Vincent's Kiss Page #2

As a gay man who came out late in life, I write stories about the struggles of young people trying to figure out who they are and the obstacles they face along the way. I try to paint pictures with words of those experiences

• Short story
• Fiction

								

She was speechless as she stood, now right hand on her hip, the other back up to her chin, her face morphing from confusion to disbelief to anger. “Why, that little queer,” she finally said after a long pause, using a word that I was only vaguely familiar with and, at this point in my life, had no sexual and certainly not any homosexual connotations to it. My dad used it often for all kinds of people and my mother didn’t like him using it. I just figured it was a bad word that was a kind of insult or put down. Later I would come to realize that I wasn’t wrong. She had been ready to scold me for hitting Vincent and I was ready for the sentence I feared the most: “Just wait ‘til your father gets home!” But this new information thoroughly confounded her. The best she could muster was to send me to my room. “I wonder what your father will have to say about this?!” I heard her say out loud, mostly to herself, as I climbed the stairs. “Me too,” I whispered, that feeling of suddenly having to urinate rising in my bladder.
Vincent was never, by any stretch of the imagination, counted among the ‘normal’ kids by anyone, especially the normal kids. I was pretty awful at any sport I played, especially when it was on an organized team like Little League or Pee Wee Football, but Vincent made me look like Pete Rose or Jim Brown. He was often teased mercilessly and called ‘fairy’ more than a few times. That made me angry because everyone knew what a fairy was and, sure, Vincent was different in a lot of ways. But a fairy? No way. He was a “C” student whereas I got mostly “A’s” and an occasional “B”.  So, it was a mystery to my parents and my older sister why in heaven’s name I had anything to do with him. They expressed that dismay regularly.
But Vincent had two things going for him that evidently didn’t matter to anyone else but me, and, I assume, his family. First, he was a creative Lake Mead held back by the Hoover Dam of his shyness, but, when the floodgates opened, out flowed the most beautiful piano playing – most of which were his own compositions – stunning artwork and wonderful stories that he could make up on the spot. The second thing was, well, embarrassing for me to admit and I dared not tell anyone what I thought: he was cute as a button. I just liked being with him. And that, for some unknown reason, didn’t seem strange to me. It would take a few more years, and a few more kisses, to fully understand why. 
As I laid on my bed waiting for the inevitable inquisition to begin as soon as my father arrived home from work, I thought about the reasons I maintained my friendship with Vincent and why I kept them to myself. It was simple. I was thirteen and thirteen-year-old boys don’t think their best friends are cute. But I did think that sometimes. Besides thinking he was cute, I really liked him. I mean really, really liked him. I couldn’t wait to see him every day at school. He always smiled when he saw me coming and hurried to greet me. I thought about him a lot at night in bed or when he was away for a few days with his family. I thought that’s what best friends do. At the same time, I was utterly aware of what people, especially my parents and my other friends – and their parents – might mistakenly think about that. Would I be thought of as a fairy, also? All at once I felt very much alone. How could something that I thought and felt about someone else suddenly appear so awful? Maybe I knew, down deep inside, that it was awful. And what if word about what Vincent did get around at school? “Hey Will, anymore fairies kiss you lately?”  “Hey Will, did you like it and kiss him back?” “Hey Will, wanna play with my sister’s dolls?” That had to be why I decked him, I thought, trying to rationalize it. But it was a square peg in a round hole. I hated myself for doing it. And not just because I hurt him. I hurt him because he scared me.
A couple of days after all that happened, I asked my mother if she heard how Vincent was doing. It was as if I had asked her if she was a communist. “Never you mind!” she said in a stern and  threatening tone. “Your father and – she hesitated like she didn’t want to say his name – his father have taken of things.”
“What do you mean? Taken care of things? Is he really hurt? He’s my friend! I should have the right to know!” 
“Not anymore. He took care of that! And you did the right thing. Go back upstairs and read or something.”
It was just a stupid kiss and I overreacted, I thought as I laid on my bed. He shouldn’t have done it and I shouldn’t have done it. Big deal! Or was it? They seem to think so. I was so confused. I cried.
Vincent did not show up for school for the rest of that week. When either one of us missed school for whatever reason, our teachers would give the one of us who was in school all the homework assignments to be delivered to the other. That didn’t happen this time. I guess his mother got it for him or maybe his little brother. When he did return the next week things had changed. Our close friendship was known by all the teachers so whenever a new seating chart was made during the school year, Vincent and I were always seated one in front of the other. The teachers trusted the two of us to be good and not mess around and we didn’t for the most part, fearing the loss of our close seating arrangement. But on the Monday morning after Vincent’s kiss, I was met with instructions to gather my things from my desk in front of where Vincent sat and move all the way over to the other side of the room. Thankfully, Vincent arrived after I had moved my things.  He went directly to his usual seat, not even reacting to the fact that somebody other than me was now sitting in front of him. That was relayed to me by one of my other friends during recess. My friend also reported that Vincent had what appeared to be the remainder of a black eye. That seemed strange to him because he had heard that Vincent was out because of the flu. He would have kept going on and on about it and about what the other kids had heard, but I told him to shut up and walked away. A week later Vincent was gone. I was told he transferred to the public school. 
I saw him only twice after that year of my first kiss – Vincent’s kiss. The first time was shortly after school was out for the summer. I was in my backyard playing catch with Marty, my new best friend. Marty started to throw the ball to me but stopped mid-throw. I was standing with my back to Vincent’s yard when Marty pointed excitedly, his eyes wide, over my shoulder as if he had seen Bigfoot appearing in the old man’s, overgrown backyard who lived in the yard past Vincent’s. I turned to look over my shoulder at about the exact same time as Vincent looked up from the comic book he was reading as he walked toward the very swing where the ‘incident’ as my mother now called it occurred. I started to completely turn and, at the same time, raise my hand and wave hello, but Vincent froze for a second then turned suddenly and went back in the house. I had gotten over the shock of that first kiss and started, slowly anyway, to think about why he did what he did and what he was thinking. I would lay awake most nights in bed wondering about it and I would feel this very gentle ache down in that space between my stomach and my heart. It didn’t really hurt. Not physically anyway. It was deeper. At first, I felt betrayed. Why would he do that knowing it risked everything including our friendship? What made him think it was ok? And that I would think it was ok? But I started remembering more details about that day – that kiss – that were not obvious to me due to the immediate anger I felt when he did it. That kiss was not quick and hard like you give your least favorite Aunt. It was gentle and purposeful like it had meaning I was supposed to understand. A meaning that words would not have adequately expressed. It was longer than I had remembered. I guess lingered is a better word. I slowly started to realize that maybe Vincent’s kiss was trying to tell me something that I did not understand. Something that he already knew about himself.  

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