Page 86 of The Charm Offensive
Dev sighs, sits up, crosses his legs. “My sexuality wasn’t much of a mystery to my parents. When I was five, I told my mom I wanted to marry Aladdin, and my parents just gave me space to be exactly who I was without making a big deal out of it.”
Charlie hugs a pillow tight against his chest.
Dev pushes his glasses up his nose. “Do you… Have you thought about coming out? As bisexual? I mean, in like two years, after the show airs and everything settles down?”
“Well, I don’t think I am bisexual, actually,” Charlie mumbles. Dev props himself back on the pillows and stares at Charlie expectantly. He’s not sure why, after everything else he’s shared with Dev, this still feels hard to talk about. “I… I don’t experience sexual attraction very often. I mean, almost never. Present company excluded.” Dev does a charming little bow at that. “And I’m not really sure if that’s because the way I was raised taught me to repress the fact that I’m attracted to men, or if it’s because I’m maybe”—he pushes his hair off his forehead—“maybe on the asexual spectrum? Or, I don’t know. Parisa used this worddemisexual, and I think maybe that could be me? Or maybe graysexual, which I googled, and it means you only rarely experience sexual attraction. I mean, I know I enjoy both giving and receiving sexual pleasure, but I don’t know what that means.”
He catches himself mid-spiral and takes a breath. “I guess I’m saying, I still have a lot to figure out about all that, so I don’t think I’m ready to come out as anything.”
“That’s okay.” Dev reaches over to touch his knee. “Sexuality isn’t always a straight line from closeted to out-of-the-closet. You can take time to explore and evolve and figure out exactly what kind of queer you are, if that even matters to you.”
The room is silent except for the whorl of the ceiling fan.
“Sorry, do you not like that word?” Dev backpedals. “What letter of theLGBTQIAP+alphabet are you?”
“No,queeris fine. It’s just—you wouldn’t care if I didn’t have it all figured out?”
Dev nudges Charlie’s shin with his toe. “Why would I care?”
“I’m twenty-eight. Shouldn’t I already know?”
“Some people know at five, some people know at fifty. It’s not a race.”
“And it wouldn’t bother you? If we were together?”
Dev stills on the bed across from him. “Together?”
Charlie feels his face flush. It’s been a long day, and he shouldn’t cross the invisible demarcation of time by referencingthe future. He only just got Dev to agree to three weeks. “Like, hypothetically. In an imaginary alternate timeline where we could be together after the show.”
Dev scratches his unshaved jaw. “In a hypothetical, imaginary, alternate timeline would I be bothered by your sexual ambiguity?” He makes a show of considering. “Um, no.”
Charlie’s already humiliated himself enough with this conversational tangent, and he should move on, but this line of questioning suddenly feels like a stain of bourbon on Dev’s shirt. He’s got to get it out—all the way out, right now. “Would it bother you that I don’t have any other sexual experience?”
“It hasn’t bothered me so far,” he teases. Charlie can feel his face frozen in its pinched expression, the tension headache appearing above his brow. Dev’s voice softens. “Oh, hey, okay. You’re serious.”
Dev pushes up imaginary sleeves like he’s getting down to business, ready to follow Charlie’s spiraling thoughts downwhatever paths they need to take. “In a hypothetical, imaginary, alternate timeline where we’re together, would I be upset by the fact that you’re sexually inexperienced and questioning?”
Dev is smiling. LaughingwithCharlie, always.
“Hmm. I imagine in this hypothetical, imaginary, alternate timeline, we are living together?”
“That was fast.”
“Believe me, you would never step foot in my current apartment.”
“I absolutely do believe you.”
“So, we own a home in Venice Beach.”
“Well, that sounds expensive.”
“Well, you’re paying.”
“And a long commute to Palo Alto.”
“You’re working from home,” Dev retorts, raising his voice over Charlie’s logic. “So, we have this house, which probably always smells like disinfectant with bleach and oatmeal body wash. And you’d obviously have your own bathroom, because you need lots of space for all your primping.”
“And because you never clean the toothpaste out of the sink.”
