A few months ago, I ran into my friend Jason in the lobby of a theater moments before a play was set to start. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly eight years. He looked good: His once wiry boyish curls were now carefully tamed with product; his style was refined. He’d been in a healthy, committed relationship since his early twenties, while I was very single. We stared at each other for several moments. My feet felt rooted to the ground, stuck.
“Wow,” he said, planting an uneasy kiss on my cheek. “How have you been?”
“I’m good,” I replied, suddenly feeling like the awkward teenager I once was. I wondered what I must look like through his older eyes. Nervously I adjusted my fitted shirt and skinny jeans.
We paused, unsure how to proceed. It had all been said years ago.
I’m not sure why, but I always knew Jason was gay. It wasn’t because of his clothes or his attitude; it was more something I knew intuitively. We met in 1992 at New York’s High School of Performing Arts during our sophomore year. Our school was filled with teenagers who were more creatively than academically inclined. We embraced nonconformity, using our teenage bodies as a canvas: nipple rings, blue hair, oversized colorful jeans, mohawks, and T-shirts printed with witty slogans like “Fuck You for Staring” or “Phillies Cunt.”
As a sophomore, I would hang out in the halls with those who had decided that cutting classes—particularly the ones we didn’t excel at—was a much better way to spend our time than actually attending them.
“Mia gave that Star Trek freak she’s screwing a blow job in the hallway,” my friend Jessica would say while twirling a cigarette behind her ear and jonesing for the Special K she secretly snorted in the girls’ bathroom. “James saw them. He was so grossed out he wanted to hurl.”
“Did you hear about those juniors who drank each other’s blood? They think they’re vampires cause of that stupid movie. Fucking ’tards,” said Tom. He was clad in the motorcycle jacket his brother had run over twice with his car in order to achieve the perfect worn-in look.
“Mario from Aldini’s class is dating this really fat vocal-major girl. But, like, everyone but him knows he’s gay. What a closet case!” said Benjamin, a self-proclaimed expert at outing the kids who were decidedly in.
We all nodded, because usually Benjamin was right. The bell would ring and we scattered with great reluctance, not necessarily toward class, but away from the security guards who liked to bust us. We were already smart enough to realize that our future success would have nothing to do with passing earth science.
I could have cared less about who was gay or who wasn’t. My main extracurricular activity that year was scribbling my boyfriend Omar’s name with ink hearts on my three-ring binder. He was a junior, and was also my obsession during most of high school; during our turbulent relationship, we wore matching Columbia jackets and made out whenever possible. None of my friends could understand what I saw in him. My definition of friendship would soon change.
When we first met, Jason and I were immediately drawn to each other. Both theater majors, we ran into each other one evening while volunteering as ushers for a senior production of The Crucible.
“Hey, do you know the choreography for the dance test?” he asked.
“Most of it” was my response. I looked at him with curiosity, not quite sure what to expect from this kid I hardly knew. Drama majors were required to attend dance class once a week, though we never took it seriously until test time approached.
Failing dance was far worse than failing chemistry. It meant you were really stupid.
Five minutes later, Jason and I were grapevining down the hallways, making the most of our jazz hands. We didn’t stop talking until another usher shushed us.
“Oh my God,” Jason froze. “Did he? Just tell us? To shut up?”
“I know,” I said, attitude flaring, arms akimbo. “Who the fuck is he?” Peals of laughter followed, as we dared the dorky volunteer to reprimand us.
After that, we were inseparable. Jason was a fast-talking kid in retro bell-bottoms who was trying to turn his curly kinks into dreadlocks; a frizzy jet black–dyed mop with brown roots were the sad remains of his Jew-fro. I had recently chopped all my hair off and was finally liberated from the hours spent at the Brooklyn black hair salons. I wore red lipstick, baggy carpenter jeans that almost fell off my skinny frame, and plaid shirts bought for fifty cents at second-hand stores.
From the back, I was sometimes mistaken for a boy, but I dug it.
Jason and I were an odd couple; we didn’t look like we should be friends, at least not by the way we dressed. Both voyeurs, we liked nothing more than to sit back and watch the mechanics of life and comment on them, loudly.
“Look at her, the one walking with the pea coat and the bleached roots,” Jason pointed at a woman walking toward us as we sat on the steps of Lincoln Center. “She’s a total elitist in that fucked-up privileged American way.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, getting into the game. “She’s part of the system. She fucking eats it for breakfast. She’s…bourgeois,” I said, tasting the foreign word in my mouth.
Jason paused, an idea forming in his mind. “I dare you to say that to her.”
“Like, out loud?”
“Yeah. Bet she won’t even notice. I’ll do it with you.” Jason smiled and nodded.
Three counts later we both called out “Bourgeois!” to the poor woman in the pea coat, who looked back at us confused. For the rest of the afternoon we called out to anyone who fit our loose definition of bourgeois, and laughed at their baffled responses.
Jason and I were weird kids, though we thought we were slick adults. Together, arm in arm, we trolled the city. Or we watched the world pass us by. On doorsteps. In diners. Anywhere where life was happening, we’d pause, observe, and talk. We analyzed the relationships we saw happening around us (what people were wearing downtown as opposed to uptown) and discussed the cultural significance of Reservoir Dogs (the best cult film ever, in our opinion). We imagined the storylines of the films we would make together when we grew up—he would direct, I would write—and we pondered over where the funding would come from and which stars we’d cast. We’d continue our conversations on the phone late into the night, or at least until Jason’s mother told him to go to bed.
“Best friend” was the term he used, and I had to agree.
As close as Jason and I were, we still had boundaries. I was struggling with the lack of connection I felt to my family and used every opportunity to escape my liberal home. My parents had given me freedom at a time when I wanted rules, something I had always equated with love. The two of them were struggling artists; my mother was a talented visual artist masquerading as a housewife while my father was trained in theater but now taught in public schools. Raising three children and living from check to check had not been in their life plans, and their unhappiness was palpable. More than anything I longed to have straight-laced parents like the ones on television shows, parents like the Huxtables. Parents with two incomes who didn’t make their own clothes. Parents who didn’t resent the mundane direction in which their lives had gone. Parents who enjoyed being parents.
At dinnertime, my younger brothers and I would take our food into different rooms, each with televisions to tune out the silence. We would eat or (more often than not) not eat the spicy vegetarian meals prepared by my exhausted mother.
At home, I was filled with a loneliness that I couldn’t articulate.
At school, my red lipstick and attitude were all the armor I had to shield myself from being outed as the flawed, fucked-up kid I was. Jason understood my discomfort and never minded that our sleepovers were always at his house in Queens, where there was a well-stocked refrigerator, comfortable furniture, and his nurturing, if overbearing, mother. It felt like a genuine family experience, and I liked it. It didn’t bother him that I never wanted to talk about my folks. We both had secrets to hide.
Not once did I ever use the words gay and Jason in a sentence. My friend lived in an asexual space, though he was perfectly comfortable discussing sexuality, as long as it wasn’t his own. Who needed labels, anyway?
My boyfriend at the time, jealous of my nights spent with Jason, once said, “You know your friend’s a faggot, right?”
Though I quickly hung up on him, it was shocking that he could see what I thought was hidden.
A few months later, in acting class, a girl boldly said, “Jason, you’re gay, right?”
I stopped breathing, scared of what Jason would say and equally scared of what he wouldn’t say.
Jason replied in the negative, and the moment was over.
It was the first and only time that he blatantly lied about his sexuality, at least in front of me. But the idea of Jason coming out had started to fill me with a sense of dread, and I wasn’t sure why.
I didn’t think I was homophobic. My bohemian parents had changed their names and religion more than once. They let their children sleep on stiff futons and perched themselves on throw pillows in the living room instead of regular furniture. Our house was constantly filled with aging dancers, actors, and musicians who attempted to mask their fear of mediocre careers with the blissful sounds of African drumming and puffs of marijuana, a pungent smell I still associate with my childhood. There was no room for prejudices.
In the last few months of senior year, I finally broke things off with Omar, and was single for the first time. Jason was now the only successful relationship I had maintained with someone of the opposite sex. Because I couldn’t rely on my own, he had become my family. Slowly and naturally, Jason and I took up the space in each other’s lives that was usually reserved for a lover.
I was scared that if Jason came out, our relationship would have to change.
If he started dating, I didn’t know if there would be room for me. I wanted Jason to find love, but a tiny part of me wanted to find it first. And most of me wanted things to stay as they were for as long as possible.
On a sticky, hungover May morning, after the two of us had binged on Bacardi at a lame party in Staten Island, I was forced to confront my fears. The two of us were sprawled out on the orange plastic seats of the Staten Island Ferry. The murky water we were floating on smelled of garbage.
“Zakiyyah,” Jason spoke in a voice I had never heard before. “You’re one of my best friends. I’ve been trying to find the right time.”
Please, please, please, I thought, let me get out of this.
“I’m gay,” Jason said. “And I know this doesn’t really change anything. I mean, I hope it won’t. But I just, I needed you to know. From me.”
In his eyes, I saw the need for affirmation. What do you say when your best friend comes out to you? Congratulations? I’m scared that if we grow up right now we’ll never be able to be the kids that we once were? I want everything to stay the same for just a little while longer, at least until graduation?
Instead, I just mumbled, “Oh, okay.”
Jason smiled, relieved.
All the way home, he talked nonstop about how happy he was that I knew, and who he had to tell, and who he wasn’t telling and why. With a vague smile plastered to my face, I tried to listen as last night’s alcohol soured in my stomach. The ferry docked in Manhattan and we arrived in a much different place than we had started.
I quickly said good-bye and headed home.
In the days and weeks that followed, Jason did change. He was finally free to be a normal horny teenager who could verbalize his desires. It was unsettling (and later hysterical) to hear of his nightly fantasies starring Bruce Willis circa the Moonlighting years. The list of the guys he had hooked up with was revealed to me with fanfare. Jason had been living a secret life; finally I was privy to the details. I felt hurt to have been left out for so long. I had naively assumed that if he hadn’t been talking about being gay, he couldn’t have been doing anything particularly gay. Now, I had to get to know this new guy, someone who walked and talked like Jason but was different.
He was confident, self-assured, and much more experienced than I was. He was out.
That day in the theater, as I looked into Jason’s eyes for the first time in nearly a decade, I went back to the time we shared. We met each other somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, and for a short time, we were as close as two friends could be. Jason had needed someone to love him who wouldn’t question who he was; I needed the same thing. It was easier for me to receive this attention from a man, and easier for Jason to receive this love from a woman who wanted nothing but his friendship.
It was time to take our seats. I looked at Jason again.
“So,” he said, “where do we go from here?”