Autoboyography
Page 39

I want him so much it’s nearly painful. So when he kisses me, I try to make the feel of him sucking my bottom lip block out anything else. I want his kiss to be the clarification, the reassurance that a label doesn’t matter—this is what matters.
But it doesn’t. The entire time we kiss, and later—when we stand and hike back down—I still have that sensation that I’m sinking. He wants to read my book, the book about falling in love with him. But how can I send my heart to him when he’s just said, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn’t speak its language?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Late Saturday afternoon, Autumn jogs after me, down my driveway. Finally we are free of my house, and she lets loose her barrage of questions.
“Were you talking to him when I got here?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re telling me he doesn’t like you? Tanner, I see how he looks at you.”
I unlock the car, opening the driver’s side door. I’m 100 percent not in the mood for this. Even after talking to him this morning, Sebastian’s words from Thursday still bounce around my head.
Not . . . that.
I’m not gay.
“You don’t see how he looks at you?”
“Auddy.” It’s not a denial; it’s not a confirmation. It’ll have to work for now.
She climbs in after me, clicking her seat belt in, and then turns to face me. “Who is your best friend?”
I know the right answer to this one: “You. Autumn Summer Green.” I turn the ignition, and laugh despite my dark mood. “Still the best bad name ever.”
Auddy ignores this. “And who do you trust more than anyone in the world?”
“My dad.”
“After him.” She holds up her hand. “And after your mom, grandmother, family, blah, blah.”
“I don’t trust Hailey as far as I could throw her.” Turning, I look over my shoulder to back out of the driveway. Dad won’t let me rely solely on the backup camera in the sensible Camry I drive.
Autumn slaps the dashboard. “I’m making a point! Stop thwarting me.”
“You are my best friend.” I turn the steering wheel and set out of our neighborhood. “I trust you the most.”
“So why do I feel you aren’t telling me something important?”
A dog with a bone, this one. My heart is a hammer again, tap-tap-tapping against my sternum.
I was on the phone with Sebastian when Auddy got to my house. We were talking about his afternoon away at a church youth activity.
We were not talking about how un-gay he is.
We were also not talking about my book.
“You’re with him all the time,” she needles.
“Okay, first of all, we’re honestly working on my book,” I say, and a metaphorical knife pokes my conscience in reprimand. “You chose to work with Clive—which is fine—but now I’m paired with Sebastian. We hang out. Second, I don’t know if he’s gay, or what”—and that’s certainly not even a lie—“but third, his sexuality isn’t our business.”
The only reason it’s mine is because . . .
Only now does it register that giving this relationship oxygen outside our Sebastian + Tanner bubble would be amazing. Even the idea of talking to someone other than Mom and Dad about this makes me feel like I can take a full breath for the first time in weeks. I want more than anything to talk with someone else—Auddy, especially—about what happened on Thursday.
“If he is gay,” she says, chewing a nail, “I hope his family isn’t too terrible about it. It makes me sort of sad.” She holds up her hand. “I know you aren’t gay, but shouldn’t the bishop’s son be allowed to like dudes if he wants to?”
This conversation makes me feel mildly queasy. Why haven’t I come out to Auddy yet? Yes, Mom’s panic before we moved was mildly traumatizing to me, and Auddy’s friendship is my bedrock. I guess I’ve never wanted to risk it. But still. Autumn Summer Green is the least closed-minded person I’ve ever known, isn’t she?
“Someone needs to have a revelation,” I say, glancing at her. “Call the prophet; let him know it’s time to accept the queer folk into his heart.”
“It’s gonna happen,” she says. “Someone is going to have a revelation. Soon.”
Revelations are a big part of the LDS faith. It’s a pretty progressive idea: The world is changing, and the church needs God to help guide it through these times. After all, they are the Latter-day Saints. They believe anyone can have a revelation—that is, a communication directly from God—as long as they’re seeking it with the intention of doing something good. But only the current living prophet—the church president—can have revelations that make their way into church doctrine. He (always a he) works with two counselors and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (also men) “under the inspiration of God”—to determine what the church’s position is on any given matter and whether rules get changed.
For example, the hot button: Polygamy was okay back in the day. Autumn’s mom once explained it to me that, at the time of early LDS settlements, there were many women and few men to protect them. By taking on multiple wives, men could better provide for the women in the community. But in my own digging, I read how the US government didn’t love this aspect of the church and wouldn’t grant Utah state rights. In 1890, Church President Wilford Woodruff declared that plural marriage was no longer acceptable to God—apparently, he’d had a revelation about it.
Conveniently, it was what the US government needed to hear; Utah became a state.
The idea of a revelation about wholly accepting openly LGBTQ members in the church is pretty much the single golden thread I hang on to for hope whenever I let myself think past today or tomorrow with Sebastian. Brigham Young himself said, in essence, he hopes that people in the church don’t just take what the leaders say as God’s truth; he wants them to pray and find that truth within themselves, too.
No doubt Daddy Young wasn’t talking about homosexuality, but there are those of us who live in the modern world, who are not LDS, and who sincerely hope that a revelation about homosexuality not being sin is just a matter of time.
And yet even with the legalization of same-sex marriage, it still hasn’t happened. Autumn taps her fingers on her thighs in time with the music. I hadn’t been listening to what’s been playing, but now it’s a song I love. It has this slow, building beat, and the singer’s voice is throaty, scratchy. The lyrics seem innocent at first, but it’s clear it’s about sex, just like nearly every song on the radio.
It makes me think about sex, and what that would be like with Sebastian. How it happens. How we’d . . . be. It’s this vast unknown, both thrilling and terrifying.
“Did you talk to Sasha?” Autumn asks me out of the blue.
“About what?”
She stares at me. “About prom.”
“Seriously, Auddy. Why are you so hung up on this?”
“Because you said you were going to ask her.”
“But why do you care?”
“I want you to go to your senior prom.” She smiles winningly at me. “And, I don’t want to go alone with Eric.”
This sets off an alarm bell in my brain. “Wait, why?”
“I just want to take things slow with him. I like him, but . . .” She looks out the passenger window, deflating when she sees that we’ve arrived at the lake.