And then on Thursday night, I go home and Tiny calls me, and some things start happening. I say hello, and then Tiny, by way of introduction, says, “You should come to the Gay-Straight Alliance meeting tomorrow.”
And I say, “Nothing personal, Tiny, but I don’t really go in for alliances. Anyway, you know my policy on extracurricular activities.”
“No, I don’t,” Tiny says.
“Well, I’m opposed to them,” I say. “Just the curricular activities are plenty. Listen, Tiny. I gotta go. Mom’s on the other line.” I hang up. Mom’s not on the other line, but I need to hang up, because I can’t get talked into anything.
But then Tiny calls back. And he says, “Actually I need you to come because we have to get our membership numbers up. Our school funding is partly decided by meeting attendance.”
“Why do you need money from the school? You’ve got your own house.”
“We need money so that we can stage our production of Tiny Dancer.”
“Oh. My. Sweet. Holy. God,” I say, because Tiny Dancer is this musical, written by Tiny. It’s basically Tiny’s slightly fictionalized life story, except it is sung, and it is—I mean, I don’t use this adjective lightly—the g*yest single musical in all of human history. Which is really saying something. And by g*y, I don’t mean that it sucks. I just mean that it’s g*y. It is actually—as musicals go—quite good. The songs are catchy. I’m particularly fond of “The Nosetackle (Likes Tight Ends),” which includes the memorable couplet, “The locker room isn’t p**n for me / ’cause you’re all too damned pimple-ey.”
“What?” whines Tiny.
“I just worry it might be, uh—what did Gary say the other day—‘bad for the team,’ ” I say.
“That’s exactly the kind of thing that you can say tomorrow!” Tiny answers, only a hint of disappointment in his voice.
“I’ll go,” I say, and hang up. He calls back, but I don’t answer, because I’m on Facebook, looking at Tiny’s profile, paging through his 1,532 friends, each cuter and trendier than the last. I’m trying to figure out who, precisely, is in the Gay-Straight Alliance, and whether they could develop into a suitably nonannoying Group of Friends. So far as I can tell, though, it’s just Gary and Nick and Jane. I’m squinting at Jane’s tiny profile pic in which she appears to have her arm around some kind of life-size mascot on ice skates.
And right then, I get a friend request from her. A couple seconds after I accept it, she IMs me.
Jane: Hey!
Me: Hey.
Jane: Sorry, that might have been inappropriate exclamation point use.
Me: Ha. All good.
I look at her profile. The list of favorite music and favorite books is obscenely long, and I can only get through the A’s of the music list before giving up. She looks cute in her pictures, but not quite like she looks in real life—her picture smile isn’t her smile.
Jane: I hear Tiny’s recruiting you to the GSA.
Me: Indeed.
Jane: You should come. We need members. It’s kind of pathetic, actually.
Me: Yeah, I think I will.
Jane: Cool. I didn’t know you had a Facebook. Your profile is funny. I like “ACTIVITIES: ought to involve sunglasses.”
Me: You have more favorite bands than Tiny has ex-boyfriends.
Jane: Yeah, well. Some people have lives; some people have music.
Me: And some people have neither.
Jane: Cheer up, Will. You’re about to be the hottest straight guy in the Gay-Straight Alliance.
I have the distinct feeling that flirting is occurring. Now, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy flirting as much as the next guy, provided the next guy has repeatedly seen his best friend torn asunder by love. But nothing violates the rules of shutting up and not caring so much as flirting—except possibly for that enchantingly horrible moment when you act upon the flirting, that moment where you seal your heartbreak with a kiss. There should be a third rule, actually: 1. Shut up. 2. Don’t care too much. And 3. Never kiss a girl you like.
Me, after a while: How many straight guys are there in the GSA?
Jane: You’re it.
I lol, and feel like a fool for even thinking her a flirt. Jane’s just a smart, snarky girl with too-curly hair.
And so it comes to this: At 3:30 the next afternoon, the eighth period bell rings, and for a nanosecond, I feel the endorphins sizzling through my body that usually indicate I have successfully survived another school day without anything happening, but then I remember: day ain’t over yet.
I trudge upstairs while a flood of people race down, on their way to the weekend.
I get to Classroom 204A. I open the door. Jane is facing away from me with her butt on a desk and her feet on a chair. She’s wearing a pale yellow T-shirt and the way she’s leaned over, I can see a little of the small of her back.
Tiny Cooper is splayed out across the thin carpet, using his backpack as a pillow. He’s wearing skinny jeans, which look very much like denim sausage casings. At this moment, the three of us constitute the Gay-Straight Alliance.
Tiny says, “Grayson!”
“This is the Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, right?”
Tiny laughs. Jane just sits facing away from me, reading. My eyes return to Jane’s back, because they have to go somewhere, and Tiny says, “Grayson, are you abandoning your asexuality?”
Jane turns around as I cut Tiny a look and mumble, “I’m not asexual. I’m arelationshipal.”
And Tiny says to Jane, “I mean, it’s such a tragedy, isn’t it? The only thing Grayson has going for him is that he’s adorable, and yet he refuses to date.”
Tiny likes to hook me up. He does it for the pure-driven pleasure of pissing me off. And it works. “Shut up, Tiny.”
“I mean, I don’t see it,” he says. “Nothing personal, Grayson, but you’re not my type. A. You don’t pay enough attention to hygiene, and B. All the crap you’ve got going for you is the crap I find totally uninteresting. I mean, Jane, I think we can agree that Grayson has nice arms.”
Jane looks mildly panicked, and I jump in to save her from having to talk. “You have the oddest way of coming on to me, Tiny.”
“I would never come on to you, because you’re not g*y. And, like, boys who like girls are inherently unhot. Why would you like someone who can’t like you back?”