I was completely at a loss; I didn't know at all what to do. I was caught. I tried repeatedly, pleaded with Rob. I told him that what he saw was not actually what he'd seen; I told him he was wrong. He wouldn't believe me; he knew what he'd seen, and he kept asking me- three times now, four- and I didn't know how to answer.
"Dude seriously, are you fucking gay?"
My face just turned red and I looked up at him despairingly, desperately wishing the entire situation would go away, that I could somehow go back in time. I guess that was admission enough because he just laughed, not in a mean or a funny way, but in a way that says `I can't believe this is happening'. It echoed my own sentiments. He turned around, away from me, and then turned back towards me and said again,
"What the fuck. Dude, what the fuck? You're gay?"
I shook my head but I didn't know what to say, all I could say was `please'. I wanted him to stop. Rob was my best friend, we'd been best friends for over fifteen years, since childhood. In fact, he was my only friend, not to mention best- because we actually were very close friends- and if he left me I'd have no one at all; so I really was desperate. I knew I needed to take control of the situation and try to explain things before if flew (even more) out of control.
"All this time," he continued, cruelly, "all this time that we were best friends and you lied to me. You were a faggot that entire time."
I winced at his brutality and I could tell he saw it on my face because his softened. He stepped back from me but he repeated himself, maybe somehow to correct what he'd said,
"All this time we were best friends and you were gay. You didn't say anything. In fact-"
I stood up, I needed to stop him, I needed to explain myself.
"Rob, I didn't know how to tell you."
I put my hands up in surrender. He scoffed. He just looked disappointed.
"But you lied, specifically lied."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know."
"What are you apologizing for? Lying or being gay?" he asked, looking at me with an expression of something like confrontation. His fists were clenched. I wanted to plead but I needed to explain myself.
"I'm apologizing for lying to you."
"Yeah, because you did lie to me. A lot"
"I know, and I'm sorry."
I explained how I had become trapped in a lie, because we'd known each other for so long and it was just taken for granted that I was straight, even by myself; and so when I'd realized it was too late, and I'd already tangled myself into the web that I would continue to weave as we'd gotten older. I didn't know which he was angrier about- the fact that I was gay or the fact that I had told him stories throughout our friendship of girls I'd hooked up with, starting when we were teenagers. Naturally, you assume some of those earliest stories are going to be lies, but we were both in our early twenties now and I'd kept on lying. I just never knew how to admit it to him; for reference, both Rob and I are pretty country- well a bit, we live in the countryside, we're both manly', we both grew up fishing on the lake' (more like a stream, behind my house) and going hunting although we weren't great at it; I guess you could call us rednecks. Homophobia just came with the territory, my sexuality was just something I had always known I'd had to hide, from the savage remarks that were casual and ubiquitous in high school, to my family's usage of certain words, to John's own vocal dislike of `faggots'. I had been surprised a minute ago when he seemed to back off when he saw the hurt in my face after he'd used the word- only one of the hundreds of times he'd used it, even directed at me, but this time not in jest. I didn't know what to think. I just tried to explain myself as best as I could but I guess I didn't do the best job, or maybe there's nothing I could have done, because he stood and listened but when he was done he covered his face with his hands, and his only response was,
"I need to get out of here. This is too much. I have to go."
Rob turned around to leave and I felt something inside of me snap- I was so desperately scared he would never come back again and I'd be alone with nobody but my alcoholic mom. I stood up and grabbed his shoulder, turning him back towards me. He looked angry; he looked at my hand and back at me, that angry expression on his face, but he didn't remove my hand. I took it away myself.
"I just... wanted you to understand, because you were my best friend. And I'm sorry that I lied to you. And you are my best friend, I don't want you to leave."
I couldn't control myself, and was finally overwhelmed by the emotions that had been building up inside me this entire time. My eyes started to well up and I turned away from my friend.
"Please, Kenneth."
I heard him say, after a moment; using my full name, which wasn't something we normally ever did with each other. I called him Rob, he called me Ken. I was trying to stop myself from crying, as well as making noise at the same time, so I couldn't even reply, but he continued,
"Don't cry, please. I just have to go. I can't think. Please stop crying, Ken."
After a minute or two I regained control of myself and turned back to face him, surprised to find him still standing there, like he was waiting for me to say it was okay for him to leave.
"Yeah," I responded, "I get it. Go. I just. I wanted to explain myself. I'm sorry."
He nodded, slowly, then he turned and left. I could hear his boots as he walked across the hall, down the stairs, and out of the front door; I heard his truck start outside my house, I heard him drive off and away. I lay down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Now that I had cried, even though it was just a little bit, I was somewhat surprised to find that I could feel nothing at all about the situation. The only time emotion crept in again was when I realized that Rob might never come back, might never text me, might never talk to me again. I wanted to call him- I wanted to do a lot of things- but I knew that none of those things would fix the situation or make him less likely to stop talking to me after the shock of finding out that his best friend had been a closeted fag all these years. There was simply nothing I could do, I was powerless, not in control of the situation. All I could do was lay there and look up the ceiling and think, and think, and think.
I guess eventually I got tired of thinking, got tired in general, and had fallen asleep. I was only aware of having fallen asleep by virtue of the fact that I was now being awakened, the sound of scratching at my window, right next to my head. Slowly, as I opened my eyes, my mind awakened to the realization that it had to be Rob because that's how he was accustomed to waking me up if I'd fallen asleep and couldn't catch me on text- he knew he couldn't call me because the ringtone might alert my mom and whether she was drunk or asleep it would rouse her to a fury directed at me. I opened the window and looked out in the darkness to see him standing next to his truck. He whispered at me to come down (more like whisper-yelling, whatever you call that- I'm not entirely sure there's a word for it).
"I'm coming down! Wait a fucking second."
I put a shirt on and tried to walk down the stairs as quietly as possible- it sounded like my mom was asleep because there was no sound. I slowly and quietly opened the side door and walked over to where he was standing, his shaven brown hair and big ears illuminated by the moonlight; his brown, beat up pick-up truck- the one he'd gotten with the money he'd earned at his first job at 17- parked behind him.
"Well?" he jerked his head back to his truck. I walked around to the passenger's side door and we both got in; for a moment the thought crossed my mind that he could drive me out into the middle of nowhere and beat my ass and leave me there- I dismissed the thought immediately, more out of the feeling that it didn't matter than anything else. I looked forward at the lake behind my house as it went by in the moonlit darkness, at least what little I could see of it out of Rob's streaky windshield. I chewed my lip and waited for him to talk. I didn't really know what it was that I could say- I'd said all I could, and had already decided that hours ago. It was all up to him.
He cleared his throat after a minute or two and I glanced over at him, noting that he was looking at me compassionately and most notably not as though he was about to drive me into a cornfield and kill me.
"Okay so..." he started, but then trailed off. I just nodded at him. He kind of looked around himself but apparently found nothing to occupy his interest and so continued, "I didn't know... I mean I guess that was the point... damn."
Rob slammed the steering wheel, the wheel, not the horn. I just stayed quiet; I assumed it was hard for him to know what to say or how to say it, the same way it had been for me. He looked towards me again and attempted to continue, again,
"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't have been making fun of you for being gay, I thought it was a joke. So I'm just saying that if I knew I wouldn't have done that to you."
I nodded, finding myself surprised, once again, by Rob's reaction- don't forget, we're both supposed to be homophobic rednecks; obviously at least half of that equation was already canceled out with me, but now it seemed that maybe the stereotype we'd played into had never been quite true for either of us, him included.
"So I'm sorry for that," he tried to hurry past the apology and continue on, or at least was talking very fast for some reason or other I couldn't discern, and was looking away from me, at the steering wheel, "I guess I get why you lied to me. Obviously you felt like you couldn't tell me. We always tell each other everything."
Rob cleared his voice again and looked at me. His face was red with embarrassment; clearly he didn't feel at all comfortable speaking on the subject of his feelings- maybe stereotypes aren't always wrong. I nodded at him and smiled and tried to make him feel less uncomfortable.
"It's really no problem, I think we can just forget about it. I don't feel like we can't tell each other everything, I always did, everything except that. So let's just forget about it."
He did not look as though I'd made him feel more comfortable, in fact he simply looked exasperated.
"I don't think we can."
He was staring up at his truck ceiling as he said this, his adam's apple jutting out of the silhouette he created in the darkness of the car as he looked straight upward; I was stabbed with a pang of anxiety, fear for what he was about to say or do next. I asked him why.
"Well it's... you can't just forget about all of that. I mean you're gay so, I mean, we always tell each other everything, like I said. Whatever. We're still best friends."
He looked very agonized but I didn't know how to help him because I still had no idea what he was getting at and I told him so. He looked me straight in the face and, it seemed like the first time I ever noticed this but I'm sure as hell it wasn't, I noticed how deep blue his eyed were in contrast to how tanned his face was.
"Cause I tell you everything about my life, we've been best friends for over fifteen years, jesus christ. You can tell me whatever you want about people you meet, just don't get too deep into specifics, like not too deep."
He had a triumphant look now, like he'd finally finished saying what it was that he had wanted to tell me, and I thought I understood; because Rob and I were really only close with each other and we didn't really have anyone else, not after high school- and it was true, we really did tell each other everything. We were actually really close friends, as I'm sure I reiterated countless times so far in the very few pages I've written on the event as it happened; including telling one another about our sex lives. He wanted to stay as close as always, he didn't want things to change but he understood that they had to, to a degree, and he wanted me to be able to tell him- he just didn't want me to get too deep into detail about my sex as it was doubtless something that he didn't want to hear quite too much about (we had previously had a habit of not leaving anything out when we spoke on the subject of our exploits- although I had always been lying- I wondered at this point if he would continue in that vein).
I agreed with him and he seemed to relax. It had been clear, throughout, that he was not at all threatened by the simple fact of my sexuality; only it was at this point alone that I had begun to realize that. I wanted to change the subject but wasn't sure how; he did it for me, suggesting we go fishing. I thought the suggestion was a bit odd- checking my phone it was now past midnight- but all-in-all not really so strange; many people go fishing at night after all, it's just that we never had.
We get out of his truck, slamming the doors shut, and head to the little barn near my house- whoever owned the house (decades past) had likely been a farmer, but that aspect of the land had fallen into disuse. We get fishing gear that we had stashed along the wall and go and get the shitty little row boat I kept up near the barn; we went out onto the water, quietly casting our rods, letting the string fly out into the still stream. It was quiet for a while- fishing is always calming and often Rob and I would go out onto the stream and sit there for hours fishing; we wouldn't even bring our cell phones out, just sit silently, occasionally entering into conversation. It was a ritual we were used to, so it didn't seem odd, or in any way awkward, that we would sit there in silence with our fishing rods in hand, occasionally reeling them in and then spitting the thread back out.
It took a while but eventually Rob caught a fish; not too long afterwards I caught three smaller ones. After another thirty minutes without catching anything else we decided to just go back up to the barn and flay and prepare what we'd caught- we'd cook them over a small fire pit I had made years ago, some yards from the barn; it was easy for us to cook what we catch, and besides that, we didn't want to go into my house and wake my mother up.
I used my phone flashlight so that Rob could see; he took out his hunting knife and unsheathed it- the long, thick blade gleamed brightly as the light bounced off of the tool. In a swift motion he cut each fish open- there was hardly any blood anymore as the fish had died some time earlier. He began to prepare them to be cooked while I lit the way for him to do the work with his sabre.
At the point that he had prepared all of the fish he picked up the designated meat, and as we walked towards the entrance of the barn I turned off my flashlight where the moon took over for it- and at this point Rob did something that surprised me rather extremely. He stopped walking and turned to his left, and just looked me in the face. I couldn't tell what he was thinking at all, whatever expression he was wearing now was highly obscure to me and I had no idea what my friend's intention was until he suddenly pushed himself forward and kissed me, roughly. I backed up to the wall, having no idea what to do, and he kept moving forward, keeping his lips on mine. He set the fish down on the bench and put his hands on the wall that I was backed up against, and continued to kiss me; well, would you believe it, I kissed him back. He had a bit of stubble on his face and I could feel it scratch against me as we kissed; his tongue entered my mouth for the first time and I embraced his with mine. I could see that his eyes were shut because mine were wide open, in a very awkward manner- I've got to explain that even at this point I had no idea what to expect and felt particularly astonished.
Matters weren't helped in the slightest when, in the throes of his passion, Rob reached down to grab my dick, which was by this point harder than I've ever been (or at least not any less erect than that) and he immediately opened his eyes and recoiled from me. He was breathing heavily and had the affect of someone who is very confused or startled. I had no earthly idea what to do, I can safely say that I felt how he looked. He looked down at my dick, I did the same; we both saw that he was hard as well. He looked back up at me, and I could see in his expression that he was very scared. He just stood there, helplessly, then began to turn around to leave; I was terrified that if he left now that I'd never see him again, I whispered out his name,
"Robert!"
It felt strange in my mouth; this was probably the first time I'd used his full name in years if not ever. Slowly, Rob turned around to face me. Quickly, I noted that he was still erect. I hesitated for a moment but then kissed him, very quickly before standing back. I could literally see a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face, down his cropped, short brown hair, next to his ears, down and off of his stubbled cheeks. Then he walked forward very quickly and shoved me up against the barn wall, as hard as he could it seemed. He kissed me violently, and reached his hand into my pants and then pulled it out and put it back into my underwear, grabbing my hard dick and starting to jerk me off. I buckled back into the wall, essentially being held up by the wall and Rob's grasp on my cock. I moaned into his mouth and tried to grab his own erection but he pushed my hand away. He jerked me off slowly. I pulled my mouth away from his and pleaded in his ear, with quiet whispers, for him to let me suck his dick. He didn't answer, but he jerked me off faster and faster.
My knees fully buckled and I fell down onto my ass. Rob followed and was now essentially on top of me, looking me in the face, and jerking my dick. His expression was one of determination. He took his hand off of my cock and out of my underwear and pulled my underwear, and my pants, down to my shoes, but not over and off of them. Then, Rob took his own dick out, and I could see that he was at least an inch larger than me, and thicker too. He was very hairy. He spit repeatedly on his hand, slathering his dick in his saliva, and moved forward on his knees, pulling my own apart, feeling down towards my asshole and penetrating it. I moaned as he did so, and then again as he pushed his cock against my asshole, trying as hard as he could to penetrate it. Unfortunately, saliva is not a very good lubricant, and as he kept pushing my cries changed from those of pleasure into moans of pain. He stopped and looked at me, concerned. I begged him to keep going and he tried again, but he couldn't get his dick into my ass- it was, unfortunately, too large.
He stood up, I got on my knees and shoved his dick into my mouth as deep as I could but he moved himself backwards. I looked up at him, the question why' written across my face. He started to stand up and I asked him if I could go into the house and get a bottle of lube. He shook his head no', pulled back on his jeans, and simply walked away. I stood in place for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. Failing, but knowing I didn't want him to leave immediately after such a scene I ran after him, catching him as he had started his truck.
I ran to the driver's side door and jumped up onto the bar, holding onto the top of the car; Rob just looked at me, for all the world like he wanted me to fuck off, but then he rolled down the window. Nothing was said. Then, I asked,
"Couldn't we just cook the fish? I'm hungry."
Rob looked away and then back at me. He almost laughed but stopped himself, then acquiesced; he got out of his car and pocketed his keys. He went to the fire pit and started it using the tubed lighter he carried with him, I went into the barn and grabbed the fish that he had placed down in such peculiar circumstances not ten minutes ago. We cooked the fish using sticks and sat in the silence, in the dark, and ate them. When we were done, he didn't immediately leave, like I'd been expecting him to do. Instead, he leaned back and said
"I came over here to fix things and just made them more complicated."
After a while, came my response, "Why is life always like that?"
He shook his head and laughed, a little at first, but then his laugh grew and grew, until I started to laugh too. John laughed to the point that he had tears in his eyes and then said
"Well ain't that a bitch. That is fucking life. Things always just get more complicated, more and more complicated, the more you try to fix it. You just fuck it up."
He laughed again. I was glad he didn't feel bad; but he suddenly stopped and looked at me, a (different) strange look on his face.
"I'm not gay, you know."
"I know that."
"Okay."
And then, after a while, "It's cool if you are, but I'm not. Like I said, you can still tell me everything. We're best friends. But I'm not gay."
I nodded and repeated that I knew what he was telling me, I knew he wasn't gay. I wasn't lying either, I was well aware of the fact that my friend wasn't gay. He lit up a cigarette; we smoked it together, finally he left. We never grew apart, we've always been able to tell each other everything. We're best friends, and that's how it's stayed.