Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend Read Free Page A

How can I know who he is anymore? And if I don’t know who he is, how can I know who anyone is?
    I open my mouth and try to sing but just a gulp comes out, like I’m gasping for air. Muffin puts her paw on my face, I breathe her in . . . cat fur, and outside smells like the forest. She purrs.
    “Muffin,” I whisper to her but I’m not sure if my voice makes it into the outside air or can be heard over Barbra. I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the window, remembering things that are not healthy to be remembering when it turns out that your boyfriend is gay. I do it anyways.
    One time after Dylan and I sang this song, we made love and then took a bath. We folded our bodies into the tub and put in raspberry bubble stuff. We laughed and laughed and made bubble beards and bubble boobs and bubble hair and then the bubbles started popping. They just weren’t there anymore and the water left the world of hot and journeyed into the world of lukewarm and Dylan kissed me a long, long kiss. Then we just sat there facing each other and everything in the whole bathroom seemed to glow—the tissue box that my mother made with plastic rectangles and yarn, the peach-colored towels, the photo of a southern plantation above the toilet. But mostly it was Dylan. Dylan glowed.
    We looked at each other and then this weird, good beam of golden light came out of my eyes and drifted toward Dylan. And at the same time this good, weird beam of golden light shifted out of Dylan’s eyes and touched my beam of light. They just stayed there, mingling for a minute. They just stayed there and with them came peace and comfort and all those Hallmarky cheese ball things.
    In the water, we sat. In the water, we were silent. In the water, we waited and waited until it was cold. Then we pulled ourselves up and out. The only noise was the water dripping off our bodies and rejoining the water in the tub. Dylan gave me his hand and we toweled each other off with good rubs.
    “I love you, you know,” Dylan said, pulling on his jeans. He had to tug them up, because I hadn’t dried off his thighs well enough.
    “Good,” I laughed, reaching around my back to snap my bra. My shoulders stretched. I was still thinking about the light thing, and whether it was just some freak weird hallucination/illusion, or whether it was real. I didn’t want to mention it though, because what if he didn’t see it? I needed it to be real.
    Dylan turned me so my back was against him. His body felt warm. “I’ll do that for you.”
    His fingers snapped my bra closed. He kissed my neck. I shivered. He gently pulled out my ponytail holder and said, “You love me too, right?”
    “Yeah.” I raked my fingers through my wet hair and turned around to face him.
    He tilted his head like a dog does when it’s trying to figure something out. “How much do you love me?”
    “With all my soul,” I said. I believe it too. I believe that’s how I love Dylan, even though it’s corny. And I believe that afternoon, in my bathtub, we saw our souls. It was the only time in my life anything remotely magical happened. And I was going to keep believing it. No matter what.
    How can you not believe you’re meant to be with a guy when that happens? How does anything make sense anymore, when that happens and then he turns out to like boys?

    “He is not!”
    “I swear it,” I say. I would hold up my hand and do the Boy Scout honor pledge but I am too sad, too tired.
    Emily, my best friend that isn’t Dylan, has lost the ability to close her mouth. It hangs there and hangs there. Finally, I reach over and gently shut it for her. She blushes, flops onto my bed, and covers her face with her hands.
    “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just . . .”
    “Unbelievable,” I say. “Bizarre? Horrifying? Ridiculous? Ludicrous? Humiliating?”
    “Yeah,” she says and moves her hands away from her face. “Yeah. But, you know, it kind of makes sense.”
    Anger wells up inside of me. I