27
“Hey, everyone!”
Ben’s voice announced, saccharine sweet. “Well, we all know that I’ve tried to rise above everything and be the bigger person. I’m on my healing journey. I’m doing my best to be my best. For the last month or so, I’ve let things go in the interest of what’s best for my mental health. However, when it comes to making sure that you guys are also protected, I have to be strong and do what’s best. You guys know I love you all and wouldn’t want to keep information from you—especially information about how you’re being lied to, right?”
The picture under Ben on the screen was a somewhat fuzzy picture of two men, kissing under an awning outside of the Midway University bookstore in the rain. Theo and me.
“For months, a certain someone has been pretending he’s innocent and sweet, and just trying to live his life. I knew better—and all of you knew better. And when it was obvious he was cheating on his new boyfriend, I made a video, trying to warn his new boyfriend of what was happening. I didn’t even want to drag him into this mess. But instead of listening to the tea I was spilling, he decided to lie and tell you all that what we could all see with our own eyes wasn’t true. He said that he wasn’t even dating Theo, and tried to gaslight all of us. Well…does this look like two guys who aren’t dating?”
Ben gesture dramatically to the space in front of his chest where he’d inserted the picture in post-editing.
“It doesn’t to me, Ben said. “It very much looks like two guys who are very comfortable with each other. I don’t know about all of you, but I don’t kiss my friends like that. There are a lot of things I don’t do with my friends.”
The picture in front of his chest of Theo and me kissing was replaced by a picture of Theo and me asleep, snuggled up in my bed, oblivious to the world.
Ben gave a fake, amused sigh, then looked back into the camera.
“I guess this is all I will have to say,”
he continued. “Because this all speaks for itself. I didn’t want to have to do all of this and get messy, but you all had the right to know the truth. Theo has never been who he’s said he is. He’s never been the sweet guy who loves animals and wants to get to know you all so badly. He’s just another guy who cheats on his boyfriends, lies, and does whatever it takes to achieve his goals. I hope now, the world can see him for who he really is.”
And the video ended. I sighed, wringing my hands in my lap as I sat on the edge of the bed.
“The Devil comes in many forms,”
Arthur said suddenly, looking over the top of his phone at me. “And they’re all enticing.”
“What?”
I looked up at him.
“That boy is too damned cute to be an angel,”
Arthur said. “I could have told you he’s evil.”
I couldn’t help but give a wry smile and look back down at my lap.
“Don’t say anything nice about that piece of crap,” I said.
Arthur lowered the phone and laid it on the arm of his chair before crossing his legs and laying his hands in his lap.
“Is this why you haven’t come to see me for a whole month?” he asked.
“Sorry, Arhtur,”
I said. “It’s just…been a lot.”
“I can see that,”
he said, gesturing at his phone. “It must take a lot of effort to fight like a bunch of pussies in some made up place in the sky.”
Frowning, I looked over at him.
“Wh-what?”
He gestured vaguely. “The cloud. Whatever. I don’t know. All of you kids and your internet bullshit. Back in my day, you’d meet at the park and get five in the mouth. You didn’t make think pieces and run your mouth back and forth—you handled business.”
I stared at him.
Arthur leaned forward and returned my gaze.
“Go whoop that boy’s ass,”
he said calmly.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“First of all,”
I said, “violence solves nothing. Secondly, he’s across the country.”
“If an ass whoopin’ is worth giving, it’s worth buying a plane ticket to deliver it.”
I laughed again.
“Seriously, Arthur,”
I said. “I’m not going to whoop his ass.”
“And he’ll keep running his mouth then,”
Arthur said, waving a dismissive hand calmly in the air before him. “See how that works?”
“He’d just press charges and I’d have a criminal record anyway—and then he’d make a whole new series of videos about what a psycho I am,”
I explained.
“That’s how you kids are different,”
Arthur said. “It didn’t matter if you were whoopin’ or getting whooped back when. The cops didn’t get called. If you deserved the whoopin’, and the other person was mean enough to give it to you, you were expected to take it and shut the fuck up.”
I grinned at him.
“And, eventually, the mouth-runner stopped running their mouth,”
Arthur said. “Maybe the two of you eventually made up and moved on. But there wasn’t any of this back-and-forth shit.”
“You are feisty today,” I said.
“Well,”
Arthur sniffed, “that’s what happens when a friend abandons me for a month.”
My shoulders fell.
“I really am sorry, Arthur,”
I said. “I’m here now. It’s just…Theo won’t talk to me. Well, he’ll talk to me, but he won’t talk to me. He doesn’t come visit me in my dorm. He doesn’t sit with me in classes. We don’t get coffee together, study together, go eat in the dining hall together—nothing. For a whole month.”
He studied me for a moment.
“Were you two playing hide the sausage?”
He leaned forward and waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Arthur!”
He grinned and sat back.
“That’s what I thought,”
he said. “Those pictures in that video spoke for themselves. Not that I think it’s all that that boy said it was. I know you two getting together was recent.”
Rolling my eyes. “Yes. We started dating a week before that video came out. Kind of. I mean, we agreed to take things to the next level and…see how it went. But we weren’t at the…hiding the sausage stage.”
Arthur grinned wider.
“Well,”
he said, “why not? Theo’s cute. You’re cute. You’re both young. You’re both available. You get along. Why not?”
“We’d been dating for a week, Arthur!”
“Is that supposed to explain something to me?”
I threw my hands up.
“Fine, fine,”
Arthur said. “I’ll drop it. So, you weren’t getting in each other’s pants yet. I believe you. I don’t understand why not, but I believe you.”
“Good!”
I was exasperated.
Arthur smoothed the thighs of his pants and laid his hands back in his lap.
“I noticed a few of the comments on that video,”
Arthur said. “Seems like quite a few people were defending you and Theo. Telling that boy to mind his business?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. It’s not that—it’s not more bullying that’s the problem. I mean, some people have left mean comments, but mostly people just want the drama between Ben and Theo to end so everyone can move on. It’s not as entertaining anymore, I guess?”
Arthur lifted an eyebrow.
“But people are talking about it,”
I said. “People are making videos about Ben’s video. Giving their opinions. They’re leaving comments. They simply won’t let it die. And it feels like it’s the hundredth time this has happened since school started. I mean, for fuck’s sake, neither of us did anything wrong. We never lied. Theo isn’t the person Ben has made him out to be. Well, not completely. I can’t tell him not to be bitter about what Theo did to him, but none of the other stuff is true. He’s trying to make something out of absolutely nothing because he’s still bitter and just won’t move on! And I know who sent at least the picture of us in bed together to Ben. Collin! No one else would have been in our room while we were sleeping. But he’s been expertly avoiding me for the longest time, too. Anytime he sees me coming, he runs the other way. I’ve tried to catch him between classes to chew his ass out, but he runs for it.”
“I guess I understand why you won’t fly across the country to whoop that other boy,”
Arthur said calmly, “but what’s keeping you from beating the shit out of your roommate?”
Exasperated, I threw my hands up again and contemplated falling back on Arthur’s bed dramatically. Instead, I settled for a frustrated growl and twisting my hands through my hair.
“You have such lovely hair, Josh,”
Arthur said. “Don’t do anything that will make you go bald prematurely. You’ll be sorry when you’re my age.”
Chuckling, I pulled my hands from my hair.
“Good boy,”
Arthur said.
“Sorry,”
I said. “I’m just so fucking annoyed.”
Arthur made a noncommittal sound with his throat and watched me as I settled myself down. I patted my hair back into place, took a deep breath, and laid my hands in my lap. Finally, I looked back over at him, hoping I didn’t look crazed.
“I haven’t spoken to Theo in a month, either,”
Arthur said, trying to sound less accusatory. “Has he said why he won’t talk to you?”
I shrugged. “Kind of. When he will talk. His text responses are short and…formal? And when I find him around campus, he does everything he can to keep distance between us so no one sees us too close to each other.”
“And?”
“The only time he really said anything meaningful was when I went to his dorm and knocked until he answered the door,”
I said. “Which was a really cute look to everyone passing by in the hall and sniggering at me.”
Arthur shook his head. “What did he say?”
“He told me that he just couldn’t do this. He said he’d promised he wouldn’t hurt me and…I was going to end up hurt if we kept dating. Until Ben gives up on harassing and bullying him, there’s no point in him trying to date.”
Arthur was frowning at me, but he let me talk.
“But he won’t actually discuss it with me,”
I said, having to stop myself from throwing my hands up again. “It’s like, that’s his final word, and there’s no discussion. That’s it. Period. The end. Which just really pisses me off.”
“I can imagine.”
“Not for the reason you think,”
I said. “I’m pissed because before Theo asked me if I wanted to date him—when he asked if I liked him back—I’d known for a while I liked him. A lot. But I was never going to move things forward because I wasn’t going to get involved with a guy who had cheated on a partner. I knew I’d get my heart broken if I did. And here we are. My heart is broken for a totally different reason than I expected—and the sonofabitch won’t even talk to me.”
I slumped.
Arthur made a clucking sound with his tongue.
“You know,”
Arthur said slowly, “there’s something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” I sighed.
“The only person who ever talks about Theo cheating is Ben,”
Arthur said, making me look up at him. “Well, and all those little fools on the internet with opinions. And opinions about other people’s opinions. Yes, I’ve watched all of Theo’s and Ben’s videos. I keep up with my—”
“Gay news,” I said.
“Precisely,”
Arthur grinned. “And Theo never says anything about Ben. He’s never talked about their break up, why they broke up, never says one snide word about that other boy. Not even to defend himself.”
“How do you defend yourself in that situation?” I asked.
Arthur shook his head as if I was dense.
“Some people are dumb,”
Arthur said.
“Are you calling me—”
“Not you.”
Arthur waved me off, suddenly looking exasperated as well. “I’m talking about people online. They all congregate on those sites—”
He waved an exhausted hand at his phone.
“—and they just lose all sense. Who knows why people believe the things people say on the internet when absolutely no proof is given for their claims. Are they jealous of the person being talked about? Want to believe the worst things they think about that person because it makes them feel better about themselves? Are they entertained at seeing someone get knocked down a peg? Does it reinforce their belief that no one out there is truly a good person? Confirmation bias? Or, are they just assholes who love watching someone else get shit on because that means no one is paying attention to them and their big bag of bullshit and bullying them instead? Back in my day, if you had something nasty to say, you said it to someone’s face and moved on. You let them know how you felt and it was done. Or you talked to your friends privately, came to terms with your butthurt, and moved on. Either way, it wasn’t all…this.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Y’all had carrier pigeons. Not the internet. Different times.”
He glared at me for a moment.
“No matter the reason,”
Arthur continued, “you can’t keep people from believing whatever the hell they want to believe. They can say the sky is red and you can show them an actual picture of the blue sky and they’ll tell you you’re lying.”
“Well, sure,”
I said. “Yeah. People are dense sometimes.”
He nodded. “You ever hear about Alice Fortner?”
I thought about that for a moment, then shook my head.
“No,”
I said. “Who’s Alice Fortner?”
“Socialite. She’s not famous or anything, but she’s rich as shit,”
Arthur explained, leaning forward in his chair. “Well, her father died of some type of cancer a couple years back. I can’t remember which kind. Doesn’t matter. So, she announced on her social media and in press releases that she was starting a foundation at a hospital to build a wing for doctors to treat patients with that particular kind of cancer. In honor of her late father. I think it was kind of a rare one, you know?”
I nodded.
“Well,”
Arthur said, shaking his head, “some asshole got on that internet and was asking why she didn’t care about all cancer patients. Their mother had died of some cancer and it was a personal attack on them that Alice didn’t care about the cancer their mother had and wasn’t going to be donating money that would benefit those patients, too.”
I rolled my eyes.
“People—probably white ones—you folks just can’t help but jump in on this shit. You want to find ways to be oppressed so badly,”
Arthur said with a sigh, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Anyway, people joined in with this online heifer, getting mad at Alice and her efforts to make the world a better place. It was a big dogpile.”
Arthur sighed and sat back in his chair. When he didn’t say anything for a minute, I spoke up.
“Well,”
I said, urging him on, “what happened?”
“Nothing,”
Arthur said. “Alice didn’t donate that money, the hospital wing never got built, and the world didn’t get any better. It got worse.”
My shoulders fell.
“My point is,”
Arthur said, “people are going to run their damn mouths. And since you refuse to resort to violence, the least you can do is to just do whatever the hell you want. Do what you know is right—and ignore the lies and bullying and harassment. People are going to want to see you fail. To fall. They’re going to want to talk about you because you’re happy and they’re miserable. Let ‘em talk. Maybe that’s your way of making the world a better place—giving them an opportunity to forget how damn insufferable and miserable and ugly they are for a moment.”
I snorted a laugh.
“You and Theo being miserable and unhappy—and not hiding the sausage—doesn’t make the world a better place,”
Arthur said. “And it certainly doesn’t make either of you happy. And people are still going to run their mouths. You may as well be dating and happy if the mouths aren’t going to stop running. Agreed?”
“Well,”
I said slowly, “yeah. That makes perfect sense.”
“Good,”
Arthur sat back, a satisfied grin on his face.
“Now explain it to fucking Theo,”
I said, throwing my hands up.
“I can’t do everything.”
Arthur laughed. “You go tell him. Talk to him. I’ve done my part.”
Sighing, I slid from the bed and stood, staring across the room at Arthur. He was looking at me expectantly.
“Okay,”
I said. “I’ll try talking to him again. But don’t expect much.”
“Well,”
he replied, “whatever happens, I expect you to bring chocolate next Monday and to not talk about this bullshit again. I’m too old to be worrying about this kind of nonsense.”
Laughing, I went over and bent down to hug him, which he pretended to hate. Then I said my goodbyes and left, hoping that I could figure out how to get Theo to talk to me.