Page 5 of Crybaby
Sasha’s parents and sister had visited him a couple of times since Jason had known him, the last during which Sasha insisted that they and Jason meet, despite Jason being wary of intruding upon family time. He wasn’t particularly close to his own parents but loved how affectionate Sasha was with his and how often he seemed to talk to his sister.
After learning that Sasha wouldn’t be able to take time off work to go to Russia during the winter, Jason pilfered Sasha’s sister’s number from his phone, contacting her about what they usually had for dinner on New Year’s Eve, and making it—or attempting to, anyway—as a surprise for Sasha.
Jason would never forget Sasha’s face that night. Confused, at first, when he smelt the food before seeing it all laid out on Jason’s table. Pickled vegetables glinted alongside a beetroot and herring salad—if it could be called a salad, really, with the amount of mayonnaise in it. There were cut fruits and lemons, and in the middle, a mountain of pork and potatoes that could feed far more than two people.
Sasha had stared, tears welling up in his eyes at once, to Jason’s repressed mortification and pleasure. Before Jason could try and downplay the gesture, Sasha had swept him up into a bear-hug so crushing and delightful that he’d genuinely not been able to breathe for a few seconds.
“Best friend!” Sasha declared him at once, swinging him around and almost braining Jason on the wall. “Best food, you see.”
“I mean, don’t get your hopes up.…Your mom gave me the recipes, but I’m not exactly well-versed in making Russian cuisine,” Jason grumbled, blushing.
“You talk to Mama?”
“Well, I called your sister. She translated.”
That, apparently, was worth another bone-crushing hug, which Jason complained about but secretly wished would never end.
Jason wasn’t really sure how the food wassupposedto taste, but Sasha was full of compliments and even teared up again when he tried thebortsch, slipping into Russian for the next ten minutes. Jason didn’t mind, trying to stamp out the warm embers in his belly before they turned into the all-consuming fire of his affection.
By the time midnight hit, they were both full and fairly drunk, still downing vodka like it was mandatory. They piled onto the couch and giggled at the TV even when nothing particularly amusing was going on.
It wasn’t until two hours into the new year that Sasha pressed against Jason’s side, not looking at him but obviously vying for his attention. “How you know? With men?” Sasha said, accent thick with drink but without slurring.
It took a while for the question to process through Jason’s vodka-soaked brain. “Like…how did I know I liked men?”
“Yes.”
“Uhm…I guess I just…like, when I was a teenager, I’d get butterflies in my stomach when I liked a girl. You know, like when she would log onto MSN or when she would come up and talk to me, I’d get all nervous. And I’d notice things about her, like her hair or the way she laughed. So I knew how it felt to like someone that way, you know?”
“Yes, American crush.”
Jason laughed. “Right, like a crush. And then I started feeling that way about a guy in my class. I tried to, you know, make excuses for it. Like, he was just a really good friend, or that I didn’tlikehim, I wanted tobelike him, or I was jealous or intimidated or whatever. But, I mean, I’d think about him in pretty non-intimidating situations, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you tell?”
“No way. I totally ignored it. I refused to think about it. Even stopped watching porn at all because I was scared I’d focus on the guy. Which, in all fairness, I would have done.”
Sasha straightened up, turning to look at him in surprise. “You scared? But I think…you open, you say to everybody, hey I kiss guy in bar—”
“Literally never said that in my life.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but that’snow. I was totally freaked at the start. I didn’t…I don’t know, nobody really talked about it, I didn’t see it on TV or anything. I just knew the word ‘gay’ was used as an insult, so I just…repressed that shit.”
Sasha sank back into the couch again, silent for a few moments. “When did you open? Why?”
“Well, I just didn’t want to be scared anymore. It was exhausting, keeping that secret from myself.”
There was another moment of silence. When Sasha spoke, his voice was small, quiet. “I’m not so brave.”
“Hey.” Jason tilted his body sideways on the couch, grabbing Sasha’s arm. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re literally the bravest person I know.”
Sasha shook his head, but Jason cut him off before he could say anything.
“No, man—that’s so bullshit. We’re not responsible for the fear other people put in us. That’s not how it works. You areliterallythe bravest person I know. Like, genuine and open with your affection and just, just, like…brave, okay? Don’t even fucking…we can’t blame ourselves for things other people do to us. For having to deal with that.”
Jason was almost panting with a long-buried fury finally cracking through the hard earth and filling him. How dare the world put that look on Sasha’s face?
