Carson’s roommate Ralph stood in the open doorway watching the two of us, and smiled. He stepped into the room and grabbed me in a tight hug, then carefully hugged Carson avoiding his cast.

“I’m glad Carson’s found someone. He’s the nicest guy I’ve ever roomed with. He deserves someone nice, and you seem like a really nice guy, David.”

“Uh… you’re okay seeing us… uh… kiss?” Carson asked cautiously.

“Sure. Why not?”

Now it was my turn to ask him a question. “How… no, what did you mean about Carson deserves someone nice?”

“I could tell he was sad and lonely when he got here a couple weeks ago. I knew he wanted a boyfriend. When he got back with his broken arm I could see that he changed. He told me about meeting you and how funny and nice you are. He smiled all the time and couldn’t wait to go to your house for Thanksgiving. So I knew he liked-liked you, that way. I wondered if you liked-liked him too. Then I saw the two of you downstairs in the library. That’s when I knew you guys are boyfriends. It’s my impeccable gaydar, mes amis!”

I looked at Carson and he was grinning, then we started to laugh.

“You must have unique gaydar, because it can foretell the future. We’re not boyfriends.” Carson grabbed my arm. “We’re best friends. And if your gaydar told you that I was looking for a boyfriend when I got here, it needs to be taken into the shop and replaced.”

Ralph started laughing. He was laughing so much that he couldn’t talk. He sat down on one of the beds, still laughing. Carson and I kept looking at each other and at him, back and forth. I wondered if Ralph had totally lost it. Finally he started to calm down and his laughter turned to chuckles. He stood and sort of grabbed us in a three-way hug then stepped back, still holding Carson’s right arm and my left.

“Oh, mon dieu! You two are so cute. You don’t even know, do you?” He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Well, I’m never one to interfere, so I think we’ll just let things happen on their own as you two get to know each other. Better. Get to know each other better. Much better.”

“Ralph, you are a loony. I’ve told you that before, and I’m telling you again. Loony!”

“Je ne suis pas cinglé, mais je suis gay et j’ai un excellent gaydar.”

“Uh, Carson, what’d he say? It sounds like French.”

“I don’t know French, but maybe he’s telling us that his gaydar works just fine.”

That caused Ralph to bust up laughing again. “Oh, you guys kill me!” he said after he stopped laughing.

A short, pudgy kid with blond hair that was the color of a crayon was standing in the doorway. He asked, “Is Ralph being Ralph again?”

Carson looked up and nodded. “Yeah, he is. Now he’s speaking French — at least, I think it's French — to us. A couple of days ago it was Russian. Anyway. Brent, this is my best friend David. David, Brent.”

The kid walked up to me and we shook hands. He sort of looked me over. “Are you a new foster kid?”

“No, I live a few blocks from here. I met Carson the day before Thanksgiving.”

“Ah. You’re the infamous David that body-blocked Carson while you were playing football and broke his arm.”

Carson closed his eyes, shook his head, and let out a sigh.

“No, Brent, I accidentally ran into David and when we fell my arm was under his body and that’s how it got broken.”

“That’s not what Ralph told us.”

“Oh, Brent, mon ami, I never said anything like what you’re attributing to me. I told you what Mr. Hagen told me, that Carson was being chased by a dog and ran into David by accident.”

“Yeah,” Carson added, “that’s exactly what happened.”

“I like the other story better.” Brent looked at Ralph and grinned. “Then who said that Carson was playing football when he broke his arm?”

“Lenny,” Ralph replied. “You know how he has a very fertile imagination, and remembers the things he’s told us for maybe seven seconds max. Right, Carson?”

“That’s Lenny, alright.”

“Did I hear my name being used in vain?” A tall, skinny, red-head with a grin so wide that it seemed to go from ear to ear stood in the doorway.

“Come on in, Lenny, meet my best friend David.”

“Hey, you’re the guy that knocked Carson down when you guys were playing soccer, right? Hey, Carson, did your team get a penalty kick?”

Carson went through the explanation of what happened once again, and Lenny came up and shook my hand. “You should play soccer. You’ve got the perfect body for it. I’ll bet you run a lot, right?”

“Well, I play tennis and there’s some running in that. But nothing like in soccer.”

Lenny saw a couple of guys looking into the room and grabbed me by the arm and practically dragged me to the door. “Hey, Tim and Martin! This is David, the guy I told you that Carson ran into!”

I said ‘hi’ to Tim and Martin, and they came in and began giving me third-degree questioning about who I was and where did I know Carson from and so on.

Carson’s dorm room got more and more crowded as more guys joined us. It was at the point that there were so many guys talking to me that I couldn’t remember their names.

I think I figured out why these guys were all coming to Carson’s room. It was because I was a visitor, someone new. I figured out that not many kids came to Hathaway House to visit the residents in their dorm rooms. I decided to ask Carson about that later. Right now Carson was showing off his new iPod to ooo’s and ah’s of the guys.

A chime sounded. Ralph shouted, “Lunch!” and all the guys exited Carson’s dorm room saying ‘bye’ and ‘see you’ and ‘later’ to me and Carson as they left. I started laughing, they were just like me, and Carson, food always comes first.

I sat down on one of the beds and sighed. “I’m exhausted.”

“Now you know what it felt like for me when I met your relatives on Wednesday.”

“Do you normally have so many guys congregating in your room?”

“Nah. I think it’s because you’re here. We don’t get many visitors who come up to the dorm rooms. You’re a novelty. Did you enjoy meeting all these guys?”

“Yeah, I enjoyed it so much that there’s no way I could even begin to remember all the guys by name.”

“I guess we should have been wearing our name badges.”

“You have name badges?”

“Yeah. Every so often they have a ‘Foster a Teen’ day when people who are looking to foster a teen come in and get a tour and meet the kids. They haven’t had one since I’ve been here. I don’t know when they’re supposed to have the next one.”

“That seems a little weird. They showed us a movie in world history about slavery that showed how the slave merchants displayed men and women and kids to slave owners and they’d feel their muscles and decide on which ones to take. This ‘Foster a Teen’ day sounds sort of like that, except you’re not slaves here.”

“We might as well be. I mean, it’s nice here, the best foster facility I’ve been in. But it’s just not the same as living in a home with foster parents. But it’s not like we’re in jail. We can go out and come back pretty much whenever we want. Like when we leave to go back to your house, all I have to do is check out with Helen and tell her where I’m going and when I’ll be back. That could be something general, like the mall or Larkey Park or downtown. Now that I’m fifteen I can even say I’m going to San Francisco on BART. So it’s pretty open. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’d like my own private room, but bunking in with Ralph is okay. Neither of us snores, and we’re both quiet, and we both have iPods now.” He grinned like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

“We should head home now. Mom’s gonna have lunch ready for us, and then you can begin downloading music from iTunes. You know there’s lots of free MP3 music you can download. You don’t have to buy everything from iTunes.”

“I heard about it but I don’t know much about it. Do you do that?”

“Yeah, some of the best music I have I got that way. You ready?”

“Damn. I forgot my backpack is at your house. I don’t have anything to carry my netbook in. Maybe Helen has a shopping bag she can give me.”

We went downstairs and Carson checked out. Helen did have a grocery bag with handles so it was easy to carry his netbook. We started walking home, and talked.

“David, were you embarrassed by Ralph seeing us kissing?”

“Yeah, at first. But when we found out he was okay with it I wasn’t embarrassed any more. Did you know that he’s gay?”

“I don’t think he is. But he never said anything to me about it one way or the other.”

“Why don’t you think he’s gay? He told us he has gaydar.”

“Uh huh. But I don’t think having gaydar that means someone’s gay.”

“I thought gaydar is what gay guys have to tell if another guy is gay.”

“Probably, but guys who aren’t gay could also have gaydar. And girls, too.”

“Girls? Carson, you’ve gotta be kidding. You know girls who have gaydar?”

“Sure. At school. A bunch of us were sitting around in the quad one day after we’d eaten lunch. This girl, Suzi, saw a guy walk by and said ‘Oh my god, he’s so cute, but my gaydar is buzzing’ and then the other girls said how they think the guy is gay and it’s a shame because he’s so cute and he’ll never ask them to go on a date.”

“What did the guys say?”

“Things like ‘who cares’ and ‘he’s in one of my classes and I don’t think he’s gay’ and ‘why don’t you go ask him’ and other stuff like that. Then Steve said ‘nah, my gaydar is on and it says he’s not gay,’ and he got kidded about that, about having gaydar. Then we talked about gaydar and we decided that anyone can have gaydar even if they aren’t gay.”

“You sure talk about more interesting things at school than what my friends and I talk about.”

“What do you talk about, David?”

“Sports, lately it was our football team, and what we did on the weekend or what we’re going to do the next weekend, and who’s going to have a party and who’s invited, and our classes and tests and good and bad teachers. But never who’s gay.”

“Speaking of gay, we’re skirting around what we really want to talk about, aren’t we David.”

“Yeah. So, Carson, are you gay?”

“No.”

That disappointed me. I wanted him to say ‘yes’ that he was gay. That would make things a lot easier for me.

I guess Carson saw my expression, so he continued. “David, I’m just a regular guy. I think I’m pretty much normal, about the same as most other guys. About the same as you. I’m not gay, I’m not straight. What it is, I’m not going to put a label on who I am. I’ve had labels stuck on me all my life. Orphan. Foster kid. I hate labels. So I’m not going to put a label on myself. I’m just me, Carson Ryan Evans, fifteen year old teen. And a pretty nice guy, if I say so myself. Remember what Lynn said at breakfast about calling someone or something ‘gay’ means good now? I didn’t talk about this because I wasn’t sure how your mom and Lynn would take it. Or especially how you’d take it. Saying someone’s gay, or that I’m gay, doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just another stupid label people try to stick on me, on anyone else. I refuse to buy into that. Instead I’ll like who I like and I’ll love who I love and right now that means I love you, David Dempsey. And it doesn’t mean that I should label myself or let anyone else label me ‘gay’ or straight or bi or whatever.”

I was smiling big-time. He said he loved me! Well, I figured as much, considering how we kissed each other last night in bed and this morning in his dorm room. So, what’s the heck is this he talked about. He’s not gay, he’s not straight, he’s not bi.

All of a sudden I got it. I remembered what Lynn told me when we were walking to Hathaway House this morning. I’m free to pick and choose who I like no matter whether it’s a girl or a guy, and that nobody our age cares about these labels as Carson calls them. It’s just the old fogeys who care about things like that. So I was acting like an old fogey when I tried to put Carson in a box labeled ‘gay’ wasn’t I. But I’m not an old fogey. So my way of thinking about sex was totally fucked up. I needed to change it to the way Carson looks at it.

Carson nocked on the back of my head. “Hello! Hello, David! Hello in there! Wake up!”

“OW! That hurt!”

He was standing, looking at me, grinning. “Where were you, David? You sure as hell weren’t here. You stopped, and I didn’t notice until I’d walked half a block down the street.”

“I was thinking about what you said, and what Lynn said to me this morning, and how it tied together. I need to think about how to change the way I’ve been thinking. Like wanting you to say you‘re gay so I’d know we could uh… mess around with each other tonight. But there’s things that still don’t make any sense to me.”

“Like what?”

“Okay, here’s a scenario. Let’s say I’m gay. I think you’re cute so I want to make out. If you’d told me you’re gay, that makes it easy for me to walk up to you and ask you if we can make out.” I could feel that I was blushing.

“In your scenario you know I’m gay, why do you think I’m gonna be interested in making out with you? Just because we’re both gay and you want to? I don’t think so. I’d want us to take each other out on a couple of dates or three or four so we can find out if we like each other. Then some time, in the future, maybe we’ll both be interested in making out.”

“Oh. I see. You’re right. But in my scenario let's say I don’t know if you’re gay and I ask you out on a date, why wouldn’t I get slugged?”

“Think about this, David. You ask guys out on dates all the time already.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding!”

“You call a friend and say, ‘You want to see a flick Saturday?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, what do you want to see?’ and there you go, you’ve asked him to go out on a date. Simple. But notice that the guy you call is your friend. He’s someone you’ve gotten to know, and you’ve become friends.”

I looked at Carson. He stood there grinning, his head cocked a little to one side, his eyebrows raised like he was questioning me.

“I never thought about it that way. But if I said, ‘Hey, you want to go out on a date?’ he’d probably slug me.”

“If he’s your friend and he isn’t gay or he’s isn’t interested he’d laugh and say something about you being desperate. If he’s your friend and he is gay or he’s interested he’d say something like, ‘David, you mean a real date, you and me?’ That’s because things are changing and guys our age are changing.”

“Yeah, sure. Guys are going to change. As if!”

“It’s happening, David. It really is. At my school, and I think at your school too.”

“Maybe. But that seems something that would be dangerous to test. I could lose a friend, or get slugged.”

“Or go out on a date.”

“Okay, you’re probably right. So I guess I’ve gotta agree with you. I just don’t want to get slugged or outed at school.”

As we walked I thought about what Carson had said about guys dating. All of a sudden it was like a lighbulb turned on in my head.

“Hey, I just realize that what you said about going out on a date is going to happen for me. And I’ll tell you why.” I grinned and didn’t say anything.

“Well, tell me why.”

“Because the one guy I’d ask out on a date is standing right here talking to me.” I grabbed his shoulders, leaned in, and kissed him on the lips. When I pulled back we both busted up laughing.