Slant: a Novel
Timothy Wang
Copyright Timothy Wang 2011
Published by Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press, at Smashwords
all rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2011 by Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press, Inc.
118 Heritage Avenue • Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3018
www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com
isbn: 1-59021-121-9
isbn-13: 978-1-59021-121-2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover and interior design: Alex Jeffers.
Cover image: Joselito Briones.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wang, Timothy.
Slant : a novel / by Timothy Wang.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59021-121-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-59021-121-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Asian American college students--Fiction. 2. Asian American gay men--Fiction. 3. Self-actualization (Psychology)--Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.A369S53 2011
813’.6--dc22
2011011366
Table of Contents
Probabilities—December, Junior Year
Oscar’s—Late May, Sophomore Year
The Rice Queen—April, Sophomore Year
Southie—Late May, Sophomore Year
First Time—Early June, Sophomore Year
Mist of Avalon—Early June, Sophomore Year
Great Expectations—Mid June, Sophomore Year
The Birthday Gift—June, Sophomore Year
The Contest—June, Sophomore Year
Stan’s Art—Late June, Sophomore Year
Bareback—August, Sophomore Year
New York City Boys—September, Junior Year
The Slut Phase—October to December, Junior Year
Fuck Confucius—November, Junior Year
The Consultation—December, Junior Year
Hang Over—December, Junior Year
The Plan—December, Junior Year
Christmas Wishes—December, Junior Year
New Year’s Kiss—January, Junior Year
New Squeezes—January, Junior Year
The Double Date—February, Junior Year
Chinatown—Late February, Junior Year
Chelsea Tiara—Early March, Junior Year
Just One More—March, Junior Year
Model Citizen—March, Junior Year
Meet the Parents—Late March, Junior Year
The L Word—Late March, Junior Year
The Phone Call—Late April, Junior Year
The Acceptance Letter—May, Junior Year
The Photo Album— May, Junior Year
Where are you really from?—June, Junior Year
Acknowledgements
The author wants to thank all his wonderful friends who had given feedback, edits and encouragement: Cormac, Eugene, Adam, Adam, Brian, Mark, Tom, and especially Sean for suffering through an extremely early draft and Arjen for patiently reviewing multiple versions. In addition, he sends his gratitude to Steve and everyone else at Lethe Press for their hard work and willingness to take a chance on this book. Finally, he loves his parents for taking pride in his rather frivolous efforts.
Probabilities—December, Junior Year
Consider the following probability problem: you are on a quest to find the best boyfriend possible. Further suppose that in your available dating time, you’re able to date only X number of guys. You must date one at a time. Before dating each one, you have no idea whether he’ll be better or worse than the previous one. Finally, when one doesn’t work out and you stagger or bounce to the next, you can never go back. So, what’s the strategy to find the best one, the one?
Since I wasn’t planning to go home for Christmas this year, I had some free time. After five cans of Diet Cherry Coke, six hours of modeling Bernoulli Trials and Poisson Random Processes in the MIT MATLAB, and one missed hook-up, I finally produced a solution. I won’t bore you with the details of my rigorous analysis here, but suffice it to say, the strategy that will most likely result in the optimal boyfriend can be broken down into four simple steps:
1. Date 37% (0.36787868… = the inverse of the natural log constant e. It’s very elegant mathematics, I assure you.) of the total number X—this can be a large number or a small one depending on how fast you go through guys. Assuming that people typically go through a guy every three month and the optimal dating age is from 20 to 28, X would be about 32 on average.
2. Rate all the past boyfriends within this set by using various metrics: looks, intelligence, loyalty, penis length, or a combination of whatever factors you deem important. Set up your own ranking system; pivot tables in an Excel spreadsheet work for me.
3. Identify the highest-rated boyfriend. Let’s call him M.
4. Continue dating, stopping as soon as you find someone who is better than M. Let’s call this N. Try to keep N if you can. My calculations show that the chance of finding someone decreases past this point, so be careful.
By the time I formulated this strategy, I had slept with so many guys, fast approaching 32, and found no one better than Stan, my M. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever find someone like Stan. I need him back, and it’s time to bend the rules.
Oscar’s—Late May, Sophomore Year
I strolled past Oscar’s, a coffee shop, several times before mustering enough guts to enter. As I walked in, a few patrons looked up from their books and magazines. Not sure if those were looks of annoyance, I felt ill at ease. I checked my fly and made sure I had no stains on my shirt from the benches—they seemed freshly painted—at Copley Square, where I had been sitting earlier.
I’d found Oscar’s on GayBostonGuide.com. Except for a pride rainbow sticker in the corner of the front window, it resembled any other independent coffee shop. The aroma of ground coffee and burned caramel infused the air, mellow music set the tone, and the menu was scribbled on a chalkboard. Worn books and glossy fliers piled on back wall shelves, and wooden chairs of various eras and sizes surrounded Parisian style tables.
“Hello, what can I get you?” asked the young man behind the register as my turn came up. He must have molded his short hair to have that bed hair look. His pierced left ear—a single metal stud not in his lobe, but on his upper ear—and a tiny scar on the corner of his right eyebrow hardened an otherwise boyish face.
“A… hmm…” I cleared the lump from my throat considering the counter, as if I didn’t deserve to gaze on his best feature, a striking pair of deep set eyes. I mumbled, “An iced tea, please.”
He punched my order into the register. When he handed me the receipt and change, my imagination flashed to a scene in a movie: the bookstore clerk tucks her phone number into the book bought by a guy she liked. I was hoping that I too would find a phone number on my receipt and that he’d wink at me with the universally recognized gesture for “call me,” thumb and pinky stretched out by his ear.
A cough from behind me woke me up from my daydream. The receipt was phone numberless; the counter guy’s gaze lacked expression. I stuffed the change into his overflowing tip jar and the crumpled receipt in my back pocket, picked up my iced tea, and found a seat in the corner with a view of the street outside.
Many of Boston’s well-off gays lived in the South End. The uniform brownstone townhouses housed boutiques and overpriced apartments; the streets, narrow or wide, were lined with tall trees, manicured hedges, and flower beds; and the sidewalks paved with red bricks. On a sparkling afternoon like this, pedestrians were out in droves. After some joggers, dog walkers and a few yuppies with baby carriages, I saw a gay couple walking by holding hands. With overt displays of affection—heads tilted towards each other just so and playful wriggling of fingers beneath each other’s palm—they were so at ease.
Then, one half of the couple glared back at me, as if to accuse me of checking out his boyfriend’s behind. I swiftly cast my eyes down, dipped my head and took a sip of the tea. He sashayed away dragging along his boyfriend, who did have a perky butt.
Having had my fill of people watching, I grabbed a magazine off the shelf. On my way back to my seat, I noticed the hottie behind the register was looking at me. Then he peered away without expression. Had he never seen an Asian before? Was there a smudge on my face? Did I nurse my iced tea too long without buying another one?
When I went over to browse the bookshelf, his eyes followed me again. I picked up a random book on astrology and pretended to read it while leaning against the shelf in a suave, nonchalant way, my best imitation of Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. When I stole another furtive glance, his eyes were still on me. I squeezed out a smile and gave a shaky half wave from behind the astrology book. A grin bloomed on his face before he looked off to one side.
I tried to subtly shift into his line of view, but, with a bang and a crash, I tripped, knocking into a table. A cup of coffee landed on an older gentleman’s lap, spilling on to the concrete floor and seeping into the cracks. Not able to disappear into the crack myself, I rummaged fistfuls of napkins to pile on my victim’s lap, creating a half soggy and half flaky mess, while he kept saying—perhaps protesting feathering after tarring—“It’s ok. I can handle it.”
A tomboyish girl in an apron rushed over carrying a mop, and cleaned up the spillage on the floor.
During the entire episode, I didn’t dare lift my head, fearing the expression of ridicule on my hottie’s face would tarnish his perfectly proportioned features and drive me mad with guilt. After the gentleman rebuffed my offer to buy him another coffee, I sat back down and dove back into the astrology book. “…Gemini is an inquisitive person with a quick grasp of subjects. Mutable motivation brings adaptability…”
But I couldn’t help myself but turn around and look at the register again. The guy was gone. In his place was the girl who’d helped me clean up earlier.
I shoved the astrology book back onto the shelf, sprinted back to my seat, and gulped down the rest of my iced tea. Ice cubes gulping down the glass made the tea rush in faster than I could swallow, but I wasn’t about to waste anything. I snatched my backpack and hopped outside. I scanned left and right, but saw no signs of him. I lowered my head, and dragged my feet towards the T station.
After stepping around the corner, I stopped. There he was, about a hundred feet away, sitting on the curb smoking. Should I approach him? What would I say? I didn’t know any pickup lines; I watched enough romantic comedies—my favorite genre besides science fiction, practically the same category and equally farfetched, I’d learn later—to know women hated pickup lines. Men must too.
“Excuse me,” said a woman from behind me. She, wearing a pink tracksuit, walked around me with two Labrador retrievers, and shot me a withering look. At least her dogs were bouncy and friendly.
I became self-conscious of my conspicuous position in the middle of the narrow sidewalk. Gripped by an impulsive flight response, I scuttled in the opposite direction of T station and away from him. Five rapid steps later, I decided to go for it and talk to him. Fuck it, I thought, What do I have to lose?
As I approached him, he cocked his head slightly to the right, raised his left eyebrow, and glanced up out of the corner of his eye. The ultra-cool demeanor seemed contrived, but cute.
“Hi, what’s your name?” All I could muster was that shaky line.
He took another drag of his cigarette, exhaled the ghostly smoke, and flicked the butt into the gutter before standing up. With a cocky smile, he extended his hand, “Stan.”
Support—April, Sophomore Year
For several months before meeting Stan, I spotted flyers on the bulletin boards lining the hallways on the MIT campus announcing meetings of the coming out support group. My early reactions were to speed up and stroll away from the flyers. Eventually, I started to slow down to take passing glances. One day I stopped, slyly surveyed the surroundings to make sure no one was watching. With one swipe, I tore the flyer off the cork board and shoved it into my book bag.
In the privacy of my dorm room, I unfolded the flyer under the desk lamp and read the pink piece of paper over and over again. The ink had already rubbed off along the creases where I had folded it. Thursday in Room 98, Building 4, at 8:30 PM: Coming Out Support Group.
As I navigated the mazelike halls towards Room 98 on the night of the support meeting, my heart pounded harder and harder even as my pace alternated from mercury to molasses. By the time I arrived, it was already 9:00 and the door was shut with streaks of light and shadows leaking out from underneath.
I knocked. Murmuring inside stopped. After a pause, the door opened to a skinny guy about my height, dressed in a D&G tee-shirt that revealed rather than hid his rib cage. He gave me a swift scan and quipped, “This isn’t the recitation for 18.03.” 18.03 was a class on differential equations.
I didn’t expect a put down with racial undertones from the first gay person I ever met. The frostiness flabbergasted me. After a year of regular visits to the gym, I had gained 15 lbs on my 5’8” frame; did I look too butch to be gay? I peeked behind him. The recitation room was narrow with a few chairs arranged in a circle. The seven people inside all fixed their eyes on me, suspiciously. One of the chubbier girls in the circle said, “Jack, I think he’s family.”
•
Sam, who led the group, had frumpy hair down to her shoulders and freckles on her pinched face. Wearing a benign smile, she pulled up a seat next to her, and asked me to introduce myself. After I stuttered my name and came up with nothing else to add, the floor was passed to Jack, because he seemed to be the only one who wanted it. He urged us to protest the on-campus ROTC and the next weekend’s fraternity party (which advertised a toga theme that he deemed too sexist). As a testament of the anti-gay attitudes prevalent on campus, he said, “People have been ripping our flyers off the bulletin boards as soon as we posted them. Those homophobic bastards, if we ever catch them…” He scratched the air with his claw and a muscular lesbian punched her palm with her fist. I shrank in my seat.
At this point, everyone else sent bored, exasperated looks towards Sam.
Sam cleared her throat. “Jack, let’s discuss something else. With a lot of discussion in the news, I wonder, do people feel that homosexuality is a choice? Let’s do a round robin discussion.”
Unfortunately, I was seated next to her. She turned to me, “James, you want to start?”
After giving it a bit of thought, I said, “Why should it matter? This is supposed to be the land of the free—”
Jack cut me off, “It isn’t a choice that’s why.”
I was about to say, “As consenting adults, shouldn’t we have the right to choose who we want to sleep with? Or else, let’s just going back to the days of arranged marriages.” But I held back, fearing Jack would bite my head off.
Then, while keeping an eye on me, Jack went on a tirade about our enemies, the Evangelical Christians and the Republicans, who said that homosexuality is a choice just like murder is a choice. He had me cowering by the middle of his diatribe. I felt like I was in a political action committee meeting rather than a social support group.
As my brain started to phase out, his voice faded to squeaks. I wondered if it was rude to leave now. Dampness pervaded the classroom, which was in the oldest building of MIT. I looked out of the windows. Names of scientists with likes of Newton and Galileo were carved on the friezes of the buildings with neoclassical columns, and metal sculptures by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore dotted the courtyards.
Another discussion question Sam raised after Jack was done ranting pulled me back: “When did you first know you’re gay?”
“The first time I kissed a boy,” said a ginger boy with a wide smile, exposing a full set of braces, and got a round of giggles.
•
When Dad bought me my first computer, a 486, he had high expectations, “Computers are the future, better get a head start.” I would soon find the newsgroup alt.erotica.stories, which filled in the gaps from the 8th grade health class.
One summer evening before 9th grade, after I shoved down the last chopstick full of pork stir fry and brought my bowl to the kitchen sink, Mom asked, “Why don’t you go do something productive? Go to your room and work on your computer?” as she scrubbed the dishes and directed Dad to take out the trash. A bonus of the Asian parent syndrome was that I didn’t have to do any chores around the house as long as I studied.
With my door shut and the modem squeakily beeping, I was on the newsgroup again. I saw a posting that departed from stories about feisty blonds from the colonial era, boobs the size of watermelons, and shy librarians with a hidden passion. The posting described acts between two men I didn’t think were possible. He put his thing where? How does it fit? Isn’t it dirty? With a few clicks/clacks of the keyboard, I discovered a photo by Robert Mapplethorpe. My jaw dropped as the pixels rendered line by line. The image, in stark black and white, proved the act I just read was more than possible in startling detail down to the last hair follicles. I could visualize the pain as my stomach churned. Do people actually enjoy this?
I soon found more and more: endless galleries of smut photos in a newsgroup dedicated to male erotica that clearly showed the lustful excitement on the participants’ faces, excerpts from books by Edmund White that extolled male beauty and described the acts in poetic, longing detail, and gay stories archived on nifty.org that opened a flood gate of positions and preferences.
A creak on the staircase interrupted me; I quickly alt-tabbed to a harmless application on the computer. Mom yelled from downstairs, “You forgot to take your vitamins.”
While I often returned to the computer to find more gay material, I dismissed my research as a morbid curiosity, just like when people did Internet searches on if Chinese people ate babies.
When I returned to school that fall, something inside me changed. During gym class, I hovered on the sideline, as usual, while other kids played basketball. Their Nikes squeaked against the polished floor, and their shouts echoed against the walls. I was bored. Then, I noticed how snugly the gym shorts fit assistant coach Ricky Higgins, and how his calf sinews drew my eyes up his thigh. I immediately squeezed my eyes shut, as if in a toddler game of peek-a-boo, “if you don’t see the monster, it’ll go away.”
Then a stray basketball hit me on the head, knocking me back and sending my glasses flying. I opened my eyes to blurred faces and an onslaught of youthful, cruel laughter.
Coach Higgins saved me by yelling at the boys, “Quit fooling around, girls. Everyone hit the showers.” He handed back my glasses, still intact. Tough little fuckers.
With my shoulders slouched and my eyes down, I walked down the aisle of lockers toward the open showers. From which, the steam slithered along the tiled floor and twined around my ankles. Under the sprays of water, the older classmates sauntered around naked, slapped each other playfully, and spewed off-color jokes. The images from Internet and acts described in the stories flooded my retina. Blood drained from my face and rushed toward my groin. Then, the new urges turned into shame, the shame turned into guilt, and the guilt into fear. I scuttled back to my locker and slapped on my clothing, sweaty as they were.
•
“So James,” Sam said, “What about you? When did you know you’re gay?”
“I don’t know.”
From the thin smiles on people’s faces, I knew what they were thinking: Stop with the “I’m not sure” thing already. Just admit it: you’re a fag.
“I’ve just never had sex before.”
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Peals of laughter erupted in the entire room, without my participation.
I didn’t explain that I was a man of science, and that the scientific method requires theories to be tested via experiments. If I had never even been with a guy, how would I know if I would like it? So when Sam announced that there was a gay dance party the weekend after next at Harvard, I thought this might just be the opportunity to find someone to verify my hypothesis.
The Rice Queen—April, Sophomore Year
When I hiked up the stairs out of the T station, the usually crowded Harvard Square was bare. There were no street performers with rings of onlookers, no chess players outside Au Bon Pain slapping their timer clocks, and no skaters kicking their boards on the ramps. I could hear some occasional laughter in the distance.
Under the street lamp, I drew out a piece of paper, a print out of an online map, from my back pocket. The party was at Adams House. Buildings at MIT were named with numbers. Buildings at Harvard were named after rich people.
Adams House was tucked into a small alley off Harvard Square; the doorway behind a driveway was even more obscure. If not for the muffled dance music leaking through the windows, I would surely have missed it even with the map. The entrance was through shut red doors and without signage. I knocked a couple times. A crack pried open between the two door panels, and a head poked out. Inside it was dark.
“I’m here for the dance?”
“Yeah, right, come on in.” A guy quickly shut the door behind me as if this was a speakeasy.
In the lobby, a dining table served as the reception; behind it, sat a tom-boy girl and a femme skinny boy. A small sign on the table read $3 with student ID, $6 without.
I dug out my student ID to get the discount. The boy winked at me and his hand lingered a little too long for comfort as he stamped my wrist. I wasn’t sure what to say or do, so I jolted inside through the doorway behind them. The main hall that served as the dance floor had to be the dining hall for Adams House. Along the left side of the hallway was a makeshift DJ station on a row of dining tables. Stacks of dining chairs piled up in the corner, and a lone disco ball hung off the chandelier in the center.
I knew no one, and I was early (this was before I learned to be fashionably late). When people gradually arrived, some greeted each other with hugs and kisses, some even screamed as if in surprise before greeting their friends with an exuberant jump-hug. Most people were with groups of friends that seemed to form cliques much like in high school: a few Asian boys donning giant baseball caps played with glow sticks; skinny queens towered in a corner, whispering to each other while slyly pointing at various individuals; and several preppy guys in argyle sweater vests huddled together, ignoring the rest of the crowd. On the sparse floor, a few guys danced but most stood on the sidelines clutching their drinks.
This party was as awkward as an 8th grade school dance. But there were a few hot guys. One in a tight baby blue tee-shirt stood out in particular with his blond, curly hair and what I was sure had to be a naughty twinkle in his eyes. He was dancing with a girl, yet the sizable gap between them indicated that they were not a couple. I lurched forward to catch a better look at him. He danced right past me without as much as a glance in my direction.
Several other attractive guys had sauntered by while ignoring the furtive stares from their admirers, me included. Maybe they didn’t see me. I felt better about the way I looked after having worked hard to improve my skin and body for the past year—even at the sacrifice of my liver. A few months ago I’d read online that the strongest zit medication was Accutane. The dermatologist rejected my request, saying that my case was nowhere near severe enough. She lectured me on the possible permanent damages to the liver, the cost of a liver transplant—perhaps she sensed my genetic frugality—and the possibility of skin cancer. When I pleaded with her and implied that I’d rather die than look ugly, she referred me to a psychologist to help me with my self-esteem. Psychology is what MIT people call “soft science.” Instead of seeing a shrink, I squeezed my zits, irritating them to extreme redness, before getting a second opinion and a prescription. Yes, I suffered headaches, nausea, and a couple dozen episodes of diarrhea during my six-month treatment, but were all the efforts in vain?
Just as I was starting to doubt my attractiveness, I heard “Hi” from my right side.
He had friendly dark eyes, unruly hair, thin black wire glasses, pale skin, and a bright smile. He seemed older than my peers, like a graduate student perhaps. My “Hi” back was hesitant.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I found his greeting strange and furrowed my eyebrows. “Don’t worry about what?”
“Harvard boys tend to have a lot of attitude.”
“Excuse me?” I was new to the gay lingo.
“I saw you kept looking at that blond guy. His name’s Gabriel. He’s notorious for trying to show off to attract attention and then not returning it. He lives off that.”
“Oh that. It’s okay. So, are you a ‘Harvard boy’ also?”
“Don’t hold it against me. I went to Harvard Medical School, but I went to Dartmouth for undergrad. I’m currently doing my first year of residency at Mass General.”
“Can I see the rest of your resume?” The attempt was aimed at being funny but my intimidation rendered my timing a tad off.
He was taken aback for a second. He then laughed and extended his hand. “My name is Michael.”
I shook his hand. “James.”
“I haven’t seen you here before. What school do you go to?”
“MIT.”
“Really? You don’t look like you go to MIT.”
“What would I have to look like to go to MIT?”
He searched for a tactful answer.
I answered for him, “More like a nerd?”
“Oh no. There’re a lot of nerds at Harvard too. Haven’t you heard of Bill Gates? So what’re you studying at MIT?”
“Biology. And I’m also thinking about getting a second degree in Computer Science.” I didn’t tell him that the Biology major was for my parents, who planned on me becoming a doctor.
“That’s an interesting combination. What do you do for fun?”
That got me thinking. “Do something for fun” evoked images of sports and hobbies. I did make time to work out, but it was neither fun nor counted as a sport. Besides, I never played sports because Mom thought them dangerous (she would say, “Look at Sonny Bono, died from skiing.” “A tennis ball could hit your glasses, shatter them, and blind you.” or “Ice skating? With sharp knives attached to shoes and fast moving kids? Scares me to death.”). Contrary to the stereotypes of Asian kids, I didn’t play any musical instruments because private tutors were too expensive for Dad. So, I couldn’t even stick with the band geeks. I was allowed to only focus on math and sciences, which put me at the bottom of the lowest popularity tier. Ever since Mom had bragged to her friends at a multifamily potluck last Christmas that I would be graduating one year early, I had to take extra classes every semester to save her face. I never had time for fun before.
So I said, “I like to play video games.” I remembered the weeks of pleading with Dad to fork out the hundred bucks for my original eight-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.
“So you have a PlayStation 2?”
“Not yet. I don’t have enough time to play during school anyway. I’ll get a summer job and save up to get one.”
As we made small talk, I thought about my parents. If I told Mom that I met a Harvard educated doctor, would she say, “What was his MCAT score? What was his GPA in College? What did he write on his applications? Why can’t you be more like him?”
Even though Michael seemed like a nice guy and was good looking, the imagery of Mom’s obsession with Harvard Medical School was a boner killer.
I told Michael that I was only recently out…and followed that with I’d never been with anyone before. I wasn’t interested in getting romantic and was just looking for gay friends. His face fell, but he recovered quickly, offering, “Yeah, I want more gay friends also. I actually have a boyfriend.”
“Oh? Is he here?”
“No. He’s in New York City doing his residency at Mt. Sinai.”
“Two doctors! How long have you guys been dating?”
“Two and half years, but recently we haven’t seen each other much.”
“It’s great to see gay guys in a long term relationship. You’re a role model for the rest of us.”
He studied my eyes.
I then realized what I said could be construed as being sarcastic. I gave him my most sincere smile and said, “I meant it.”
He nodded, “Anyways, I better call it a day, I have to work tomorrow. Let’s hang out sometime. I think my boyfriend would like to meet you also. What’s your email?”
•
As I was leaving, I bumped into Jack near the entrance. He had been watching the conversation between Michael and me, and felt the need to enlighten me, with a whisper and a snap, that Michael was a “big rice queen.” I’d never heard the term before, and he explained that it refers to a gay white male who only likes Asian guys. Learning this, I wondered about Michael, not sure if my yellow skin, funny accent, and slanted eyes were the only reasons he talked to me. I asked Jack, who apparently knew everyone, if Gabriel’s a rice queen also. Jack rolled his eyes, made a sad face, shook his head condescendingly, before slithering away.
Walking back to MIT down Mass Avenue all by myself, I murmured to myself, “This gay thing is harder than I thought. Maybe what they say is true, gay guys are too superficial. Hot guys don’t go for guys like me.”
But I didn’t give up on my quest. When I returned home that night, I found GayBostonGuide.com. My perseverance would pay off a few weeks later when I met Stan, who was way hotter than Gabriel.
Southie—Late May, Sophomore Year
I checked my Timex. 11:45 PM. In my best blue oxford shirt and khakis, the same ones I wore to the interview for my summer internship at the Whitehead Institute, I loitered on the corner of Dartmouth and Tremont streets. After meeting Stan on the pavement earlier, he had asked me to meet him at the street corner here at 11:30 PM, when he got off work.
After a bag lady pushed a rickety shopping cart past me and into an alleyway, I saw a dark figure coming around the corner. Even though a Red Sox baseball cap cast a shadow on his face, I recognized Stan’s swagger. Immediately, my heart rate surged.
I said, “How are you?” The only thing I could think to say.
“I’m doing well. What’s up with you?”
“Not much.”
An awkward silence ensued. My fingers fidgeted in my pockets. Once again, I couldn’t maintain eye contact.
He said, “Do you want to go back to my place?”
I nodded.
“Did you drive?”
“No.” I then mumbled something about how it must be hard to find parking in Boston.
“Well, we won’t be trying to find parking. We’ll be going back to my place. My car’s that way.” He pointed using his thumb, tilted his head and led the way.
His Toyota Celica coupe was low to the ground and gray, perhaps once white, with a few rust marks near the bottom—a common problem in Boston with salt and snow covering the streets every winter. As soon as I got in the car and sat on the stiff seats, an apprehension came over me as I recalled the elementary school era warnings about getting in a stranger’s car. The engine revved and car locks clicked. I felt claustrophobic—like a trapped rabbit uncertain whether it would end up as the companion to a seven year old girl or the main course at a French brasserie.
As he pulled out of the parking space, he asked me, “So what do you do?”
“I’m a college student.”
He snorted. “Seems like almost everyone is around here.” With one hand on the wheel, he stepped on the gas. The Celica zipped away from the curb.
When the car sped onto Mass Avenue, he turned, cut the air firmly with his palm, and said, “Okay, this is the deal. You must be really quiet. We’re going back to my sister’s place. She’s probably asleep by now. We really don’t want to wake her up.”
Living with his sister? That had to be inconvenient for bringing someone over. I wanted to ask him if he wanted to go to my place instead, but didn’t want to derail his plan in motion.
I wasn’t good with directions; it felt like we were heading south. The architecture was hard to identify in the dark, but the houses morphed from the elegant brownstones to narrow wooden houses with chain linked fences and unkempt driveways. Thinking back, we probably entered Dorchester, the former neighborhood of Marky Mark, who had to drop his pants multiple times in public to gain enough notoriety to get out of this ghetto.
The car stopped on a narrow driveway, a patch of concrete with grass popping out of the cracks.
Before we got out of the car, he emphasized once again, “We have to be really quiet. We don’t want to wake up my sister, and you have to leave at 4 AM exactly.” The words were icy. I looked down.
We walked around to the back of the house. He opened the door with the same care as someone would use to disarm a bomb, and we slipped inside.
“Shh… wait here.” He sneaked up the stairs to check if his sister was asleep. After several minutes, he crept back down to the foyer and told me to follow him. As hard as I tried to land my foot softly, the staircase creaked with every step and a thread of my nerves snapped. At the top of the stairs, he held a door ajar and flicked his thumb.
The steeply sloped ceilings and exposed beams made the room more like an attic than a bedroom. All lights were turned off, and a spot of moonlight on the floor looked like frost. His eyes shone with that same spot reflected in his pupils. He shifted behind me with vampirish swiftness and quietness, and enveloped me in his arms. I tensed. Suddenly I had the urge to pee.
He said he would come with me to the bathroom. I figured that meant he suspected that I might steal something. He tip-toed out of the room and summoned me to follow with a flick of his finger. We snuck past a couple closed doors, which I assumed were bedrooms, and entered the bathroom. He turned on the light. The sudden brightness made me squint. A chipped free-standing claw-foot tub with wrap-around shower curtain, porcelain faucets handles over the sink, and a hexagonal mosaic tiled floor made the bathroom looking dated.
He pointed to the toilet. I positioned myself so he couldn’t see my penis. I contracted and flexed my groin muscles, but the pee wouldn’t come out.
He folded his arms and turned his head away nonchalantly.
I could feel the temperature on my cheeks rising with embarrassment. After what seemed like an eternity, the first drops hit the toilet bowl, and the noise breaking the once utter silence almost startled me. Then the rest finally trickled out.
“Let’s head back to my room,” he whispered with a tilt of his head as I washed my hands.
•
Maybe the clouds shifted or maybe my pupils dilated; the once dark room was now bathed in moonlight. He took off his shirt. Under the soft moonlight, his skin was pale and creamy, with a dusting of peach fuzz on his arms and near his navel. He had a bulging chest and rippled abs that had been hidden by his tee-shirt. I couldn’t help blurting out, “You have a really nice body.” He shushed me by placing his finger against his lips and broke out in a naughty, crooked grin behind it. I drew my jaw back up from the floor.
He lifted the sheet on his bed, and beckoned with his other hand. I nodded, got naked in one shot, and slipped between the sheets with him.
I drew my hand up to his chest; his skin felt cold and dense like marble. I didn’t dare to kiss him or even pull up my face close to his. As I was hesitating, he pushed me on my back, and then descended on me until our mouth touched. We kissed and rubbed our naked bodies against each other. Straddling my body as I lay on my back, he told me I was the cutest boy he’d seen in a long time. I asked if I could suck his dick. He agreed. I slid beneath the sheets and found his member. Trying to take the whole thing in, I gagged. I pulled back and coughed. His hands found my ears and cradled them. He rocked his hips up and down to shift himself in and out of my mouth. After a few minutes, he stopped me—was I doing a bad job at it?—slid me up, pushed me back, and scooped his arms under my thighs. With an ease that suggested he’d done this many times before, he lifted my legs up and pressed them back against my chest, exposing my most private parts. As he rubbed himself against me, I was turned on and defenseless at the same time. I didn’t want to get fucked—at least not yet. Especially without a condom.
He said between moans, “I could unleash myself on you.” Caught between fear and lust, I didn’t know whether to respond with “Give me all you got” or “Be gentle.” Then, he slipped under the sheets and started licking me. I turned to mush. After rubbing his member along my crack over and over, we faced each other and came on each other’ chest.
Afterwards, we lay there spooning, but 4:00 AM arrived way too quickly. Rummaging in the dark for my socks, I asked for his phone number.
He was half way through putting on his tee-shirt. He paused for a second; the shirt hid his facial expression. Then his head poked out. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you soon.”
I found a pen and engraved my number on a back of an old receipt, the iced tea receipt I received from him earlier. I wondered if he’d ever call me. I’d read many stories about one night stands on nifty.org. This fit the profile. I left the receipt on the dresser, cautiously tucked under a Mickey Mouse ashtray.
He called a cab for me, donned his baseball cap with the embroidered ‘B’, and walked me outside. The dimly lit street was empty. He rambled on about how bad gay culture was. The rambling didn’t make much sense, and I wasn’t listening. I was distracted by a fresh shame and an odd sadness about having undergone my first one night stand.
Soon, the cab pulled up. Before I got in, he kissed me and said, “Bye.”
“Bye.” The car door shut with a thump.
As the cab pulled away, I turned back. Through the dingy back window, I saw him step out of the light cone under the street lamp and disappear into the dark.
OCD—Late May, Sophomore Year
The doctor on duty at the MIT Clinic was a slender black woman with Rastafarian hair and intelligent eyes. After she led me into her examination room and set down her clipboard, I said, “There’s no way my parents will find out about this, right?”
Her brows rose a tad. “Yes. There’s a student privacy policy here at MIT.”
“Good. I want to get tested for all possible sexually transmitted diseases.”
After my first encounter with Stan, my obsessive tendencies began to get the best of me. Even though I had read countless articles on safe sex and knew we hadn’t done anything dangerous, I couldn’t help thinking, “What if I caught something?” The more I read about the elaborately but vaguely described symptoms of a long list of sexually transmitted diseases; the more of them seemed to be developing.
She was taken aback, then “Are you sexually active?”
I thought that was a stupid question, but resisted my urge to say “Duh.” Instead I responded with “Yes” and more pride than I’d intended.
“When was the last time you had sexual activity?”
“Two days ago.” For those two days, I had gone to the bathroom every fifteen minutes to check if there were any red spots, rashes, discharges, or enlarged lymph nodes (how big are they supposed to be anyway?). My first inclination was to ask Michael, who’d become a friend since we met at that Harvard dance, for advice, but then I thought better of it. He was a radiologist, and STDs don’t show up on X-rays.
She then asked me to describe the sexual activities involved. I was mortified, but her gaze possessed an authority. So I told her everything without lifting my eyes from my lap.
“You know, it’s unlikely you caught anything. Gonorrhea is about the only thing you could have possibly caught.”
At least she didn’t laugh, unlike that the doctors from that one morning back in high school. I woke up convinced that I had a heart attack, after reading about the symptoms—the tightening of the chest, the dizziness, and the shortness of breath—the day before. Ever since that day when Dad drove me to the emergency room upon my insistence, I tried to erase from my memory the laughter that the doctors and nurses had failed to suppress.
She took a cotton swab and swiped the inside of my cheeks. The cotton swab went in a plastic bag with a bright orange band and one of those biohazard symbols found as Celtic tribal tattoo arm bands on the biceps of convicts or older gays. Handing me the bag, she said, “Just go down the stairs, go all the way down the hall, and drop this off at the lab.” Seeing my hesitation, she quickly added, “Don’t worry. It’s quite unlikely anything will turn up.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait a moment. Let’s talk about safe sex. For oral sex, you should use a dental dam.”
“What’s that?”
“A plastic sheet, you can use Saran Wrap if you like.”
The doctor’s advice on sex was just as impractical as Mom’s on life. I remembered the day when I was to leave to Boston for the first time. As soon as we got to the airport, Mom’s glee at my acceptance to MIT—she had opened the acceptance letter before I got home from the chess club meet—suddenly turned into public tears. Like a broken record, she repeated a million times, “Don’t walk around at night.” “Don’t go to public places where there’re big crowds; terrorists tend to target those places.” or “Look both ways before crossing the street.” My parents’ biggest fear must be that I’d be struck by a car while crossing the street, probably because of the hostile drivers in China that instilled fear in every pedestrian. When I read a Times article on OCD a while ago, I was sure Mom had it. Sometimes, I feared that I perhaps inherited it.
“Also, you know you always need to wear a latex condom—”
“I know.” I wasn’t stupid. I was just as scared of HIV as the next guy.
“You probably should try the Coming Out Support Group here at MIT. It may be easier to meet guys of your own peers.” She dug out one of the flyers on the Coming Out Support Group, exactly like the one I’d ripped off the bulletin board.
As she expected, the gonorrhea test proved to be negative, but it still was like a rock off my chest. Safe sex was already on my mind, but I thought her Saran Wrap idea was unpractical, and I didn’t need to be taught again that condom use is important after been inundated with literature on HIV. In fact, condom shopping would be my next task.
First Time—Early June, Sophomore Year
Much to my surprise, one week after we met at Oscar’s, Stan called. “Wanna hang out?” “Yes.” I said. “You got a place?” and I said “I got lucky in a dorm lottery, and got a single with its own bathroom, almost a private studio apartment.” “Is there parking nearby?” I answered, “Yes, on Binney Street,” and, for the rest of the week, blissfully anticipated meeting him.
Considering how suggestive he’d been the previous time, I figured this time we would go all the way. I wanted to lose my virginity, a stigma that stuck with me for way too long; I was almost twenty, and was sick of hearing stories and watching TV shows about people losing their virginity at sixteen.
I meticulously prepared for my first time. Picking condoms from CVS took me hours. I perused all the labels, even though some older ladies bit their lips and held back their knowing smiles as they squeezed passed me in the aisle, perhaps searching for tampons. I wanted to make sure I was getting the right product, but all the labels said the product was for vaginal sex only and untested for anal sex, which puzzled me. Don’t condom manufacturers want gay dollars? Some packages said anal sex usage may increase the risk of condom tearing. I picked out the extra strength Trojans because I was paranoid about breakage.
•
When the time finally came, after the instant he popped in me, the pain pulsed through my entire body, paralyzing me as every fiber of my body contracted.
I didn’t want him inside me anymore, even though I had followed all the Internet advice: breathe deeply; relax; push out as he pushes in; fight the urge to clamp down. I could feel tears welling in my eyes.
He leaned forward more and licked and nibbled on my ear lobes. The warm, moist softness of his tongue distracted me from the pain, and I was able to suck in air. My chest heaved, and I slowly gained back control of my muscles, I opened my eyes to see Stan lazily opening his eyes too. His wicked smile was contagious; I smiled weakly in return.
He rocked his hips. As if my throat had a mind of its own, it moaned, purred and grunted. Pain slowly eased, but the traces of it still lingered. A feeling of unnatural fullness and odd satisfaction took hold for a moment, and then dissipated into yearning and hunger. After Stan started to thrust faster while he gripped my ankles, the pain returned. I bit down on my lower lip and bore it. When his body shuddered with the final thrust, I had already ejaculated without touching myself.
•
When I woke up, Stan was already awake. He sat on the futon smoking a cigarette. Some rays of sunlight snuck between the folds of the IKEA curtains and reflected on the futon to create a golden halo around his silhouette. I could lie here forever enjoying my view.
Hearing me rustling in the sheets, he turned his head, “Good morning, Sweetie.”
Sweetie? I thought. Not even my parents called me that.
“Good morning to you as well.” “Sweetie” didn’t roll off my tongue as easily; words of affection weren’t used in my family. My mind flashed to last night, and warmth rose inside me. I broke out into a smile, but then quickly buried my face in the pillow and snuggled it tighter.
“Do you have anything to eat around here?”
“For breakfast?” I hopped out of bed. “The only things I have are milk and cereal.”
He said, “That’ll do.”
As I went to fetch the milk from the mini fridge, he grabbed my waist, spun me around pushed his face toward mine. Self-conscious about the possibility of morning breath, I turned my face away. “I have to go pee.” I said meekly.
I brushed my teeth and put on a generous helping of Old Spice deodorant before gazing into the mirror. You look different. You shed a shell. You are different.
When I came out of the bathroom, he was already helping himself to a bowl of cornflakes. Between spoonfuls, he said, “What are your plans for tonight?”
“Nothing really. Probably just doing some reading to get ready for work tomorrow.” I’d found a summer internship at the Whitehead Institute. It sounded prestigious, but I mostly washed test tubes for eight dollars an hour.
“Have you been to Avalon before? It’s the best gay club in Boston.”
“No, I’ve only been to a dance party at Harvard before, but not nightclubs.”
“We should go.”
“I’m under 21 and they card pretty strictly in Boston.” I fidgeted. I felt like this was 12th grade, and I had to come up with a reason why I couldn’t go to the Homecoming Dance.
He tilted his head a bit to the right. “How old are you then?”
“19,” I said, and then quickly added, “But I’m almost 20.”
“Let me see your driver’s license.”
Did he want to make sure I wasn’t an under-18 jailbait? Pulling apart the Velcro of my nylon wallet, I slipped out my driver’s license from back home—not having a car, I hadn’t bothered to get a Massachusetts License yet—and handed it to him.
He busted out laughing.
Self-conscious, I said, “Is my picture that bad?” In that picture, my neck looked like a pencil under my melon head, and, magnified by the heavy glasses I wore, my eyes bulged. While I always wanted bigger and rounder eyes, the enlarged frog eyes in the picture always seemed to mock me with irony.
“Well, no… Umm, this license is one of the laminated kinds. All you need is a razor blade to fix it.”
“You know how to do that?”
“I know someone who can. Let me have it. I’ll have it fixed by tonight.”
Breaking the law for the first time, I felt such the rebel. If he asked for my birth certificate and my parent’s marriage license I would have given them to him on my high from last night.
He kissed me on the lips. “See you later tonight, sweetie.” Then he went out the door.
Mist of Avalon—Early June, Sophomore Year
Stan delivered on his promise and returned with a doctored ID.
“Let’s grab a bite to eat and then we’ll go out tonight to Avalon.”
I had to work the next day, but said, “Yeah, can’t wait.”
Having our first date after we had already slept together was not typical from what I saw in TV shows, but I guessed that’s the way gay guys do it. A dinner and clubbing date trumped the traditional dinner and movie date, but then again, nothing we did was traditional.