My Carolina

At the time, I let myself blame the booze. We were five hours into a big bottle of gin, rolling around on Mother's persian rug. We had reached that point of perfect exhaustion where the entire world and everything in it becomes hysterically absurd. We couldn't stop laughing about his stupid cat and how much it hates purses. He, I think it was him, he put an arm, or let an arm fall on me and... Well at the time I blamed the booze, but now I know. I kissed my first boy. I was seventeen and lying under a black coffee-table when I fell in love.

In time, we did all sorts of unmentionable things to each other at the country club. It was easiest to meet there without attracting suspicion. We'd sneak away from our families and find some hidden, secret place. Even now, when I pass those little changing booths by the pool, I can't help but feel a faint stirring. I know it's awful to suggest, and I certainly don't miss those ignorant, hateful days, but there was something incredible about the danger. North Carolina at the time, though it's not much better now, was a hostile sort of place. Everyone was angry, but no one ever said anything. Maybe they didn't know how, or didn't know any better. They were just angry and couldn't do a thing about it. I don't know if it helped much, but every now and then some boys would go lynch a faggot and everyone seemed to feel better for a day or two. He and I would crowd into a changing booth and he'd stand on the changing bench, so the people passing by would only see one pair of feet. And we'd have to be quiet in there. Oh, that certainly helped. Biting our lips and whimpering, pressing each other up against the rough wooden walls. It was a long time ago. Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else.

That August, we spent a whole two weeks together. Mother kept a boathouse on a lake in Georgia. She didn't have the time to wrap it up for fall, so she sent me off. "Take your time, dear," she slurred over her cocktail, waving me toward the keys, "Bring a friend, have fun," I wondered if she knew, or somehow consented, even encouraged me. I never asked, and I suppose it never mattered. I had my love, a quiet lake, a small cottage. It must be trite to call it paradise, but to a young man... Ah well, I beg you forgive an old man his follies.

I'd like to end the story in proper dramatic fashion. I could paint such a picture of my love slung to the back of a truck and dragged through the night until there was hardly enough to bury. Or perhaps we are discovered entwined and he sends me a tear-stained letter before hanging himself, or vanishing on a train with whatever he could steal from his family to invent himself a whole new self on the other side of the country. But this would all be flattery. The truth is, as truth should be, pathetic.

Toward the end of our two weeks by the lake, he grew cold. On the drive back to Carolina, he wouldn't even look at me. He stopped answering my calls, and turned up a month later with some picture. He nearly shoved it in my face, some girl, his girl. What could I say? He told me he was happy, but he looked so angry. "That's that," he said. And that was it.

Oh I made a big fuss about it at the time, but that passed. I was an old man before I found love again, though... Well, if there's a lesson, it is that there is love to be found in life. It's the same sort of thing in every story. It's what stories are all about. It is the only story.