Page 78 of My Own Kind of Person

I applaud and cheer. He holds a hand out to me.

“Oh,” I say. “No thanks.”

“You can do it. Just live in your body and move however you feel.”

I wrap my arms around my knees. “My body is already moving how it feels.”

He crouches in front of me. “You would love a eurhythmics class.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I prefer to detach from my body and exist as floating thought.”

“Do you?” He sits and crosses his legs. “You’re so comfortable with yourself.”

“Me? You are.”

“How many times have you seen me talk in class?”

I consider this. “That’s true. Why don’t you?”

He shrugs. “When I was little, I barely spoke at all. Ever. Then I found dance, and it was this way I could be myself. And it’s like I practiced being me onstage and slowly learned to take it offstage.”

“So…”

“So, I still don’t feel like talking about myself in front of a room of people!”

No cars pass by. I hear myself inhale before I speak. “Would you tell me the story of the friend who saw you but didn’t see you?”

He says he will if I try a movement exercise first, and I accept. He says to listen to the sounds outside of us, to the air above us and the cars in the distance and the insects all around, and also to the sound inside, to my heartbeat and my breath. He says to move however I feel without concern for how it might come out. He says he will go elsewhere and look away.

I watch him move, not dancing exactly, not doing anything necessarily beautiful. He moves across the field with his body like each gesture is a phrase in a language I haven’t learned.

Soon I do the same, or I try. I move my arms and my legs, like a robot at first and then more smoothly. I am learning the language of my body. I move over the grass until I find myself near Elijah. I wouldn’t understand the first thing about attempting to have my body in conversation with someone else’s, it would terrify me to try to move together, to see while being seen. But I suppose I must be interested in it, because I move in front of him and make eye contact, and he responds by touching my chest lightly and whispering, “You’re it.” Then he sprints away. I race after him toward the trees and I tag his arm and I turn and run back into the field, his laughter close behind.

We’re lying in the grass out of breath and sweating when Elijah says, “Last year my best friend Gabe’s girlfriend broke up with him, and he started inviting me over every Friday night. It used to be their night and now it was ours. Gabe was a track guy who buzzed his own hair and looked like he was in the army, but I knew he was secretly scared of everything: heights, bugs, everything.”

We’re not touching, but I can feel the heat of his arm beside mine.

“One night, a cockroach ran next to my sleeping bag on the floor, and I didn’t care but Gabe said I should come sleep in his bed. I climbed in, a foot of space between us. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t get morning wood,’ and I was like, ‘Phew,’ and he goes, ‘Because I jerk off every night.’ I said, ‘That’s weird because I jerk off all night,’ and he goes, ‘While sleeping?’ And I said, ‘Very slowly.’ And then we went to sleep. The next time I slept over, he invited me up again, and again we slept. The only weird thing about it was that it wasn’t weird. He knew I was gay and I knew he was straight. We were proud of ourselves for not caring.”

I make a sound of affirmation.

Elijah shakes his head. “Then one night we’re lying there with the lights off, and he says to me, ‘I’m kind of surprised there’s been no incidents,’ and I said, ‘Incidents?’ He says, ‘Have you thought about it?’ And I say, ‘I must not have, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I loved him so cleanly I never would have allowed myself to see him that way. And I was raised very Christian, so I can only be attracted to someone if they’ve given me permission to be.”

I’ve never heard this idea before but it makes sense. I wouldn’t want to think about someone in a way they weren’t comfortable with.

“And Gabe rolls onto his back and says, ‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’ And like it was waiting under my tongue, I say, ‘An incident sounds fun.’ He turns over, his face lit up by the moon. And, like, I have heard guys say that the first time they kissed a guy it finally felt right. I’d been kissing boys since elementary school, but Gabe was the first boy I kissed who I loved. And. It. Felt. Right. We barely touched each other but we still came all over the bed, and it was gross and we laughed trying to clean it up and there was no way to clean it up.”

“Oh my God.”

“When we woke up in the morning,” Elijah says, “I asked if he wanted to be my boyfriend, and he said, ‘You know I’m only emotionally attracted to girls.’ And he kept inviting me over for sleepovers, and I kept saying yes, only now I slept on the floor again. And when he’d ask if I wanted to jerk off together, I’d say yes. And afterwards he’d say how proud he was of us just being cool about it, for being guys and keeping things uncomplicated, and I’d laugh and agree. And I got so angry.”

“With him?”

“With myself. For trying to play it cool, for trying to please him…I was mad at myself for not believing I was deserving of his affection. And that’s why I moved here. To get away. To start over.”

For a moment I only blink, not because I can’t find the words, but because there aren’t words.

“Thank you for sharing.”