The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 02

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kidboise
kidboise
166 Followers

Miguel wanted to reach out then. He wanted to feel the smooth skin of Sebastian's neck with the tips of his fingers, to press his ear against the boy's bare chest and keep it there. He wanted to see his friend again with no clothes...and then?

But he needed to be sure. He looked over. "Remember that question you asked in seminary? About men marrying men?"

"Yes."

"Why did you ask about that?"

"Because I don't want to be with women," Sebastian replied, unfazed. "I want to be with men."

So, it was that simple. One could just state it. But if Miguel were to repeat the words back to his best friend, would they be true? Was it men whom Miguel wanted to be with, or was it just Sebastian?

Never mind that. What difference did it make? After all, he didn't have to say the words to get what he wanted. He looked up into Sebastian's dark eyes, swallowed, smiled a little.

Sebastian cleared his throat. In a timid voice that was not his own he said, "We don't have a lot of time."

It didn't matter whether Sebastian referred to his father, who would soon come pounding up the stairs looking for him, or to the boys' inevitable parting, now just a month away. The underlying message was clear enough: permission. Permission to act, to touch. Miguel moved into the small space that had separated them and Sebastian met him there, surrounding him with his sweaty limbs, wrestling him onto his back. When Sebastian kissed him, Miguel kissed back with a sort of pent-up ferocity—one whose existence he had not known until that moment. He had never kissed anyone romantically before. He hardly knew what it meant to do so, had always planned to postpone the moment for as many years as possible. But now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, like putting on a favorite old shirt. Instantly he was hungry for more, ravenous, taking as much as he could get, as if the kiss were oxygen and he had just resurfaced from the turquoise depths of the local pool.

Sebastian began to move his waist against Miguel's. Miguel liked the feeling and began moving in the same way. That prodigious sensation, which he had experienced for the first time only one year earlier, mounted inside him faster than it ever had before. Alarmed, he realized he would finish in his jeans. He couldn't stop it. He tried to warn Sebastian, who gave him a helpless look and whispered, "Me, too."

Once it was over, the two boys lay side by side, sweating, breathing, recovering—and not a second too soon. The stairwell sounded its noisy warning as the counselor stomped up to fetch his son.

Late in the evening, the boys found a private moment to sneak away, up to Miguel's attic bedroom. Though it was unthinkable during the havoc of the years that followed, Miguel would one day smile at the memory of those few wily minutes and shed a happy tear or two: A rusting, three-bladed ceiling fan wobbled above the twin bed where they sat. Sky-blue ceiling dove in accordance with the sloped roof to meet stunted bookshelves built into the walls. His model planes (fifteen in total) hung from wool string at various altitudes all around the room, endlessly twirling, un-twirling.

"I think about you," said Sebastian. "You know, when we're not together."

"I think about you, too."

"I don't know how long I'll keep thinking about you...after you ago away."

Miguel hid his face. He would not allow Sebastian to see him cry.

"I feel like I'm going crazy," said Sebastian. He stood suddenly. "I need to do something. We need to do something." He looked all around Miguel's room, as if searching for an idea among the shadowy bookshelves.

"What do you mean?"

"We need to show them," the boy asserted. "They need to see us."

Miguel still lay on the bed. He gazed up at his best friend, feeling nothing but intense adoration and attraction. He no longer lagged behind, was no longer trying in desperation to understand. Instead, he ran alongside his companion now, their arms linked. He was fully complicit, so he stood, too. For a moment he forgot everything else. All plausible outcomes to their next action, no matter how horrific, backed away into a fog until they were completely obscured.

All fear left him. "How should we do it?"

Sebastian's eyes lit up. "We'll go to that window. We'll sit at the edge, just like always, and we'll show them how much we care for each other."

The pain of knowing they would soon say goodbye had slowly built inside Miguel since he first found out. He needed an outlet now, and this was it. He saw the moment for what it was. He grabbed Sebastian's hand and towed him to the window, urged him to climb out and scoot toward its edge.

"Up here!" Was it Sebastian or Miguel who shouted down to the innocent families on the lawn? By that point, it didn't matter. They embraced there in one another's gangly limbs, sweaty from the hot bedroom, lips parting to make way for tongues.

The reaction was quick and audible. Miguel remembered it in a strange way: Every time the local rollercoaster called Aconcagua first ka-thunked into motion, its centipede of anxious riders gasped and murmured in the exact same manner as the guests below. For one full second, Miguel's mouth smiled against Sebastian's at the thrill of it all. Then the shouts, guttural, and mostly from the men in attendance, began shrieking up like angry warplanes from the yard. The two boys fell away from each other, backs against opposing frames of the window. Miguel knew it then: Something was horribly wrong.

The sounds of shoed feet (never allowed in the house) came thundering up from the first floor stairwell, then the second. It was his father, and the counselor close behind him, the soles of their boots threatening to punch through each wooden step as they rose up through the house.


Miguel's memory of what happened next would be forever cast in a haze. Perhaps the door had been locked, he later reasoned, because the two men had busted clear through its stop in a dramatic bid to reach them. The men were aggressive, the counselor shoving his son with such force toward the doorway that the boy tripped over a piece of splintered wood and nearly tumbled into the stairwell. The bishop pressed his own son, massive hands acting as vices against Miguel's small chest, into the back wall. A model plane fell to the floor. Did the two boys' eyes meet in a final, mournful flash before they were parted? No. Miguel remembered nothing of Sebastian's face in that moment, but heard a handful of young, exasperated pleas descend toward the main floor.

All further action between Miguel and Sebastian was to be completely severed. A clean cut. The adult members of the ward vowed to help, in any way they could, keep the two boys' lives separate. Seminary leaders placed them in different classes; neighbors kept an eye on them as they came and went from their homes. Their shared route to school was put under clandestine patrol to ensure they never walked together.

The collaboration was so exhaustive, so effective that the boys hardly tried to sidestep it. Miguel could not guess how his friend dealt with the shock of such an abrupt end. As for himself, he did all he could to avoid eye contact when their paths inevitably crossed. He tried to pretend the boy who he had once known was not there at all. His peers maintained an eerie friendliness, to the extent that he was certain their parents had demanded it, likely threatening harsh punishment should they act otherwise. He was, after all, still the Bishop's son.

But Miguel could no longer ignore Sebastian when he appeared one night outside his bedroom window, just standing there in the yard far below, two days before the move. How could his friend have known he would still be awake well past midnight, would be stationed alone out on the windowsill they used to share? Sebastian waited faithfully for the full ten minutes it took Miguel to descend silently through his home.

They dove immediately behind the hedges lining the back fence and came to know each other all over again, panting in the cold night.

When it was over, Sebastian said, "I know your sister is planning to stay. I heard her talking about it."

"I don't know yet."

"You should stay with her."

"I'm not allowed."

"You can run away, and then live with her once they're gone."

"My parents might leave without Lucia, but they will not leave without me."

Miguel could tell the wheels were spinning out of control in Sebastian's brain. "Lucia could convince them she will watch over you—"

"Lucia is grown," interrupted Miguel. "She can do what she wants. It's different. I'm—we're not grown up, Sebastian. We have to wait for the things we want in life. Besides, I don't think this is right. What we're doing, it's not a good thing. It's immoral."

The boy drew back from Miguel. "In the eyes of your father."

"No, Sebastian, in the eyes of God." I didn't matter whether Miguel believed in those final words or not. He simply wasn't going to stay in San Justo. He needed his old friend to understand, to leave him alone for good.

They were shivering now. June had ushered in a sudden cold season. Sebastian didn't speak. He just looked at Miguel for what felt like a very long time. Then he stood slowly and walked through the open gate, out of the yard forever.

When remembering back on that night from a much older vantage, Miguel couldn't help but be impressed with his younger self. Even by thirteen, he had grasped that his life could be very different one day, if he could just hold on long enough...because deep in the mists of the future lived a smiling adult self who knew unfathomable things, who understood the answers to questions that young Miguel hadn't even begun to ask. Miguel believed in the promise that future held, and it guided his actions then, just as it would again, countless times in the years to come.

--

Monday, June 28th, 1999

Gabe was due back tonight. Miguel would believe it when he saw it. He moved quickly along an alley route from his apartment, where the fetid breath of a grease dumpster nearly consumed him as he passed. The kid was to be driving a different car now, a large Toyota sedan, brand new, the color of sand. Miguel had asked Eddie if there were any other distinguishing details, and Eddie told him that it was the kind of car that would run you over before you noticed it—exactly the car they should have been using all along.

Miguel was eager for things to return to normal. It wasn't just the thought of seeing Gabe again; he also felt it would do Eddie some good to reassume his regular post back at camp. Eddie had been moody, a descriptor that Miguel was shocked could ever apply to the hulking Vietnamese man. Some nights he acted cheery, and stranger yet, talkative, helping Miguel move the packages while asking him evaluative questions about his personal life; others, he would sulk around his SUV, or wait impatiently in the driver's seat, massaging his temple with his index finger. Miguel came to view this behavior as mostly volatile, especially around ten days in, at its peak: Eddie stood frowning in an open expanse of concrete, hands on his hips, and asked, "What the fuck are we doing here, exactly?"

When Miguel asked him to clarify, Eddie had gestured wildly in odd directions around the warehouse, saying, "This, this, just, all of this," then told Miguel never mind, to forget about it.

None of it was particularly worrying. It was just that Eddie's confidence truly did hold all of them together. All the guys, especially the encampment laborers, looked to Eddie for his stern reassurance and his conviction. Miguel wondered if he was simply catching Eddie at his worst. It would be just like Boss Man to hold it together at home with his family, and throughout his shifts in the desert, only to fall apart at the very end of it all, safe within the secured walls of the warehouse. Maybe there was even something about Miguel's presence that put Eddie at ease. He flattered himself that it was probably true.

After a nervous smoke, propped against the concrete post at the edge of the garage door, Miguel watched a beige car approach down the lane and pad softly into the lot. The driver window dropped, and there was Gabe, looking unexpectedly friendly and eager. In the dim light, Miguel noticed coarse black stubble above his lip and under his chin. The kid was growing up.

He said the only thing that came to mind. "How's the new car?"

Gabe seemed to fumble for a response. "It has an automatic transmission."

Miguel went inside and raised the garage door while Gabe performed his usual three-point turn. Once Gabe had finished backing into the garage, Miguel was glad to see him stand up out of the car, no groundhog scared back in by its shadow. Miguel flipped on the lights. For the time being, Gabe remained partially barricaded between the door and the car. Miguel reached into the trunk and brought out the first of the packages. He took another glance at Gabe and said, "It's a lot cleaner than the old one."

"It won't stay that way." Gabe stepped out from the gaping mouth of the car door and closed it.

Miguel continued to appraise the sedan. "Damn. Doesn't even look like it's loaded up."

The kid nodded.

"What happened to the Honda?"

"It's my personal car now." He paused. "It belonged to my father."

Well, that was fucking strange. Anyway, come on, Miguel begged himself, bring up something other than the stupid car. Anything. He cleared his throat and said, "It got old having Eddie around all the time. Glad you're back."

"Eddie can be a little intense sometimes."


"You're telling me." Package still in hand, Miguel lingered on the edge of it now: that un-talked-about event, the reason for Gabe's absence. And somehow, Gabe seemed right there with him, preparing for the dive, so Miguel said, "Anyway, I heard about what happened. I'm so sorry." Then he asked in Spanish, "Were you close with your mother?"

Gabe was thoughtful for a moment. "My mother and I had a complicated relationship."

"Is your dad still around?"

Gabe's hands fidgeted, fingers drumming against the roof of the car. "No, he is not."

"Oh."

The kid's mom was gone, and yet you could hardly tell, looking at him. Normally attuned to subtle changes in other people's behavior, Miguel could not detect even the slightest shift in Gabe's. It seemed unnatural, inhuman, not to be different after the death of a parent, no matter their role or lack thereof, whether beloved or loathed.


He fetched a felt-tipped marked from a workbench along the wall, marked the package and brought it all the way to the back, where he dropped it in a canvas bin with some others.

Life in America posed so many novelties that Miguel could not properly mourn the loss of Sebastian. Instead it felt like a sadness once-removed: sadness at the frustration of being unable, in his distraction, to conjure tears—sadness because he knew he was supposed to feel it and couldn't. After several months' time had passed, Miguel's head became filled with too many new experiences, and the memory of his best friend, of that entire place where he used to live, faded before it even occurred to him that he must grasp for it.


He had left one giant city for another. Both were vast and unknowable to a young person who had not yet reached the age to explore on his own. The borders of Miguel's world were still defined by home, neighborhood and school. And yet even by these definitions, his world would soon grow immensely, because Samuel Odin No. 2 was the largest public middle school in the city. It housed a mass of kids more various in appearance and attitude than Miguel had ever encountered back home. Then there was the hapless (and strangely charming) veneer of the structure itself: A stench of burnt eraser permeated the halls, lined with firm green carpet that turned black as squid ink down the center; walls were a hodgepodge of quick fixes slapped over early-1960s construction. Miguel loved everything about it.

His old school had mostly served the children of the ward; few outsiders roamed its halls. But here, Miguel and his new friends from church formed a hopeless minority. Furthermore, Miguel and his peers were growing older and more insightful. Discussion of God (or which was the correct one to believe in, or whether there was really one at all) became a subdued but persistent dialogue, a lunchroom undercurrent, reaching the occasional zenith of sophistication one might expect of a group whose median age was thirteen.

Miguel no longer received discipline for his misstep back in San Justo. Surprisingly, his parents continued to acknowledge the kiss (emotionlessly referred to as The Thing That Happened) partway into October of that year. It would strike Miguel later as a balanced, cerebral approach: Continued punishment would surely perpetuate the enigma of The Thing That Happened—and so would pretending it hadn't.

Miguel's father never fell from grace during this period of casual dismissal. His mother slipped only once, when she and Miguel stood alone in the kitchen after dinner one evening. Or maybe it wasn't a slip, as the blur of her new life began taking shape around her, as her wits were once again fully gathered. Miguel recalled her demeanor, dabbing her hands against a yellow dish towel, staring down at his maturing face (even though he had recently outgrown her), impatient but frighteningly collected. She was about to assume his knowledge of a word whose meaning had only recently distinguished itself from the slurry hurled between students.

"My love," she begged, voice barely above a whisper and constricting at that final syllable, "please tell me you're not really gay."

He answered her quietly but with great conviction, "Of course I'm not."

She must have believed him then, just as he believed himself, because any outward concern fell immediately into a years-long sleep. Perhaps she was distracted at the time by the pain of losing her oldest daughter. In the end, and with the law on her side, Lucia had not backed down. During their long flight to America, the empty airplane seat presented a tragic void that none of them wanted to be near. The Bishop had filled it with their coats, but it hadn't helped much.

Miguel's concern over his sexuality hung back in the shadows for a long time. Primarily he was Miguel, the good Christian. Miguel, man of the people. He would soon learn that, like his father, he was born to lead. Unimpeded by social anxiety except under the most extreme of circumstances, he formed friendships more quickly than he could keep up with them. He joined soccer, where he asserted himself as a mostly-valuable player. His presence put people at ease, made them feel listened-to. And so, when it came time for the associated student body to elect a president, he was encouraged to run.

He had worried at first that a faith-based campaign to lead a decidedly secular group of constituents would be ineffective. This was the case. So he immediately backed away from it and began a more general approach, every bit as honest, in which he told them all, I will figure out what it is you want, and I will spend every waking minute reaching for it. My goal is to get to know you, and then to serve your needs. Miguel met with both the varsity and junior-varsity football teams. He learned to play Magic: The Gathering during his lunch hour with the trench-coats who hung out in the storage hall. That deep gruffness to his voice, which he had once loathed for its gross intermittence, had now fully settled, and he laid it just as thickly upon the Young Men's Chorus as he did the Young Women's Soccer League. It wasn't teenage dissent, but rather Miguel's campaign principles lifting that first cigarette to his lips after class, as he came to know the grungy (and somewhat feared) kids who roamed the reaches of the schoolyard. Sure, they laughed at him as he choked and coughed his way through it, but with each new jab came another pat on the back. You're alright, they said, you're not fucking around.

kidboise
kidboise
166 Followers