Saturday, June 28, 2008 | by nathan

Vignettes 3: In The Face of Imminent Sex

I’ve had a crush on him since the moment we met; now, about to graduate college, we have left our respective boyfriends behind and headed out for a big group trip to the beach, where we’ve been lightly flirting all weekend. We come back from a walk by the ocean all covered in sand and salt. I hear him yelling my name from the bathroom of the beach house, and I drag myself in, exhausted from the sun, to see what he wants. He’s lying in a bubble bath completely naked, the bubbles covering the only part of him I’ve never seen, with a huge, playful grin on his face. I roll my eyes at him, turn and walk out of the bathroom, then go in the room we’ve been sharing, cover my face with a pillow, and scream.

I’ve been pining for him for 3 months, and now, after endless flirtation, he’s informed me that he intends to remain celibate. Still, he’s always up for friendship, and tonight that has entailed us going out to a bar, him getting good and drunk, and then me driving us back to my place, where, he has made it clear, he will be sleeping on the couch. As we pass the lake, however, he insists I pull over, and he leaps out of the car and tears off running across the muddy bank. "Let’s go skinny dipping!" he shouts, beginning to strip off his shirt. "That water is freezing," I tell him. "It’s November." He cajoles me some more, but I flatly refuse, trying to honor his wishes despite how badly I want to follow him into the frigid waves. I tell myself that perhaps it would be fun, the water acting like a cold shower, but when he grabs my arm and tries to lead me, the place where he’s touching me burns hot and, choking back emotions and desires that threaten to overwhelm me, I lead him back to the car, reminding him that, no, you don’t want to go in there - you’ll catch cold.

I’m in the kitchen, mixing him a gin and tonic. I’ve lived in Connecticut for a month and of all the new people I’ve met, he’s the most fascinating. And God - those eyes. I try to shake it off as I carefully measure the ingredients, but when I turn and hand him the glass, he’s only about a foot away. My boyfriend and another friend of ours are in the other room; we thought having new friends over to the apartment would be fun. Now, with this incredibly attractive and intelligent guy standing here in my space, it’s gotten confusing. He pecks me once, on the lips, quickly. I blush and look down, forcing the drink into his hand. Things dry up and get awkward within a second. "Sorry," he says sheepishly. I am unable to speak, so I just shake my head, staring at the floor. "Come on," he says as brightly as possible, then turns to go back into the living room. My boyfriend and our other friend are now seated next to each other on the couch. "Were you guys making out in there?" the friend slurs. "No," he says. My boyfriend won’t look at me. The friend speaks up again. "Well, we figured you were, so we were just out here going at it." I look to my boyfriend, but he still won’t look up. In that moment one thing breaks inside of me, and I know that we’ll be over very, very soon. Inside, defiant, I suddenly wish I’d been less restrained in the kitchen, and am also glad I can now self-righteously hold this over his head. Very, very soon, I think, and furiously suck down my drink.

…and once again I invite you to participate in the comments. When are some times you’ve walked away from sex, or just from another person in general, even against your strongest urges?

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 | by nathan

Vignettes #2: Things That Happened To Me In 1990 and 1991

I get to take the day off of school because mom has to drive to Ft. Worth, to take her car back to the dealership to have some work done, and she doesn’t want to go alone. After waiting for hours in the show room we go to the mall, where I buy a cassette single of Janet Jackson’s song "Escapade" with the $5 she has given me to spend. We listen to that song almost the entire 3-hour drive back to Oklahoma, rewinding the tape over and over again and laughing at ourselves for having so much silly fun. She is my mother, and I am her child; everything is going to be okay.

In the week we’ve been in northern California visiting my uncle Bill, who manages this campground in the mountains, I’ve crossed the creek a hundred times via a fallen tree. I don’t expect this time to be any different; the process has become almost second-nature to me now, and the log is really wide enough for two of me to cross side-by-side, and anyway, I’m always climbing trees and walking along fences at home. My brother stays on the bank of the creek, ready to cross after I’m done. Halfway across, I’m not sure what happens; I feel the air go out of the world and the forest spinning around me before my body hits water. It’s freezing, but before I even have a conscious thought I’m swimming, struggling for the shore, trying to get my breath. I emerge from the water shaking and cold, but safe. When I turn to look behind me at the creek from which I’d just emerged I don’t see the tranquil mountain stream I had only moments before. Now it’s a river, and I see rocks, and currents, and, downstream, a waterfall. Suddenly the world is much more full of danger, but I am stronger than I knew.

I’ve forgotten my lunch ticket again, and, exasperated with me, the teacher on duty in the middle-school cafeteria won’t let me eat. "This is the fourth day in a row you’ve forgotten it," she barks at me, so all the kids can hear. Laughter follows me out the door, where I sit with my sketch pad and colored pencils and try to come up with something to draw. Uninspired, I flip through the drawings I’ve already done; in an instant the pad is wrenched from my hands and three boys stand around me. When I try to stand up to take my pad back, one of them pushes me back down. They start looking at what I’ve drawn, laughing themselves silly and refusing to let me stand up. I can’t help myself; I start crying and, embarassed, wedge myself into a tiny space between the outer wall of the cafeteria and a portable building. There are, as it turns out, advantages to being the smallest kid in school; the other boys can’t follow me in. After a few moments they toss the sketch pad into the gap with me and trot off to more worthwhile pursuits, and I stay there, wedged in the dark, the bricks cold on my back, until the lunch bell rings and I have to go to English class.

 

Once again I invite participation; what happened to you in 1990 & 1991?

Thursday, March 20, 2008 | by nathan

Vignettes

What are the moments in your life that walk with you? The formative ones, the stories you’re always telling? In an effort to challenge myself to become a better writer I’m going to try to tell some of these stories, to share some of these moments as concisely as possible. Sarah Brown is the queen of this; definitely read her "Impressions" series, but as she’s a really, really hard act to follow, do me a favor and read mine first.

We’re sitting in her car, and she’s crying. I’ve cried over this stuff enough, though I’m just barely holding it together after she’s just told me that I’m going to be excommunicated for being gay. Honestly, if it wasn’t so deeply sad, if I wasn’t feeling so insanely guilty for hiding it from her all these years, I’d find it incredibly funny. We’re Protestants, I think to myself. We don’t excommunicate. Only it’s not funny - it’s the moment I’ve dreaded. She’s hurt because I didn’t tell her for all this time, and I’m hurt because she doesn’t realize that I knew all along that when I told her that this is how it would go down. It’s my worst fear come to life. Finally I tell her that we’re not going to solve anything like this, that there’s no point in talking right now because emotions are running way too high, and I get out of the car, feeling guilty and low. As I’m walking back to my apartment someone shouts my name; two of my friends have their heads out the window of their apartment, and when I look up they toss a water balloon at me. It’s just some harmless fun; any other day I’d find it hilarious. For now, I am defeated. When I get back to my room I don’t cry, but I wish I could.

I’m staring at a computer screen in Creative Writing class when I hear my name whispered somewhere behind me. If I was a dog, my ears would perk up; as it is, the activity on the screen freezes and I can’t help but listen; as is common in high school, people are talking behind my back without bothering to check whether or not I can hear them. "Constantly!" shouts the girl in the conversation, who I’d long considered a close friend. "He is constantly eavesdropping on me!" She has a point, I suppose; I was, except that her naturally-loud voice carries through the classroom. And despite the fact that I’d been putting a lot of distance between us for a long time, that she was the first person to teach me that friendship is so often one-sided, it hurts. Until I hear the teacher mutter under her breath, heard only by me, "It’s not eavesdropping if everyone in the goddamn room can hear you." Then, I feel better.

He has found a pad on which I’ve written an entire treatise, a letter to myself saying, basically, "Nathan, you’re gay, and can you not see that Jesus is so totally okay with you?" I felt better after writing it; so cleansed and refreshed, in fact, that I’d left it behind in the room where our fellowship group had gathered. A day later he shows up at my room, the pad in his hand, saying, "I think we should talk, because I found this, and I didn’t really mean to read it, it’s just I was trying to figure out who it belonged to. Anyway, let’s take a walk." I’m dreading it, but I trust him. We take off down through Reynolda Gardens and he tells me that he’s been dealing with the same thing, but no one can ever know. I promise to keep his secret. We walk through the thick, humid spring air, magnolias and crocuses blooming all around us, the trails quiet. When we take a break and sit, he pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his bag. I smile and say, "I’m just learning all sorts of things about you today."

Like any writing project, this one turned out very differently than I anticipated. I didn’t mean for any of these to necessarily be sad; I just thought of three tiny little stories and told them in the order they came to me. What are some of the moments that have shaped you?