AND so we fell into a bit of a pattern. Bill had basketball or track practice three nights a week after school, so we couldn’t get together every night, but on the two nights when he wasn’t obligated to something already, he came over to my house. On Tuesdays my mom was usually out, but she was always there on Thursdays so it was more difficult for us to have any intense personal time with her always popping up to ask a question about whether Bill liked a particular food or wanted his steak rare, medium, or well done. I wanted to scream at her after one particularly poorly timed interruption.
I finally remembered to ask Bill for his cell phone number and e-mail address and was shocked to hear that he didn’t have either. Was that even allowed? Was a teenager in America allowed to be seen in public without a smartphone—or even a dumb phone? And even my grandmother had an e-mail address. What was with that? When I pushed him on the issue, Bill told me they didn’t have a computer at home, that his dad wouldn’t allow any of his hard-earned money to be wasted on something he didn’t understand. His dad sounded like a real winner.
I had both a desktop computer and a laptop computer. Actually, I had two laptops since I had gotten a new MacBook Air for Christmas the previous December. And there was nothing at all wrong with my previous laptop. It was bigger and weighed more but otherwise it worked fine. I started to wonder if I should give it, or loan it, to Bill so that he could have Internet access and be able to e-mail me and keep in touch when we weren’t able to be together physically. But I didn’t know how he could get Internet access from way back in the hills where he lived. If his dad wouldn’t even allow a computer in the house, he certainly didn’t sound like he would be eager to pay for Internet access. I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t buy it for him. Not to mention the entire issue of how to get it past Bill’s dad without him seeing and questioning.
After mulling—no, stewing—over the problem for one night I had an idea, albeit not a perfect one, but an idea nonetheless. Like every other teenager in America—aside from Bill, that is—I had a cell phone. Actually, so did my dad and so did my mom, although she didn’t carry hers and didn’t ever use it. To the best of my knowledge, hers still sat in its original box in the closet. Dad had only gotten three phones with three lines because he got a package deal that he thought was a good deal. It probably wasn’t, but at the moment, I didn’t care because it gave me an option I didn’t have previously.
That night after my parents went to bed, I went to the closet in question and found what I was after. As I had expected, I found the box, still in the bag from the store in fact, with the phone completely untouched. Taking it to my room I opened the box. The phone was identical to the one both my dad and I carried and used. I just didn’t have that many people I needed, or wanted, to call, so I used mine more for games and Internet access from school.
A few hours on the charger and the third phone was powered up and good to start doing all kinds of phone stuff. I tested it out to be sure I had the correct number for the phone. I hoped that the ringing didn’t wake up my parents, even though I caught it very quickly and silenced it almost immediately.
Even though by that point it was getting late and I needed to get to bed, I poked around the Internet a little bit to find a good, innocuous place to set up basically a couple of dummy e-mail addresses. I chose absolutely generic, nondescript addresses, something with seemingly random characters and letters at whatever domain name I found first. I set up a simple password for each and wrote a simple text file with the basic information on how to access the account. I also programmed my cell number and home number into the phone but also gave them utterly nondescript identifications, something like Nv1967a, which to the best of my knowledge had no relevance to anything real. It wasn’t part of anybody’s address. It wasn’t part of anybody’s birthday. It wasn’t anyone’s name. If the phone fell into enemy hands, I wanted to be sure that both Bill’s and my identity would be safe.
It was such a pain having to hide everything about who and what you were just to survive and having to go through such total subterfuge just to be able to send a friend an e-mail or a text message or to be able to call them. Not for the first time, I dearly wished that the world, even for a day, could flip so that being gay was the normal thing and being straight was seen as “wrong.” I’d like to see how all of those supposedly tough guys reacted if they had to hide a core part of their very beings, a core part of their identities, from all the world and live a fictitious life just so no one else could ever guess who they really were. I’d like to see them try to live that life and survive, let alone be happy. If I had a magic button that would allow that switch to happen, I think I’d push it in a heartbeat just to let the bullies get a taste of their own medicine for even twenty-four hours. I’d like to see them be the minority, for them to be the scared ones, for them to be forced to live a lie. That night I fell asleep with that thought, feeling both pleased and down about the idea.
The next morning, I planned to pass the phone to Bill and tell him what I was doing and why. When the time came to leave the house, I hesitated, not knowing how in the world I should make the pass, so to speak. How could I hand something to him without the world noticing and asking questions?
At the last minute, just before leaving for school, I took the phone out of its original packaging and carried it in my backpack without the original box. A simple iPhone was a lot easier to pass to somebody without attracting too much attention if it was just the phone and not the phone in its original box, even though it was an artsy, tasty box that someone had spent a fortune to design. I’d give him the box later. I had to get the phone in his hands first and then quickly tell him how I thought it would all work.
Fortuitously, I happened to pass Bill in the hallway early in the day. I took a chance and said, “I need to talk to you sometime today.” I didn’t elaborate. At lunchtime we could eat in the cafeteria or go outside anywhere on the grounds of the school. If you were willing to push it, you could even walk just off the school grounds to the local McDonald’s, but only people with money did that. I didn’t fall into their camp.
Bill and I agreed to meet at lunchtime and go outside. Our cold weather had warmed up a fair amount, and the snow we had gotten was now mostly gone. If the snow was still on the ground we’d have been severely limited in our options. Leaving the building by separate doors and taking separate routes to a remote part of the “campus,” I arrived first and waited for Bill. He arrived looking all around like I had to make sure that no one saw us together doing anything questionable.
“What’s up?” he asked.
I quickly pulled the phone out of my pocket and shoved it toward him. I answered his questioning look with a quick explanation of what I had in mind. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or pissed. Remind me never to play poker with the man. What the hell was he thinking?
He looked down for a moment. His hand was touching and feeling the smoothness of the telephone I had given him. When he looked up, he didn’t have to say a word—there was a tear in his eye. I had all I could do not to just reach out and throw my arms around him. I cursed the world for making a circumstance where I couldn’t offer even a friendly gesture without causing massive chaos and upset. I so wanted to simply reach across the space between us and simply wipe the tear from his eye. But the rules of our society prohibited that.
“It might appear to be generous, but it’s actually quite selfish. I’m loaning you this phone because I want more of you than I can have at the moment.” Looking around quickly to make sure that we were still alone, I said, “I want to be able to sleep with you every night. I want to be able to lick you on that spot on your neck that makes you arch your back each time. I want to practice making your eyes roll back in your head. And I want to just lie in bed in the dark next to you. I want to lie with my head on your chest and simply listen to your heartbeat. We can’t do those things right now, so I’m trying to find something we can use as a temporary substitute until we find a way to do the other things. So, I’m doing this because I’m selfish.”
Bill gave me a tiny hint of a smile. “You’re very special to me. Please know that.”
“Ditto,” I said.
“Ditto? Ditto?” he joked. “How romantic is that?”
“You want romance, press 3 now.”
We shared a laugh. By the time I gave him a crash course in how the phone worked and how to text or e-mail or call, we were both freezing our cojones off and needed to get inside. It might have warmed up enough to melt the snow, but it was nowhere near summertime warm temperatures.