I opened my eyes. 5:30pm.
I hadn’t slept after school, just rested my eyes. The butterflies in my stomach needed calming. I had no intention of falling on my face in front of Paul. Beautiful Paul.
I reached for the now lukewarm, left over 7-Up on my bedside table and downed it, thinking only during the last gulp that there was no caffeine in 7-Up, and that I would probably need some of that. I heard voices and a television. It was the football game dad was watching with a few of his friends in the family room.
I welcomed a hot shower. With the small, window over the stall open, the cool, early evening air was just enough to counter the steam and pulsing water from the shower head. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the hot water flowing over my head, my shoulders, my arms, torso, stomach and legs. It was so hot my chest and shoulders were turning red. But it was exactly what I needed, relaxing my tense body so I’d be ready to connect with Paul when he came to pick me up.
My stomach turned. I couldn’t believe I’d asked Paul to the prom, let alone that he’d accepted my invitation. I looked over the suit I’d chosen, wondering again if I’d made the right choice of color, lapels, of shoes. Paul was different, beautiful. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t have those worries. He didn’t even have to try. No matter what he showed up in, he’d be the focus of the room, and the simple truth was that, at least for tonight, I’d be on his arm.
I was following Paul to college, both of us enrolled at Fresno State. I would major in psychology and Paul in business. We’d be living separately, but the fact that I’d secured his hand for the senior prom had to give me some leg up on any kind of future relationship, didn’t it? Paul could be with anyone. And without a doubt, everyone wanted to be with him. It was just a stroke of luck that we’d been partnered in chemistry, and that we’d hit it off. I’d spoken to him briefly before, but Paul was, in my mind, in a different league. He was class President, beyond popular, and to look at him was to gaze on beauty.
It was my fault I’d predicted who he’d be before I’d come to know him. The fact that he was smart, had a sarcastic sense of humor, and parents who were not only liberal, but ahead of their time, was a bonus I’d never imagined.
Just as I could have never imagined the sensitivity I found during my first one on one talk with him, away from school and those distractions. He opened up about his fears that he couldn’t possibly live up to what his parents expected. Then he completely surprised me when he told me how much he admired what I was able to do during my performances on stage, as an actor in the drama department, and how he’d love to know what it was like to escape from reality and form an identity outside himself.
We shared our first kiss that late afternoon. We were in his car, after driving far from the school and ending up in the middle of town, somewhere I’d never been, near a park, under some street lights just buzzing to life in the early dusk of the evening.
He asked if he could kiss me. Not out loud, not with his voice. He asked with his eyes, his face, in a way I would never have imagined. I thought if it happened, he would force himself on me, take what he wanted. In reality, it was nothing like that. He was gentle, and waited for approval before he brought himself, willingly, to me again. It was the sweetest taste.
I stood in front of the full length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I looked at the diagram of the way to tie a bow tie, the one I’d downloaded from the internet. To my surprise, I got it right the first time. Standing and looking at myself, I tried to find a mistake in my outfit, but I couldn’t. Maybe that was a sign.
I heard a car horn. At first far away, then closer, and finally just outside the house.
My father opened my bedroom door and smiled, approvingly. My mother walked down the hall from the kitchen, joining him and locking her arms around him as she focused on me.
"You look great," my father said, the sound of the football game still in the background. My mother released herself and came toward me. She smiled more with her eyes than her lips, then cupped my face in her hands and moved in to kiss me. My cheek was dampened with the tear that rolled down her cheek.
"You’re going to have the time of your life," she said.’
Another honk. I broke free from her to look out the window to the street. Paul stood up and outside of the moon roof of the long, black limousine. He held a single rose in his hand, glancing around, looking confused, as if trying to find me.
It was going to be quite a night…
****
I sensed the crust in the corners of my eyes the minute I woke up. 6:15pm. I woke up to MTV on the television, all the lights off and no sound coming from the house around me.
The prom started in 45 minutes. At that exact moment my mother shouted through my locked bedroom door…"Stephen, are you getting dressed?", I threw off my t-shirt and boxers and jumped into the barely warm shower.
I wondered where I’d put Pam’s corsage. I remembered picking it up from the flower shop but I suddenly couldn’t remember if I’d put it in the fridge or thrown it on the kitchen table, where by now it would be wilted and discouraging.
I shut off the shower and dried off. When I looked at myself in the half fogged mirror, I wasn’t sure if I cared how my hair looked. I brushed, put deodorant on, shaved the few whiskers I had and splashed cold water on my face.
I regretted the cumber bund the minute I put it on, and chastised myself for choosing a dark blue tux. I should have gone with basic black. I stumbled my way to the kitchen table, to find a note from my parents. "Gone to Howard’s game…have fun".
They hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see how I looked. There was a saran wrapped dinner plate with cold meatloaf and carrots, along with a glass of milk in the fridge. I grabbed a soda and a piece of bread and put the useless plate in the empty sink.
Back in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and flipped through channels for a few minutes, realizing it was too soon to head over to Pam’s. Bored, I shut off the TV and sat down in front of my laptop, only to be faced with the crumpled note half hidden under my biology book. I realized that no matter how hard I willed things to be different, they wouldn’t be, and I pulled the note out to read, knowing full well the message it held.
YOU’RE DEAD! TONIGHT AFTER THE DANCE!
It was scrawled, in the hand of a person who meant what he said, quivering with the anger he couldn’t hold back. It was Jared. I’d been told so by Jack, who saw him slip it in my locker. After years of being terrorized by this jock who I didn’t know anything about, he’d clearly chosen the night of senior prom to make his stand with me. This, after five physical injuries at his hand. Three of which I didn’t report and two which he denied. Not only denied, but amplified. The fact that I’d named him brought out not just his deepest wrath, but the wrath of those close to him. In the past couple of months, it seemed every wrestler and half the football team were aiming for me.
My face in the mirror. Acne. Tousled hair. The opposite of the image in my perfect dream, when my dream date in a perfect world met every expectation I’d ever had. The perfect night. Expectations which not only weren’t going to happen, but would never happen. At the age of eighteen, the thought of living this life for another sixty or seventy years brought me to tears again. Slow, restrained tears. I felt like throwing up. And as they wet my face again, then blurred the red ink of the note below me, the note of the person who hated me so much for who I was that he was not only willing, but eager, to kill me, I decided I had a choice. I didn’t have to go through with this.
This was my future. This was how it was going to be for the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine telling my parents I was gay. I couldn’t imagine telling anyone. Not even my friends. That would lead to someone else and someone else. Then everyone would know and I’d have to live with it. I couldn’t. I was tired. I imagined how other, normal people felt. But at eighteen, I was tired. I was done. Nothing was ever going to change.
I took the pills out of my desk drawer. I’d taken them from my mother’s medicine cabinet hours before, knowing what I’d be facing. At the time that I took them, it seemed just melodramatic, the act of someone who was reaching out for an answer symbolic of the pills. But now they didn’t feel symbolic. They felt like freedom. They felt like silence instead of pain and confusion.
I poured them onto the desk. There were 23 pills. That had to be enough.
****
"Steven?"
I felt Ted’s hand on me, jostling. I became aware I’d been dreaming, and almost as quickly, the fear, self loathing and desperation drained away. Morning sunlight drenched my face and half uncovered body. I rubbed my eyes, then turned, as the dreams faded away, and saw that it was indeed my sweet husband, Ted, who was shaking me awake.
"You were moaning," he said, "I couldn’t understand what you were saying. Were you having a dream?"
Suddenly, I returned to where I’d been the whole time, at home, with my husband, Ted, in the bedroom of our very own house. At once, I knew it was Thursday, with just two more work days until we’d be going away for the weekend to Las Vegas to party for Ashton’s birthday.
Ted stopped what he was doing, sat down on the bed next to me and laid a hand on my bare chest. "Hey, are you okay?"
I felt it, a sense of the desperation that was in the dream, but just as quickly, it was gone. I remembered that I had three patients to see today, but that I had about an hour and a half for a run before work.
"I’m fine," I told him, "just a dream."
Then I heard our son Dustin running from the bathroom to the living room, where shortly afterwards, cartoons came blazing on the television.
"Dustin," Ted called out, leaving the room in jeans and an open shirt, "let’s get you some breakfast."
Thank God I didn’t take the pills. I would have missed out on all this. I closed my eyes.
Then I felt a small, cool hand on mine.
"Daddy?’" came Dustin’s voice, eager and urging, "Bugs Bunny is on."
I opened my eyes. Dustin was glowing. I looked down, and his small, untouched hand laid on top of my wedding ring.
