“You’re g*y?” I say, seemingly uncomprehending.
“Yeah. I know. I know it’s a shock. But I wanted you to be the first to know. Other than my parents, I mean.”
And then Phil Wrayson breaks out into song, singing more or less exactly what I said when this really happened: “Next you’re gonna tell me the sky is blue, that you use girl shampoo, that critics don’t appreciate Blink 182. Oh, next you’re gonna tell me the Pope is Catholic, that hookers turn tricks, that Elton John sucks HEY.”
And then the song turns into a call and response, with Tiny singing his surprise that I knew he was g*y and me singing that it was obvious.
“But I’m a football player.”
“Dude, you couldn’t be g*yer.”
“I thought my straight-acting deserved a Tony.”
“But, Tiny, you own a thousand My Little Ponies!” And so on. I can’t stop laughing, but more than that, I can’t believe how well he remembers it all, how good—for all of our bad—we’ve always been to each other. And I sing, “You don’t want me, do you?” And he answers, “I would prefer a kangaroo,” and behind us the chorus high-kicks like the Rockettes.
Jane puts her hands on a shoulder to bend me down and whispers, “See? He loves you, too,” and I turn to her and kiss her in the quick dark moment between the end of the song and the beginning of the applause.
As the curtain closes for a set change, I can’t see the standing ovation, but I can hear it.
Tiny runs offstage, shouting “WOOOOOOOOOT!” “It could actually go to Broadway,” I tell him.
“It got a lot better when I made it about love.” He looks at me, smiling with half his mouth, and I know that’s as close as he’ll ever come. Tiny’s the g*y one, but I’m the sentimentalist. I nod and whisper thanks.
“Sorry if you come across a little annoying in this next part.” Tiny reaches up to touch his hair and Nick appears out of nowhere, diving over an amp to grab Tiny’s arm, screaming, “DO NOT TOUCH YOUR PERFECT HAIR.” The curtain rises, and the set is a hallway in our school. Tiny’s putting up posters. I’m annoying him, that catch in my voice. I don’t mind it, or at least I don’t mind it much—love is bound up in truth, after all. Just after that scene, there’s one with Tiny drunk at a party in which the character Janey gets her only time onstage—a duet with Phil Wrayson sung on opposite sides of a passed-out Tiny, the song culminating in Gary’s voice suddenly toughening into confidence and then Janey and me leaning over Tiny’s mumbling half-conscious body and kissing. I can only half watch the scene, because I keep wanting to see Jane’s smile as she watches.
The songs get better and better from there, until, in the last song before intermission, the whole audience is singing along as Oscar Wilde sings over a sleeping Tiny,
The pure and simple truth
Is rarely pure and never simple.
What’s a boy to do
When lies and truth are both sinful?
As that song ends, the curtain closes and the house lights come up for intermission. Tiny runs up to us and puts a paw on each of our shoulders and lets forth a yawp of joy. “It’s hilarious,” I tell him. “Really. It’s just . . . awesome.”
“Woot! The second half’s a lot darker, though. It’s the romantic part. Okay okay okay okay, see you after!” he says, and then races off to congratulate, and probably chastise, his cast. Jane takes me off into a corner backstage, secluded behind the set, and says, “You really did all that? You looked after him in Little League?”
“Eh, he looked after me, too,” I say.
“Compassion is hot,” she says as we kiss. After a while, I see the houselights dim and then come back up. Jane and I head back to our stage-side vantage point. The houselights go down again, signaling the end of intermission. And after a moment, a voice from on high says, “Love is the most common miracle.”
At first I think God is, like, talking to us, but I quickly realize it’s Tiny coming in over the speakers. The second half is beginning.
Tiny sits on the front edge of the stage in the dark, saying, “Love is always a miracle, everywhere, every time. But for us, it’s a little different. I don’t want to say it’s more miraculous,” he says, and people laugh a little. “It is, though.” The lights come up slowly, and only now do I see that behind Tiny is an actual honest-to-God swing set that seems to have been possibly literally dug out of a playground and transported to the stage. “Our miracle is different because people say it’s impossible. As it sayeth in Leviticus, ‘Dude shall not lie with dude.’” He looks down, and then out into the audience, and I can tell he is looking for the other Will and not finding him. He stands up.
“But it doesn’t say that dude shall not fall in love with dude, because that’s just impossible, right? The g*ys are animals, answering their animal desires. It’s impossible for animals to fall in love. And yet—”
Suddenly, Tiny’s knees buckle and he collapses in a heap. I jolt up and start to run onstage to pick him up, but Jane grabs a fistful of my shirt as Tiny raises his head toward the audience and says, “I fall and I fall and I fall and I fall and I fall.”
And at that very moment, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I dig it out of my pocket. The caller ID reads Will Grayson.
Chapter twenty
what’s in front of me is the trippiest thing i’ve ever seen. by far.
I honestly didn’t think gideon and i would make it on time. chicago traffic is unkind to begin with, but in this case it was moving slower than a stoner’s thoughts. gideon and i had to have a swearing contest in order to calm ourselves down.
now that we’ve made it, i’m guessing there’s no way our plan is going to work. it’s both insane and genius, which is what tiny deserves. and it required me to do a lot of things i don’t usually do, including:
• talking to strangers
• asking strangers for favors
• being willing to make a complete fool of myself
• letting someone else (gideon) help me
It also relies on a number of things beyond my control, including:
• the kindness of strangers
• the ability of strangers to be spontaneous
• the ability of strangers to drive quickly
• tiny’s musical lasting more than one act