Two Boys Kissing(7)

“Wake up,” the father says.

Anger. Rage.

When Cooper doesn’t stir, he says it again and kicks Cooper’s chair.

That does it.

Cooper jolts awake, his face pressing into the keyboard, creating an unsayable word. His contact lenses feel like dry wafers on his eyes. His breath tastes like morning worms.

His father kicks his chair again.

“Is this what you do?” is the angry accusation. “When we’re asleep. Is this what you’re up to?”

Cooper doesn’t understand at first. Then he raises his head, swallows the meager spit in his mouth, sees the screen. Quickly, he closes the laptop. But it’s too late.

“Is this what you do in my house? Is this what you do to your mother and me?”

From a cold distance, we know that confusion is at the heart of this disgust. And into that heart is pumping a steady flow of hate and ignorance.

We know that Cooper doesn’t have a chance.

His father grabs him by the shirt and pulls him up, so he can be screamed at eye to eye.

“What are you? How could you do this?”

Cooper doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. There aren’t even answers.

The father’s face is burning red now. “Do you just go off and fuck men? Is that it? While we’re asleep, you go out and fuck them?”

“No,” Cooper finally says. “No!”

“Then what is this?” A disgusted gesture to the closed computer. “What kind of whore are you?”

Fuck. Whore. These are not words any son should hear from his father. But the father’s rage has its own language. It does not have to talk like a father.

“Stop,” Cooper whispers, tears filling his eyes. “Just stop.”

But there is no stopping. Cooper’s father pushes him against the wall. Impact. The wall shakes and things fall. Cooper is no longer nowhere. He is somewhere now. And it is a horror. It is everything he never wanted to happen, and it’s happening.

His mother comes running into the room. For a moment we are grateful. For a moment, we think it will stop. But the father doesn’t care. He keeps yelling. Faggot. Disgrace. Whore. Sick.

“What’s going on?” the mother yells. “What’s going on?”

Cooper cannot stop crying, which makes his father even angrier. And now his father is explaining to his mother. “He sells himself to men on the Internet.”

“No,” Cooper says. “It’s not like that at all.”

“Open it,” his father commands his mother. “Read.”

Cooper actually lunges, tries to grab the laptop away. But his father knocks him back, pins him down as his mother opens the computer. The screen lights up. She begins to read.

“It’s just chatting,” Cooper tries to tell her. “Nothing ever happens.”

But the look on her face as she reads … some of us have to turn away. We know that look. Something inside her is breaking. And in that breakage, she is giving up on us.

There is nothing more painful than watching someone give up on you. Especially if it’s your mother.

Some mothers recover from this moment. Some never do. And within the moment, the trouble is: You can’t know which way it will go.

“You see,” the father says.

A fuse in Cooper finally reaches the explosive core, detonates. He has to stop this. He has to do something. He doesn’t mean for it to be fighting back, although later it will look like fighting back. All he wants is for his mother to stop reading. So he jumps for the computer, tears it from her hands. In surprise, she recoils, and his father is too unprepared to catch him. But even though Cooper’s gotten it out of her hands, it won’t stay in his. He fumbles, and the laptop goes crashing to the floor, making a terrible sound. He reaches down and picks it up, but now his father is on him, pulling at his back, spinning him around. Cooper knows the blow is coming, and he lifts the laptop to block it. His father’s fist is too fast, and it slams into his cheek before he can get the laptop up. “No!” his mother cries out. She gets in between them—she will do that much. Cooper doesn’t hesitate. His keys and his phone are in his pocket. So he runs. He runs out of the room as his father rages behind him—raging at him, raging at his mother. He runs out the front door, runs to his car. He sees his parents coming after him, hears his father screaming but doesn’t understand the words. When he turns the car on, the music blasts. He doesn’t check to see if any cars are coming as he pulls out of the driveway, even though he knows this will only piss off his father more.

It only takes him ten seconds to leave his parents.

Besides strangers, they are now the only people in the world who know he’s gay.



You spend so much time, so much effort, trying to hold yourself together.

And then everything falls apart anyway.



In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Tariq takes a shower. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Craig (admittedly a slow eater) eats a piece of French toast. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Peter loads up a video game and starts to play. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Avery wakes to find a phone number still written on his hand, and wonders what to do next. He doesn’t have to worry, though. Ryan is already on it. He has Avery’s number in his phone, and as soon as the clock hits ten, he’s going to call. He feels it’s rude to call anyone before ten. So he waits. Impatiently, he waits.