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2. Keep a towel nearby for coverage at all times.

  3. Be the first one in and out of the shower.

  4. Monitor the pitch of your voice.

  5. Run laps alone to avoid group sports.

  6. Don’t look anywhere you don’t have to.

  Number six was my biggest challenge: keeping my latitudinal gaze in check.

  The next day, after running laps for forty-five minutes, I found a small corner locker to change by. Just as I sat on the bench, a thickset eighteen-year-old with a husky voice and full, bushy pubes approached me from the shower.

  “Hey, dude. Are you using this locker?” he asked, his dewy genitals bouncing mere inches from my face as he towel-dried his hair.

  “No,” I answered in a low-pitched, testosterone-full croak, like a robot with a vocal modulation disorder.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  I stared as hard as I could into his eyes as he towered over me, which was probably creepier than if I’d just looked down and answered his dick directly.

  No, Mr. Penis. I am not using this locker. You and your pendulous, man-size testicles are welcome to use this locker if you wish.

  Creepy or not, my little manifesto was working. By carefully following my strict set of guidelines, I avoided all unnecessary human interaction. Sure, there were a few girls I’d chat with in class and a nerdy boy with weird teeth who’d talk to me in the library. But by October, outside of a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them interactions with acquaintances, I hadn’t made a single real friend. I was proud of myself.

  One day in October I was running laps when I heard Coach Allen blow the whistle. The coach had a head of pale yellow-white hair and a pinched, sunburned face. He looked like a bigger, sloppier John Madden.

  “Come on in, ladies!” he bellowed like a human foghorn, his bowling-ball belly hanging over his tight blue shorts. “Time to change out!”

  By that point, I had my locker-room process down to a science. After a quick armpit rinse followed by a towel-shielded change-out, I was done. Five minutes later I was walking back to the bleachers to wait for the bell before the other boys were even out of the shower. I felt pretty good about my process over the last few weeks and smiled, happy that I’d reached a whole new level of camouflage and solitude so quickly.

  And then I saw him.

  Near the top of the bleachers was a new boy. His hair was expertly moussed. His clothes were perfectly unwrinkled. He had clear, tan skin and a strong, square jaw. He wore Ray-Bans and stared down into a notebook. I couldn’t tell if he was reading or sleeping, but it was clear that he hadn’t broken a sweat in the last hour.

  I sat down a few feet away from him in my pale-blue polo shirt and tan slacks, dressed like a used-car dealer or someone’s stepfather. In his backpack I noticed the name Greg Brooks scrawled across the spine of a textbook. Greg was dressed like someone from television, in stylish acid-washed Guess jeans and a striped Cavaricci pullover. The boy sat as still as a marble sculpture, listening to his Sony Discman. It was the newish pale-gray model with orange control buttons that I’d been wanting for weeks.

  Hey, Greg. I’m David.

  I could imagine myself saying it, and almost hear the words coming out of my mouth. I cleared my throat and thought I saw his eyebrow flinch, which sent me into an anxiety hole. I had to talk to him. I took a deep breath and parted my lips just as the bell rang. Greg sprang to life and sprinted away with his backpack. He moved so quickly that it took my breath away, like everything he would do over the next few weeks. Every color-blocked ensemble, every slight variation in hairstyle and gelling technique, every pair of patterned socks peeking out beneath his smartly tapered jeans was impeccable.

  Each day at 2:20 p.m. I gathered the courage to attempt an introduction. And each day, just as I was about to speak, the damn bell would ring. I failed to see, of course, that the problem wasn’t the timing of the bell but my own confidence. The bell could’ve been late by five minutes or two hours or four weeks, and I still wouldn’t have spoken. If the bell never rang again I probably would’ve spent all of eternity in a panicked silence, unable to simply turn and say, Hello. I’m David.

  In lieu of speaking to Greg, I spent that fall trying an assortment of nonverbal ways to get his attention. In the bleachers I would cough extraloud to see if I could get him to flinch behind those black-lensed Ray-Bans. Was he even listening to music? I thought, straining to hear any sound coming from his headphones as I whooped and gagged. By the end of that week, my persistent hacking had convinced at least one person that I was deathly ill.

  “Take a hint, Typhoid Mary,” growled Coach Allen as he dumped a handful of Halls cough drops into my palm after gym. “You sound like you’re drilling for oil out there.”

  Every day, as fifty of us walked across the gymnasium floor to run laps outside, Greg stayed behind with a few other boys scattered in the bleachers. As the weather got chillier, the activities moved indoors. Throughout November, as I repeatedly failed to serve a volleyball correctly, Greg sat in the bleachers writing in his wire-bound notebook, somehow exempt from participation. What was wrong with Greg that kept him from physical activity? More important, what was wrong with me that I still couldn’t speak to him?

  The week before Thanksgiving break I tried a new tactic, using the Sony Discman my mom had just gotten me. It was the gray model with orange control buttons, just like Greg’s. I sat in front of him and made a point of jamming out extra-hard to my music, practically banging my head to Jody Watley’s “Looking for a New Love.” After roll call I made a huge production of putting the Discman away, delicately winding the headphones around it like I was swaddling a preemie.

  That’s just like my Discman! I imagined Greg thinking when he saw it. It’s a sign. I’ve gotta talk to this friendless, little typhus-ridden dude who dresses like a Mormon missionary.

  But nothing.

  Greg wasn’t so expressionless when I saw him in the courtyard with his friends, a group of cool boys who weren’t identified with any specific clique. They weren’t jocks, but they weren’t bookish. They weren’t alternative kids, but they weren’t quite preps, either. They wore clothes a bit more expensive than the ones my mom could afford: brown leather Bass shoes and fitted Guess jeans cuffed at the ankle, plaid Gap shirts tucked behind woven brown leather belts. My favorite thing about them was their scent, which was strong enough to let you know they were near before you saw them. They didn’t smell like all the Eternity-drenched athletes in the locker room. Their more obscure colognes smelled sweeter and spicier. Sitting downwind of Greg every day in the bleachers, I could smell the wondrous, manly musk of him behind me. I had to find that remarkable scent.

  In the mall on Black Friday I went to the magazine section of B. Dalton books, where I lingered until the register was so busy that no employees were on the floor. And then I began my research, looking through men’s magazines like GQ and Details for cologne samples. I checked over each shoulder to make sure no one was watching before I began to tear open the glued-down paper strips, quickly smearing my wrists, forearms, and elbow crooks with Escape, Joop!, Cool Water, and Drakkar Noir. I moved quickly from magazine to magazine, trying to remember which scent I had wiped on which part of my body.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I heard, and turned to see a small brunette wearing a name tag. I froze midsmear, with a copy of Esquire magazine pressed against my neck. “You know they’ll give you free samples at Dillard’s?” she asked with a grin.

  “Oh,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said, walking forward and patting my back. “Wanna know which one I love? All the boys are wearing it now.”

  She looked over either shoulder and pulled down a copy of Men’s Health. “It’s this one,” she said, tearing open the sample flap at the center. I lowered my face into the magazine and was suddenly overtaken by the exotic, musky scent of Greg Brooks.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, genu
inely grateful for another retail angel in my life.

  That day my mother bought me the fragrance—Fahrenheit. On Monday morning I sprayed loads of it on my neck and wrists, not wanting the scent to fade before fifth period. In gym class I sat in front of Greg and waited for him to say something. I imagined him tapping me on the shoulder to compliment me on my great scent, but nothing happened. Each morning I lathered on more and more Fahrenheit, oblivious to the absurdity of my plan: how would Greg be able to smell me over himself when we smelled the exact same way?

  By Friday morning the pungent tang of my own body made my eyes water.

  “You smell like a French whore,” gagged my mom as she rolled down the driver’s-seat window on the way to school. “Honey, too much scent is almost worse than none at all!”

  In gym class I sat down in front of Greg and waited expectantly for him to say something. After a few moments of silence, I decided to kick it up a notch. I began making big, exaggerated gestures as I took off my coat, hoping to fan my splendiferous odor in his direction. But nothing happened. So I made my movements even bigger, swooping my arms out wider and with more velocity. Within five seconds I was struggling violently with my coat, flapping like some great, crippled bird attempting flight.

  “Crabb!” yelled Coach. “What the hell? You got bees in your bonnet?”

  “Oh,” I stammered over scattered laughter. “My coat’s stuck.”

  “You look like you need the damn Jaws of Life up there!” Coach smiled mockingly as everyone laughed.

  “I got it,” Greg said as a hand clamped down on my sleeve. With one light tug it was over. Greg had not only talked to me, but touched me. Greg Brooks had . . . touched me.

  “Time to change, boys,” Coach yelled before focusing his gaze on me. “You think you’ll be able to Harry Houdini yourself outta that shirt, Crabb?”

  “Um, yes,” I whimpered as everyone jogged to the locker room.

  I turned to thank Greg but was confronted with his perfectly still, sunglasses-wrapped face, like a contemporary re-creation of The Thinker with more stylish hair and headphones. Could he hear me? Was he looking at me? Did he realize how perfect he was? There was no way to know. And, until I grew some balls, no way to tell him.

  By December, Greg still hadn’t changed out. And I still hadn’t really made any friends. As much as my manifesto was working, the isolation was starting to wear on me. Between classes I would look at other groups of kids in their cliques, laughing and whispering in the hallways. To an outsider looking in, their friendship configurations seemed obvious and dull. All the girls with a certain type of purse and blouse ate together in one area, while boys with long hair and rock-band T-shirts smoked cigarettes in another. In the parking lot, clean-shaven guys with big muscles and checkered shirts gathered around one car, while girls in matching school jackets carrying musical instruments rode away in another. There was no special science or deductive method required to figure out why people in high school had the friends they had. Reminding myself of that made it easier to judge them, and judging them made being alone feel easier. Friendships were basic and beneath me.

  But on certain days, in certain moods, it all looked so pleasant. I’d watch them cackling hysterically while reading a note by someone’s locker or giggling over a foot-long pizza-cheese strand in the cafeteria. Suddenly I’d think that no ill will or cruelty could exist in them. And in that brief instant I would doubt all the careful planning I’d done based on my fear and dread. For a split second I’d feel like a fool. But then I’d remember the dull thud of those heavy, brown leather books on either side of my skull and know that my manifesto was right.

  On the last day of school before Christmas break, while the gym class did indoor push-ups and jumping jacks, I watched Greg chat with a few other boys at the edge of the bleachers. The boys looked normal, but I assumed that they, like Greg, harbored some gruesome physical abnormalities that kept them from participating in class.

  As I started my set of one hundred push-ups, I considered each possible secret illness or malady. Perhaps, beneath all those fashionable clothes, Greg’s body was horribly deformed. After all, I’d never seen him shirtless or in a tank top. What if he had been in a fire that precisely disfigured his torso but somehow left the smooth, sinewy skin of his arms intact? Realizing I’d never seen him in shorts, I thought that maybe he’d lost his legs in a car accident. Under those perfectly fitted Girbaud jeans might be a complex system of steel rods and hydraulic joints, intricate prostheses that allowed Greg to walk but not run, jog, or jump. I imagined rubbing soothing salve into the burnt cheese pizza–skin of his chest while singing him to sleep at night. In the morning, he’d passionately kiss me good-bye after I WD-40ed the high-tech gears and pulleys of his squeaky RoboCop legs.

  Each deformity I imagined was more grotesque than the last, but it didn’t matter. I would love him regardless of his scabby foot-long tail, boil-covered penis, or swastika-shaped port-wine birthmark. I would love him for what was on the inside, as he would love me. Greg was gorgeous and effortlessly cool, and he smelled great. And one day he would be mine.

  Pushing my body off the ground for the ninety-ninth time, I peered with laser-focused intensity at my intended’s face, thinking, What could be wrong with someone who looks so perfect?

  “One hundred,” I groaned before lying flat on the ground. I raised my head up to the bleachers as rivulets of sweat stung my eyeballs, gazing at the length of Greg’s body flexing and twitching as he yawned.

  “Why are you lying there like a dead frog?” Coach Allen asked, his blinding white sneakers so close to my face I could smell them.

  “Just . . . need . . . one . . . minute . . .” I panted, breathing deeply and slowly against the red rubber mat beneath me.

  “Well, don’t be late, Crabb,” he grunted before shuffling away. I lingered on the gymnasium floor and closed my eyes, hoping that the unyielding boner beneath me would dissipate so I could stand up.

  Maybe I wasn’t quite ready to meet Greg. After the holidays, I told myself as the gym emptied. After the holidays.

  During some of the more painfully anxious years of my life, I would find solace in other peoples’ pets. In any situation around family or my parents’ friends in which I felt vulnerable to questions about sports and girlfriends, I would find the pet immediately and force every bit of my love and attention onto it. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent in my mom’s boyfriends’ backyards or my grandparents’ garage playing fetch or tug-of-war with a mutt. Parties with other kids my age were the worst, as they weren’t easily tricked like adults into thinking I was “normal.” Here I am taking solace with Whitney, the poodle of a seventeen-year-old girl named Michelle. I’m also taking solace in the third glass of wine cooler mixed with Sprite that Michelle snuck me at this party. I’m actually quite happy here. Even as an adult, “tipsy while holding a dog” is still one of my favorite states of being.

  CHAPTER 4

  I Want to Wake Up

  If Why don’t I like girls? was the controlling thought of my life in middle school, my high school brain was consumed by Why do I like boys?

  I asked myself this repeatedly, my gaze roaming up and down the length of his chiseled physique, his body so spectacular that I didn’t know where to focus. The ripples in his abdomen transfixed me. The magnificent striations in his upper thighs were stunning. There was also that beautiful space near the armpit where the muscles of his chest and arm merged, flexed from holding the weight of his body up against the giant wooden cross.

  “Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius,” hummed Father Carol, gassing our entire pew with incense fumes from his swinging thurible.

  “Oh dear,” my mother coughed, overcome by smoke, “it’s enough to knock you out. Isn’t it, Leonard?” She glanced around me to my father, who was so bored by Christmas Mass that he looked dead, like a pale, bald corpse propped up in his seat as a holiday prank.

  “Uh-huh,” he groaned as we proceeded to lip-sy
nc another hymn.

  Since their divorce when I was two, my parents had held on to the idea that their spending time together in my presence was good for me, regardless of their differences. My mother had grown up deeply embedded in the Catholic Church. She remained devout in an open-minded way that allowed for her other interests: metaphysics, exorcisms, and Shirley MacLaine books. Her esoteric hobbies were at odds with my dad’s interests in astronomy and fiber-optics.

  After Mass my father took us to Church’s Chicken for lunch, a prospect that appalled my mother.

  “Church’s?” she muttered as we arrived. “Fast food on Christmas Day?”

  Half an hour later we were gathered around a sad pile of cardboard and Styrofoam that sat atop a yellow linoleum table. My mother was not happy and, in a passive-aggressive fashion, made a big show of picking greasy bits of napkin off her manicure.

  “I guess it’s not about where you are but who you’re with,” she sighed with a Plasticine smile, sounding like she’d rather be anywhere else. I stayed quiet and gorged myself on drumsticks, again trying to soak up the tension in my bones with the food in my mouth.

  “You eat up, sweetie,” my mother encouraged. “You’ve gotten so skinny lately. Hasn’t he, Leonard?”

  My father nodded silently behind the reflective lenses of his sunglasses, which were lightly misted with mashed-potato steam. Mom continued to chatter on the way home, a nervous response to my dad’s silence that, ironically, only made things more tense.

  By the end of the day I was emotionally exhausted. I went to bed early but couldn’t stop thinking about Jesus, in the bad way. As I imagined dragging a moist cloth down the length of his torso, it occurred to me that maybe, instead of giving him a sexy sponge bath, I should ask him for help. So I closed my eyes and posed the simple question: Dear God, why do I like boys?

  I waited for an answer from on high until eventually I fell asleep, but I decided to keep at it. I started the new year praying all the time: in the car on the way to school, in the locker room after gym class, during my lunch break in the library. Sometimes I prayed in sync with my sinful thinking, asking Christ to heal my wayward soul while I watched Greg Brooks’s beautiful butt ascend the bleachers ahead of me.