Duck Duck Goose

By

Cole Parker

Chapter 34

I loved Pomona College.  The retreat was a special experience, getting to know the kids I was going to be taking classes with—living the next four years with, really—and the professors I’d be learning from.  That first week, away from everything, in the mountains, was special.  Pomona College was a relaxed place, not a high pressure, competitive atmosphere.  They told us at the retreat that they didn’t want us feeling pressure, that we were all top kids from our high schools, that we’d all excelled on the SATs, that we all had what it took to not only succeed, but to thrive here.  They said they had a much higher graduation rate than larger schools, they expected all of us to graduate, and that some of us would have adjustment problems but that we could get individual help if we needed it.  They encouraged us to get to know the professors, the administrators, and especially each other.  They said we were all now part of a large family, a supportive family that wanted everyone to succeed.

It felt like that, too.  I felt everyone there was family.  I’d worried about fitting in there, but I hadn’t had to.  I liked my roommate, I liked the school and the environment, and was sure this was where I wanted to be for the next four years. 

So I settled in pretty quickly.  They had both a band and an orchestra.  I liked both conductors a lot.  The band was just a fun experience more than anything, a laid back group that included faculty and community members and whose purpose was a fun, low-key musical experience.  It was about a third the size of my high school band.  They never marched. 

The orchestra was much different, a serious musical organization that played a rigorous repertoire of classical literature.  I had to audition to get into the group.  I did, and was awarded their solo clarinet position, the first time a freshman had ever achieved that honor.

I loved the classes.  Even introductory freshman classes were small, and were taught not by TA’s but by professors.  I was surrounded by eager, interested and really bright students, and the classes were challenging and rewarding.  I really could see myself thriving in that atmosphere.

I was very busy.  First there was the retreat, then we were all back in school and I was getting to know my roommate and the other people on our floor in the dorm, and classes had begun and I was seeing how much more intense the studying was in college than high school and that took a lot of time and I was learning where everything was on campus and in the town and then I had to audition and.... 

Yeah, I know.  I’m running on here.  But that’s what the days felt like.  Exactly like that.  I hardly had time to turn around.  I hardly had time to think about Kevin.

Well, I’m sort of lying about that.  But it was complicated.  I was busy, really busy, and my mind was filled with my new life, it couldn’t help but be.  Everything was new and different, and I was consumed by it.  But I didn’t forget about Kevin.  When I’d go to bed at night, he was in my head.

I thought about him when I was on the retreat, of course.  I’d lie in bed at night, and I’d remember how we were before last summer, and then about last summer, too.  I’d remember what last summer had felt like, the distance that had grown between us.  And I’d thought a lot about our night at Yosemite.  I’d thought about what we’d done, and how it had felt.  Then I’d thought about Kevin crying on my chest afterward.

I’d thought at the time he’d simply been overcome by the emotion of it all.  We’d finally had sex, what he’d wanted all along, and he was crying at the release of emotion he felt after our expression of our love for each other.  We hadn’t talked about it.  In fact, we hadn’t talked much at all after that.  We’d driven back home and slept most of the way, just like the year before.  Then I’d been busy with final preparations for leaving, he’d been back at his job, and that had been it.

As I say, I’d thought about him crying, but then I had a new thought.  What if it hadn’t just been emotions?  What if he was crying because he knew he was leaving me, and this was our one and only time together?  What if he was crying because it was goodbye?

I hadn’t emailed him.  I couldn’t at the retreat.  No laptops, they’d told us.  This was so we’d get to know each other, and so no phones, no laptops, just all of us getting acquainted.  Then when we’d come back, I’d been too busy.  At least I told myself that.  That was why I didn’t write during the day, but I knew there was time at night.  I’d started to, a couple times, but I always stopped.  I stopped because I wasn’t sure what to write.  I was scared.  What if I was right, that his crying was because he was saying goodbye?  What if I wrote, and he wrote back saying it was over?  What if he wrote back and said he was with Timothy now?  What if he didn’t write back at all?

It was a week after school had started, two weeks since I’d left home, that I finally did email him.  I wanted to sound happy, not how I really felt.  By now, I was feeling strange.  I was excited about Pomona.  I really liked it, everything about it.  But in private moments, my missing Kevin had become a sharp pain.  I’d taken to trying not to think of him, because it hurt so badly.  But I couldn’t help it at night.  Lying in bed, I couldn’t help it.

So one night when I couldn’t stop thinking about him and couldn’t sleep, I finally got up.  My roommate was asleep.  He snored softly, and I’d found he didn’t wake easily.  I turned on my desk lamp and wrote an email to Kevin.  I wanted to sound happy.  I didn’t want to share how much I missed him and the hurt in my heart when I thought of him.  I wrote about the retreat, about my classes, everything, making it upbeat.  I did apologize for not writing sooner.  I did tell him I missed him. 

I didn’t feel much better, after I’d sent it.  I missed him dreadfully, and each day that went by, the hurt didn’t become less.  I’d always heard that’s the way it was supposed to work.  It wasn’t working that way for me.

And what I had worried about is what happened.  He didn’t email me back.

--   --   --    []    --   --   --

When I revisited that trip to Yosemite in my head, over and over again, I saw lots of things differently.  I thought about what he’d said when we were sitting on that hill, awed by the glory of Yosemite lying before us, after we’d been hiking and were resting next to each other.  He’d said we had to accept what was going to happen, that I was leaving.  He’d said he’d always love me.  Then, I’d taken comfort in that; I’d thought he was recommitting himself to me, accepting our upcoming one-year separation.  Now, it seemed like he’d been saying goodbye, even then. 

My roommate knew something was wrong.  In the past few days, I’d taken to lying on my bed when I wasn’t studying or in class.  I wasn’t eating much, and didn’t have much energy.  I’d check my email when I’d come into the room, and I’d find mail from my parents and other friends but there would be nothing from Kevin.  I’d lie down, and sometimes not even get up to study.

I did go to class, and I did try to study, most of the time, but as I said, my roommate knew something was wrong.  When I wouldn’t talk to him about it, and then stopped eating entirely, he finally got the dorm’s resident advisor, and he physically took me to the school’s health clinic, where I met with a psychologist.

She said she was used to talking with kids whose high school romances didn’t last when they went to college.  She wasn’t unsympathetic, she tried to help, but really couldn’t.  It was my problem to get over, and I knew I could, I would, with time.  I’d had the summer to get used to the idea of losing Kevin.  It was just that I’d had so much hope, after Yosemite.  So much hope.  And then to lose it so quickly, it wasn’t easy.

I did start eating again, but life didn’t have the glow to it that it had had only weeks before.

I thought about Kevin a lot.  I thought about why I hadn’t had sex with him.  I’d been honest with him at the beginning.  I had thought he was too young for me.  I hadn’t wanted to take advantage of him.  I hadn’t really said it to him, but also I was afraid of what other kids would say.  I realized how much that had worried me; I always worried about the other kids.  It was easy to say that was silly, now, at a distance, but then, it was a real fear, what they’d think.

There were more reasons, too.  They had to do with the attitude my parents had taught me when I was young, an attitude that sex is better if you wait till marriage, if you save yourself only for your partner; old fashioned ideas, but I’d listened to them.  I think more of a reason, though, was I was a little scared of sex.  I’d never done it, I wasn’t very mature, I had even been scared for a time that having sex with Kevin would prove I was gay.  Lots of silly fears, but they were there, and the package of them altogether probably conspired against me to say no.

I hadn’t realized how much having sex meant to Kevin.  Until it was too late.  Probably part of why I had sex with him a few weeks ago was what my mom had explained to me, why it was important to him.  If I’d known that earlier, would I have lost my inhibitions earlier?  I didn’t know.  I hoped it would have made a difference.   I’d been so foolish.  I hadn’t realized what losing Kevin would mean.  I hadn’t realized how deeply, thoroughly, disastrously in love with him I was.

Thanksgiving was coming, and I was going home. My parents insisted.  They knew something was wrong, they could tell from my emails.  They wanted to talk to me, face to face.  So I was going home.

I couldn’t go on like this.  I’d flunk out of college, going on like this.  What I wanted was Kevin, but I was sure he was with Timothy now.  In emails to Becky, I’d asked about that, and she’d said yes, they spent some time together.  So I knew.

I knew I had to put an end to this.  My life was ahead of me.  I’d told Kevin we couldn’t be together because I’d be going away to college.  Now, I was away at college, and we weren’t together.  It was just as I’d said.  I had to make a final break from him.  Final.  Finale.  I had to finalize it.  Maybe then the pain would stop.

I decided I’d do it in person.  Maybe if we spoke, if he said goodbye to me in person, and I said it to him, maybe if I kissed him one last time, held him for a few moments, maybe if he kissed me back, maybe if we did that, I’d have some closure and could move on.

Thanksgiving was coming.  I’d do it then.  I thought about what I’d say to him all the way home.  It was a two hour drive.  You can do a lot of thinking in two hours.

--   --   --    []    --   --   --

I stood in Kevin’s bedroom doorway.  He hadn’t wanted to see me.  I’d spoken to his mom and she’d agreed with me he had to see me, and she’d made him stay home.  I’d come over then, and she’d let me in.  She said she had an errand to run, she’d be gone for a couple of hours, so we’d be alone to talk.  That Kevin was upstairs, waiting for me.  Then she smiled at me, a sad smile, put her hand on my shoulder briefly, and then left.

I stood in Kevin’s bedroom doorway.  He looked up at me from where he was sitting on the side of his bed, his feet on the floor.  Then he looked back down at his lap again.

I walked in and sat down next to him.  Neither of us spoke right away.  I’d planned what to say, but sitting next to him, seeing him, looking smaller than I remembered, looking vulnerable, made me stop. 

Then I simply decided to go ahead with what I’d planned.  I’d already lost him.  What would it hurt?

“Hi, Kevin,” I said softly.

“Hi.”

“Kevin, I’m sorry I didn’t write right away.  I couldn’t at first, and then when I could, I was scared.”

“Scared?”

“Yeah.  Scared.  I’d thought about us when I was at the retreat.  I finally realized that what you were doing at Yosemite was saying goodbye.  I figured it out, finally.  I thought about last summer, when you were with Timothy a lot.  I thought about how you must have felt, knowing I was going away, knowing you’d be staying, knowing how Timothy felt about you.  I can be pretty dumb.  I finally figured it out, though.  You were saying goodbye.  So I was scared, and when I did write, it was just about the college and what I was doing, and I didn’t say what I was feeling at all.  I was scared.  I knew I’d lost you.

“I know what you’ve decided.  You haven’t answered my emails, so it’s pretty clear you’re over me.  It’s pretty clear that you’ve chosen Timothy.”

I stopped and took a deep breath.  This was the hard part.  The part I had to make work.

“Kevin, I need to tell you something.  I love you.  I didn’t ever realize how much, but I love you more than anything.  And I don’t want to lose you.  I don’t know how much you love Timothy, or he you, but I want you back.  I don’t want to lose you to Timothy or anyone else.  The problem is, I never let you know that well enough.  So I’m here to tell you that now, and to talk about whatever we need to talk about, and figure out whatever we can figure out, and to show you how much I love you.  I have a four-day weekend to do that.  And if you’ll let me, we can have all the sex you want, and I want, and we both want, together.”

He was looking at me now.  He’d been looking at his lap.  Now he was looking at me.

“Matt?” he said, a question in his tone.

“Yeah?”

“You’re an idiot!’

“Huh?”

“You’re an idiot.  I don’t love Timothy.  I love you.  I always have.  I’ve never stopped.”

“But…but…you never answered any of my emails!  And all last summer, you were distant, there was something standing between us, and I could feel it. And at Yosemite, I’ve thought for hours and hours about the two of us at Yosemite.  You were saying goodbye to me!”

He was looking at me with the most love I’d ever seen.  He was almost absorbing me with his eyes.  When I stopped talking, he stood up, then leaped on me, forcing me back onto the bed.

“I can explain that,” he said, “but I’ve got something I need to do first.”

And then we were kissing, and hugging, and rolling around on the bed, and all the worries and fears of the past few weeks were gone, obliterated as our arms held each other, by our kisses and caresses and arousal.  I was totally entwined with a boy who loved me as much as I did him.  I wasn’t holding back now, and he never had. 

We kissed, and I cried, because I hadn’t thought it would work this way, I’d thought I’d lost him, and my emotions, always too close to the surface, overcame me.  I’d originally planned on telling him I knew it was over, and I had accepted he was now with Timothy.  But the more I’d thought about that while driving home the more I’d refused to accept it.  Losing Kevin wasn’t what I wanted, and I was going to fight for what I wanted. 

The Matt of two years ago would have turned around and walked away.  The Matt of two years ago had told himself he was a man, but hadn’t believed it, and in fact he hadn’t been.  But that Matt was gone.  That wasn’t who I was any longer.  I had changed in the last two years, since I’d known Kevin.  I was older now, and stronger, with more resolve and determination.  I knew who I was, and I was not about to easily give up something so important to me.  I was going to fight for Kevin.  He was everything to me, and was worth doing everything I could to keep.  I was going to find out what had gone wrong between us and fix it, and not stop till it was fixed.

I’d realized in my senior year in high school that my happiness was my responsibility, not anyone else’s.  I seemed to have forgotten that recently.  I’d remembered it when I realized, driving home, that I’d planned to simply give Kevin up.

I was not going to give him up.

We kissed, and then that wasn’t enough.  We’d already had sex once, at Yosemite; it had been an urgent, passionate, desperate kind of love.  We were just as eager now, and just as passionate, but we were doing this for different reasons.  Then, I was afraid I’d lost him, and I’d been doing it desperately, doing it because I feared losing him more than anything else.  Now, I was showing him I loved him, how much I needed him, and how I was not going to let him go, but mostly, mostly, I was showing him how very much I loved him.  He was showing me how much he loved me, too, how much he always had.  The feeling in that room was different.  The feeling in that room was that finally, finally, we had reached our beginning.  And with that feeling came overwhelming joy.

--   --   --    []    --   --   --

“Okay, so maybe I’m an idiot too,” he said.

We were lying on his bed, exhausted and euphoric and finally able to talk.  We were still naked.  I was hoping his mother had meant it when she’d said how long she’d be gone.  I thought we might be pressing our luck as it was. 

“How were you an idiot?” I asked, nuzzling my lips to where his neck met his collarbone, and sort of nibbling.  “You were never an idiot.  You are the smart one.  And the most beautiful, smartest, most wonderful boy I’ve ever known.”

“Quit it,” he said, and pushed closer to me.  “You wanted to know this stuff.  How can I talk with you doing that?”

“Concentrate,” I giggled.

“I’m an idiot, too,” he repeated.  “I knew you were going away to college.  You wouldn’t have sex with me, you’d hardly even talk about it, so I knew right from the start you didn’t really love me, not like I loved you.  You’re a nice guy, the nicest I’ve ever met.  You help people.  I decided that’s what you were doing with me, just helping me because I didn’t have any other friends, helping me as long as you could, right up until you had to go off to college.  But I loved you so much, so hard, that I accepted what I could get.

“But then you were a senior, and you were going to graduate, and I kept thinking about how, when the summer was over, you’d be gone.  I knew that when that happened, it would just about kill me.  I didn’t know how I’d manage with you gone.  You’d been my whole life for two years, and one day you’d suddenly be gone, and that day was coming.  I knew when that happened, when you left, I’d fall apart.  I knew, since you wouldn’t have sex with me, that when you were gone, you’d really be gone, and we’d have lost each other.  My telling you’d I’d wait, my actual waiting, hadn’t meant anything.

  “You’d told me how when you were in college and I was still in high school, that separation would be too much.  Finally, at the beginning of last summer, I began realizing how true that was going to be.  I knew then that we’d have to break up.  And I knew it would be the worst thing that had ever happened to me.  My parents’ divorce was nothing.  This would kill me.

 “So I started distancing myself from you, little by little, all last summer.  I was trying to protect myself.  I told Becky what I was doing and she got really mad at me, but I made her promise not to tell you.  But I had to make it gradual.  Losing you all at once would be too much.

“It was hard, and it hurt, but I spent a lot of time with Timothy, and that helped.  He’s smart, and he cares.  He knew what support I needed, and he was there for me.  He worried about me, we got pretty close, but only as friends.”

I thought about Timothy, about him watching Kevin all the time, about the look in his eyes when he did it, and wondered if I’d misinterpreted all those glances.  I really wondered.  “Are you sure he doesn’t love you, Kevin?”

“Timothy is straight, Matt.  He has a girlfriend.  Becky found one for him.  He’s a really good friend, but I don’t love him, and never have.  He doesn’t love me, either.”

“Okay, get on with it then.”  I kissed his neck again, then began trailing my fingers lightly over his chest, brushing against his nipples now and then, glorying in the way it made him squirm.  I was with the boy I loved.

“I put some space between us all summer, and it hurt so bad, Matt. It was so hard.  When it got too bad, I’d come see you, just to be close.  Then when I stayed away again, it hurt even more.  By the end of the summer,” he continued, brushing futilely at my fingers but wriggling so his lower body was pressed against my leg, “I was really hurting.  I went to Yosemite with you as a last, final chance to be with you before saying goodbye.  It was awful.  I fell even more in love with you while I was trying to keep a distance between us.  That night, looking at the stars, was the best night of my life, but it was so bittersweet.  I thought you’d suspect something when I was crying on your chest, I was afraid you’d ask questions and I’d lose it and tell you I loved you and plead with you not to leave me, but you didn’t, and I didn’t.

“When you left for college, I was inconsolable.  While you were at that retreat and out of contact, I almost lost it.  If it hadn’t been for Becky and Timothy, I don’t know what I’d have done.  Timothy stayed with me most nights, and I might not have made it without that.  Then, finally you started writing, but the emails were all about college, all about what was happening, sounding so happy, and it was too hard.  All the intimacy we’d had, the closeness, was absent in those emails.  We were apart, and we’d lost what we’d had.  How was I supposed to respond to emails like that, when you were telling me how much you loved college, and I wanted to hear how you loved me?  I’d cry after reading what you wrote, not because you were happy, but because you were happy without me, and I’d lost you.  I simply couldn’t write back.  I knew I’d lost you.  What difference did it make if I wrote back or not?

“Then you wrote you were coming home for Thanksgiving, and you were going to talk to me.  I didn’t want you to.  You were going to make it official, and even though I knew it was already over, I didn’t want to hear that from you.  I just couldn’t bare the thought of that.”

“I was missing you so much,” I said.  Even hearing of his pain, I wasn’t crying now.  I had him next to me.  We were in each other’s arms.  There was no need for crying.

“I didn’t know,” he said, and moved his hips.  Incredibly, after what we’d just done—after what we’d done twice, actually—he was ready again. 

I had always worried about the fact he was so much younger than I was.  I knew that fact would come into play some day, and now, here it was.  He was ready, and I was still in recovery mode.  I knew right then, I needed to stop with all this worrying. This might be a good place to start, I realized.  This was one worry I could learn to live with.  In fact, as he pulled me to him, eager to show me once again how much he loved me, I found that worry was senseless.  In the time it took to think this, I was now as ready as he was.  And proved it.