Then someone said, No don’t leave, join us. I thought it was Melanie, but it was my voice I heard. Putting her name on it gave me justification to continue, even though my actions gave me as much pleasure as an elbow rub. I was going through the drunken motions for absolutely no reason. The agreement to keep my vagina in my pants was in the back pocket of my jeans on the floor in less than two minutes.
During a separate kiss with Steven, I stopped to ask if what we were doing was turning him on. The shared feeling of boring straight sex had us giggling in each other’s faces as we pretended to engage in this debauchery. Steven composed himself long enough to explain his desires for Rick as we shielded our whispers from them. But, Steven added that he really had to leave because Rick wasn’t gay; it wasn’t going to happen for him and he was getting very uncomfortable.
I whispered back, “I’m staying to get to her,” and kissed him goodbye. My focus was on Melanie after Steven left. Even during sex with Rick, my intention was always to get back to her. It became my mechanical strategy, and, eventually, I pulled Melanie to the other twin bed across the room so we could be alone.
Why couldn’t Rick just watch like a good boy? He obviously wanted Melanie as much as I did because he followed us all over the room. Ultimately the chemistry between them overwhelmed the experience and I was left out, more than not. That was my cue to exit.
I put my shirt over my naked body and peeked out of the open doorway to check the hall. My intention was to hurl myself across to my own door and scurry through it to the safety of my bed. To my surprise, Franklin was blocking the doorway, and my head nearly smashed into his huge shining noggin. I jumped and tugged at my t-shirt to cover my naughty bits. He looked down at my hands pulling the bottom of my t-shirt, and, although I was covered, he knew I was panty-less. “Go put some pants on,” he demanded as he looked at me with disgust.
My eyes tried to adjust to the lights from the hall, but they burned from secondhand smoke and smeared makeup. “I’m just having fun. Relax, Frankie. You should join us,” I invited and tried to pull him into the room despite his protest.
“You are drunk.” He broke free from my grasp and rebalanced himself in the doorway as he crossed his arms.
“I’m not that drunk. I know what I am doing and I want you, so let’s do it.” I didn’t want him, per se. I wanted to feel like someone desired me, and he was my only option.
“I’m not going in. You know the door has been open this whole time?” He was right, but Rick had strategically placed his wall lockers just beyond the entrance so he could get some privacy should his roommate need to leave while he was changing. Sure, it was open, but unless you walked in and around the locker, you couldn’t see the shenanigans behind it.
In slurred speech I asked him if he had been watching as I giggled and reiterated how bad I wanted sex.
Truth was, I couldn’t handle his rejection, so I begged him a bit more before kissing him in the open doorway, caught between the light of the hallway and the darkness of the room. It was familiar and comforting. He pushed away and looked at me intently, even held my head still for a moment as he stared into my glazed eyes, almost romantically. It was the only time he ever looked into me and connected on a level beyond sex. The kiss was amazing, too; the passion behind it surprised me, and it allowed me to enjoy, for the first time, his thick smooth lips.
I wish I knew what he was thinking in the second before he unzipped his pants and fucked me where we stood. Before there was time to be appalled, he finished and tucked himself back into his jeans. He turned and walked straight to his room, never looking back as he yelled, “Go to bed, Emma.”
CHAPTER 5
The Sunday afternoon light beamed through my window just as Annica’s lighter flicked two or three times. She inhaled, exhaled, and looked over to see my discomfort from the interruption of sleep. The sun peeked around my blinds, misting the room with a cheerful afternoon glow, yet, somehow, managing an intensified stream of light over my eye, searing it right through the eyelid. I struggled to shift my head on the pillow to capture an inch of shade. My attempt was unsuccessful.
Annica hummed that infamous three-note wordless phrase: tsk-tsk-tsk. Almost everything that needs to be said about disappointment can be grunted or hummed in this way. It means “damn, dirty shame” or “no, you didn’t” without articulation. I looked over to her smoking in her twin bed without glasses, which had been slapped to the floor in an effort to find the pack of smokes and lighter on her nightstand.
I grimaced in disgust, moaned, and threw the covers over my head. Annica repeated those little notes, accompanied by a synchronized headshake. This was one of the few times where she didn’t need to say anything to be loud and clear. She simply inhaled, then exhaled, and tsked me with squinted eyes. I knew what the fuck it meant.
“I know! Shiiit!!” My voice, still scratchy and dry, popped as it tried to kickstart itself with the morning. I pulled the covers tighter over my head and faced the wall in shame. Annica laughed and puffed away until she was finished with the cigarette and lit a second one. She enjoyed it slowly as sleep overwhelmed me and carried me off into another dream. The plan for more people to lessen the chances of a guilty hookup was a bullshit strategy that worked about as well as a broken condom. Little attention was given to the rumors of an orgy in the barracks; in fact, I didn’t entertain the idea, I dismissed it all together when Steven and I talked of marriage. We just wanted to be ourselves on the most basic level, and we figured the only way to do that was to marry, yet lead our own separate gay lives. It made perfect sense to us.
The agreement was to marry sometime in December if I didn’t find anyone else more convincing as a straight man. We would be two gay roommates essentially, and none would be the wiser. The money would be better and the freedom, priceless. We hung out more and took lots of photos to portray a budding relationship. I listened to details of his life and noted the little things he did to deceive the masses. However, there were things he just couldn’t hide, like the curved shape his fingers made when he pressed on the volume button to listen to Erasure. Of course, my version of our story replaced the artist and omitted his squeals of excitement over the lyric “In the fields where poppies grow.” That was the plan. It was the summer of ’97, the supposed beginning of my hidden lesbian life.
Melanie held my affections after the sex fest in the barracks. I gave her attention, helped her pick out weekend outfits, bought her simple gifts, listened to her talk about Rick, and asked with genuine concern how her new diet was going, even though she was perfect. She always thanked me with a wink and a smile when I complimented her.
During this infatuation for Melanie, I remember my stepmom calling me and how, for the second time, I tried to come out of the closet. A cordless phone allowed me to walk and talk in the dayroom, which is a common entertainment area for soldiers to use. I passed Melanie’s room on my way there and noticed her door was ajar. She was inside laughing and joking with a friend. When she saw me, she slowly made her way to the door, curious as to what I was doing. Just before I turned into the dayroom, I stopped like she stopped outside of her room. We stared at each other at opposite ends of the hallway and smiled as hard as we both could smile. As I looked at her and she looked at me beyond her friend’s head, I threw a curve ball at my mother.
“Mom, I think I am gay. I like girls.” There were no feelings of nervousness or worry about how Mom would accept it. It fell out of my mouth, regardless of her potential reaction.