Honestly Ben

“I don’t know. I still don’t feel like I’m gay,” I said.
“What a thing to say to a guy after sex!”
“No, really.”
“Maybe you’re bi?”
“I feel like I’m more, like, gay-for-Rafe.”
He put his hand on his heart. “Sincerely flattered to be a sexual orientation now. Thank you.”

I was too tired to explain to her that I wasn’t coming out as gay, or even bi. Unless she was telling me that there were generations upon generations of talented gay men who were otherwise straight until they met her son, none of this was particularly meaningful to me.

I think it’s okay to just say who you are without it being final or something. I mean, none of us are finished products. We change. We keep changing. We won’t be finished products ’til the day we die.

For someone who is all about being himself, you sure edit yourself a lot.

As I opened the car door and stepped back into the chilly night, I was thinking that maybe the key to life is to have goldfish memories. So you can’t remember the time a friend hurt you. So you can give second and third and even fourth chances. To yourself too. Because sometimes it takes multiple chances to get things fully right, to put your universe in order.

“Anyway, I’m giving up sex,” Toby said. “I’ve got other things on my brain.”
I thought back to when he’d come to my room to subliminalize me; he’d said he needed to talk. I wondered what was up.
“Isn’t it more like sex is giving you up?” Albie asked. “You don’t have a boyfriend, Toby. You haven’t abandoned sex; it’s abandoned you.”

“It’s Sunday,” he said. I’d been asleep for twenty-four hours.
“Whoa. That’s substantial.”
“Forget sub. That’s fully stantial,” he said.