Jacob Gelt Dekker

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Ross and the Real Boy

There were three intangible things I loved in high school, the first being Disneyland. Before you get to thinking I was lucky enough to attend classes in the Magic Kingdom, "Disneyland" was a small corner of land off-campus, tucked between two suburban Crackerbox homes.

During brunch, my friend Vince and I would slip under a fence to the tree-shaded patch, light up a joint, then look up through sky-freckled branches at the happiest place on earth. Disneyland made the real world of high school livable, and on most days we returned at lunch to ride again. My second love was a rock star, F., whom I idolized and dreamed about and appropriately worshipped with his posters that covered my bedroom. F.’s devotion I proved daily by playing his albums till they scratched themselves out, memorizing every song lyric for spiritual guidance, and fantasizing about being one of his sex disciples, spreading the word of Him wherever needed.

My third love was a student named Jim. Although Jim’s real, he was more of a hallucination than anything I smoked, more idolized than any immortal on my wall. Jim was 17 when we shared Photography class together; I was 15. He was a senior to my sophomore, and I’ve never had a bigger dream than the sin of being his. First love is not just something that stays with you forever; it defines you, turns you inside-out, brings the stars under your feet so you can glide over them and into him. First love unrequited kills you.

I don’t remember when Jim’s presence first eclipsed a room, but I do recall the thrill and terror my feelings aroused. I lived in a town that didn’t know fags but would have killed one had it invaded. Jim was a straight man in a town that didn’t know that word, and coveted his baseball skills, his good-guy looks and affability, and his after-school job pumping gas. The city was born into him. Jim had a green Trans-Am that smelled of oil and blared the music of Rush and that he took care of like a lover. While he fit in with both the Stoners and the Jocks, and I fit in with no one, we hit it off like the best of friends. We were class partners, took photo field trips to San Francisco - that was my idea - and kidded and ribbed and play-punched each other. Jim made fun of my middle name, Ross, as if he were pulling at pigtails.

He let me take his portrait. It was September, shortly after class started, and in the picture he’s laying profile on still-warm mowed grass, propped up on one elbow. His brown eyes are staring into the camera, and he has brown curly hair, down to his ears. He’s wearing a green, plaid shirt, and you can see the beginning of his light-brown corduroys, puffed up unwillingly around the crotch, as if I, not Miller’s Outpost, designed them. He’s not smiling, and there’s an awkward fear in his gaze. It looks like he’s questioning the camera’s intentions, not the other way around. The photo is in black and white, but the details of the day remain in color. The picture was taken in the open field across from campus, the place where school ended and the town that was the world began.

Jim dated a girl named Sue, who, at our high school, was what people called "a hard." She hung out in the Smoking Section, and wore tight flower-print dresses and black sunglasses over her brown-feathered hair. Sue had a bad complexion, and doused herself with makeup, which meant she’d gone all the way. Her garter belt hung over Jim’s rearview mirror - a trophy from their Junior Prom night - and he relished that prize over anything the Track Team might have offered him.

I lived a few blocks from Jim’s house, and on weekend nights I would ride my bicycle around the neighborhood till his car drove up. We’d hang out till late, laughing and listening to his tape deck, and drinking beer he’d sneak from the fridge. There were no streetlights in our part of town, and the darkness drew him in like a tide that’s about to pull you under. I’d sit in the upholstered seat, conscious of my every facial muscle. He’d never say much, just look past the dashboard and drink his beer. When it rained, the quiet patter on the windows blared messages and meanings and blood into my head. Jim always wore the same gray windbreaker, and I loved it because it smelled of him. It smelled like the world I wanted to live in forever. He took it off one night and told me to wear it home. He was afraid I’d get cold. That simple, affectionate gesture broke the rules of men.

There’s only been one night in my life that I’ve wanted to be the opposite sex. It was the Senior Prom, that spring, right after my 16th birthday. My older sister, who was Jim’s age, was on the back deck of our house getting her hair braided Bo Derek-style. Her boyfriend would be there soon, in a tux and rented limo, and neighbors were already dropping by, everyone joyous and taking photos, celebrating a girl’s inherited right. I sat on the front porch waiting in another world for a man who’d never arrive. He was my right in a place that denied me access to a trial. I should have been Jim’s girl. He’d show up at my door, my Mom and girlfriends lavishing compliments on his groomed features and his endearing smile, Jim grabbing my arm on the way out.

I wanted to drive to the prom in his car, pushed up next to him in the upholstered seats, his hand on my knee. I wanted to lean on his shoulder as our friends cheered us on, slow-dancing to "Colour My World" and whispering of even better days. I wanted him to kiss me good night and to write about it in a journal, and to wake up with giggles and bright fatigue and, finally, the ring of the phone that was Jim’s promise on the other end. My sister would surely get these things, while I’d replay the broken record of Jim’s night with Sue.

Instead, Jim knocked on my window that night, around 2 a.m. He’d had a fight with Sue, over a guy who showed up at an after-party, they’d broken up, and she was some sort of whore anyway so it didn’t matter. He was drunk, told me there was beer in the car, and asked me to join him. There’s no romantic way to describe first sex between two male teenagers, except that the terror and longing elevates the slightest touch, turning the removal of a belt buckle into electric shock. When he pressed his fingertips against mine, risk reversed itself. I knew it wouldn’t happen again, and within a couple of days, Jim was back with Sue. They pretty much spent all their time together after that, and she told me once to find a new friend. For a night, though, I’d found a home.

I thought about Jim recently, for a couple of reasons. High school flooded back into my world when I got the chance to interview my former idol, F., who still performs, and who answered his phone as if we were old friends catching up. That tunnel to youth raced through me and back, imagining the fifteen-year-old conversing like an equal with God. When I met F. after his New York concert shortly thereafter, the girl next to me said she was waiting for everyone to leave because "I always blow him after the show." I envied her in a way because she reminded me of Sue, the slutty girl who always gets the guy.

Vince and I are two grown gay men on opposite coasts, and we have newer versions of Disneyland. He’s raced the rapids on the River Russian, I’ve been stranded with men on an Island of Fire. And then I got an email from Jim’s sister, who was in my class, and who found me through the Internet. I asked her how her brother was doing, and within a couple of days, he e-mailed me too. When his name showed up on my Blackberry, I saved it next to F.’s - I have both of my childhood sweethearts in the palm of my hand.

I never had sex with Jim, never felt those fingertips. I almost made a pass at him one night, after a J. Geils concert. We were both bombed, sitting in his car, not saying a word, and to this day I don’t know what might have happened. The possible repercussions were too terrifying. He might have told Sue, he might have told the world of school, which lived on every corner and would have been happy to kill me. Yet my regret of not taking that chance still hurts. Unmentionable love aborts your life before you’re allowed to breathe.

The resolution I gave is the one in my head and the payoff you’re entitled to. It sells books and films and plays and gossip. Now that gay kids have Coming Out parties, Lance Bass promotes gay tolerance on school campuses, men are married with children, and idols are out, it might be an ending other teenagers get. It’s the ending I want to rewind when someone tells me about their first love and all that did, and was meant, to happen. It’s the finish that threatens to rewind itself when a man rejects my own jacket. My night with Jim is real when Photoshop makes everyone a perfect 10, MySpace and Facebook make you friends with people you’ll never know, and whose identity and photos you’ll never know to be true, and James Frey’s a footnote on the plagiarism story scale.

Jim did give me his jacket, and I slept next to it for months. It helped me dream on nights I couldn’t sleep. I did take his photo, and it remained stashed in my bottom-dresser drawer for years, next to a hand-written note from F., who responded to a fan letter I’d sent him. It’s also true that Jim e-mailed me, and updated me on his life since the last time I saw him, driving down the street in a different car, something practical. I’d come home for a visit from college, where I’d actually been with a man, and Jim honked when he saw me jogging by. I got in his car, and neither one of us could think of a thing to say. He’d joined the Marines. As for what he said in his e-mail, I’m not yet sure. If an ending works for someone else, perhaps I’ll feel him too.