Page 66 of My Own Kind of Person

“There we go.” Mazzei motions toward me. “Please welcome to the mic Sean O’Brien.”

Only Elijah claps.

I guess I’m taking a while to say anything, because Jay shouts, “It’s okay if you can’t get it up, O’Brien!”

I look at Jay’s face, truly the most irritating arrangement of eyes and nose and mouth that could ever exist, and my disdain for him wipes out every other feeling. I will use this rage as fuel. I will be better than Jay not because I am good but because he deserves to lose.

“I appreciate that, Jay,” I say. “There’s nothing more comforting to me than how consistently boring you are.”

Kids laugh and make sounds like we’re about to fight. Mazzei leans his forehead on the back wall. Elijah would say I’m hiding behind humor just like Jay. He’d say I’m fighting for power just like Jay. He’d say I’m doing exactly what I keep saying I don’t want to do. And he’d be right.

When I look down at Elijah in the front row, he isn’t frowning or scowling. He’s simply looking back.

I keep my eyes on his and I let myself exist only in his gaze.

“Before I met Elijah Summers,” I say, my voice reverberating around the auditorium, “I was the Homecoming Court Jester. I was the scrawny pale guy. By making fun of how I wasn’t the epitome of an alpha male, I turned myself into someone who was still acceptable. But there were so many things I didn’t know how to joke about, which meant I didn’t know how to talk about them, which meant I didn’t know how to think about them. That’s why, one afternoon last week, I slipped into the boys’ bathroom in the banana wing to let myself have a minor panic attack in peace. As I turned into a version of myself I didn’t want anyone to see, a toilet flushed and Elijah exited a stall.”

I look out at the silent crowd. It’s not too late, I tell myself, to walk off the stage, rent a boat, and set off to sea.

Or, I think, I could keep talking.

“That’s when the strangest thing happened. I told Elijah how I felt, and he heard me, and he accepted me as I was.” I add with exaggerated disbelief, “Could you imagine?”

The room laughs. It’s an interesting laugh. I’m poking fun at how I couldn’t imagine being accepted as I was, and we’re laughing because we see ourselves in that experience. Everyone else is also changing who they really are to make themselves “fit in.” And I’m not making fun of us for not fitting in. I’m making fun of the feeling that we have to try to, the feeling that who we are isn’t enough. It’s a joke that doesn’t put us all down but instead questions the unspoken social norms that hold us all down.

I tell the room about sharing stories with Elijah in English, and messaging with him, and going to the city with him.

“And whenever I was with him,” I say, “I’d have this warm feeling that I didn’t know how to name and I didn’t know what to do with.”

Mr. Mazzei, standing on the back wall, uncrosses his arms.

I take a breath and continue. “My first crush was on a girl in kindergarten who mostly pretended to be a panther. I had a crush on a girl in the third grade who kicked a soccer ball into my groin. I didn’t have a crush on her because of that, but that is something she did. I think I got married to a girl in the fifth grade. Not sure if we ever got divorced. I knew these feelings were crushes because I’d seen in movies how a kind boy could have an innocent crush on a girl, and I wanted to be a kind boy.”

I look down at Elijah. He’s holding his closed hand in front of his closed lips, watching me closely.

“But along the way there were also boys who I thought were so cool,” I say. “In the seventh grade I thought the lead in the school play was so talented. In the tenth grade I thought a soccer kid’s buzzed hair looked so good. And I wonder if those were crushes on those kids and I didn’t realize it because I’d never seen an example of a guy who was neither straight nor gay.”

Elijah’s face doesn’t budge. He doesn’t even blink.

I put my hands in my pockets. A little defensiveness is okay, I think, given the moment.

“But if you imagine being accepted as you are,” I say to the room, to the lights, my voice trembling, “then suddenly you realize who you might be. And it turns out I might be someone who can be attracted to people regardless of their gender.”

When I look back to Elijah, his closed hand hasn’t moved from the front of his face. His eyes are, if anything, distrustful.

But I stay looking at him. “Which is all to say, Elijah, you’ve helped me become who I am. And I am someone who has such a big crush on you.”

Now his hand drops and he smiles. He motions left and right and whispers loudly, “We are in school!”

I make an eek face and turn to the room. “Thank you! Sorry if that last part was awkward.”

I leave the stage as everyone applauds, and I walk toward Elijah as he adjusts his outfit. I casually sit beside him and look over as he looks away and smiles. Mazzei goes to the microphone and asks for critical feedback, but I don’t hear anything people say because all I’m thinking about is the side of Elijah’s face.

When he turns to me, his eyes are wide.

“Was that okay?” I ask quietly.

“That was more than okay.”