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Freefall
By Codey
Chapter 06
I never stopped at the bottom of the stairs, but ran out the front door. I had no idea where I was going; I just knew I had to leave. When I reached the corner, I turned and kept running, barely noticing the people waiting for a bus. I had no idea how far I’d run or how long I’d been running. My emotions were doing flip-flops inside me so that my mind couldn’t work right. I was pretty much unaware of anything but the flood of conflicting feelings running through me.
I felt saddened and hurt, but mostly I felt anger. I was hurt because the guy I considered my best friend had turned out to be not as perfect as I’d thought. I couldn’t believe the Tim I knew would think those things Philo had said were funny. Thinking about that would bring up the sadness – Sadness that there was a good chance our friendship was, at the least, damaged by what had occurred this evening, and maybe even destroyed.
Underneath the hurt and sadness, there was the anger. Over the last three months, It had slowly been building somewhere deep inside me. I was as shocked as anyone that it had burst forth like a dam breaking tonight. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to, and the sad thing was, I didn’t want to. I wanted to strike out and hurt someone the way I’d been hurt lately. Hell, I wasn’t even sure who to be angry with. Mom and Dad? Of course. Philo and Tim? Yes, and with myself too.
I think, mostly though, I was angry with all the ‘normal’ guys who got to live their lives free from all the crap that Tobey and I, and all the people like us, had to go through just for being born different. The ones who could walk down the halls at school and stare if they saw a cute girl and not have to worry about someone bashing their heads in for just looking. The ones who could tell a girl she was cute and not have to worry about whether or not they’d still be alive the next day to go to school. All those guys going around calling each other faggots, and if something is disgusting say “that’s so gay” like being gay is a bad thing. They don’t realize the people they’re hurting when they say things like that. It could be their best friend or even their brother that they’re hurting and they’d never know it.
They’d never think about using the “N” word around black kids or making derogatory statements around them. The black kids are visible though and we’re not. We’re the invisible minority and that makes us safe targets for their abuse.
I slowly became aware of a voice trying to get my attention. “Brian, Dude, if you don’t stop running soon, I’m going to have a heart attack or a cop is going to stop us to see what convenience store we robbed.”
I looked over my shoulder and Tobey was running just behind me. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I came to a stop.
Tobey had come to a stop too and was standing, bending forward at the waist and supporting himself with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. “Thanks for finally stopping, Dude.” he said between gasps. “Give me a minute to get my breath back. I think another block would have killed me!”
I realized I was out of breath too and looked around me while catching my own. I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was or how to get back to Tim’s from here. Then the thought hit me that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go back there or if I’d be welcome if I did go back.
Tobey’s breathing had eased and he stood back up straight, “I think I’m going to take up soccer,” he said. “Tim says you’re a great soccer player, and if the game gives you this kind of stamina, then I want to start playing too,” he laughed.
“Where the hell are we and how’d you find me?” I asked him.
“I never lost you, Dude. I came close a couple times but managed to keep you in sight.”
“No, I mean how did you know where I was?”
“I know, Brian. I was just making a little joke, but it looks like you’re not in a joking mood. I was waiting for my bus when you came running up the street from Tim’s, like something big and mean was after you and planned on eating you. I decided I’d better run too, just in case it saw me and decided I’d make a better meal. The direction you were going looked OK to me so I just fell in with you. That was almost twenty blocks ago.” I smiled at his story, and he said, “That’s better. You look better smiling than how you looked a while ago. You looked like you’d lost your best friend and were ready to kill someone.”
“There’s a good chance I did.”
“Killed someone?” he asked in fake shock.
“No.”
“Aha,” he said, getting serious. “Tim?”
I just nodded.
“Dude, you have nothing to worry about there. You and Tim have something special between you. You guys are connected at the heart. You’re more than best friends. Hell, you’re more than brothers even. If you guys were gay, you would be soul mates. As it is, the two of you have one of those one in a million friendships where either of you would give up his life to save the other. I bet, as angry as you are right now, if Tim came walking across the street and a car was bearing down on him, you’d jump in front of the car to push him to safety. Be honest, now, you would wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t even have to think about that. “Yeah, I would.”
“See? And I know Tim would do the same. Some silly little argument can’t destroy what you two have, unless you let it eat at you until you forget the way you feel towards each other.”
“It was more than a silly argument. I even questioned the sincerity of his friendship with me.”
He grabbed my arm and stopped. I turned to see why he’d stopped and saw a profound sadness come over his features. “Why do I think Philo was involved in all this?” It was more a statement than a question. “We’re closer to my house than Tim’s, Brian. Why don’t we walk there and I’ll borrow Nana’s car to take you back to Tim’s later. You can tell me what went on as we walk. That is, if you want to tell me.”
Again, I just nodded, and as we walked to his house, I filled him in on what happened after he’d left earlier that evening.
Tobey’s house was a complete shock to me. From what Tim had said earlier about money being tight, I was expecting something a little run down, to say the least. The house was small but set on a lot big enough to hold three of Tim’s homes. The yard was like an English Garden. There were flowers and plants everywhere, and the house itself looked like a picture of a small English cottage. “Wow!” was all I could say.
“Nana has a green thumb,” Tobey laughed. “I have no complaints because the more flower beds, the less mowing for me to do.”
“There’s still a lot to mow though, it looks like.”
“Yeah, there is, but I manage to find the time to get it done, somehow.”
He fumbled with the lock, and finally got it unlocked, pushed the door open, and told me to go on in. As he entered behind me, he yelled, “Nana! I’m home.”
“We’re in the kitchen, Tobias.”
“We? Have you got that no-good boyfriend of yours here again?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. You can come in, though, we have our clothes back on.”
Tobey laughed and said, “Come on and meet my Nana, Brian.”
“Are you sure we should?”
“She was just jerking my chain, Brian. That’ll be Bear in there with her.”
“Bear? How do you know that?”
“He always comes by to make sure I’m OK after I stalk off from Philo,” he laughed. “He’s my bud.”
Bear was sitting at the table with the remains of a sandwich on a plate in front of him. Behind him, at the counter, an older lady about five feet tall and nearly that big around was putting dishes away. Bear glanced up at Tobey as we walked into the kitchen; then did a double take as he saw me. As had been the case all evening at Tim’s, his face was unreadable. This guy could hide his emotions better than anyone I’d ever met. He looked back to Tobey and, with a nod in my direction, said, “I see you found the raging bull.”
I couldn’t see Tobey’s face but saw him shrug. “I wasn’t really looking for him, we just sort of ran into each other.”
Looking back to me, Bear continued, “You have some people looking all over Chicagoland for you. Brian. They’re pretty worried about you. You should call them and let them know you’re OK.”
“I’m not sure I can go back there.”
“Dude, no one said you had to go back. You don’t even have to tell them where you are. Dr. and Mrs. Mathers think of you as another son and they’re worried to death about you. They couldn’t be more worried if Tim was the one missing. You owe it to them to let them know you’re safe.”
I felt a wave of guilt and knew Bear was right. “May I use your phone, Tobey?”
Tobey took a cordless off the wall and tossed it to me. “Here you go, Dude. You can make the call from the living room.”
“Thanks, Tobey.” I stopped in the doorway leading to the living room and turned back to look at Bear. I gave him a smile and said, “You’re going to make a great parent someday, Bear.” He cocked his head to one side and looked puzzled. “You have this guilt trip thing down pat already.” He just smiled back at me and I went into the other room to make my call. I dialed their number and paced back and forth waiting for someone to answer. “Please God, anyone but Tim.” I just wasn’t ready to talk to him.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Pop.”
“Brian! Are you OK? Where are you?”
“I’m fine, Pop, I’m in a safe place. I just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be worried. I’m sorry I ruined everything.”
“You didn’t ruin anything and have nothing to be sorry for. If anything, it’s we who owe you an apology.”
“But I shouldn’t have lost my temper and blown up like that.”
“Maybe not, but it’s understandable why you did. Brian, we’ve always encouraged you to think of our home as yours. You’ve become the second son we weren’t able to have and you should never have been subjected to what you were, and especially not in your own home. I promise you that it will never happen again if I have any say in the matter.”
“I guess Tim’s pretty mad at me now.”
“No...right now, Tim’s worried, scared and confused. He’s worried about you, out lost in a strange city. He’s imagining all the bad things that could happen to you. He’s scared that he’s destroyed the special friendship you two have always had, and confused because he hasn’t put it all together yet, that what he did was so bad that it hurt you as much as it did. Right now, he’s walking around the streets, looking for you.”
“Tell him I’m OK, will you?”
“I can’t do that, Brian.”
“Why not?”
“Because, I don’t think you are OK. What happened last night was a signal, a warning that your anger is reaching an explosive point.”
“I can’t help getting angry.”
“Of course you can’t. No one is blaming you, but you need to figure out how to let that anger out in a way that doesn’t destroy the good things in your life. What Philo did last night was inexcusable, and Tim was wrong for letting him get away with it. You were right to stand up for yourself and Tobey, but you can’t let this build into something that destroys a great friendship. It was Tim’s place to put a stop to Philo’s talk. He didn’t, and I have no idea why. I’m too angry with him myself right now to ask, but I intend finding out when he gets home. When you get back, the two of you need to sit down and talk it through too.”
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back or even that Tim wants me to come back. He made it pretty clear that he agrees with Philo, and that people like me and Tobey should only be allowed around to be the brunt of jokes.”
“I know for a fact that he wants you to come back. He’s torn up inside right now. You think he’s been a phony because of his actions last night. He thinks you’re willing to give up your friendship because of what he knows was a dumb, stupid mistake. The longer you don’t talk, the more you’ll each be reinforcing your own opinions, and the harder it’ll be to see the situation from the other’s point of view. If you think your friendship is worth saving, don’t wait too long, Brian.”
“I won’t, Pop, thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Brian. And remember that no matter what happens now, you’ll always be a part of our family and will be welcome here.”
After talking to Pop, I decided I had a lot to think over. There was no way I wanted to lose Tim’s friendship. But was I willing to live with the knowledge that he wasn’t as accepting as I’d thought? Maybe I was wrong about that too. Maybe it was just a one-time mistake and I overreacted because of all the other things going on in my life. I just wasn’t sure that I was ready to talk about it with Tim.
When I got back to the kitchen, Bear, Tobey and his Nana were all sitting around the table. Tobey had a strange look on his face when he saw me coming into the room. “You have it all covered?” he asked, his face returning to normal.
“Yeah, I talked to Pop. They know I’m all right and safe but I never told them where I was.”
Tobey laughed and said, “I’ll give you even odds that he knows exactly where you are!”
“No way he could know. I never said and he never asked after I told him I was OK and in a safe place.”
“And if he wasn’t able to figure out where you were, do you think he’d let it go at that, or would he keep after you to tell him where you were?”
I hadn’t thought of that. He had seemed to just accept what I’d said with no question. “How could he know, Dude?” I asked.
“Easy, Brian. There’s this technology that’s only been around forever.”
I looked at Bear and he looked as puzzled as I was. Suddenly, he smiled like he got it, “Caller ID,” he said, starting to laugh.
This seemed so obvious, I felt really dumb not thinking of it myself. Soon the three of us were laughing like it was the funniest thing that any of us had ever heard.
“Tobey?” I asked after we’d stopped laughing. “Do you think I could crash here tonight?”
He looked a little troubled but said, “Of course you can, Brian, but I don’t think you should.”
“OK,” I said dejectedly, “I’ll find somewhere else, I understand.”
“No, you don’t. I didn’t mean I didn’t want you to. I meant I think you should go back and work this out with Tim. I don’t want you risking your friendship because of me and Philo.”
“It’s not just about you and Philo. It’s also about me. I’m gay too.”
Tobey didn’t seem to be surprised. He just nodded and said, “Yeah.”
“You knew?” I asked.
“Bear told me you’d pretty much outed yourself tonight at Tim’s, but I still think this needs to be worked out between the two of you, and the sooner the better.”
“That’s what Tim’s dad said too, but I’m just not ready to talk to Tim about it. I will, but I have to get some things straight in my mind first.”
“How about this? We take a walk down by the lake for awhile and you can think it out. Then you can decide whether you think you need to come back here or to Tim’s.”
“You’d be okay with me coming back here, if I think that’s what’s best for me?”
“Of course. In the end, you’re the one who has to decide what goes on in your life. Your friends may not agree with you, but if they’re really your friend, they’ll live with your choices.”
“You two can do whatever you like, but I've had it and I’m through with both of those assholes!” Bear said.
“Bear...” Tobey started to say something but was interrupted by Bear.
“No, I mean it, Tobey. This has been going on long enough, and I'm tired of seeing you hurt by those two. Philo's a jerk and Tim's a phony. Tim knows how to act like a friend, but I don't think he knows how to be a friend, or even what being a friend really means.”
“Tim has never said anything bad to me.”
“No, but he encourages Philo by laughing instead of telling him he's out of line. We've been arguing about this since the first time it happened, and I've kept my mouth shut like you asked, instead of breaking Philo's legs and kicking Tim's ass like I wanted. Now it's done and you're on your own.”
Tobey looked sad but resigned, “Okay, Bear, but I'm going to give Tim one last chance. I mean it this time, if he blows it again, I'm giving up and moving on.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been hearing that for two months now.”
“No, one last shot is all he gets in honor of our new friend, Brian.”
“You consider us friends even though we only met?”
Tobey laughed and said, “Dude, I’ve been meeting you nearly every day since Bear introduced me to Tim. The way he talked about you constantly even had us wondering at one time if he were gay and you were his boyfriend. According to Tim, you could walk on water.”
“We probably know nearly as much about you as we do each other, and we’ve known each other nearly all our lives,” Bear added, laughing himself. “We even know about Texas, but find it hard to believe.”
“Yeah,” Tobey laughed, “we’ll have to see it to believe it. You don’t want us to think Tim would lie, do you?”
***
I know I turned beet red with embarrassment. I had a birthmark on my right butt cheek that Tim swore was shaped just like Texas. We’d known each other a few weeks, the first time Tim saw it. I’d just come home from soccer practice and he’d gotten there while I was in the shower. I came out of the shower wearing only a towel wrapped around me, and was surprised by him. “Hey, Dude,” he said, when I walked into my room. “Your mom said you were showering, and I could wait in your room.”
There I stood, a 14 year old gay kid with this terrible, huge secret and this incredibly hot dude was sitting in my room while I had nothing on but a towel. What the hell was I going to do? I could always just get some clothes and go back to the bathroom to change.... Yeah, right, how cool would that be? I thought maybe I’d just talk and wait until he needed to use the john, and dress real fast while he was gone. That wouldn’t work either, though. What if he didn’t need the bathroom for an hour? I could just hear Tim talking to our friends tomorrow, “Yeah, Dude, He sat there, almost butt naked, for an hour, talking to me. How gay is that?”
I finally decided my only option was to just bite the bullet and do it. I wouldn’t be the first naked guy he saw, so it’s not likely he’d be sitting there, staring at my naked ass. I mean, we both were guys and both had been naked in locker rooms around other guys before, so how bad could it be? “Pretty bad,” the little voice inside my head said. “This isn’t some smelly old locker room and you’re the only one going to be naked.” I have to start listening to that little voice more often.
Tim was sitting on the edge of my bed, facing the chest where my clothes were. I dug through my underwear, found a pair of boxers, let the towel fall, and lifted a leg to step into them, with my back still to Tim.
“Whoa! That’s awesome!” I heard.
“What is?” I asked.
“Your ass, Dude, your ass.”
Hormone alert! Hormone alert! This guy thinks I have an awesome ass? I hurriedly put my other leg through and pulled my boxers up. “My ass?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah, Dude. It’s amazing! You have a map of Texas on your ass!”
OK, hormones, false alarm. Go back to wherever it is you hide when you’re not tormenting me. We’re not talking about my ass here...but what the hell are we talking about? “I have a what?”
“A map of Texas. Damn, Dude, haven’t you ever looked at your ass?”
“Well, actually I’ve never had any reason to.”
“You’ve never checked yourself out nude in front of a mirror?”
“Sure, but I never had any desire to check out my ass. Call me weird, but that’s the way I am.” I laughed.
“Well, you have a reason to now,” he said, walking to me. He put a hand on each of my shoulders, turned me so I was facing the mirror again, and knelt behind me. My brain froze. I just knew there was no way he was going to pull my boxers down and look again.
But he did. “See?” he said, poking my cheek, “Here’s the panhandle,” I felt him tracing a line and he said, “Here’s the Rio Grande, it’s all there.” He stood up, turned me around and said, “Look for yourself, Dude.”
This was just perfect. I’m standing there trying to see my own ass in the mirror, and all the time facing him with my boxers around my knees and all my stuff hanging out. My brain might have known we were talking about Texas, but the hormones didn’t believe it. Some guy had pulled my underwear down and had been touching my ass, so the hormones knew there was a party going to happen, and the crowd was building. I had to do something fast, or I was going to supply the pole to fly the Texas flag from!
“Tim, you’re totally whacked.” I laughed, as I pulled up my boxers and grabbed some jeans to put on, before things got out of hand. Tim sat on the bed and looked like he was deep in thought as I finished dressing. “Let’s go to the park and see if any of the guys are there,” I said after I was dressed. As we were walking up the street, Tim finally said something.
“We have to get a picture of that and send it to one of those TV shows or Believe It or Not.”
“Are we talking about my ass again?”
“Yeah.”
“There is no way we’re taking a picture of my ass and sending it to anyone!”
“But we could be famous, and they might even pay us a lot of money for that picture.”
“We? So how did my ass become ‘ours,’ all of a sudden?”
“I discovered it,” he laughed.
“Well, the answer is still no.”
“Wait! I got it! We can tattoo a star around it for The Lone Star State.”
“No.”
“Maybe do one of the Alamo right below it.”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t that be cool? We could show the Mexican army storming the walls and the smoke from the cannons.”
“No.”
“Too much, huh?”
“Yes, I mean, no. I mean, yes, too much and no, no tattoos.”
“You’re probably right, that’s a little much. It should be simple like a single yellow rose or something like that.”
“NO........!”
***
I smiled at the memory. “You two can think whatever you like about Tim, but I’d have to consider you pretty good friends before I’d ever show you,” I laughed.
Bear was going to walk along with us as far as his house. When we got there, Tobey asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to go with us.
“Only if Brian’s going to show us Texas,” he laughed.
“No way, Dude.”
“Well, in that case then, good night guys.” he laughed and walked up to his house.
As Tobey and I walked to the beach, I was thinking that I could become good friends with him and Bear. I just couldn’t get a handle on what Tim saw in that homophobic bastard, Philo.
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