Just Hit 'Send' By Grasshopper

Just Hit 'Send' - The High School Years by Grasshopper Ch. 19

"Just why do you think you're......gay?"

Jordan had come out of his room and everyone had been polite and civil. They sat on the front porch, Mama on the swing, her hands pressed tightly together, Daddy on gray deck rail, his long legs stretched out and Jordan on the front steps, biting his bottom lip. He remembered so many other times they had sat just like this, laughing and talking. And he remembered when Adam had sat right here beside him, his head on Jordan's arm as he got so sleepy but wouldn't go to bed.

He heard the question again. "Jordan, why do you think you're.....gay?"

He had to make these words right........He knew how hard it was for his daddy to even ask.

"Why do I think I'm gay?" he repeated the question. "Do you really want to hear this?"

"No," David replied honestly. "But tell me anyway."

Jordan sat still for a few minutes. He could hear his parents breathing, waiting for him to explain. Taking a deep breath, he began:

"In the 4th grade, Terry Frazier gave me a stick of gum. I didn't chew it. I kept it." Jordan paused.

"What? And that made you gay?" his daddy snorted.

"In 6th grade, I sat behind Kraig Lefler and learned more about the way his hair curled just below the tips of his ears and his jeans pulled across his butt than any of the Geography Mrs. Franks was teaching."

"Jordan !"

"You asked."

He turned and faced his daddy. "I'm not trying to gross you out. I just want you to see that it isn't Danny. I've been this way a long time. Danny's just the first boy that I let see me." He heard his mama's sharp intake of breath. "Not like that, Mama. I mean, letting someone else see who I am." He thought about what Danny had seen and was glad the darkness was hiding his blush.

"But Jordan, all children have a healthy curiosity. Remember when you played doctor with little Jeanie Clark and her mama caught you?"

"Yeah, I remember. I remember thinking she had parts missing and would have looked really good if she'd had a..............had more parts," he finished lamely.

"But, Jordan. You date all the time. Girls like you. You come home and you have lipstick on your face. What is that?"

"I do that for you, for my friends, for the world. I like girls. They're funny and soft and they listen better than guys and I even kiss them. I didn't want to be this. Believe me.......I tried not to be this." Jordan thought of all the kisses he'd had and how only one had turned him on, made him hard.

"You don't have to be........this," his daddy muttered.

"And how will we fix me? Am I broken? We could just take me to the dump and you could go to the new boy store and buy another me. A better me. A str8 me. C'mon, let's go now before the store closes." He knew he was being horrid but he felt horrid.

"Stop, Jordan," his mama's voice calmed him.

"I'm sorry, Mama. I would have fixed me before this if there was a way. But I've got to be me now. You don't have to love me anymore. I know that. I'm now exactly everything you don't believe in."

He felt his mother's arms slide around him as she sat down beside him on the step. "I wouldn't trade you for any other boy in the world, Jordan Lawrence, I created you. I carried you. I gave birth to you. Who you are is half my doing." The words 'half my doing' hung in the air.

"But Claire," David argued, "the church........."

"I did not make love to the church to create this child, David," Claire said firmly. "You are the other half of him. Are you worried that you are gay? That you gave him this "affliction"? Claire was tired and David was being dense. "Think, David. Are you gay? Am I?"