Page 14 of Like a Love Story

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He braves the subway alone and heads back to school. But I don’t. I can’t. I go back home, where my parents are waiting for me.

My dad’s in one of his perfectly tailored business suits. My mom’s in a Jane Fonda aerobics outfit, but not even the sunshine yellow of her leotard and leggings can mask her distress.

“We saw you on the news,” my dad says, his voice laced with barely concealed rage.

My mom says nothing, because she’s really good at letting my dad speak for her.

I say nothing, because I know that I won’t be able to control my anger once I open my mouth.

“Look, we love you, Art,” my dad says, like he’s exasperated. “I wouldn’t have come home from work if I didn’t love you,” he continues. “But this is getting serious. You could have been arrested. You could have jeopardized your future.”

I roll my eyes at him.

“Art,” my mom says, her voice trembling. “You have such a bright future ahead of you. I just want you to have... a future.”

There it is. It’s not my criminal record we’re worried about anymore. It’s my death.

Then dad does what he does best. He offers me a deal. “I’ll tell you what, Art. If it’s what it takes, then I’ll write a check to any AIDS charity of your choice. Ten thousand dollars.” My mom looks at him in shock. “If you promise to stay away from these protests,” my dad says. “And from that man.”

“That man” is Stephen, of course. I wonder what he would do in this situation. Would he take the deal? I can almost hear him telling me that the money will make more impact than one passionate teenager ever could.

“Okay, you’re on,” I say. We shake on it. My dad’s handshake is so firm that it almost crushes me.

“This is the right thing, Art,” my mom says, visibly relieved. She takes my hand in hers awkwardly. “Thank you,” she says, with a deep breath and a smile.

The relief that washes over my mom’s face makesme feel sick for a moment, because I have no intention of keeping my end of the bargain. I’ll just wait for the check to ACT UP to clear before doing anything risky again. Then it’ll be too late for them to cancel the payment. I avoid looking at my mother. I tell myself that I’m Madonna, and my parents are Pepsi. I’m the badass bitch here. Did Madonna also feel guilty when she took their money?

But deceiving them was the only choice. I couldn’t say no to that donation, and I’m not done either. I’m only getting started. For the first time in my life, I know what being gay is all about. It’s not about the wet dreams, or the jerking off, or the ability to impersonate your diva of choice. It’s about the feeling you get when you look into another person’s eyes and have an out-of-body experience. It’s about whatever the hell I was feeling when I reallysawReza for the first time. It’s about love. How can I not keep fighting for that?

As I walk away from my parents, another thought, and a feeling of terror, washes over me. Judy. Judy. Judy. I won’t hurt her. I won’t. And yet... I resent her right now. Her heterosexuality gives her the ability to declare crushes openly and without fear. She assumed he was straight, because why wouldn’t he be? Because the whole world is pretty much straight. I resent that she has a privilege I’ll never have. And I hate my resentment. I love her more than anything. I have other privileges. She’s my everything.What do I tell Judy?

Judy

I’m in my bedroom, staring at fabrics, desperately trying to drown out the sound of my mother’s book club. I pick up a sunflower-yellow fabric I’ve always wanted to use for something but never have because it was just too bright and beautiful and optimistic to be wasted on my life. Don’t get me wrong, my life has had its moments, but this fabric deserves better.

Maybe tonight is worthy of it, Judy. A first date. Is it a date? It’s so not a date. You invited Reza to Sunday movie night with your uncle and Art. What kind of a pathetic move is it to invite a guy you like to the gayest movie night ever, with your uncle who will most likely be wearing makeup and a kimono, and your inappropriate best friend?

I’m a chicken, and I need a buffer, and the thought of being out alone with Reza, even in the world’s lushest yellow fabric, scares me half to death. I hold the fabric up against my body and second-guess it immediately. Artsays I’m a summer, which means I look good in this kind of hot color, but maybe he’s wrong. Maybe I’m a winter. Maybe I’m frigid. I think about what I could do with the fabric. It could be a dress. It could be flowy. It could be asymmetrical. It could be simple and classic, even though I don’t do simple and classic.

But I can’t get inspired when the sound of my mother and her friends invades my room, and our apartment is so small that you hear everything from everywhere. That’s the thing about having parents who insist you go to the best private school in the city. They end up living in the only nearby place they can find, which is tiny and has no heat. They say they moved here just before I started kindergarten so I could be closer to the amazing school I still go to, because education means everything, but I secretly think another bonus for them was the fact that we have to walk up six flights of stairs, which they think would be good for my waistline, and theirs. And yes, I was big back then too.

We rarely have guests, but my mom’s book club rotates hosts each time, so every fourth meeting, the ladies colonize my space. I love books. I love clubs. I just have a problem with this particular book club because they only read self-help books. Not a joke. Their current choice isThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Pretty much every book they’ve ever read involves a colon or a semicolon in the title. My mom asks me to join the book club every time they make a new choice, as if whatever crappy book they’re readingnext will tempt me into having Sunday brunch with a group of ladies who wear pastel and love to discuss ways of making their lives better, even though their lives have not changed since I was born. And yet... and yet... every one of those women is married. Every single one somehow attracted a man while wearing pastel and filling her bookshelves with books about how to be the best you. Which makes me wonder if I’m not the best me. I wonder if Reza would prefer a pastel Judy with highly effective habits. I crack my door open to spy on them.

“Okay, let’s discuss habit number four,” my mom says. “I really loved this one, and I can already feel it changing me. Think win-win!”

“I had trouble with this one,” my mom’s friend in pink pastel says. “It says not to make any deal unless both parties feel that they win.”

“But isn’t that such great advice?” my mom’s friend in blue pastel says. “The other night Jim and I argued and argued over what movie to see. He wanted to seeThe Abyssand I’ve been dying to seeParenthood.”

“Oh, it’s so good,” my mom’s friend in red pastel says. (Yes, there is such a thing as red pastel.) “There’s a scene with Dianne Wiest and a vibrator that...”

“Shh!” my mom says. “The walls are thin. Judy can hear everything.”

“Well, at least she doesn’t have headphones on her ears all the time like Jonah,” pink pastel says. “He’s always listening to music, like he’s not present at all. And therein lies my problem with habit number four. I’m all forwin-win in adult relationships, but with kids...”

“Well, children are the exception to everything,” blue pastel says. “Carl and I had this joke after Reagan made that speech about how we don’t negotiate with terrorists. We decided that in our home, we do not negotiate with teenagers.”

They all laugh, like this is funny, like comparing us to terrorists is somehow apropos. I hate that I use, or even think, words likeapropos. That’s my mother’s influence. She says education is the only reason they break their backs to send me to a school they can barely afford, but the other reason is that she worships rich people, wants to talk like them, and dress like them, and always be happy like she imagines they are. I look at her, smiling. She’s always smiling, even though I know that inside, there’s pain and sadness and yearning. She works as a teller at a bank and pretends it’s the most exciting job in the world. She pretends to be happy with my dad, with his dull accounting job, with the world in general, with everything except me. She wants me to be thinner, to smile more and be more pleasant, and to have girlfriends. In the friends-who-are-girls sense, not in the lesbian sense. Sometimes I want to shake her and be like,Look around, this world isn’t pleasant.Why do you have to act so pleasant?But obviously I don’t, ’cause that would just confirm what she already thinks about me. That I’m weird and aggressive and do things just to be different. That’s what she said to me once. “Judy,” she said, “life is so much easier when you fit in. All you have to do ischooseto beinterested in things others are interested in.” She also told me once that even though she loves her brother, he chose a difficult path. Those were her exact words. “He chose a difficult path, sweetie, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love him to death.” Then she said, “Sorry, bad choice of words at the end there.” But seriously, she thinks he chose to be gay. That he chose to get sick. That he chose to bury all his friends.