Damon

    Damon’s leg jiggled in anticipation as he road the school bus home. He had been waiting all day to get his back issue of a XY magazine that his older brother had ordered for him from his college dorm. Actually, the excitement about getting mail had caused him to not pay much attention in any of his first semester high school classes all day. Not to mention that this issue might have been able to help him with his dilemma more than anything else.
    As the bus pulled up to his driveway, Damon’s heart sank. There was a red car in the drive. That car belonged to his dad. He stepped off the bus and walked a couple of steps. He closed his eyes and rolled them in the back of his head. As he took steps toward the mailbox, he breathed a few heavy breaths through his nose. The mailbox door creaked as he pulled it down. Nothing was inside the small black hole. Damon leaned his head back and looked up at the sky, as if he were pleading to it to have had no mail for the day or at least not make this the day that his magazine had come. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands as he walked to the house.
    Upon entering the house, he saw the unopened mail on the side counter. There were only white envelopes scattered. Apparently Damon’s father had already rummaged through the unopened bills that laid there idly. The lump in Damon’s throat started to dissipate.
    The floor creaked underneath Damon’s steps on the carpet in a spot just before the opening to the living room. A sport announcer’s voice came from the television in that room. Damon peeped in as he went by. His father sat on the couch, keeping his attention on the bright flashes.
    “Hey Dad,” Damon said loud enough for his father to hear.
    No response.
    Damon blinked, then quickly went up to his bedroom, telling himself that his father must have just not heard him. He turned the doorknob and pushed hard on the wood to get the door to his room open. As soon as he opened the door, the first thing he saw was the magazine laying on his bed. His backpack dropped to the floor, making a plunk from his math book. He kicked his backpack to the side and slammed his shoulder against the door at the same time to make it close all the way. A force not of his own accord made Damon walk over to his bed. He rubbed his shoulder as he took small steps closer to his bed. His hands shook as he picked up the magazine that was still sealed up in plastic, except for the top of the plastic was torn off. Damon wanted nothing more than to die right then and there. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them up to see the word “Closet,” the issue title, on the bottom of the magazine. Next, he noticed that there was a boy looking out of broken glass. He eased up, thinking that it looked simi-normal. Then he saw the red print on the side that read, “‘the gay boy’s bible’—heavenly times.”
    “Dammit,” he gasped and hit his forehead with the magazine. The plastic tore a little more. He let go of it and let it drop to the floor. Looking around his room for an answer to a question he still didn’t know, Damon rolled his tongue back and forth in his mouth. His legs started to make him pace around the room. Many times his eyes rolled over to the clock. He didn’t feel sure why he kept wondering what time it was. Maybe he desired for his mother to save him. No, that wasn’t it. His eyes darted to the phone.
    Luke will know what to do. He got me in this mess, Damon thought as he made his way over to his cell phone.
    Damon opened up his phone and quickly found Luke’s name in his address book and pushed the green phone to make it call out to him. Desperately pressing the phone against his ear, it rang once—twice—three times. “Hey, this is Luke. Can’t get to my phone mon ami, leave one.” Before it beeped, Damon shut his phone.
    For about three seconds, that felt like forever, Damon tapped his foot against the floor. He blinked four times in a matter of two seconds, and opened his phone to call again.
    “Hey, this is Luke—” Damon clasped the phone closed again.
    “Dammit, Luke!” he exasperated, clinching his teeth together.
    More pacing commenced, as Damon kept looking down at his phone. Tears started to gloss over his eyes. He noticed the magazine laying lazily by his bed. Damon kicked at it, sending it under the bed, where only one small corner peeped out, making it barely visible.
    Two minutes after his last call, Damon decided that if he couldn’t get a hold of his brother this time, he would leave a message. Damon put the phone up to his ear. It rang until Luke’s voicemail picked up again.
    “Luke, I really need you. I’m scared...” Damon couldn’t talk anymore. Instead, he just started crying. The fear and frustration was enough to make him cry.
    He hadn’t hung up, but started hearing a beeping noise. Pulling the phone away from his ear, the screen of the phone lit up and showed Luke calling back. Damon clicked over, without hanging up with Luke’s voicemail.
    “Luke,” Damon gurgled, still slightly crying.
    “Dude, what’s wrong? You’ve called like three times in the past five minutes.” Luke’s voice sounded very panicked.
    “It came,” Damon said between sharp breaths.
    Silence.
    “What?” Luke asked.
    “The magazine,” Damon said, suddenly alarmed.
    “Okay...”
    “Dad got home first, and he saw it. He put it on my bed. And I think he looked through it,” Damon muttered quickly. He had resumed pacing.
    “Um, I still have ten minutes of French. Can I call you after that?”
    “Dammit, Luke! If you wouldn’t have caught me kissing Michael a few years back, none of this would have happened. You got me into this mess, now fucking get me out of it.” Damon ranted and let out all of his frustration as quickly as his mouth and vocal cords could move.
    “Damon, quit being a little shit. And stop cussing. Ten minutes, okay?” Luke kept a cool tone and waited for a reply.
    Damon sighed. “Okay, ten minutes.” He hung up the phone and flopped down on his bed. He had almost dozed off by the time that his phone started to sing to him. Ugh, gay ringtone, Damon thought to himself as Hilary Duff belted out a simple song.
    “Hello,” he answered groggily.
    “Damon, are you sure dad looked at the magazine?” Luke asked. Wind blew in the receiver.
    Damon sat up. “I’m pretty sure. The top of the plastic was tore off,” he sounded a little more calm this time.
    “Well, at least it’s doing its job effectively,” Luke tried to make a joke.
    Damon pursed his lips. “Not funny.”
    “Listen, don’t worry about it yet. Dad might not care. Why don’t you go talk to him and then call me when you know for sure.”
    “Right,” Damon rolled his eyes. That was the stupidest idea his brother had ever had.
    “Do you want me to just come home tonight?” Luke sounded a little irritated at that point.
    “No—” Damon said meekly, even though he did.
    “Fine. Wait until dinner, then see what happens, okay?”
    Damon sighed softly. “Okay,” he said almost inaudibly.
    “Okay, call me after.”
    “Okay. I will.” Damon hesitated for a second. “Luke?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I love you.”
    “Love you too, little bro.”
    Damon hung up the phone.
    To distract himself of the thoughts of what would happen during dinner, Damon got out his math book and sat at his desk. For an hour he scribbled away at every math problem on the page, even though he was only supposed to do the even problems. Damon had always loved numbers. They were concrete. Two added to two was always four. Six divided by six was always one. There was order in math, unlike his real life.
    After finishing his math homework, Damon turned some light instrumental music on to relax his nerves. Music seemed to have a combination of the concrete mathematical beats and rhythms that kept the music on a steady path, yet there was also the chords and instrumentation that seemed to have so many possibilities and combinations that one could not simply control all the elements of a musical piece, saying what’s right and what’s wrong.
    A light rapping on his door broke Damon’s connection with and on his music. He got up from his desk, where he realized he had been making a doodle on the bottom of his homework by what the music had made him feel like. It didn’t much resemble anything, though. When he got to the door, he pulled on the handle with both hands as hard as he could to get the door open.
    “Damona, dinner is ready,” his mother told him with a bright smile on her face. Damona had been a name Damon had wanted to be referred to as when he was a kid and watched Gargoyles all the time. He had always been amused by the fact that she didn’t follow what all the other gargoyles did and lived life the way she wanted to, which Damon had dreamed about when he was little. At least when it came to what his dad wanted him to do most of the time.
    Damon looked over his mother’s expression. It was obvious to him that his father had told her about the magazine.
    “Come on, mi amor, you can’t hide in here forever,” she commented, not making Damon feel any better about his situation. Suddenly, Damon wished he had told Luke to come home. His support would be very helpful. Somehow Damon felt that Luke would tell him that this was something he needed to do on his own. And that fifteen was the age that he would need to show how grown up he could be to show that he would be adult enough to drive the next year.
    The hallway had a dark and damp lurking to it as Damon made his way behind his mother to the kitchen. He debated with himself if it was more “adult” of him to be coming out or to be confronting his dad the way he knew he needed to. Neither were all that appealing. Maybe being an adult wasn’t for him. A smirk came to his face as he thought that one up.
    When he hit the kitchen and saw his dad sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper in hand, he knew that being an adult would mean getting out of the house. Suddenly it felt appealing again.
    “Locking yourself away in your room again,” Damon’s father half-questioned, half-commented, not looking away from the paper.
    Damon blinked and tried to keep his focus on the steaming food that his mother brought out to them and set down on the table.
    “I was doing my homework,” Damon meekly piped up.
    “On a Friday?” his dad huffed in a gargled tone. “Don’t you have the whole weekend for that?”
    Damon’s mother started dishing out the meal that she had prepared for her family. Damon thought that he saw her take a quick glance at where Luke usually sat. He knew that his leaving for his first year of college had been hard on her. If only she knew how hard it was on him. He thought that maybe she had also wished he was there for this conversation too.
    “I think it’s great that Damon is getting his schoolwork done early. Leaving it looming all weekend might make the weekend less enjoyable.”
    Damon half-nodded to his mother’s comment. He didn’t really agree with it, but it sounded good for his case for staying in his room. Everyone at the table knew the real reason he had finished homework that night, though.
    If it hadn’t been for the clinking of the forks against the glass plates, or the scraping of the knives as they cut the meat up, the room would have been in silence during the whole dinner. The only thing that seemed to really be getting louder was the since of looming that Damon felt. Something had to be said, but he just wasn’t sure when it was going to be started. And he certainly wasn’t going to start himself.
    Once dinner finished, and still no one had said anything, Damon quickly helped his mother with the dishes and took off to the bathroom. He closed the door and locked it behind him. (The bathroom was the only room with a functioning lock.) He put the lid down on the toilet and sat down on it. Resting his arms on his legs, he put his head down into his hands, rubbing his face, trying to get the angst off of it.
    Out in the other room, Damon could hear his mother ask his father why he didn’t say anything to Damon. In which, his mother got a grunt as a reply. She, then, kindly reminded him that he couldn’t just hide from it forever. In reply, Damon’s father yelled at her to drop it. A sense of shame filled Damon completely. He got up from the toilet and flushed it to make it seem as if he had used it. After washing his hands, he retreated to his room.
    In Damon’s room, he didn’t have the energy to close his door all the way. Most of the noise outside of his room was blocked out, but he could still feel the negative energy surrounding the entire house, and it was all his fault.
    A glance at his cell phone made Damon remember that his brother had urged him to call him after dinner. However, Damon felt like there was no reason to call Luke because nothing had happened. His heart wouldn’t have been able to let him articulate things over the phone anyway. How would Damon ever speak out his feelings? That just seemed impossible.
    Instead, Damon sat down at his desk and logged into his instant messenger. Damona777. “God, I need to change that,” he muttered to himself as he typed it in.
    He looked over everyone that was online. Not surprisingly, Luke was on. But Damon couldn’t bring himself to click on his name and talk to him about everything that was inside him. However, that didn’t stop Luke from sending Damon a message.
FrenchWizz: Hey, bro. What happened at dinner?
Damona777: ugh nothing happened
FrenchWizz: What do you mean?
Damona777: dad ignored it and mom got in a fight with him after dinner about it
FrenchWizz: I hate when he just ignores what’s bugging him. You know, I’m just going to come home.
Damona777: NO! DON’T! it doesn’t matter...he likes you better than he’ll ever like me...you’ve never messed up and lived up to his expectations all your life...I just suck...
FrenchWizz: Is that what you think?!?!?!
FrenchWizz: That’s it. I’m coming home.
Damona777: NO LUKE...i’ll do this myself
    It was too late. The house phone started ringing. Damon strained his ears to hear his mother excitedly talking to his brother about coming home for the night. After a little more casual conversation, Damon couldn’t hear anything his mother was saying. He deduced that the conversation must have ended.
    Later that night, while Damon was in his bed reading Great Expectations, his mother lightly tapped on his door and came into his room without a greeting.
    “Luke’s coming home tonight, and we’re all going hiking tomorrow. Doesn’t that sound great?” She had that sweet, little smile on again, while she walked over to Damon’s bed and sat down.
    “Yeah, that will be tons of fun.” Damon rolled his eyes and put his book down.
    “Damon, honey, we’ll figure everything out. I’m sure you’re brother can talk to your dad.”
    Sometimes in Damon’s life, he felt like his mother knew every last thing that had ever happened in their house. And this was certainly one of those times. Damon didn’t know how, but he knew that his mom knew that Luke already knew about his secret.
    His mom got off the bed and bent down. Damon wasn’t sure what she was doing. But when she came back up, she was holding something. “Shouldn’t you be reading this?” It was the magazine that he had almost forgot about. How could he have, with all the trouble it caused? Somehow he had though. Mostly it was because he didn’t want to see it. “I think it will help you,” his mom went on. She laid it on his bed, then left the room.

    A bounce on Damon’s bed woke him up the next morning. It was Luke sitting on his bed.
    “Wake up, Stud.” Luke laughed.
    Damon rubbed his eyes and pulled his blankets up over his naked chest. He felt a bit disoriented. He realized that he must have fallen asleep before Luke had even made it home the night before.
    “Geeze, Luke. Why’d you have to come home?” Damon asked; his voice cracked.
    “Awww geeze, Damon, someone might think you weren’t happy to see your big frere and best ami.” Luke faked a look toward the ground in disappointment.
    Damon threw his arms around Luke. “I’m glad you came,” he confessed in a whisper.
    Luke looked up at him and smiled. “I knew you would be. Now get ready. We’re going hiking.” He bounced up from the bed as Damon fell back down into it, grimacing.
    It was only because it was Luke that Damon got out of bed and got ready to go hiking. Otherwise, Damon would have stayed in bed all day and never have left his room. Facing his dad just wasn’t an option to him. However, because of Luke, that’s exactly what would have to happen all day.
    The car ride to the state park was quiet except for the oldie radio station that his father had turned on. Damon and Luke sat in the back seat. Damon kept giving his older brother unsure looks. In return, Luke tried to make his brother more comfortable by telling him just to trust him and his judgement.
    Arriving at the state park helped calm some of Damon’s anxiety. No matter what had ever happened within their family, somehow hiking had always made everything better.
    Everyone got out of the car. Damon stretched as he stood next to his mother. His father and Luke started walking toward the sets of trails. Damon and his mother followed at somewhat at a distance.
    The open wood of the trails made Damon almost forget why they were out there in the first place. Something about nature always made him feel at peace. There was a double quality of spirituality and musicality out in nature. The wind blew through the trees, causing a swaying and a rustle of leaves that put a smile on Damon’s face. The chirping of the birds singing, and the rush of the animals getting to safety gave Damon a sense of life continuing no matter what was going on within the world. Everything had its own comfort when it was scared of something. And Damon felt the strength to get closer to his father and brother to see what they were talking about. But he still stayed at a distance.
    “You have to talk to him, Dad,” Luke commented, trying to sound quiet.
    “I know. I’m just—not ready for this. You were so much easier.”
    Luke quickly replied to his father’s comment. “You can’t compare him to me. We’re completely different people. That’s his problem. He doesn’t think he’s good enough for you.”
    His father sighed and didn’t say anything.
    Damon felt shaken. He double backed to where his mother was taking pictures of the water that looked determined to be anywhere but where it was as it rushed down its path.
    “Mom?” Damon asked as his mother put down her camera. Some of her hair brushed her face from the wind as she nodded to go on. “Are you—disappointed in me?”
    “Oh honey.” Her eyebrows fell down with concern. “You have so many special and unique talents. You listen to everything around you. You try not to judge others as so many other people do. And you’re one of the smartest people that I’ve ever come across in my lifetime. I imagine that it’s hard for you to make a dark realization that you have something different from many other people within your sexuality, but to me, you’ve always been something so different from anyone else that I’ve come to see that the world needs more people like you in it. So, to answer your question, no, you could never be a disappointment to me.” She brushed his hair with her hand as they walked down the path.
    “Dad’s disappointed,” Damon sighed.
    “Possibly. But you’ll never know for sure, until you talk to him.”
    They walked for a bit before Damon could muster the courage to admit, “I’m scared.”
    “He is too,” she murmured back.
    The woods opened up into a big area where most people lounged around in the water or on the rocks nearby. For some reason, though, there didn’t seem to be much of anyone there. Damon’s dad walked over on a big rock. Luke fell back a bit to let Damon catch up.
    “Il est temps (It’s time),” Luke said with a reassuring glance.
    Damon gulped and nodded.
    He cautiously walked over to the rock that his dad was on. With a few shuffled steps, he climbed up on the rock and found himself next to his father. They both sat down.
    “You know, Damon, I always wanted a son. You see, I never really knew how I would deal with all the important things that a young woman would go through. I felt relief the day you were born, and I had a second son. Somehow, I thought it would be just as easy as Luke was, with the same problems and the same victories. But you’ve been very different from Luke. Almost everything is different.” He wiped away a drop of sweat that was falling down his face.
    “Dad, I’m sorry I’m so different. I tried to be like Luke, but—”
    Damon’s dad looked at him. “I’m going to tell you something my father told me when I was your age. You see, I got in trouble for stilling a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store because all my friends were doing it. Well, I was caught, and they called my father, instead of the police. And instead of punishing me, he took me for ice cream and told me that I needed to be myself and not try to be anyone that I wasn’t. You need to make sure you stay true to who you are.” He looked away, down into the water.
    “But you’re still disappointed in who I am?” Damon released his deepest feeling.
    His father looked at him again. “Down this trail, I noticed these two baby deer and their mother. They were just grazing. But as we approached them, they started to run away. And in the distance there was a buck. I’m guessing that it was their father. And it reminded me that a father is a protector. And I haven’t been doing a good job at protecting you as far as making you feel safe in my care for you. I’m going to try hard to understand who you are. I felt ashamed at first, realizing that I now have a gay son, but in the back of my mind, I always knew you were a different type of person. It’s my job to make sure that the light that you bring to the world never goes out. So, I’m going to learn about being a parent of a gay kid and work hard at keeping you safe and loved.”
    They hugged each other with a new understanding.