Chapter 19
My heartbeat slows down a bit as we roll up on the scooter to the heart of the Marais. The quaint, hip neighborhood is the charming center of queer bars and restaurants in Paris.
We survived our scooter ride, but now I’m anxious about all sorts of new things.
Even so late at night, the bar block by Rue Vieille-du-Temple is jam-packed with queer people—a majority gay men, and all have made some sort of effort in dressing up.
There are the modelesque guys in silver loafers, the hairy dudes in leather harnesses, the well-manicured guys in see-through mesh tank tops, and the cool-casual guys in oversized sweatshirts.
A few are wearing full faces of makeup, some just a little, some not at all.
The air is thick with cologne and body odor.
The pulsing beats from different clubs and parties shake the ground and compete against each other to take over the noise.
“Can we walk a lap before we go inside the club?” I ask Tyler, my stomach roiling.
“Sure, Ben,” says Tyler, totally at ease. “Nervous?”
He kicks the kickstand of the scooter and leaves it perched at the curb.
The top of the seat opens like a hinge, and we stow both our helmets in the compartment.
The Hotel Ritz concierge told us that there’s a tracker in the scooter, so the rental company will pick it up anywhere in the city by the morning.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s my first gay bar,” I tell Tyler as we walk away from “our” scooter. “I guess I get a little anxious in gay spaces sometimes.”
“That totally makes sense,” says Tyler. “They can be a lot.”
We start our loop around the block. The sidewalks are busy, but the streets of the Marais are light on cars this time of night.
The crosswalks are painted the colors of the Progress flag.
People treat the pavement like an open town square, groups of gays running into each other and calling out names with familiarity.
Cédric, qu’est-ce que tu portes? Fabien, attends-moi!
On the one hand, I so want to be part of this gay village.
It feels like a magical-unicorn small town of queers nestled right in the heart of Paris.
From my research before the trip, I learned that the Marais became the gay haven it is now because it used to be a neglected part of town where no one else wanted to be up until the 1970s.
Now it’s neon-colored and bougie. Restaurants like Tata Burger and a wild, tropical-themed hot spot called Club Banana are intermingled with high-end boutiques that are closed for the night.
I feel so ordinary compared to all of it—I’m built to blend in with suburban strip malls and American Eagle.
Here, I feel like a plain gray pigeon amid a flock of peacocks.
“You’ve mentioned that you haven’t always felt welcome in the LGBTQIA+ Alliance at school,” says Tyler as we shoulder our way through the throngs.
“I love parts of it,” I explain, having to shout over the crowd.
“I’ve made some good friends through it.
And I love that there’s real progress at Sandy Springs High …
I heard from some alumni that even five years ago, there was so much controversy about just being allowed to start a gay-straight alliance.
But now it’s the biggest club in the school, and I love that we elected our first trans president for next year, Alyson Weir. ”
“I love Alyson,” agrees Tyler. “I can’t wait to work with her.” Tyler detects a shift in my energy and adds, “I voted for you, by the way. Both times. Obviously.”
I smile, even though I’m still a little bitter about losing my election for alliance secretary to Topher Willis in February after a runoff, while Tyler coasted to his landslide victory for vice president.
“Thanks,” I say. “Although I have to admit—I didn’t vote for you for vice president. I voted for Chandra Hatchett.”
Tyler chuckles. “I voted for Chandra, too.”
“I was impressed by your speech, though,” I say.
I don’t recall everything he said so much as his confidence as he stood on the stage, his hair combed a little neater than usual.
He made a self-deprecating joke to open, something along the lines of, Let’s get this out of the way—yes, I know I look like a Republican congressman, which got a big laugh.
From there, he talked about how he’d grown up being bullied, and he’d use his privilege now to prevent that from happening to anyone else.
I didn’t realize until now that the bully he was talking about was his dad.
“Oh, please,” says Tyler, waving his hand dismissively, “your speech was amazing. What you said about wanting to make the alliance more like the safe space every queer kid grows up fantasizing about … it was really inspiring.”
My face goes warm. “Thanks. But I guess my speech was a little too abstract. I mean, Topher Willis promised that his cousin in Los Angeles knows Troye Sivan and could get him to perform at Queer Prom next year. I couldn’t compete with that.” I laugh, but Tyler doesn’t laugh with me.
“Topher Willis is a complete and utter pet de dinosaure—‘dinosaur fart’,” spits Tyler. (For once, I’m grateful Tyler translated himself.) “I bet it’s guys like Topher Willis who ruin the alliance for you.”
“I mean, yeah,” I admit. “I’ve been sort of jaded by the whole thing.
I thought the alliance would be some kind of queer utopia—it’s a big reason why I came out when I did, because I was in such a hurry to join.
I shouldn’t be so surprised—it is still Georgia—but I didn’t expect just how much of the bullshit of mainstream straight culture carried right over into the queer world.
I mean, Alyson Weir is the exception, not the rule.
The same types of cliques seem to call all the shots.
I’ve felt it ever since I started, but it really got confirmed for me in December … ”
Tyler has his head ducked close to me as he listens carefully. “Tell me more,” he says.
I’m not sure I want to tell him about what happened at the Alliance Holiday Bash. Even though my brain knows I did nothing wrong, it still fills me up inside with shame to remember it. But this is my oldest friend, I remind myself. And I know he’ll be on my side.
I start talking, and remembering.
It was the night Lucas and I kissed under the mistletoe in the Sandy Springs High gym.
As we slow-danced to “My Grown Up Christmas List” by Kelly Clarkson, I gazed into Lucas’s pretty eyes and felt, for the first time since I came out, that I was totally where I needed to be.
At the two Alliance Holiday Bashes before this, Ashley and her boyfriend, Derrick, were nice enough to come so I could be their third wheel and I wouldn’t have to come by myself.
But now that I was here with Lucas, everything felt right.
I didn’t wish I were in some movie instead.
(Although the decorations—the metallic Christmas trees in every color of the rainbow, the glittery snowflakes floating around us, the disco menorah on the snack table—did remind me of The Magic Christmas Snow Globe, a movie where the main character got knocked out by a snow globe on a high shelf while working her job at a big-box store and was magically transported to a town where it was Christmas year-round, and where she fell in love with a sexy lumberjack who worked on a Christmas tree farm. Anyway.)
“You are on the top of my grown-up Christmas list,” I told Lucas as we danced.
“That’s funny,” said Lucas. “Because all I want for Christmas is you.”
And then we kissed. For a long time. And it didn’t matter that we were kissing in the middle of a crowded room, because it was our party.
It was perfect—a rare scene in life that was better than the fantasy. But like all amazing nights, it had to come to an end.
The end came sooner than expected. Brittany Johanssen started trying to get the entire crowd to do a choreographed dance to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.
” Lucas is more introverted than I am, and that was his signal that he’d hit his wall with big groups, so we each texted our rides—I texted Mom; he texted his older brother Vu—and we went out to the bleachers outside the gym to wait.
And make out, of course. Making out is proven to be one of the most efficient ways to stay warm, which was important because it was freezing out, and we were wearing matching imitation-velvet Christmas sweaters we’d found at Value Village.
We were alone at the very top of the bleachers as the music thumped inside—the bass line of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” slaps surprisingly hard—when we heard stifled giggles from beneath us.
“Yeah, give me some of that nog,” slurred a deep, laughing voice.
“This is strong,” said another voice.
It was Topher Willis and his gaggle of gay jocks—Jonah Cowles, Brock Krehmeyer, and Danny Meltzer.
Despite the freezing December weather, they were all wearing red sleeveless tops and short-shorts as part of their “Thirst Trap Santa” outfits—although they really just looked like overgrown elves, pretending not to be cold even as they visibly shivered in their fuzzy boots.
Lucas and I bit our lips to keep ourselves from laughing. Topher and his goons were almost directly underneath us, sharing a water bottle—a TANK Cup, in electric-blue steel, one of the most popular colors—full of their illicit spiked eggnog.
“Well, I’m gonna need this stuff to get through tonight,” said Topher Willis. “As a gay dude—key word, dude—it’s nights like this that make me homophobic.”
The other dudes guffawed in agreement.
Lucas and I looked at each other. Lucas made a gagging face, pointing his finger into his wide-open mouth. I rolled my eyes repeatedly, making myself dizzy. But we kept listening.
“I mean, what happened to actual masc gays?” Topher ranted on. “Are we the only ones?”
“Maybe we should all start dating each other,” chuckled Brock—or maybe it was Jonah. Their voices all sounded alike.