Boys, Girls, and Others
Oscar Martel’s Boys, Girls, and Others was the second runner-up in the secondary schools category of the Sunday Star-Times short story competition. One judge described it as a ‘heartfelt and humorous tale about a guy who is secretly in love with his best
The aggressively cliched ‘60s sock hop dance was in half an hour, and I wasn’t going to get out of bed. Even though my date is here – looking stunning, and she knows it, and even though my best friend is here.
The maths department had been teaching us to dance, having realised that, now level two exams were finished, we didn’t care about their lessons – we stuck around to see who we could kiss. He can get any girl he wants. Not that I’m jealous, mind, but it gets a bit tiring when your best friend has been with three girls in as many weeks when you couldn’t even talk to Clair to ask her out to coffee. Clair who I wasn’t sure if I even liked, and I know she doesn’t like me. It’s a problem, but if I’m going to be normal then I needed to get a girlfriend.
He’s my best friend. He’s been my ride or die since kindergarten, and I love him as much as straight guys can love each other. I was pretty sure that she likes him better than me, even if just as a friend. I couldn’t blame her, if I was honest. Even I was jealous of his physique. If I was a girl, I’d be crazy for his dark eyes, for his muscular shoulders, for his jawline sharp enough to cut your finger on. I couldn’t blame him for the way his thick, golden hair framed his tanned face, the stubble just starting to sprout along the bottom of his jaw. Legitimate stubble, thick and tough like prickles in the grass. The way he threw his head back when he laughed and his gleaming skin caught the sun, the bulge and bob of his Adam’s apple, the slight smirk when he knew that someone’s wrong.
But I wasn’t a girl, so I wasn’t to be attracted to him. Simple maths. The singular gay guy at school, Jamie, tall and skinny and hung out with all the popular girls. He wore tight button-up tucked into his pants and had – I swear on the Bible – a beaded purse swinging from his arm. He was all fake smiles and giggles as the popular girls fawn over him and drop him as soon as their next fake-woke fetish comes along. I was not like that.
I was as straight as the rulers that my maths teacher uses. That cute teacher with the dark skin and lazy American drawl. He was buff and wore glasses and tight, black, jeans. Just because I had an appreciation of the male form, did not mean that I’m. . . like that. I was just jealous because the hot guys could get any girl they wanted and I was stuck behind Harry and his latest chick.
Girls are so pretty with their . . . you know . . . butts or whatever.
I sighed, sitting up and poking my cheek in the mirror. I’m no Leonardo DiCaprio, or Brendon Urie, or Dwayne Johnson, or Orlando Bloom, but I’m far from a Quasimodo. I’m decent, I guess. Somewhere in the middle, sickeningly average. I got good grades, I was middle-of-the-road popular, and I had a job at Subway. I was nothing more or less than what I want to be, an ordinary – straight – guy.
Clair knocked on the doorframe. She looked great. Her silver dress melted off her curves, embroidered pink flowers dancing up the semitranslucent bodice. Her dark, frizzy hair was
If a middle class 40-year-old woman who thought she was ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ had projectile vomited a sock hop Pinterest board through the school hall ... she would have found something like our school dance.
knotted into an elaborate bun, her lips stained dark red and her eyes thick with makeup. She smiled and blushed. I was wearing my cousin’s secondhand tux that was too wide around the shoulders, my hair had been done by my mother.
‘‘You look. . .’’ I gestured to her with my hands. ‘‘Awesome.’’ She glanced down her body, blushing. As though she didn’t know how amazing she looked. I inhaled. This night was going to end with drunken sex. She was pretty, sure, but. . . I blushed back at her, mostly because it felt like the right thing to do.
‘‘You both look amazing!’’ He walked in, knocking Clair’s shoulder with his own and winking at me. My armpits were sweating under the several layers of my suit. Because I was so excited. It was nothing to do with his tragically well-fitted suit, his hair slicked back, the chipped, black, nail polish on his fingers, nothing to do with the way that his thumb hooked into a belt loop – ‘‘Are you checking me out?’’ Yes, that was the way to go. Gay jokes, because I was Typical Straight Man. Straight boys made gay jokes, right? I needed to prove to Clair that I was straight enough, and then we could date and prove to everyone that I was normal.
‘‘No.’’ Harry snorted at me. ‘‘That’d be gay, bro.’’ ‘‘Yeah. I’m not gay.’’ I shifted my feet. ‘‘Ha. Um. Gay.’’
‘‘I’m bisexual.’’ Clair shrugged. Oh. This was awkward.
‘‘Oh.’’ Should I make a joke about threesomes? No, she’d think that was crass and Harry would think I was homophobic. I might be. Lots of straight people were homophobic, no matter how much they thought they were allies. It didn’t matter.
‘‘Cool!’’ My voice cracked. ‘‘That’s awesome. It’s today’s world, we get over ourselves. But I’m totally straight, 100 per cent, absolutely, astonishingly straight. God, I’m just so straight. I love titties. So much. Couldn’t live without them. But I support you. That’s awesome. Not that you need my permission. Or approval. Or anyone’s approval. I’m straight. But-’’
Clair gave a forced laugh and glanced at Harry. ‘‘Let’s. Um. Go downstairs.’’
The prom photos had already been taken, tortuous and awkward and filled with groping hands and flashing lights. Hands there, look here, don’t do that, smile, smile, smile, click, click, click.
The good mood was infectious. My mother was driving us all in her suburban Toyota, with Harry in the front making small talk and Clair and me in the back. Clair shifted in her seat so that her purse fell open. Inside was a metal water bottle, and I had no doubt as to its contents. Harry laughed about the weather and told jokes. I was silent.
If a middle class 40-year-old woman who thought she was ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ had projectile vomited a sock hop Pinterest board through the entire school hall and sprinkled every hidden corner with a good helping of horny, drunk, teenagers making out, she would have found something like our school dance.
My mum snapped out pictures again as we got out of the car, all linking arms with me in the middle. Music pulsed out of the open double doors of the hall, light spilling down the stairs. Clair tossed her head and laughed at some friends, Harry excused himself to go and find his date – a pretty, shy, girl called Sylvee.
I could smell Clair’s perfume, alcohol, masking the hand-sanitiser-and-old-person scent of every school hall. She laughed again, bumping her hip into mine and kissing my cheek.
We stepped through the doors into the teenage dream. Everyone, from footballers to nerds, were wearing their best clothes. Jamie had brought his much older boyfriend from a different school and they were both being mobbed by popular girls wearing expensive dresses. They both looked uncomfortable.
Clair waved at the group clustered around their token gay-boys and we drifted over to them. I glanced around, fidgeting with my cufflinks as she was enveloped in a perfumed cloud of high-pitched squeals about how good we both looked. Jamie watched me. I glared at him. I wasn’t like him.
Harry returned to us, Sylvee holding his hand. Something sparked in my gut as he leant over to kiss her cheek, he liked her a lot. He glanced up at me, the corner of his mouth twitching up. My gut twisted.
Not gay.
‘‘Alright, boys and girls!’’ The voice sounded like a 12-year-old trying to impersonate Tim Storms. ‘‘Are you ready to PARTAY.’’ It was cringe-worthy. The DJ didn’t wait for an affirmative roar, he played a record scratching sound and launched into dubstep so awful I thought my ears would bleed.
Clair laughed and grabbed my hand, and the hand of the girl beside her. The entire group spun onto the small dancefloor, bobbing our heads and shaking our hips in the way that we were supposed to.
A cup of punch had appeared in Harry’s hand and he tipped it back. Lights flashed over his face, catching his golden skin. His hair bounced, he lifted on the balls of his feet. His lips parted with a laugh.
Clair pulled me around to look at her. Her hair had pulled free of its tight knot and was bouncing around her head, dark and bouncing. Her dark skin shone under the colourful lights, she ran her hands down her sides and hips and grabbed my waist. She was just taller than me, so she had to lean down to kiss me. Her breath was hot on my face, full lips brushed mine. I pulled away. ‘‘Sorry!’’
I was running before I knew what I was doing. My shoe caught on the bottom of my pant-leg and I almost tripped, stumbling into a group of juniors. They shoved back. Lights pulsed behind my eyes, the beat seemed to fill my chest until it was ready to burst — I shoved open the door to the bathroom and slumped down into a stall. The toilet paper was rough and scratchy, like sandpaper on my cheeks. My chest heaved with sobs that didn’t make sense. Why was I crying? She’d tried to kiss me. And I’d fled.
I wasn’t like that. Please, God, I wasn’t like that. Harry throwing his head back, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The curve of his shoulder as he hunched on my bed, his twitching, shy, smile. How he wasn’t so strong, so silent, so cool when it was just him and me and our history. The way that he tugged on the front of his hair when he was nervous. He was tugging on it now, and his eyes were red.
‘‘Go away,’’ I muttered. I didn’t want him seeing me now, hunched on a toilet sobbing at my prom because a girl had tried to kiss me. But he was crying as well. I passed him a wad of sandpaper. He reached for my hand. I took it.
I knew every part of his hands, every tiny nick, scar, and callous. I knew about the time he’d sliced open the pad of his thumb when he was trying to cut a branch, I’d cut my thumb and pressed mine to his to create a blood pact between us.
His hands were shaking, his shoulders heaved. There was saliva stringing his lips together. ‘‘I’m sorry.’’
The stall was so narrow that our chests were almost touching. He reached out and locked the door. Our own private universe.
‘‘For what?’’
He didn’t reply. Tears stained his collar, oozing down his cheeks in silent floods. I wasn’t any better. I wiped my eye on my sleeve. Harry took a shuddering breath.
‘‘Aaron.’’ My name sounded strange, halfwhispered, hoarse and full of hope.
I wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that.
So why was I leaning in? Why were my hands on his hips, why was I closing the gap between us? Why was my stomach on fire, why was he bending down to me, our bodies pressed together?
Why did it feel so right to be kissing Harry, kissing my best friend? Kissing the boy that I had loved my entire life, the boy who I had been through everything with, why did I want to kiss him forever and never stop?
We moved apart at the same moment, our lips centimetres apart. His breath smelt like fruit and the peanut butter that he was always eating. He reached up and ran his hands through the front of his hair.
I smiled.