That morning, I showed up at Corvis’s house and demanded that we go on an adventure in Provincetown, now that it was getting warmer. Since we still weren’t hanging out in public, I figured we’d better go somewhere else. Provincetown didn’t go exactly how I imagined it would last time, and I thought Corvis would have something to add.
Corvis had been to a couple of other places. Disney World, for one, which she hated. Also, London and California. Her parents were the traveling kind of parents, not the kind whose family lived in Hopuonk their entire lives.
They were from Michigan. They chose Hopuonk because they thought it was bucolic, which means, like, pastoral and quaint—a place that makes you think of shepherds and things. Man, they had it wrong.
“I have dreams,” I said. “Like, Susan and I will be in a rowboat or somewhere, and she just, like, jumps out. Or disappears, or turns into Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Corvis’s mouth set.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Why am I telling you this?”
Part of why I wanted to go to Provincetown today had been to give myself some time away from the telephone, which was starting to seem like a monster. I spent too much time picking it up, putting it back down, and just sitting there, waiting.
“I guess because you’re scared,” Corvis said. “Which is okay. I am too.”
“Of what?”
“What if I think college is going to be so great and it’s not? What if I’m the dumbest one there? And then there’s Kristen.”
“What about Kristen?”
“She wants to come with me to New York,” Corvis said. “She says she’s in love with me.”
I kept my eyes on the road, which was getting twisty. My Volvo protested, and I pressed the gas harder. Corvis sighed.
“She’s not gay,” she said.
I thought of Kristen’s interaction with the Hot Topic kid at the mall. She looked at him the way Susan looked at Brad.
“But,” I said, “you’re always holding hands in public.”
“She’s not gay,” said Corvis. “She’s fat.”
“So?”
“So she thinks she can’t have a boyfriend because of it. Once she realizes she can, it will be different. She’ll get married to a guy one day. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
“But do you love her?”
“I mean, yeah,” said Corvis.
At least half of Corvis and Kristen’s friends were in accelerated—headed to college, or at least community college.
“Which is why she can’t go with me,” said Corvis. “I can’t just keep waiting for her to figure everything out.”
Corvis kept speaking, looking out the window instead of at me.
“You and Kristen—you’re opposites, but you have the same problem,” she said. “You both let how you look dictate how you act, who you can love. And that haircut? Not the answer.”
“So how do we stop loving them?”
“We can’t,” she said. “We live with it. I feel like shit, and I can’t do anything but feel it.”
“We did more than kiss,” I admitted. “I’m not exactly sure, but I think we went all the way.”
“Well,” she said, “so have we.”
“Does that make it better or worse?” I asked.
Corvis flung her cigarette out the window, a bit too forcefully. It almost blew back into the car with the wind.
“Fuck if I know,” she said.
* * *
—
We wandered along the empty streets—even though rainbow flags lined it, Provincetown was still mostly closed-up. Maybe summer was a better time to be gay.
We ducked into a convenience store, where an ATM was lit by a giant rainbow. You couldn’t tell if the person behind the register was a man or a woman, and they didn’t greet us with more than a half smile before returning to their magazine.
A sign on a spiral staircase indicated that there were sex toys upstairs, and I tugged on Corvis’s coat to follow me.
There were only a few aisles, but they were crammed full. My heart pounded, looking at the displays of objects that advertised vibration, or had strings or spikes attached to them for uses I couldn’t even imagine. There was even a section for butt plugs.
“Do you need anything specific?” Corvis asked. She did not whisper.
“Shh.”
I crouched in an aisle full of strap-ons of all colors.
“What are these for?” I whispered to Corvis, running my finger along a shiny purple one.
“What does it look like?”
“But, like”—I spoke very softly, hoping Corvis would catch on and copy me—“is it if you want a penis? Do you want a penis?”
“No, I don’t want a penis,” she said, still not whispering. “It’s just a role. Here, I’m getting you one. You can read the instructions and try it at home.”
“Try it on who?” I asked.
“You can use most of these things by yourself,” Corvis said, as if I were an idiot.
“Do you and Kristen use these things?” I asked. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Corvis picked up a solid-looking cream-colored one.
“This one’s nice,” she said. “It’s German.”
She carried it downstairs to the register and set it on the counter. It was sixty dollars, which seemed incredibly expensive, but Corvis didn’t seem to think so.
“We’re gay,” I told the checkout person.
“We’re not gay together,” Corvis added.
“Right,” I said. “Just next to each other. At the same time.”
They gave us a strange look, and I saw Corvis’s jaw clench. She shoved the bag into my chest, and we found ourselves back on the street.
“You’re so awkward,” she told me.
“Funny,” I said. “That’s what I was going to say about you.”
Then I saw what I’d come here for—I just didn’t know it yet. On the next corner, there was a tattoo parlor, and miraculously, it was open.
“Tattoos,” I said. The strap-on touched my chest through the bag, and it made me feel powerful. “We’re getting tattoos.”