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“It’s nothing, forget it.” I was backing out, backing down. I felt myself shrinking. This was dumb. I was being dumb. I needed to bottle this all up, find my own place, and get on with my life. I had silenced this part of myself for so long already, why not keep it going?
“No, I don’t think I am going to forget it. You’re acting, on a scale of one to Gwyneth Paltrow, you’re acting Goop-level weird. And that’s fucking weird. Have you read her newsletter? She told people to stick jade eggs up their cooters. Imagine that. A nice, porous stone stuck inside of a humid cave filled with friendly bacteria.”
“She really said that?”
“Mhmm.” He drank a sip of the mango margarita he had prepared himself. I stuck with an orange-flavored beer he offered me.
Different, but still the same, my brother and I.
“So what’s going on, my dear, dear, tortured older brother.” He batted his long lashes, not letting go of the lead he had on me. He knew something was up. He could always tell, even since when we were little. We were only separated by two years, so as kids, we would hang out often and that only strengthened the bonds between us.
It also meant nothing was going to get past him.
I took a breath, setting my fork down. I had to do it. I had to talk to him about it, at least talk to someone about the feelings that had a life of their own inside me. “All right, so, I wanted to come over to talk to you about something.”
“Is this about the complicated and frightening disappearance of our keystone species all across the globe?”
“Wha? No, no it’s not about Keystone beer or whatever you just said.”
Oliver laughed and sat back in his seat. “Sorry, Jojo, something’s obviously bugging you. I’m going to put my joking aside for the next ten minutes.”
“The jokes were fine, funny actually. Which I guess is what I’m not used to.”
Oliver’s jaw dropped at the unexpected dig. “Excuse me!”
It was my turn to laugh, more of the nerves melting away. “Kidding.”
“You better be.” His slanted his lips in a smirk. We looked pretty similar, with our blue eyes and short dark hair. He had a sharper set of facial features to him. He had less muscles than I had but still kept fit. He was shorter than I was, too, although that didn’t stop him from projecting his personality out as if he were a seven-foot-tall man in the center of a room.
“I wanted to talk to you about…” I didn’t even know how to start it. And then I blurted out: “How did you know you were gay?” I guess that was as close to square one as I was getting.
“I got my gay letter from a glitter ghoul inviting me to gay Hogwarts.” He threw his hands in the air and bobbed his head. “Duh.”
“Ah, now it all makes sense.”
Oliver’s smile flattened, his expression growing serious as he pivoted back to my original question. “I mean… I always knew, Jojo. Since I could remember. I was never really interested in the girls in my class unless it meant to be friends with them. But the boys, I was always weird around. I think that’s because I knew I had feelings for them, except I was too young to even understand them yet, so I’d just hang out with the girls all the time. And then Jason Coolidge hurtled into my life like the comet that took out Fred Flinstone. That guy was a tall glass of water and more. I was smitten and totally swept off my feet. I was also a freshman in high school and at one of the most vulnerable points in my life, but I decided to be loud and proud about my feelings. I thought he was going to punch me at first, but he kissed me instead. Since then, I’ve lived as loud and proud as I can.” He pursed his lips, a wave of sadness breaking on the conversation. “It’s been hard.”
It had been hard. My brother almost lost his life because of how loud and proud he was.
His boyfriend had lost his life. There in my brother’s arms while they waited for police to show up.
And still, my brother faced the world with a smile and a couple of painted nails, twirling and laughing and saving little forest animals or whatever else he did at vet school.
He was an inspiration, someone I’d always look up to.
He was my hero.
“But what’s life without a little spice, huh? Imagine if the Spice Girls never happened? I strongly believe we’d be in World War Five right now, so spice is fine. I’m fine. Being gay is great, as much as there are certain challenges that come with expressing your true self. It’s scary when there are some ugly mofos out there who’d rather hurt your true self instead of amplifying it. But you can’t live by their rule. You can’t.”
