"It's a new type of pill," started my dad, "that stops men from having sexual intercourse with other men."
"Oh." I said, as my mother glared at my father's answer.
"Right?" asked my father, the instructor's certainty taking leave of his voice.
"That's right," answered my mother, and then added, "it's a cure for homosexuality. It gets rid of everything in the brain that makes a man act like a woman.
After that car ride, I understood the severity what had transpired between me and myself. I felt a great relief that I had caught it in time - that I had discovered its severity before accidentally tipping my hand to someone inadvertently, letting my secret slip without realizing what a secret it was supposed to be. I felt a dizzying sense of balance, like looking down onto the street from the roof of our building, a relief that I hadn't accidentally spaced out and jumped off to my death, and a fear that I still accidentally might.
I'd never been that close to losing everything - Like being on a rooftop, I was compelled by the existence of one simple channel to failure- if anyone were to find out about the bathtub, it would be the same as falling off of that roof.
As I regained balance, I was glad that I had caught myself in time. Now that I understood what was at stake, I could bury the secret- make sure that no one ever discovered what I was.
School continued at the pace that had been set on Ash Wednesday, but I actually became accustomed to it as my treatment from the other kids became mundane. The A list kids called me "Jesus," the others just ignored me. In hindsight it seems unbearably cruel, but at the time my secret problem had so eclipsed my school troubles that they seemed tame by comparison.
One further incident at school was memorable- it happened on the back of the bus on the way to school. I frequently sat back there because it was marginally quieter - I was one of the first kids to get on the bus in the morning and I found that if I scurried to the back as soon as I got on, I could usually sit there unnoticed for the remainder of the ride. The day of this incident, I was at the back of the bus - and it was pretty empty - the only kid seated anywhere near me was a fat girl who was sitting three rows up from my seat.
I was listening to headphones because it's always made me feel sick to read in moving cars. I was startled to see Davis jump into the aisle from his seat near the front, and saunter down the aisle approaching me.
"What-up." he said. He didn't call me 'Jesus.' We were all alone except for the fat girl two seats up. I didn't say anything to him.
"My man," he said. "Lemme get your math homework real quick?"
We had a math class together during the first period of the morning. I don't know why he assumed I had the math homework - probably because I had no friends so he assumed I would be the nerd type who always did their math homework. The truth was, I hardly ever did my homework, I was going to be getting horrible grades, and lived in fear of the time when my parents would eventually find out and I'd be in a world of shit. The funny thing was, on this morning I actually had done the homework because my father had checked up on me the night before, asking me what kind of homework I had and whether he could do it with me. Maybe he was starting to pick up on my distance, or more likely, my mother had picked up on it and told my father to make sure I was alright. It certainly wasn't too much of a stretch to think that my father might translate my mother's call for action over her concern of her reception of my troubled vibes into a request to see my math homework for the evening.
So I had the math homework. I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had given it to him- whether he would have rewarded me and called a truce, or agreed to call off his dogs, make everyone like me, give me some friends? But again, I was dumbstruck by his presence, and I couldn't muster any reply at all.
"Man," he tried again, "I'm serious, Mr. Suggs is going to kill me if I don't turn the homework in - let me just copy yours real quick? I'll get it back to you before we're off the bus?"
"I didn't do the homework."
"C’mon man you know you did the homework."
"I didn't."
"Man, you know I'm going to find out in like twenty minutes when you turn that shit in first period- man I'm gonna beat your ass if turn that shit in and you didn't lemme get it."
"No- really I didn't do the homework- I just don't have it."
"Man, Benjy, you are so full of SHIT. lemme get it-"
I shrugged my shoulders and just looked at him.
"Don't have it," I said.
He stared at me. He was sitting on the armrest of the chair in the second-to-last row, the row right in front of my backseat.
"Man," he said, and he seemed really angry and exasperated, "You know what you are Benjy? You're a little faggot. " He looked at me all-knowingly, "Idon hav-eet! Idon hav-eet. Man, shut the fuck up. You are a little faggot in training. Look at how you walk, listen to your voice, look at your fuckin bendy-ass wrists. man, you're a young little faggot."
I put my headphones on, but I didn't turn the music on, I was secretly listening to hear what else he would say.
"You *know* it." he said as he stood up and started to walk away. He turned around once more "I know you know it."
I knew it, but I hadn't know that anyone else did. In under a minute, Davis had taught me that the bathtub would never be a secret. It wasn't something that I could keep, or keep away from anyone- it was something that was in everything about me - I was as provably guilty as a drunk driver that reeked of alcohol.
I got off the bus and couldn't even go to class. It's not that I was afraid to let Davis see me turn in my homework- I just didn't want to go to school- I didn't see the point. I felt completely hopeless, that it was only a matter of time before my father found out, and the pastor found out, and god found out about me. I literally did not see the point of living. I started to think about the way I walked, the way my toes pointed inward, the way my limbs flailed about. Now it seemed obvious to me, and I wondered if perhaps everyone already knew, the way that Davis did.
