Like a Love Story(3)

“Can you stop staring at me,” he says. It’s not a question, it is a command.

I quickly look out my window at the city streets outside. At the base of a tree, trash bags are piled up, and I feel so nauseous that I can almost smell them.

“I was not looking at you,” I scoff.

“Why do you talk like that?” he says.

“Like what?” I ask.

“So formal. Like you’re fresh off the boat. Loosen up. Weren’t you in Canada the last few years? Don’t they talk like normal people there? It’s 1989. You talk like it’s 1889.”

“I don’t know what normal people talk like,” I say. And this, I think, is exactly why I do not usually talk.

“Your family should’ve left Iran during the revolution like the rest of us,” he says. “I don’t know why you stayed.”

We stayed because my dad believed in the ideals of the revolution, even though my mother knew they were immediately corrupted. Also, because my mother was not ready to leave him yet.

“I said stop staring. You better not be a fag,” he says. “One per school is more than enough.”

My heart races. Is it because this hairy beast has figured out in a few moments what my mother has not figured out in seventeen years? Or is it because I now know something about my new school that I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams . . . . that there will be someone like me there?

“I’m not a . . .” But the word won’t escape my lips. I want to say it. I know that if I say it, he won’t think I am one.

He opens a drawer and pushes some of my underwear aside—starched white briefs, which, next to his boxers, seem like what a little boy would wear. My room used to be his, before he got upgraded to what used to be the guest room. “I’m just shitting you,” he says. “I know you’re not. My mom says homosexuality is luckily a problem that Iranians don’t have. I guess we don’t have that gene or something. But Art Grant definitely has that gene.” He moves on to another drawer and finally finds what he’s looking for. “Here it is,” he says. Once he has the CD in his hand, he looks at me. “Hey, little prince, my dad asked me to take care of you at school.”

“Oh,” I say. “Um, I don’t know if that is necessary. I can take care of myself.” That’s untrue, but I am good at disappearing into the background.

“I figured,” he says. “You look like a strong, self-sufficient person.” There’s a hint of a smile on his lips. “I’ll be watching you from afar though, just to make sure you’re okay.” He smiles bigger now, and then adds, “I’ll always have my eye on you.” He says it like a threat, and I know it is.

When he leaves, I close the door and put a chair in front of it. I need privacy. I find the yearbook the school sent me. It’s on my bookshelf, where it sits next to the summer reading I had to do (Maya Angelou, Bram Stoker, George Orwell) and the Homer books I will be reading this fall. I quickly flip through the yearbook, scanning the small square black-and-white photos of my new classmates. Most of them look shockingly similar, the boys with their collared shirts and side-parted hair, and the girls with their ponytails and pouts. I notice a girl named Judy who looks so different from the rest, with heavy eye makeup and a piercing gaze, and I think that it’s nice someone else at the school doesn’t belong.

But I’m looking for Art Grant. I go to the Gs, but at first I don’t find him, until I realize Art must be a nickname. He’s listed as Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI, and he’s very hard to miss. His hair is shaved at the sides, and a soft Mohawk at the top sways toward the right side of his face, which is turned slightly, probably to reveal the earring in his left ear. He has a smirk on his face, like he knows exactly what people are thinking of him, daring anyone looking at this picture to call him a fag again, telling the Saadis of the world to go to hell. Even in black and white, his eyes look like a cat’s, defiant, challenging you. My mom once told me that no matter where you stand, you’ll think the Mona Lisa is looking right at you. That’s how I feel about this picture. Like Art is looking right at me. Like he sees me.

I quickly close the book, overwhelmed by his image, but his face haunts me. I cannot stop thinking about him, and his shaved scalp, and his studded ear, and his devilish lips. I need to stop thinking about him, and I know there’s only one way to do that. I lie back on my bed, close my eyes, and unzip my pants. I see Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI come to life, enter my room, climb into bed with me. He kisses me, undresses me, tells me not to be scared. But then he’s gone, and all I can see are images of dying men with lesions.

I hate myself. I hate these thoughts. I hate Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI.

I close my eyes tighter, and my breath quickens. When it’s over, I breathe out all the air inside me, hoping that with the last bit of oxygen leaving my body, this sickness will leave me too. I know this is a phase. It must be. I grew out of needing my stuffed rabbit with me all the time. I grew out of hating eggplant, and of putting McDonald’s french fries on every Persian stew my mom made. I will grow out of this. I must, because I cannot ruin my mom’s new marriage. And because even though my mom can handle anything, I don’t know if she can handle me dying.

I need to live, and to live, I can’t ever be what I know that I am.