant athlete, the man of all talents, without asking why. He was a born runner, or a made one, track, cross country, triathlon. He couldn’t keep up choir, but he could do the annual musical. And if anyone had anything to say to him now, fuck them. And if anyone had anything to say now, well then he also had long, wiry muscles, defined thigh muscles, triceps, a young, fluid strength and a circle of friends that resisted fag bashing.

And then came the girlfriend.

Whatever people said about Paul or sensed in him, he never felt gay. It was in track, in the locker room, in the showers with his new friends that he began to feel different. Not just about their bodies, but his own. There was a great pleasure in seeing the muscle play on his own body, in running with his friends and knowing girls were looking at them in the shorts that hung low revealing that V of flesh that descended to the sex unseen, their strong calf muscles, their buttocks, rounding under their shorts. And the mutual admiration of fellow runners in the shower, casually touching each other, muttering, “You’re looking better and better everyday, Anderson.”

And he noticed his friends were looking better and better too.

So when Mariah showed up, and they were kissing in the back of his car, he noticed how much he didn’t notice, how much he’d rather be with his friends. She was nice though, very good, and he thought it would be okay to confirm his suspicions.

“I think I might be gay.”

“You’re a Christian, right?” she said.

He was Catholic. He was devout. He went to the little stone church, Saint Stephen’s, the only Catholic church in East Carmel.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding more doubtful than he should have felt.

“Then you can’t be gay,” Mariah said with confidence.

To prove it to him, she said they should have sex.

“You don’t want to be gay, do you?”

He liked the way he felt with the guys. He liked it when they would touch his hip and he would get excited. He liked looking at his friends in the shower, and the way he smelled after a work out. If he had thought about it, his answer would have actually been yes. His answer would have been, “I don’t like your question.” But he wasn’t there yet, and so he had sex with her that night. Anyone who thinks it is impossible is underestimating the power of the promise of sex on a seventeen year old boner. When he came, she patted his head and while he was still hard inside of her, she said, “See, I knew you weren’t gay.”

When he thinks of humiliation, even with all the things that happened to him after this, the days and nights on the streets, offering up his body for basic needs, it is this moment that comes to mind.

But when he remembers joy, he remembers Wyman. When he thinks of Wyman, Paul thinks of the bright hot sun in late spring, and his legs stretching, barely touching the earth as, gazelle like, he almost flies over the track. And it isn’t that pain isn’t there. There is pain aplenty. Only it doesn’t matter. He almost thinks he could run like he used to, and then he stretches out his arms and his legs, looks in the mirror and remembers he is fifty. He stands looking a little longer and notices a little white at the temples and the little bit of lines around the eyes, but goddamn, he looks good. Real good. He has even taken off his clothes and looked at himself naked. No, he isn’t seventeen, but he is beautiful the way only an adult can be. He thinks, if only he weren’t married he could probably get a young thing like the young thing he once was.

He thinks, can it really have been thirty years ago? How can it be? There is almost a violence in the idea that thirty years have passed since he was running track. Thirty… more. When he thinks of Wyman it is all just happening. They are seventeen and he wonders if Wyman—frankly—looks as good now as he does? If you can see the boy in the man? They were best friends senior year, exchanged knitted caps and stayed the night with each other.

No boy should miss that friendship. And when he thought of what had happened between himself and Wyman... All these years later, with all that had happened, that first night when he and Wyman were nervous on the bed together, and then Wyman offered him the comforter his grandma had made, and they played footsey and then began the tentative touching that led to kissing, that led to pressing bodies against bodies that led to coming…

When it was over, in the dark room, neither one of them said anything for a long time.

“This isn’t like being with a girl,” Paul said, making his voice work. It hardly wanted to.

“No,” Wyman said.

“I did it with her cause I had to,” Paul said, and understood by his nodding that the same thing had happened to Wyman.

“I didn’t feel like I’d lost my virginity. I just felt like a fool when it was over. Right now, now I feel like I just lost my virginity.”

“I love you, Pauly,” Wyman said simply.

They lay face to face, heedless of the slickness on their chests or the sweat on their bodies.

“No one ever told me that before,” Paul said.

“Come’on,” Wyman said. “I know that’s not true.”

“My mom,” Paul said. “I guess.”

Then Paul wrapped his arms around Wyman and smiled.

“You’re so goodlooking,” Wyman said.

“Everyone says I look like a rat,” Paul said. “Or at least they used to before…” Paul pulled the covers down to display his lightly muscled body.

Wyman could not deny Paul’s long nose, slightly sharp face, his—yes—faintly murine appearance. So he shrugged, touched Paul’s nose and said, “Fuck, I like mice.”

He’s not mad at him. Even then he was never mad at him. Most of that year they were so easy with each other, arms always around each other while they smacked their gum, showing up almost hand and hand to the school cafeteria. All athletes were like that, and only athletes had an excuse to be that way. And if someone called them faggots, well then, look, they were. Right?

When they went down to run in Indianapolis, Paul and Wyman fell in with other runners from schools around the state. Kyle Norman was from Rummelsville not far off, and he and his best friend Kurt would be rooming with them.

“Rummelsville is even smaller than East Carmel,” Kyle said. “I can’t wait to get out of there. Go someplace real. Where people are… I dunno, open minded.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed.

He thought Kyle was one of the most beautiful guys he’d ever seen, tall strong like wire, bronze skinned with thick copper hair and dark green eyes. All four of them sat long into the night and Kurt said, “I know he’s gonna get out of Rummelsville.”

“You will too,” Kyle said, smiling. “We’ll get out together. I promise you. We’re not gonna let this Indiana bullshit get us down. If I can’t drive I’ll run! But I’m gonna get out of here.”

“And be big,” Wyman added.

Kyle said, “I don’t have to be big, but I gotta get out. I gotta live.”

Paul thought Kyle was the most alive person he’d ever seen. He didn’t doubt he’d have everything he wanted.

Late that night, while Paul and Wyman were trying to be quiet, they heard sighs, thumping, giggles across the room from the bed where Kyle and Kurt were.

“What the…?” Paul began.

As a sigh came from the other bed, suddenly Wyman went down on Paul, causing him to cry out.

“Wyman!” Paul hissed, but Wyman sucked on him until Paul groaned and then, suddenly, in the other bed, Kyle and Kurt did the same, now all four of them, laughing, and now unabashedly, set to, a rush going through Paul as Wyman humped him and the backboard continued to hit the bed, and the bed across from them creaked quicker and quicker. Wyman, or Kurt, came with a relieved shout and a minute later, Paul did too, staggering, crying out, thinking, Oh my God! When they had all come, there was silence in the room, and then suddenly—Paul thought it must have come from Kyle—chuckling. And then they were all laughing, all exhausted, all found out, all glad to be found out.

Being with Wyman was like being on top of the world.

So it hit Paul harder than a punch in the face when Wyman said he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they were getting married.

“You an’ me shouldn’t have even been doing it,” Wyman told Paul. “It was a sin.”

“It’s actually a sin to have premarital sex with anyone,” Paul said, even though he remembered his girlfriend pulling him down onto her that night a year ago to make sure he was straight.

Paul leaned in and hissed, “I gave you love. All she gave you was… a fucking baby.”

There was no point in rehearsing it. Wyman ended things with him. He was rough about it and Paul went cold. He was so cold when Mariah said, “You don’t even like me. You won’t touch me. You’re in love with Wyman, you fucking faggot,” he just slapped her savagely. She burst into tears, but he didn’t care. He shoved his ball cap on his head and turned his face from her to the window.

His dad had been gone a few weeks and Claire said, sagely, “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“He is!” Matty protested.

Claire, just turned eight, looked at her little brother and said, “I hope not.”

It seemed to all happen at once. Wyman was married and his girlfriend just got bigger and bigger like the moon. Paul stopped acting and dedicated everything to sports, and those soft feelings were gone. If he let himself go soft again, he didn’t know what would happen.