“Not like that,” he says. “I can’t believe you won. With them. Looking like that. It’s like you … it’s like you spit in my face.”
“What?” I ask, taking my hands off him. “It’s just a game. We dressed like this for morale. It’s just makeup, clothing. Your parents aren’t here. Why does it matter?”
“Just …” He looks up at me, and I’ve never seen his face like this. He’s angry. Really angry. I feel a thousand things at once. Hurt, that he’d be angry. Afraid, that my plan has failed, and now he doesn’t love me anymore. Stupid, for ever putting this makeup on. Stupid again, for thinking he loved me enough not to care what I wore. And stupid a third time, for ever thinking this plan would work. That he would ever love me.
All the emotions are forming a chorus line in my chest for their big tap number, their feet working in perfect unison, and it’s like one of those big routines you see in movies from above, where they spiral and make different loops, mixing, mingling, but all putting their foot down at the same time, and stomping down into me.
He walks away into the woods, and I follow him. It’s just like when Brad wore the nail polish, right? He just needs to talk it through. He LOVES me. He’s not going to change that because I beat him in an obstacle course in sequins. What, he can’t handle me winning and looking fabulous?
Or maybe it’s just the looking fabulous. I don’t know. He sits on a rock in the woods, hidden from everyone else by bushes. I sit down next to him.
“What’s the matter?” I ask him again, more serious. I put my hand on his leg.
“I … look, if you’d won, it would have been embarrassing, ’cause this is my thing, the obstacle course, you know. But you did it in makeup and whatever you’re wearing now.”
“Sequin jumpsuit,” I say quickly.
He sighs. “I just think that you’re better than that.”
“Better than what?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything, but I feel like I’m starting to understand, and now a new emotion joins the chorus in my chest. Anger.
“Every year,” I say, “you tell us we can be better. You stand up and tell us that no matter what straight people think, we’re just as good as them. We just showed you that.” I take my hand off his leg. “I don’t know why you get to be angry about it.”
I go to get up, but he puts his hand on my leg, and I stay.
“I lied about my coming out,” he says softly. “My parents. They didn’t actually handle it that well. I mean, they seemed to, at the time, but later … right after my grandma died, I was in the mall with my mom. I don’t remember why. And she was looking at makeup, and I was with her. And I found this eye shadow. Blue …” He looks up at me, but he’s not smiling. “Sort of like what you’re wearing now. I picked it out, and I showed it to my mother. I said, ‘This was Grandma’s favorite shade. Can I buy it?’ Don’t know why I asked permission. No, I do. Because I knew I shouldn’t want it. Or, like, I wanted her to say it was okay to want it. Or something. And she took it from my hand and put it back in the little sliding tray it came from, and then she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me around the corner, where it was empty, and then she pushed me up against the wall—not hard, but hard enough I can remember my head kind of knocking on the wall. And she held her hand against my chest, like she was pinning me there, and she said in this low whisper voice, ‘I don’t care what your sexuality is, but I won’t have my son wearing makeup like a faggot.’ And then she let go.”
“That’s awful,” I say. I knew his parents weren’t super comfortable with the queer thing, but calling your kid that word … that’s something else.
“Her mom had just died. She was upset. And she apologized right away. I remember, I just stood there, and I felt like she’d carved my chest out, like I was just empty, and hollow, and like, if I spoke, it would echo because of how there was nothing inside me, and she walked away, but then she turned around. Like, not even five steps, and she said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have used that word. Come on, we’re going to be late.’”
“That’s all she apologized about?”
“And that night,” Hudson says, not having heard me, “my dad came into my room, and he sat on my bed and he said he heard Mom had used a bad word, but she’d apologized, and he asked if I was okay. And I told him I thought I was, but it was also kind of shocking. And he said to me, ‘Hudson, you need to understand. You’re special. Your mom and I … we don’t really get gay people. When you told us you were homosexual, we thought that maybe that was it—that you weren’t really our son anymore. We worried. But we came to terms with it. It’s not what we wanted for you … but it’s fine. But, stuff like makeup, drag queens, dancing in their underwear on parade floats with feather boas and stuff isn’t you. That’s … being a freak. And it’s weak willed of them, I think. I mean, that’s what society tells them they’re supposed to be—these fairies prancing around in their short shorts. But you’re not like them. You’re stronger than that. You look at society and say, “Yeah, I’m a homosexual, but I’m no sissy.” I’m proud of that. I’m proud of you for being like that. And I think that’s all your mom was saying. That we’re proud of you. Okay?’ And I said okay, and he left.”
“But that’s not okay,” I say. “That’s terrible.”
“The thing is,” Hudson says, taking his hand off my leg. “I liked that he said I was special. And … I think he’s right.”
The chorus line stops dancing for a moment, and then starts up again, but the orchestra is out of tune. Off tempo.
“Right how?” I ask.
“I think it’s weak willed to be a stereotype. Being what everyone tells you you should be. I think being more … masculine, I guess, is strength. I think it’s better.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “My team just kicked your ass in high femme.”
“That’s why it made me so mad,” he says. “But … I know what you’re going to say. That clothing doesn’t matter. Makeup doesn’t matter. And maybe here it doesn’t. But back home? You know what would happen to me if I wore what you’re wearing in my hometown? Or held hands with someone dressed like that?”
“I think if you hold hands with a boy, homophobic assholes won’t care what that boy is wearing.”
“Maybe. But maybe all they want is for us to be like them.”
“Screw them for wanting that. You said we could be better. But being like them isn’t better. We can do everything straight people can do, you’re right, but what makes being queer special is we don’t have to if we don’t want to.”
“I … don’t know if I’m that brave,” Hudson says. And when he says it, the dancing in my chest stops. The dancers are collapsed in a heap. My heart breaks for him.
I take his hand. I squeeze it. “Sweetie, you are.”
“With you …” He looks down at our hands linked, my nail polish peeking out between his fingers. “How did you know?” he asks suddenly. The forest goes quiet. Not a bird is chirping.