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Freefall
By Codey
Chapter 08
I was startled by Tim’s voice, but instantly angered by the tone. “What the hell do you care, Tim? Aren’t you afraid to ask? What if I’ve been out ‘being gay’ and, since you asked, you might actually have to listen to what I was doing?”
For several seconds, there was silence from the dark porch followed by a short series of heart-wrenching sobs. My anger melted away and I moved across the porch to where Tim was. He was sitting on the edge of the porch with his feet hanging down and facing the street. I sat beside him, and when he looked over to me, I could see his eyes were all red and swollen.
“I deserved that, Brian. I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to figure out how to tell you how sorry I am, but I can’t. There aren’t any words I can think of that could let you know how sorry I am. I was afraid you weren’t coming back and I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he managed to choke out. “You do know that I’d never say or do anything intentionally to hurt you, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, Tim. After last night, I don’t know what to think anymore. Sometimes, the unintentional hurts are the worst, because they’re so unexpected.”
I was having a hard time deciding what to say to Tim. I remained silent for a couple minutes before the words finally came to me. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Tim, I don’t need an apology. What I need is to understand. I need to understand how you could allow Philo to say those hurtful things about a friend – and I’m talking about both Tobey and I. Philo had no idea at the time that I was gay too, but you knew. I need to understand how you could have kept encouraging him by laughing. I can’t imagine that the Tim who’s my brother would ever have allowed that to happen. Probably the most important thing I need to understand is how you could sit there and allow Philo to out Tobey to a straight stranger and not call him on it.”
“You weren’t a stranger and you’re gay too. What harm could it have done?”
“Had you told Philo I was gay?”
“Of course not.”
“Then as far as he knew, I was straight and I was a stranger to him. How can either Tobey or I feel safe around the two of you, now? How do we know it won’t happen out in public and someone hear it that hates gays?”
Tim opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. “People die, Tim, and they die for no reason, other than someone hates them for being the way they were born. Have you heard of Matthew Shepard? He was a young gay man from Wyoming, who was beaten nearly to death and then stripped and tied, spread-eagled, to a barbed wire fence in the middle of winter and just left to die. All this just because two guys that hated gays decided it would be fun to go out and kill a gay one night.”
“I’d never let anything like that happen to you or Tobey.”
“How would you stop it, Tim? You can’t be with us every minute of every day, and besides, those who’d want to hurt us would like to hurt you just as bad, since you’re hanging with gay guys. They wouldn’t care that you’re straight. Having friends with you is good but can’t guarantee you, or they, would be safe.”
Tim looked thoughtful for a minute before replying, “If anything ever happened to you, Bri, and it was my fault, I’d not be able to live with it. Just hurting you last night, even though I didn’t mean to, has me all torn apart inside. I know you’re angry now, but is there a chance I didn’t ruin our friendship, and can you ever forgive me?”
“Yeah, you’re right, Tim. I am mad right now. I’m mad at you and Philo but even madder at myself. When I saw you basically ignoring Tobey whenever he tried to say something you considered gay, it brought back all the times I tried talking to you and you’d keep changing the subject, instead of listening to me. I have to be honest with you, Tim, I don’t know where you stand on gays. I thought I did, but last night proved me wrong. I’m pissed at myself for being so blind and stupid all those years.”
“Brian, I don’t care if you’re gay, a drug dealer, a murderer, or go around screwing animals. You’re my friend and that’s all that matters.”
“And Tobey?”
“He’s my friend too.”
“But you defended another friend who was making fun of Tobey for being gay. Why didn’t you defend Tobey from those attacks by Philo?”
“I told you, Philo has this weird sense of humor.”
“And that’s why you were laughing? You thought it was funny too? Do you have so little concern for our feelings that you thought it was OK to laugh? Tim, you just said we were your friends, no matter what, but what you were doing last night makes us wonder if you’re our friend too. If someone were really our friend, would he have laughed at jokes ridiculing us for the way we were born? What are you going to do if you ever have a handicapped friend and Philo starts in on them? Will that be funny to you too, because Philo has a weird sense of humor?”
Tim looked like I’d slapped him. “You know me better than that, Bri. I’d never let him make fun of a handicapped person. Hell, I wouldn’t let you do that and you’re my best friend.”
“But it’s OK if he makes fun of your fag friends, including your fag best friend, huh? After all, they’re just a couple of girlie-boys.”
“That’s not funny, Brian, you and Tobey aren’t girlie-boys.”
“It’s not funny? I’m confused. It was funny last night when Philo called Tobey a girlie-boy. What’s changed?”
Tim said something in a muffled voice I couldn’t make out, but I could tell he was softly crying. I asked him what he said, and when he looked towards me, I could see the tears running down both cheeks.
“I said you guys just don’t understand. I can’t keep losing friends.”
“Well, you lost one of the best friends you could ever have last night. You have another willing to give you just one last chance; and right now you’re on pretty shaky ground with me.”
I saw Tim’s face begin to crumble, and soon he’d lost control and was sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to go over and comfort the guy that was my best friend and like a brother to me. Another part of me said he’d brought all this on himself and was just getting what he deserved. I felt like a bastard for the latter feelings, but I couldn’t help feeling like that. Tim looked at me, as if asking a silent question, and then, with a look of resignation, nodded his head a few times and stood up. He walked over to the corner of the porch and hugged the post, as if it were something to give him the strength to pull himself together, rested his forehead against the post and continued crying but not the sobbing he was doing before.
I suddenly felt like kicking myself in the ass. Here I’d just spent all this time berating Tim for not being a good friend, and here I was doing the same thing to him. What kind of friend could sit and ignore the pain his best friend was suffering, no matter what the cause of that pain? As I got up to go over to Tim, I heard the door open and saw Tim’s dad coming out. We both stopped and looked at each other. After a few seconds, he smiled at me and nodded his head and leaned back against the wall. It was as if he were saying for me to go to Tim, that right now he needed his best friend more than his dad.
I walked up behind Tim, put my arms around him, and gave him a gentle hug. He turned and looked me in the eye then rested his head on my shoulder as I held him and let him cry. “Tell me it’s going to be okay, Brian, tell me that we’re going to be okay,” he said.
“I can’t, Tim. I hope it’s all going to be okay and I want it to, but some people have been pretty hurt, and I just don’t know how it’s all going to turn out.”
“I fucked up big time last night,” Tim said. – I wanted to add it wasn’t just last night, but had been going on for over two months, but didn’t. He was in enough pain, and saying that would just have been twisting the knife. “I’ve been such a jerk to Tobey,” he added. “I don’t blame him for not wanting to be friends with me anymore.”
I looked at Tim and realized he thought Tobey was the one that was through with him. “Tobey’s not the friend you lost last night, Bear is. Tobey’s willing to give you one last chance.”
“Bear? Why would he decide he didn’t want to be friends? Philo or I never did anything to hurt him.”
I sighed in frustration. Tim still didn’t get it.
“Tim? Do you remember the first day we met?”
“Yeah, it was just a few days after we moved to St. Louis. I was wandering around the neighborhood and saw you and this other kid kicking a soccer ball around.”
“Freddy.”
“Yeah. I stood there watching you guys for a little while and then you came over and introduced yourself and asked if I’d like to kick the ball around with you two.” Tim got this far away look in his eyes and his voice grew wistful as he remembered, “I tried telling you that I was a football player and didn’t know anything about soccer, but you never gave up. You and Freddy kept telling me you’d show me how, and then you said something that broke the ice, and I knew we were going to be friends. Do you remember what it was?”
I racked my brain trying to remember something I’d said that day that was special so that he’d still remember it to this day but I couldn’t come up with anything. “No, sorry, Tim, I don’t remember anything out of the normal. It was just guys talking.”
“Exactly, and that’s what made it so extraordinary. You said, ‘Come on, Tim, we’re just kicking it around for fun. Even a football player should be able to figure out how to kick a little round ball in a couple hours or so.’ ”
“Oh yeah, I do remember saying that…and as soon as I said it, I was afraid I’d hurt your feelings.”
“Well, you didn’t. You made me feel welcome. We’d just met and you were teasing me, the way friends tease each other. Brian, you have no idea how important that day was to me. We kicked that stupid ball around all afternoon. I was amazed at the way you and Freddy could make that ball do whatever you wanted it to do. I couldn’t even get it to go straight when I tried kicking it to one of you guys. The two of you spent most of the afternoon chasing down the ball and never got angry. It was one of the most awesome days I’d ever had.”
“We all did more laughing that day than I could ever remember doing before. When we finally tired out and were laying in the grass, resting, and you said you’d had fun and we were all going to have to do this again, and Freddy agreed because you were wrong, and it looked like it was going to take you two a hell of a lot longer than a couple hours to be able to teach this football player to kick a ball, I almost cried. I’d never been welcomed like this before at any of the places we’d moved. The two of you made me feel like I belonged, and it was a good feeling. There’s no way I’ll ever forget that day, Brian.”
I knew there was something important that wasn’t obvious in what Tim had just said, but I’d think about it later. Right now, I was trying to make another point. “And by the time school started that fall, we were best friends, weren’t we? And before long, we were even closer than best friends, we’d become like brothers.”
“Yeah,” Tim said.
“It’s not even three and a half years that we’ve known each other, Tim, and look at how close we’ve become. Tobey and Bear have been best friends longer than their memories go back. Neither of them can remember when they weren’t a part of each other’s life. The two of them are as close to being real brothers as any two unrelated people could be. Scott likes you and always has, but if he’d been here last night and Philo had been sniping at me and you kept laughing, how long do you think it would have been before Scott would have been in a serious ass-kicking mood, and you and Philo would have been wearing the asses he wanted to kick?”
At first, Tim had this startled look on his face, but it slowly turned thoughtful. “Bear never said anything.”
“Because Tobey didn’t want him to. Tobey was sure you’d see how bad it hurt him and would put a stop to it, but you never did. From the first time it happened, Bear wanted to break Philo’s legs and drop the two of you as friends. This has been causing a lot of arguments between them because of Tobey wanting to hang in there until you come to your senses, and Bear thinking you and Philo are both assholes.”
“Bear was the first friend I made in Chicago.” You could hear the sadness in his voice. “Up until right now, I thought of him as my best friend up here. I had no idea he hated me. I was wrong and we did do something to hurt Bear. We hurt his best friend and that hurt him. That’s what you’re saying isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you’re saying something else too, Brian. I think you’re saying Bear was a better friend to his best friend than I was to mine, aren’t you?”
This blindsided me. I hadn’t been thinking that at all, but after Tim said it, how could I deny it was true? All I could do was look at him, and I could tell he could see the guilt I felt for thinking that, written all over my face. He took a deep breath and said, “It’s OK, Bri, I knew this day was going to come someday. I’ve been expecting it.”
Now I was puzzled. “What’s that mean, Tim?”
He walked back over and sat in the same spot he was in when I got home. He was swinging his legs nervously and just looking out into space like he was deciding something. Finally, he looked back at me and patted the floor next to him. I walked over and sat down and waited for him to say something. “First, Brian, I want you to know that you are my best friend, and even if the ass I’ve made of myself chases you away and you never speak to me again, in my heart, I’ll always consider you my best friend.”
This was like being hit in the gut when you’re not expecting it. Tim sounded like our friendship was over. Had I gone too far? Had I given him this impression? “Tim, nothing’s happened that would end our friendship. Sure, a lot has happened in the last day that has brought up some problems that neither of us have been facing up to, but nothing we can’t solve. We just have to start working on them.”
“Even if we do, I’ll just do something else to ruin it. I always do.”
“Tim, I....”
“Brian, will you just shut up and listen? If you keep interrupting, I may lose my nerve and never tell you this.”
He turned back and was just staring into space but had a look on his face like he was trying to find the right words. Without turning back to look at me, he started speaking, “I have something bad wrong with me. I don’t mean like an illness or something. It’s some kind of character flaw, I guess. I don’t know what it is or how it works, but I can’t keep friends. I always do something to chase them off, it seems like. This is the first time I even know what I did that cost me friends. Usually, we just drift apart and stop talking.”
I remembered Bear’s words last night about Tim knowing how to play the part of a friend but not understanding how to really be a friend or even what being a friend meant. This wasn’t the time to bring that up, though, and it might never be the right time, so I just waited for Tim to continue.
“Do you know that yours is the only friendship I’ve had that’s lasted for longer than a year?”
This was surprising to me. I’d never really thought about Tim and his old friends before. I’d just assumed since he seemed to be popular with my friends, he’d been popular at his old schools.
“We moved an awful lot, Brian. Until we moved to St. Louis, I’d never been in the same school for more than one school year, and a couple times, I was in two different schools in one school year. I’m going into the twelfth grade and this is going to be the twelfth school I’ve attended. It’s a bitch being the new kid all the time. I never seemed to have too much trouble meeting kids, and some I thought were friends, but then we’d move, and before long, the calls would be farther and farther apart, until there weren’t any more. Hell, when we moved to St. Louis, I was nearly fourteen and you were the first kid I ever had sleep over at my house, and yours was the first house where I’d ever slept over. I don’t know what’s wrong with me or why people don’t want to stay friends.”
I heard movement behind me and saw Tim’s dad straightening up. He had a look of shock and guilt on his face. I said, “There’s nothing wrong with you, Tim. You’ve just never had the time for friendships to develop beyond the school friend stage. I have a lot of friends that are school friends, friends I talk to in school, but we’re not friends outside of school. If we see each other out of school, we say hi and then go on about our business with whatever regular friend we happen to be with. You said you thought some were friends and you’d call each other once in awhile. If you’d stayed where you were, those would have probably been good friends. They made the effort, but it’s hard keeping a friendship going over a long distance. It’s only normal for people to get caught up in their own lives and let some things slip.”
“Bear said something last night that I thought I’d never tell you, but I think I need to. He said you were good at playing a friend, but he didn’t believe you really knew how to be a friend, or even what being a friend really means. This isn’t your fault, Tim. You’ve just never been anywhere long enough to have a real friendship until you moved to our neighborhood. You’ve been trying to learn in the last couple years what the rest of us learned a long time ago, and it wasn’t any easier for us back then as it is for you now. To have a friend, you have to be a friend, Tim. Being a friend isn’t always easy, and sometimes, like right now, it can be pretty damn hard. After all the arguing and fighting is over, even if you can only agree to disagree about something, it feels pretty fucking good when that friend smiles at you.”
“If you want to learn how to be a friend, you have two damn good examples to watch, Tobey and Bear.”
“I’ve blown it with Bear.”
“Yeah, but Tobey’s willing to give you another chance, and if you can prove to be a good friend to him, Bear might come around.”
“What about you?”
I never even had to stop to think to answer his question. “You’re my best friend, Tim. I don’t know how good an example I’ll be, but I’ll do all I can.”
“So you forgive me?”
“I forgave you last night, Tim, but that doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you anymore. I’m still madder than Hell that you and Philo have been treating Tobey the way you have, and about last night too.”
“Tell me what I need to do, Bri. I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right with you. If you want me to dump Philo, I will. If I have to choose, then I’ll choose you.”
“Dammit, Tim, don’t do that to me!” I don’t know who was more startled by my anger, Tim or his dad. “Don’t put me in that position. I’m not picking your friends for you and I don’t have that right, anyway. No one has the right to tell you who your friends can be. I’d never put you or anyone else in the position of having to choose me or someone else. What kind of friend would do that? If anyone ever told me I had to choose between two friends, I’d pick the one that didn’t try forcing me to choose.”
“But what do I do about Philo?”
“That’s your decision, Tim. I won’t tell you what to do, but if I were you and wanted to be friends with him, I would. If you see something in him the rest of us don’t, and you think he’s worth the effort, then that’s what you should do.”
“What I see in him is myself, someone that can’t keep friends. Maybe by being his friend, I can help us both learn what we’ve been doing wrong and it’ll help us both.”
I could see the sincerity in Tim’s eyes. “That’s a noble goal, Tim, and I think that’s a good way to start learning to be a friend. You have to remember one thing though: just because he’s your friend doesn’t mean he’s mine. I’ll be civil if we bump into him some place, but never ask me to willingly be anywhere around him.”
“That’s fair,” he said, smiling for the first time since we’d started talking.
“OK, guys, that’s enough talking for now. It’s nearly daylight and we all need some sleep,” Tim’s dad said from the shadows.
“Dad!” Tim said, jumping up, “I didn’t know you were there. How long were you there?”
“Long enough to see that all three of us learned some pretty important things.”
“Dad, I don’t want you to think I blame....”
“That’s for later, son.” he said, walking over and hugging Tim. “That’s something for us to discuss with your mother. But let me say, for now, that I’m sorry, and let it go at that until we all can talk about it. OK?”
“OK, Dad. Oh man,” he said, looking at the brightening sky, “I have football practice in a couple hours.”
“No football practice for you today, Tim. You’ve been up all night, and it’d be dangerous for you to try to keep up with the others who slept all night. Your health is more important than a game.”
“But, Dad....”
“No buts, Tim. You two get some sleep, and then spend the day tomorrow on something fun. You still have some issues you need to work through, and the best way to do that is in a relaxed fun atmosphere.”
“Your dad’s right, Tim, the last twelve hours or so have been pretty rough. We need to have some fun and put all the crap aside for awhile.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “But there’s no way things could get worse than they were last night.”
Ah, what foolish dreams we mortals keep!!
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