FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

Fifteen
by Sharon Bordas

PAGE TWO:
As the weeks passed and David failed to reappear on campus, the rumors that he must be gay gained momentum. I tried to distance myself from the potential humiliation of being a gay guy's girlfriend with vague, carefully worded statements.

"Yeah, I think he did do a little ice skating. But that was way before I knew him."

"He was an altar boy, yes, but he never took the overnight trip to Magic Mountain with Fr. Folgrom."

"You'd have to ask him, but I'd guess he'd pick Les Miserables over La Cage."

I really had no idea if he was gay or not. I wasn't all that sexually experienced. Maybe, I thought, I didn't want to have sex with David not because he was a good six inches shorter than me and wore braces. Maybe it was instead an unspoken sexual ambivalence I had sensed emanating from him. I tried to look objectively at the situation. We were both active members of the choir and drama clubs and we both knew every word of West Side Story; homosexuality was a real possibility. I wondered if David had a crush on the only openly gay kid in choir, Ioannis, a Prince tribute band of one. Although I was guilty of giggling whenever Ioannis attached a brooch to his choir uniform, I didn't consider myself homophobic. I figured there had to be at least one homosexual in Duran Duran, and they were totally hot. But David wasn't as cute as those guys were. Could I find a way to respect his lifestyle choice but save myself from living a life as his beard? I lamented over my sexual future, now so intricately intertwined with the least attractive homosexual in the world.

Despite my tortured inner dialogues and sleepless nights, my new role as a teenage near-widow did have clear advantages. Several of my teachers told me in whispery voices that homework was optional until I "recovered". No one expected me to practice the piano or learn geometry. I spent a little less time washing my hair and a little more time ripping my jeans in strategic locations. I started smoking cigarettes. Concerned parents lurched towards me, their arms outstretched.

"We're all thinking about you and your family during this terrible, terrible time."

I squirmed out of reach of those arms and joked that there was no need to worry about my family. My father hadn't even registered David's existence, much less that he now resided in a mental institution. My mother was happy that the "little faggot" was no longer tying up our phone line. No one seemed to know what to say to that. Even Ms. Landers, the hippie-chick English teacher I so wanted to grow up to be, just stared at me blankly, pulled me into a suffocating hug and told me that everything was going to be OK. How disappointing, I thought, that she didn't know she was supposed to laugh.

I resolved to polish my comedic material. Although I was an untested talent, it's likely that my delivery was not at issue. When I picture 15-year-old-me laughing uproariously about my mother's cruelty, I cringe. I thought it was hilarious that she always sat with her back to the wall in restaurants so that if someone came in shooting, I would be the first to go down. After a decade of shattering panic attacks and reoccurring nightmares about being shot in restaurants, I now wish for the ability to time travel so I can go back and not only laugh along with my 15-year-old self, but also give her my number so she could call me anytime. I think it would have helped her to know someone like me back then. I could have given her some much-needed emotional support. And help her polish up her routine.

I'm an old lady of 35 now and, when I cross paths with 15-year-olds, I am shocked to see how young they are. I study the peach fuzz on their sweaty faces, the way they have barely transitioned into wearing deodorant and managing their hair. Always these truths take me by surprise. These smelly children are not what I imagined myself to be back then. Instantly, I feel protective of any 15-year-old within arm's reach. I want to squeeze them until they tell me their secrets. I imagine fighting their battles for them, engaging their startled parents in aggressive conversations, asking pointed questions, trying to determine if their children are safe. Their parental reassurances sound like party line to me. They fall on deaf ears. I know that if asked, my mother would have said I was a happy, well-adjusted kid and she would have been wrong. There wasn't a moment where I didn't feverishly hope that my real parents, the ones who adored me beyond reason and would have given up anything in their possession to ensure my happiness, were going to drive up to my front curb, preferably in a red Volkswagen rabbit or a midnight blue convertible mustang, and offer to take me home.

The unexpected wave of compassion I received as David's girlfriend helped to legitimize my silent fear that any hope of an intellectual, exciting future was about to be extinguished. David was now my future. I imagined myself a young mother, sitting at a Formica table, a cigarette on my lip, baby on my hip, talking into the phone about David and his "goddamn boyfriend". I reluctantly acquiesced to the notion that I would never study abroad.

Several months had passed and I still hadn't called David. I felt badly about that, but I had never really been that good on the phone. I wrote a couple letters. I never sent them.

Then one day, well into my homework-free time of healing, spontaneously, without warning, my mother decided that visiting David in the looney bin was an unfortunate but necessary social obligation. A duty falling somewhere between sewing quilts for abused children, an act I performed with what now seems a shocking lack of irony, and visiting my grandmother on the holidays. Wracked by guilt and a sense of inevitability, I agreed to go. We set a day. She did, however, decide against taking me herself, thinking it would be better if she kept her nail appointment, so I was forced to ask around and try to bum a ride. I struggled with the right way to phrase the request. It came out something like this:

"Anyone want to give me a lift so I can visit my gay boyfriend in the mental institution?"

Quite an offer.

David's friend Chris volunteered to give me a ride. "And I don't think he's gay, by the way," he said.

"Right. Me neither." And off we went.

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