CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next day, I wake up and spend one perfect day with him. We meet his gay friends for brunch at The Public, a beautiful spot downtown.

I grab his hand.

“So - I say - Let’s talk about the governor of Seoul recently sending federal money to a program that sponsors conversion therapy. What a tard. Have you ever heard of something so crazy?”

He stills, then smiles.

“Well hello, Choi Siwon. You’re very informed today.”

“Of course I am. You matter to me. This matters to me.” - I say, motioning at the table, and his friends.

“Really?”

“Of course, mister brown eyes. Now let’s start a huge fight over politics and social issues, and ruin brunch!”

After everyone is good, Kyuhyun walks me home.

“Can I tell you something honest?” - he asks as we hit BoJin, the main road.

“Sure.”

“When we first met, I kind of suspected you were lying about never having talked to guys before. I thought it might’ve been an act. But now it’s very clear…you couldn’t have been more straight, or more clueless about all this.” - he laughs.

“Shut up. And why’d you think that?’

“I don’t know. The term ‘straight’ means a lot less than people think it does. Like I’ve said before, you would be absolutely shocked by the guys that have hit me up for . If you downloaded one of the hookup apps right now, fifty percent of the guys would be married businessmen trying to meet guys on work trips. I’ve seen millionaires, doctors, lawyers…one of my gay friends even hooked up with a judge who’s a big pusher of ‘Christian family values.’ He has three kids and a wife at home.”

“No.”

“Absolutely…if you see a conservative politician going on and on about how he wants to overturn gay marriage or whatever, there’s a good chance he’s had a gay app on his phone at some point. People who don’t think about have absolutely no reason to care about people who do. Would you get up one morning and decide to start some campaign to ban the world from eating, say, Ramen noodles, just because you don’t like them?”

“No. I don’t care about that.”

“Exactly. I rest my case.”

This makes me laugh louder than I have in a while. Before our goodbye kiss he starts to head into my house, since I usually don’t kiss him out in the open. But I grab his arm, stand firm on my porch, and kiss him right there.

“What was that?”

“Two boys kissing - I smile - In public. What. Haven’t you ever heard of it before?”

Kyuhyun leans in and rubs his cheek against mine, and I feel like I am flying through sunrise. When I was young I always looked at people my age like they were magic: they were still sort of kids, but not yet sedentary adults. They weren’t yet fearful and tired, but they weren’t still clueless and naïve, either. They knew a secret…they knew a secret that children couldn’t figure out, and that adults always eventually forgot. And that, I knew, was what I was finding with Kyu. The secret.

And then my old life calls. That night I go to Kangin’s yearly party where everyone watches baseball and eats junk food and says terrible things about women and minorities, and every second is a drag. I’d heard a few secondhand rumblings that this crew has been whispering about where I’ve been, but since nothing has been said directly to me, I’m not too nervous about a confrontation.

“So where the hell have you been? - Kangin asks after we install ourselves in the corner - Seriously, it’s starting to get weird.”

“Around - I say, and he raises an eyebrow - I don’t know. The baseball thing hasn’t held as much appeal for me lately.”

“Are you okay? You look…different. And you never text me back.”

“I’m good, this semester has just been annihilating me.”

He’s not convinced, but he lets it go. As the night goes on I try to pretend everything is fine, but it’s not. If anything I’m getting more and more uncomfortable. Kangin´s friends keep saying awful things, and I have absolutely no interest in watching a bunch of men run into each other on a grass field anymore. During one interview segment with a star running back with dyed blonde hair, Jung, one of Kangin´s friends, leans back and points at the TV.

“Gross, this is the guy I heard was gay. I heard he’s a total homo on the down low.”

He doesn’t pronounce the word “gay” like any other word, he says it like he’s actually calling him a murderer or a or something. In his eyes, these words are all probably the same, actually.

“Yeah, look at his tight little suit."- other of his friends laughs.

I sit up straight. The old me would’ve rolled his eyes and ignored this talk, but the new me can’t hold his tongue. Even if The Monster has terrorized me, I know too much now to keep my mouth closed. My senses have become more heightened than ever. I’ve been noticing things, like the way people use the word “gay” as an insult or how I hear the phrase “no homo” in rap songs all the time and how I’d overheard a father tell his little son in Target that “real men got their hunting licenses.” A “real man” was any male human who was made of bone and melanin like anyone else, and my patience was wearing thin. Who would I be if I kept my mouth shut and let all these people continue with their ignorance? I’d be just as bad as them.

Or what if they were hateful because they were like me? After all, Kyuhyun always said a lot of the “straight” guys were into dudes on the down-low. When I was straight, I couldn’t have cared less about who was gay or not, but these guys are weirdly fixated. What makes someone hate something deep down, anyway? What did it have to do with them? What was the root of all this?

“Hey. Don’t forget the dude just made a sixty-yard touchdown - I call, unable to control it anymore, and everyone goes silent - Did his alleged gayness affect his ability to run down a field and score against the team you’re rooting for?”

All of them stare, and for a second I can’t believe what I’ve done. After the most excruciating silence of my life, Jung finally shakes his head at me and turns away.

“Whatever, the guy’s been a total weirdo lately anyway…hey, look at this, halftime’s on!”

Kangin looks as relieved as I am that Jung and his boys let it slide. I end up excusing myself in the third quarter and jogging home, too bored to keep feigning interest. And as I slip out of the door, I do it with the feeling that I would be perfectly fine with never seeing ninety percent of those idiots again.

oOo

Since Kyu is doing family stuff the next day, I skip my class and decide to do something that came to me last night, during the hatred-fest: I want to get a little gayer.

I don’t want to look in the mirror and see someone who looks like Jung anymore, so I head back to that outlet mall from before. This time I dive in headfirst, though, and get a leather jacket, some tighter pants, and some shirts that are in size small instead of medium or large. Before I would have associated the act of caring about style as feminine, but now I know the truth – you can be whatever you want to be, and I want to look hot. I don’t want to dress like a boring old accountant simply because of the fear that I’ll look “gay” anymore. And by the way, what’s wrong with gays? Nothing at all.

Then I stop by a tanning salon, since I’m sick of the autumn making me look Casper the ghost. Finally I get a haircut, cutting it closer on the sides while leaving the top a messy, swoop-y mass of light brown. When I pass myself in a bathroom mirror, I almost check myself out, that’s how much better I look. And I look like someone who is comfortable with himself, too…for the first time I look at home in my own body.

I take a shower and go to sleep early, seeing the same dreams of messy brown hair and doe-brown eyes.

And when I wake up, my world explodes.

I wake to truly horrifying news that only gets worse: apparently there was a coordinated attack against Seoul’s large gay community. A small bomb went off in a trashcan at a peaceful Pride event in Bo Park, but most horrible of all, The Monster, a gay bar in Midtown, was attacked by a crazed gunman twenty minutes later.

Tears stream down my face as I watch the reports and read the latest on seventeen young people are dead, with the coward gunman being shot outside after a standoff. I am stunned into silence. I can’t believe this could still happen; can’t believe anyone could carry this much hatred in themselves, especially for such a nonsensical reason like this. These people went out expecting to have fun, and ended up being shot like dogs. All the faith I’ve gained in humanity over the past few months, all the hope I saw in Kyuhyun’s eyes…all that is dashed the instant I see the headlines. The world is sick, and it is not okay. Over a dozen people who were just like the friendly, vibrant, loving kids I’d been getting to know lately, they were dead. All of them were gone.

I am paralyzed with fear that one of my new friends was killed, but eventually I learn none of them were in Seoul at the time. Kyu updates me throughout the morning, and it turns out his good friend’s ex-boyfriend was seriously injured, so he’s offered to drive him to an Seoul hospital to visit. (Of course he has – he’s the best person in the world) I sit around my house alone all day, haunted by something I can’t quite pinpoint. It’s not just the death…it’s not just the viciousness…it’s not just the tragedy…it’s also me. Soon I realize I am truly scared for myself now. And for Kyu, too. And for both of us, together.

At the end of it all, this is what I’ve gotten myself into: a situation where I can be shot down for walking out into the public and being myself. Dating and hooking up and having fun was one thing, but I am about to cross a threshold I will never be able to come back from. I never even thought about this aspect of it all, and as the night goes on, the uneasiness grows. For some reason the phrase “guy crush,” from one of the chat room people, keeps sliding into my mind. What if I am changing my whole life, and endangering it too, for a boy crush? For a bro flirtation? Do I love Kyuhyun down to my bedrock, or is this some kind of innocent puppy love thing? Actually, scratch that: I know I am falling in love with him, but is that love permanent, and is it worth possible persecution and danger and death?

Sleep evades me until well after midnight. I kill a bottle of wine to quell my anxiety, but I keep being jolted awake by my nightmares. My dreams are dark and tense and unsettling: I see bizarre, macabre visions of vivid blood spilling under disco balls, I watch people falling dead against velvet nightclub booths, staring sightlessly up at the disco lights. At around three I wake up for good and decide I can’t do this anymore, at this speed. I can’t live with this fear. I need to figure this out once and for all before I make a decision that could impact my life forever.

Kyuhyun Snapchats me a few times the next day, but I open them and don’t respond. The silence becomes excruciating, but I have no idea what to say, so I say nothing. My parents arrive that afternoon, and I do my best not to act like a sad sack. Liu texts relentlessly, of course, furious that