Tony and I figure the best thing a straight boy with religious, intolerant parents can do for his love life is tell his parents he’s gay. Before Tony’s parents discovered he was gay they wouldn’t let him shake hands with a girl. Now if he mentions he’s doing something with a girl—any girl—they practically pimp him out the door.
Jay and I wait in a Laundromat parking lot a couple of blocks from Tony’s house. Tony tells his parents that he’s going on an outing with Mary Catherine Elizabeth from school. The ‘rents immediately have visions of Immaculate Connections and press spending cash into Tony’s hands. He leaves his house dressed for repressed flirtation. When he gets to the car, I throw him a duffel and he changes into some hiking gear. Jay drops us off at the local water supply reservation and we hit the mountain.
It’s not a mountain, really. Not in a Rockies or Appalachian sense. Any serious mountain climber would call it a hill. But Tony and I aren’t serious mountain climbers. We’re suburban teen gay boys who need a place with nature and walking paths. I relish the anonymity of the trees. I’ve been here so many times that I don’t mind when I’m lost.
I first came here with Tony. It’s his place, really. We’d been hanging around for a few weeks by then, grabbing movies and surfing the mall. He told me there was a place he wanted to show me, so one Friday after school I hopped over to his house and we walked an hour to get to this reservation. I had passed it a million times before, but I’d never been inside.
Tony knows the names of trees and birds. As we walk around, he points them out to me. I try to record them in my mind, but the information never holds. What matters to me is the emotional meaning of the objects. I still remember which rock we talked on the first time we came here. I always salute the tree I tried to climb on our fourth visit—and ended up nearly breaking my neck on. And then there’s the clearing.
Tony didn’t explain it to me right away. On our second or third visit, he pointed through a thatch of trees and said, “There’s a clearing in there.” A few times later, we poked our heads inside—sure enough, there was a patch of grass about the size of two trailers, guarded on all sides by branches, trunks, and leaves. It wasn’t until we’d been coming to the mountain for a month or two that Tony told me that he’d lived in the clearing for a week—the week after his parents found out he was gay. His mother had decided to swap his winter clothes for his summer clothes and went through his drawers while he was at school. She found a magazine folded into a flannel shirt—nothing raunchy, just an old issue of The Advocate that Tony had bought on one of his city trips. At first she didn’t understand—she thought The Advocate sounded like something a lawyer would read. Then she sat on his bed, opened up to the table of contents, and Tony’s secret wasn’t a secret anymore.
They didn’t kick Tony out of the house, but they made him want to leave. They didn’t yell at him—instead they prayed loudly, delivering all of their disappointment and rage and guilt to him in the form of an address to God. This was before he knew me, before he knew anyone who would take him in and tell him he was all right. So he kipped together a tent and some clothes and pitched his life in the clearing. He still went to school and let his parents know he was okay. Eventually, they reached a collect-call truce. He went back home and they promised to hold back their condemnation. Their prayers were quieter, but they still filled the air. Tony couldn’t trust them any longer—not with the gay part of his life. Now he keeps the few love notes he’s ever received in a box at Joni’s house, and borrows my magazines instead of buying his own. He can only do e-mail at school or a friend’s house; his family’s computer now screens its sites.
I know Tony still goes to the clearing every now and then, to think or to dream. I give it a silent salute every time we pass. We never sit down there together. I don’t want to trespass on his solitude—I want to be around when he chooses to step out of it.
“How are things with Noah?” he asks me now, as we set off on our hike. As usual, we have the path to ourselves.
“Good. I miss him.”
“Do you wish he was here now?”
“No.”
“Good.”
We walk a few more steps, then Tony asks, “So how are things with Kyle?” I love Tony dearly because there’s no judgment in this question.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I tell him. “He loved me, then he loved me not. Now he needs me. I’m sure pretty soon he’ll need me not.”
We walk along for a few minutes in silence. I know Tony hasn’t lost the subject, though.
“Are you sure that’s healthy?” he asks at last.
“I think it’s good he’s opening up,” I say.
“I don’t mean for him. I mean for you.”
I’m confused. “He’s the one asking for help. Why would it be unhealthy for me?”
Tony shrugs.
“The thing is, I’m not vulnerable this time,” I explain. “It doesn’t mean everything to me.”
“Did you know you were vulnerable last time?”
This one I can answer in confidence. “Yes. Of course. That’s what falling in love is all about.”
Tony sighs. “I wouldn’t know.”
The part of me that misses Noah right now has an equal part in Tony. The difference is that his longing doesn’t have a name or a face.
“Someday your prince will come,” I assure him.
“And the first thing I’m going to say to him is, ‘What took you so long?’”
We reach the mountain’s steepest incline. We pick up fallen branches to use as walking sticks—not because we really need them, but because it’s more fun to walk that way. We start talking in our own language (“Sasquan helderfigglebarth?” “Yeh sesta.” “Cumpsyl”), then stop when Tony hears a birdcall that interests him greatly. (The only birdcall I know is the Road Runner’s BEEP BEEP.)
Tony’s sights alight on the highest branches. I can’t see a thing, but after a moment, he looks very pleased.
“A bohunk. Not native to this area. But that makes it more mysterious.”
I nod. I can go for mysterious.
We continue walking.
“So what’s up with you?” I ask.
“Not much.”
“And how are things?”
“Fine.”
RRRRRRRRR. I make a loud game-show-buzzer noise. “I’m sorry,” I say, “we don’t recognize ‘fine’ as an acceptable answer. We see it as a conversational cop-out. So please, try again.”
Tony sighs again, but not that heavily. He knows he’s been snagged. If I ever say “fine” to him, he reacts the same way.
“I’ve actually been thinking about life lately, and this one image keeps coming to me,” he says. “Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there’s a DON’T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there’s always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don’t continue moving, it will all be over. That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I know I’ll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming.”
He gives me a low smile. “You know, sometimes I wish I had your life. But I’m sure I wouldn’t be much good at it.”
“I’m not that great at it myself.”
“You get by.”
“So do you.”
“I try.”
I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.
“You know I love you,” I say to Tony now, not for the first time. “You are really one of the greatest people I know.”
Tony can’t take a compliment, and here I am, giving him the best one I can give. He brushes it off, sweeping his hand to the side. But I know he’s heard it. I know he knows it.
“I’m glad we’re here,” he says.
We switch to another language—not our invented language or the language we’ve learned from our lives. As we walk further into the woods and up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us space to think and move. We can be both here and elsewhere at the same time.
I hit the peak with Tony and then we turn back around. I am conscious of this in my silence, but I am also conscious of Noah and Kyle at their different destinations, miles away. I am conscious of Joni, who is no doubt somewhere with Chuck, not getting any silence unless he permits it. (Is this an unfair thought? I’m truly not sure.)
I don’t know where Tony is while he’s with me—maybe he’s simply concentrating on the birdcalls and the slant of the sunlight, which hits through the trees in a pattern that decorates his arm with the space between leaves.
But maybe it’s more than that. As we get back to the main path, Tony turns to me and asks for a hug.
Now, I don’t believe in doing hugs halfway. I can’t stand people who try to hug without touching. A hug should be a full embrace—as I wrap my arms around Tony, I am not just holding him, but also trying to lift off his troubles for a moment so that the only thing he can feel is my presence, my support. He accepts this embrace and hugs me back. Then his posture raises an alarm—his back straightens out of the hug, his hands fall a little.
I look at his face and realize that he’s seen something behind me. I let go of him and turn to find two adults gawking.
“Tony?” the woman asks.
But she doesn’t really need to ask. She knows it’s Tony.
After all, she’s his mother’s best friend.