NOVEMBER 14, 2009
Different with us.
I don’t know what that means. Tyler didn’t answer my question about whether he is attracted to me. I’ve always scoffed at stories of women marrying men who came out as gay after four kids and thirty years of marriage. I didn’t think that kind of thing happened anymore. Now I understand exactly how it could happen. How the wife would almost be happy for it to happen.
He likes hanging out with me.
Whatever the real reason, I am sure about that much. For the past week we have gone everywhere together. In the mornings before class, we go to the Starbucks in the grocery store across from school and get coffee drinks with whipped cream, then sit with Tyler’s friends and eat our drinks with a spoon. Serious winter has started and the girls wear their North Face jackets now every day. Just like the Nike shorts, they all have the same style but in different colors.
In the evenings, after school, we hang out at Paige’s watching movies in the media room, playing “Guitar Hero,” and drinking beer from the refrigerator her parents keep stocked just for us.
Tyler and I do the things that me and the other band kids made fun of and that we pretended we had no interest in. We pretended there weren’t any cliques, that there wasn’t a ruling elite. We pretended we believed what my mom and, probably, all of their moms too said: that school is so diverse now that the kids in Computer Club, or the emo kids running the literary magazine, or the choir queers or drama dweebs were really the cool ones. And in a happy, pretty, gentle, glowing-rainbow way, it is true that all the groups are cool. But it is even more true that only one of them is golden.
I can never tell my mom any of this. She would say, “No one interesting is ever popular in high school.” Or, “All the stars in high school end up selling cars or being housewives and mourning their glory days. It’s just sad.” And that would be the end of the discussion. Except to maybe add that Parkhaven is a wasteland and life will be totally different and totally wonderful the instant I leave.
She would never understand how much fun I am having being Tyler’s pretend girlfriend. I make a big point of hanging all over him when we are together. He seems to like that. When we are alone, though, it is completely hands-off. There is no way my mom could ever understand any of this. Especially since I don’t.