The Presents and the Past

Chapter 1-2

“Earth to Snowman.” When I returned to the present, Troy was waving a dishtowel in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

“A little walk down memory lane. My childhood sweetheart was definitely another boy,” I told Troy and his brother. “I can’t believe it never occurred to you such a thing is possible, Spencer Holiday!” I shook my head some more. “For shame. For shame!”

“Okay.” Spencer smiled as he warmed his hands on a big mug of coffee. “In my case, I didn’t come to think about other guys in a romantic way until I was a teenager.”

“I knew from the moment I first saw Steve on Blue’s Clues,” I said. “And it was only reinforced when my world expanded beyond Nickelodeon.”

“Point taken. I apologize.” Spencer turned toward the kitchen when a timer went off. “Troy taking care of you?”

“He wants a custom cake, Spenny.” Troy’s smirk made me want to deck him. “A really custom cake.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Um.” Was I blushing? Where had my youthful devil-may-care attitude gone, the one I’d developed sometime after crying my eyes out on the day I’d met Angel. “Actually, I’m not even…I haven’t…I’m still bouncing a couple of ideas around.”

Troy thought my side-eye and angry scowl was funny.

“I’ve been invited to the Brockman, Pointe, Weller, and Phipps law firm’s holiday party this year,” I said, trying to save myself. “In the new Forsythe Hotel ballroom.”

“Fancy, schmancy.” Spencer headed toward the back.

“I’d like to bring some sort of confection there, too.”

“Sure thing. Just let us know when and—”

“I’m on it, Spenny. Go tend to your cookies.”

“Yes, boss man.” Spencer offered his baby brother a salute. “Good to see you, Noah. Help yourself to yesterday’s leftovers.”

“Thanks, Spencer.” I was almost sweating now, and not because of my furriness. “And thank you, Troy,” I sniped, once the coast was clear.

“You’re welcome.”

He’d been a tall, annoying baby back in high school—an eighth grader on the varsity basketball team, who played alongside Angel and I when we were seniors. We couldn’t stand him at first. No one could. When Troy and I shared the court again in 2010, since I’d been expelled the previous May and had to repeat my senior year, we became kind of close. Seven years later, he was still a giant pain in the ass, but I really dug the guy. I adored him with all my heart.

“Sarcasm, dude.” I took a black and white cookie. “Oh my God, these are good!” Being a UPS driver had its privileges. I usually got some sort of tasty treat from Troy every day—one free sample. It happened everywhere I went, every place where food was sold. No wonder I was getting a gut. Arriving at just the right time that day, to order my something special for someone special before the crack of dawn, I’d hit the Holiday Brothers’ Bakery motherlode. “The idea…in its entirety…is kind of a romantic walk down memory lane,” I explained, “all about being childhood sweethearts. This guy—”

“Is it someone I know?” Troy asked.

“Could be.”

He went back to work on his Hanukah cupcakes. “What you mentioned so far doesn’t sound romantic at all, Snowman. No Romeo ever gave his Juliet an erotic cake in a Hallmark movie.”

“I can be romantic, Troy, but we’re dealing with double Romeos, here. I don’t want to leave any doubt I’m also looking to…” I lowered my voice, even though Troy and I were the only two people left in the room and Kelly Clarkson was belting out holiday tunes through a speaker in every corner. “I want him to know I’d like to get between the flannel sheets, too.”

“Well, nothing sends that message quite like dirty devil’s food and frosting.”

“I was thinking the exact opposite. Whatever we come up with, I want you to make it. Don’t tell your brother.”

“He’s the expert on gay sex.”

“I know, but it’s embarrassing.”

“An erotic Christmas cake for Angel Ramos? How is that embarrassing?”

I took another cookie. “So, you figured it out.”

“I always knew there was more between you and Angel than basketball and getting in trouble all the time.”

Troy’s comment made me flinch. “There was, and I hope we can get it back. I need to remind Angel—”

“I love the way you say his name,” Troy teased, bringing his blue stained fingers to one cheek. “Ong-hel.” He rolled the l as I’d seen him roll croissant dough in the past.

“I took four years of Spanish because of him. At least I learned something. I want to do a secret Santa deal for thirteen days, culminating with the cake…as a bonus.”

“A porn cake…because you want to f**k him. For the first time or again?”

Angel and I had been together only once.

“Again,” I said.

It hadn’t ended well.

“Alright, Snowman! You, go, go, go man.” Troy added the wiggle the cheerleaders did when screaming the same thing at basketball games a lifetime ago. Then he poked me in my ribs with his elbow.

“Can I confide in you, Troy?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Angel Ramos the first time we met.”

“Wow.”

“I pictured us as a couple from almost day one, like any other couple, with a house and a dog and some kids. We were maybe the first generation where two boys could openly explore those feeling…or two girls…and not think of it as abnormal. Or maybe we weren’t. Maybe your age group is…or your little one’s generation.”

Troy was a young father, with a one-year-old baby girl, Ashley. Half a decade older, I kind of envied him. The thought of passing on the Mann DNA was frightening, though.

“I figure boys falling in love with other boys felt natural back when the great big world seemed truly vast—like prehistoric times, even, when people weren’t bombarded with standards of normality and puritanical teachings hadn’t been introduced yet. Lusty teenagers probably just went about their business and felt how they felt. Art historians have found hieroglyphics substantiating the idea.”

“Ancient gay porn.”

“Yup. Consider how beauty was once defined by the image of voluptuous, Rubenesque women and that sexy bear Henry VIII with his big old drumstick.” I picked up another cookie, a bell shape dusted in red sugar. “Then think about the standards we apply to attractiveness now. Societal thoughts are easily swayed. In Ancient Greece, when a lot of man on man art was being made, you gotta figure growing boys were like, ‘Yeah! That’s what I wanna do,’ and parents probably said stuff like, ‘Look at our little Agamemnon holding hands with Thaddeus. Don’t they make a beautiful couple?’ What came naturally wasn’t squelched so easily, because all a person had was his feelings and his own thoughts to go on, not a billion other people’s.”

Troy held the piping bag still as if he was thinking about what I was saying.

“Now, jump ahead to the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Despite free love and all that, TV must have made the planet seem smaller in a way. Because people from different parts of it were suddenly in everyone’s living room, it left viewers with the subliminal message they were seeing everything there was to see in it…the world, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“So, since Bobby Brady, Danny Partridge, Blair Warner, Webster, Joey from Blossom, and Ben Savage’s brother on Boy Meets World only had crushes on members of the opposite s*x, little Noah Mann might have thought that was how it had to be for him, too.”

“Hmm.”

“Now, it’s changing again. With hundreds of channels, social media, and internet porn, kids can see a sampling of all different kinds of ‘normal.’ For a while, when news shows would feature some bozo saying homosexuality was wrong, there was very little counterpoint, right? Because news was news back then, not a screaming match between people with varying ideas.”

I had to stop for breath and a second bite of my sweet, buttery, perfectly crisp bell.

“For every opinion someone offers nowadays,” I said between chews, “there are a hundred other views on the same idea available with the swipe of a finger. Gay boys can still find people wanting to encroach on what the body knows is right, but they can also easily find their role models. Sure, we have a ways to go, but if I do have a kid someday, I betcha they won’t doubt their first pang of love for a moment, even if it is for a same-gendered person. I hope so, anyway.”

“Me too,” Troy said.

“Who knows if any of what I just said is the least bit accurate or not…sociologically speaking?” I shrugged. “What I do know is this—Angel was so sweet to me. He was tender, loving, and caring within a moment of us meeting.” I took another cookie, a soft, fudgy concoction dusted in snowy whiteness. “There I was, standing in the middle of Miss Mahon’s kindergarten classroom, certain I could be all tough and manly…”

“At age five?”

“Six, actually. I was held back a year, remember? This was my second time being dropped off for kindergarten, and I still couldn’t be butch about it.” I shook my head remorsefully. “While I’d already been taught to feel like a sissy for bawling my eyes out—‘Don’t you dare cry this time,’ my father had warned in the car—Angel rubbed my back and held my hand. Those were two things I never would have initiated with another boy. The moment it happened, though, and every single time he touched me over the next fourteen years, I loved it. Playing tag in elementary school, I wanted Angel to catch me. Arm wrestling in junior high, I tried really, really hard, Troy, not to win, but because I didn’t want to let go of Angel’s hand. There was something about his touch I needed. Something gentle and reassuring, as opposed to…”

Pausing for redirection, I tried to recall how many cookies I’d devoured.

“I can still feel his fingers on my cheek the day I cried in front of him again.” I touched the spot Angel had as we’d said our last goodbye in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In an instant, I was back there.

* * * *

“Angel…please…I’m sorry.”

“You’re always sorry.” He was pacing around the train station parking lot, the gravel under his shoes crunching like sugary cereal. Mine had been so loud I couldn’t finish it, because of my pounding head the morning after. All grown up, Angel had a thin black moustache and a goatee. His chest was broad, his waist narrow, his ass so perfect in his tight, white jeans I could have stood there and stared at it all day, if he wasn’t sending me away forever. “But Noah…you never change.”

“Look at me.”

He turned around.

“I will,” I swore. “I can.”

Angel wanted my promise to be true. I could tell. We both doubted it, though. Then he took my hand. “I hear the train.” He let go of me and we started toward the platform. He did, even though I was the one who was leaving. I followed. “You shouldn’t have come,” Angel said.

“I couldn’t help it,” I told him. “I’ve missed you so much. I wanted to try again. It was great, Angel. It was.”

“It was.”

“It almost worked this time.”

“Almost, Noah.” He’d said it angrily. “Almost,” and then his voice was tinged with disappointment and sadness.

“I’ll quit. I’ll never…” I couldn’t lie to him. “You really want me to leave, even after we finally got to be together?” I reached for his hand. Holding it always made things better.

“It doesn’t matter what I want. You have to go.”

“You don’t, at least. Thank God I didn’t screw everything up for you here.”

“Yeah. Thank God.”

“Tell me I can come back, though…or swear you’ll come to me. Just tell me we can have another chance. I love you.”

Angel wouldn’t say the three words back to me. “I hate this feeling,” he said instead. “All of them…how they get all mixed up whenever I’m with you. I can’t do it anymore. You’re all out of chances, Noah.” Then, as the train pulled in, he touched my cheek one final time before turning his back to say the word I dreaded most. “Goodbye.”