Why Can't Billy Idol Love Me?

Chapter 2

“Kurt? Are you kidding me, I was checking Britney out.” I checked my hair and tie trying to sound hip when really I was about to s**t my pants. “Now, that’s a sweet ass.” It was the best I could do; besides, there was no way they could know exactly who I was looking at. (Tip: If you have to lie, remember that it’s a lot like acting; believe what you’re saying and so will they.)

Rick’s flinty eyes blinked a couple of times, his processors running a check on the data. Then he bought it. Or seemed to, with bullies you can never quite be sure. I nodded, wanting more than anything just to be on the other side of the bathroom door.

“Dude! I totally had you goin’!” said Rick, his face suddenly brightening. “You thought I was serious?!” He gave me a friendly but just-a-little-too-hard pat on the face. “No biggie, dude.”

“Just fuckin’ with you, bro,” said Jim, offering me a fist bump. I punched back, noticing how small my hand was against his. He was a big red-headed moose of a guy. I let myself have a half laugh before reality was hammered home one more time.

“But ditch that retro s**t,” said Rick, thumping my hat. “Totally makes you look like a fag. Lose the tie or you’ll never get laid. And you want to get laid, right, Noble?”

They disappeared out the door into a blast of music and lights, leaving me whip-lashed but at least momentarily alone. God those guys were good; I had the shakes and they’d barely done a thing. Hard to believe that this was as far as I’d gotten in the friends department. We had spent afternoons since third grade on soccer fields and hockey rinks. Then we had gotten closer in scouting, and really seemed to bond when we’d all decided it was too gay for suburban wanna-be bad boys like us. Now, I was always on the fringe of their radical mood swings in cool-dom, but I still belonged. But in their increasingly erratic drive-bys, I knew that my safety was as thin as my normalcy: one slip and it would be over. Yes, waiter, I’ll have the David Mortimer with a side dish of total rejection, please.

On autopilot, my hands took the tie off, stuffing it into my pocket. My retro dreams of Duran-Duraning it up for the dance were over. Had I actually been so deluded that I’d fantasized about doing Nick Rhodes eye make-up for Chill, the holiday dance? For the moment, I had escaped anything permanent occurring, but whether Rick said they were kidding or not, they really had been watching me. And I had no idea how long that had been going on. I just wanted to run, to go home. I was afraid that as soon as I saw Cassandra, she’d know something was wrong, get me to crack: ‘Homo? Why would they think you’re a homo?’ So I didn’t give her a chance.

I left the bathroom like a rocket, spotted Cassie at the patio railing, grabbed her and dove into a kiss like an Olympic medalist. I grabbed and pawed at all the appropriate spots, letting her push my hands away. Finally she stopped and turned her head away. “Ok, ok. I need to come up for air.” She laughed a little and I could tell I’d overdone it just right. “Where’s your tie?”

I patted the front of my pants. “Got hot dancing—in my pocket.”

“Oh, is that what that is?” She groped me gently and I knew that she was ready for round two, but I couldn’t go there again. So I pretended to notice the big wall clock inside.

“Oh s**t, it’s already 10:30. We should be going.”

Cassandra sighed in frustration. “Would it kill you to be late just once? What’s your mother going to do, shoot you?”

“No, she’ll just pull the plug on going out for a semester, is that what you want?” I brushed the hair out of her face and gave her a sensual caress on her arms the way she liked.

“Jesus, Shane, with your mom around, who needs abstinence-only programs?”

Before I could soften her reaction, Cassandra was marching off toward the parking lot.

▲▼▲

The drive to my apartment was a little quiet, windows down, heat on, tunes up too loud to talk.

“I don’t mean to be a b***h, Shane.” Cassandra let the car idle, the amber dash lights giving her an unreal glow. “I appreciate that your mom has rules, and that’s good. But I feel like what we have is maybe worth updating the rules for. I mean you want me, right?”

“Of course I do.” I lied. The several times we’d gotten close to doing it, it was me who had to put the brakes on. Cassandra was ready to go, very comfortable with her body, and with giving it to me. I felt like s**t for not feeling the same way.

“I’ll talk to her. But you know how she is? There’s not much you can hide from a nurse. She’s going to know that later curfews means s*x and I don’t know if she’s ready for that.”

“And what about you?” She took my hand and smiled warmly, the pissed-off Cassandra gone. “How do you feel about that? About me?”

“I want to do it, you know I do. I just want it to be right, you know?”

She said “me too,” but I got the feeling that if I’d said I was ready right then that she’d have yanked me into the back seat. We kissed goodnight and I walked up the stairs of my building, turning to wave dutifully as she drove off.

The town-house-style apartment where I lived with my mom was always quiet at night. She was on nights at Mercy General in the ER. We didn’t have to worry about money, but the twelve-hour shifts were tough on her and left me a lot of time on my own. My friends thought it was cool, and so did I for a while. But you can only skip so much homework, wander at night so often, or try to get into trouble so many times before you realize that real trouble is always out there waiting for you. On junk-food treks to the Kwik Mart I’d passed enough drunks, runaways and creeps who stared at kids to know that only luck was saving me from a run-in. Sophomore year I started staying in, doing my homework, and watching whole lotta Discovery Channel and Nat Geo. Nothing to take your mind off things like finding out that our brains are mostly water.

In my room, trying to shake off what happened at the dance, I re-evaluated myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my door. Did I look like a fag? Could people really tell? Online there were always people leaving comments about this star or that singer “looking gay,” “sounding gay,” or “acting gay.” Sometimes I saw David Mortimer in the hallway and wondered if he could tell about me. He was usually busy keeping his head down and trying to avoid his next ass-kicking, but I wondered if he didn’t pick up on my signal no matter how badly I tried to suppress it. Is that what the Asshole Patrol did on the dance floor? Sense a gay vibe?

My walls and ceiling were covered in the best of the 80s, literally like wallpaper I don’t think I’d seen the actual wall since I was 12. Yeah, I had the Bangles, and Sheena Easton, and the Go-Go’s, but they were just filler between my real loves. Duran Duran (them decked out in black and white, Simon in a trench coat, John Taylor in those loose leather pants!) Adam Ant, Stray Cats, Simple Minds, Thompson Twins, Culture Club, Yazz, The Cure, The Smiths, and my all-time fav (drumroll please) Billy Idol. That guy was perfection. From the tip of his bleached out spikes to his battered boots, and every rubber bracelet and artfully torn shirt in between. So incredibly beautiful, but that raunchy grin that just makes your head spin. My 80s playlist from an old iPod was on eternal loop. The Smithereens “Blood and Roses” came on and I knew God had a sick sense of humor. The lyrics were exactly right: not belonging and love coming out wrong.

I felt the lump of the tie in my pocket and took it out, unfurling it like a tiny flag. It was still in a loop so I put my head through the soft noose of it. The guys in these bands had it so good. Fame, fortune, any woman—or man—they could possibly want. And they made make-up cool for men. And not just Bowie or guys like Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes either. Billy fuckin’ Idol, too. Street tough who could be pretty and rough at the same time. It never got any cooler than that; we’ve just been backsliding since then. Gay marriage?! Ha. What good is being married when your kid gets bullied at school because of his two moms or dads? How many minutes was I out of sweating a close encounter with the Asshole Patrol myself? What was it I had to do to get them off my back... have s*x with Cassandra in public, post a video of us doing the nasty? Those guys were human earworms eating away at my brain. Faggot, I thought. Queer. Cocksucker. That’s all I’d ever be to them. If I made it to graduation, I’d just face more of them in college, and then at work.

“Faggot,” I said out loud, and gave the tie a backwards tug. Queer. I pulled harder, the tie squeezing my jugular. Rick’s words burned in my ears: “What’s your secret, Noble?” Did he already know? Who else knew? What would happen if everyone knew? I pulled the tie until it cut off the blood to my head, immediately getting dizzy and weak. A few more seconds and I’d be out.

I heard keys in the front door and jerked back to reality.

“Shane, you home early?”

Mom’s voice filtered up, muffled by heavy carpeting and the floor between us. I whipped the tie from my neck and quickly went to block the door in case she tried to come in.

“Just getting ready for bed, Ma.”

She was already upstairs. “They overstaffed tonight so I got sent home. Can I come in?”

I threw the tie on the bedpost and pulled off my shirt. I opened the door a crack and she hovered outside.

“How was the dance? You and Cassie have fun?”

“Oh, it was totally great. But could we talk about it tomorrow? I’m kinda tired.”

After the briefest pause, “Sure.” She used her casual voice, which always made me tense. “Goodnight, hon.”

I heard her pad down the hall, then the soft click of her door. We were now each sealed in our respective mother/son bunkers. But who was I kidding? She had to know something was off; we just hadn’t talked about it. The older I got, the more internal my problems became. A skinned knee at 8 was a lot easier for Nurse-Mom to diagnose than a broken heart at 16. Who was to blame for that? Her for not digging (well, okay, prying) or me for not coming forward? But c’mon, really, come forward for what? To have my head chopped off? Parents are all supportive until they actually get something concrete. And then it’s like “Drugs!?” “Suspended for what?” “Pregnant?! How!?” I’d heard people at school telling lunchroom war stories long enough to know that secrecy was a necessary shield sometimes.

I left my guard-post at the door and sank down against the tangled mess of bedding at my headboard. All that came to mind were the blond curls of Kurt Thompson’s mane. Unaffected, unpretentious, nearly unstyled, he was naturally beautiful and undeniably masculine. Envied by the guys and adored by the girls. You either wanted to be him, or be with him. And of course, I was in the latter group. It was so Capulet-Montague it was sick. How could my heart be broken if I hadn’t even had a relationship?