Two #3
If he were Davit from Tbilisi, I might tell him about coming out to Dad a few years ago.
How I’d blurted it out while he was sorting a pile of old records that needed shelving, fanned out on the floor around him, a rainbow of vinyl album covers.
He didn’t say anything, just hugged me while I cried.
And the next day that pride flag showed up outside my bedroom door.
I’m so damn lucky.
I don’t say these things now. Someone like Garrett wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have to worry about being accepted.
He doesn’t back down. “Irontown’s a small town and everything, so I wondered—”
“Wondered what?” I ask.
“What it’s like to be gay in a backward place like this.”
“I never said I’m gay,” I remind him.
“Sure.”
“And what? You’re assuming everyone here is conservative because it’s a small town?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I counted seven churches on our drive here.”
“That’s rich,” I counter, “considering you’re from the South.”
He folds his arms across his chest the way guys who have arm muscles do when they want to show one another they have arm muscles.
I’ve been the recipient of this gesture once before—in eighth-grade gym class when Evan Hegge accused me of checking him out.
He cornered me against a wall and punched me in the stomach so hard I threw up.
I told the teacher I had a stomach bug and left school early.
Garrett isn’t Evan, I tell myself. Even if they both play football and ask probing questions about my sexuality.
“Why don’t you go ahead and tell me everything you think you know about the South,” Garrett says.
I rack my brain, trying to think of something snide, but instead my mind conjures images of fried okra and well-dressed Baptist church ladies.
He nods at my inability to articulate a response. “That’s what I thought.”
“Well,” I say, trying to end this inquisition, “your room is right there, so…”
Garrett narrows his eyes at me. “You really don’t want me here, do you?”
No, I realize. I’ve successfully avoided Evan Hegge for four years.
How am I supposed to deal with someone exactly like him living across the hall?
Maybe Garrett is different from Evan, but right now he’s towering over me in the doorway of my bedroom, and with each passing second, I feel myself growing smaller.
I don’t want to feel small in my own house.
“Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you signed up for a foreign exchange program. You didn’t have any questions when they sent you a one-way ticket to Michigan?”
His unflappable calmness gives way to annoyance.
“Dude, I was supposed to be in Florence. You think I’m pumped to spend the year in the middle of bumfuck nowhere?
Apparently, GYA couldn’t find enough placements this year.
Something about not enough people in other countries wanting to host American teenagers.
Three weeks ago, I found out I could either drop out of the program or come here. So … here I am.”
“Why didn’t you just drop out?” I ask. “Why did you come here?”
He looks at me for a long moment. His eyes are more gray than blue, I decide, like the heavy November sky before a snowstorm.
“Because all I wanted to do my senior year is live above an antique shop with an asshole clarinet player.” He grabs the handle of his suitcase and wheels it across the landing to the doorway of his room.
“Oboe,” I correct. “And Irontown is not the middle of bum-fuck nowhere.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh really? The guy next to me on the plane literally asked me where my family’s deer camp is. What the hell is a deer camp?”
“It’s where you hunt deer.” Ours is a two-hour drive west.
“And then when I told him I’d be in Irontown for the year, he starts rambling about the outhouse he’s building. What kind of hick town doesn’t have fucking plumbing?”
“We have running water, douchebag. The outhouses are for the races.”
He does a double take, and I can tell he wants to ask about the races but is determined to continue shitting all over my hometown.
“Nine bars,” he says, holding up fingers, “four antique shops, the previously mentioned churches, a couple of old buildings that look like they collapsed in on themselves decades ago, and half a dozen boarded-up stores. This town is nothing.”
“Then go back to Atlanta!” I snarl. “We don’t want you here! You’re not some foster-care handoff with shitty parents. So if Irontown sucks so much, go home.”
I’ve said more than I meant to, but I don’t take it back.
It’s unfair that it’s not a big deal for Garrett to spend a year as an exchange student, and that when he goes home he can live in his own city and attend a selective college and get a job.
Opportunities live where he lives, and leaving home is something he’s choosing to do just because it’s fun.
The sheer privilege of it makes me see red.
We glare at each other, and I expect him to yell back at me, to hurt me like I’ve tried to hurt him. But he only shakes his head in disbelief, one long shaft of light hanging between us.
“Asshole,” he mutters, then closes his door.
A strange, childish part of me wishes Garrett were still standing here arguing with me. I stare at his closed door for a second before turning and sealing myself into my own room, his accented voice still ringing in my ears.