;the fear of speaking



*



“Cold. That’s what you are.”



His eyes. Squinted and full of anger, they are focused straight at you. His mouth is a rigid, flat line. Everything about his aura screams pain; screams I-can’t-do-this-anymore, and a part of you feels bad. A part of you wants to apologize. But it’s only a part.



You meet his gaze, trying to look as aloof as possible, as if his words aren’t leaving a single dent on you. You cross your arms and raise your eyebrows like the whole ordeal is just bothersome. He looks up"over your head"and exhales. He seems to collapse right in front of you.



“I wanted to try, y’know,” he says, licking his lips. “I wanted…I thought… I have my limit, though. And I’m tired. Goddamn tired. You’re just such a…a…” he pauses, searching for the right words.



“B****?” you say, getting a locked, restricted feeling in your throat, like you’re trying to swallow something too large for you. You will it to go away. No crying. Not here. Not now.



He looks you in the eyes, his demeanor changing back to fury. “Cold. That’s what you are. A cold, selfish son- of- a -b****.”



**



You can feel him staring.



Again.



You try to ignore it this time, try to concentrate on the uneven strokes you’re making with charcoal, try to focus on drawing the person sitting across from you, but it’s difficult and pointless. The picture comes out looking like a mess, with the head too circular, the eyes too large, the ears too small, and a disproportional body.



You apologize and start over. But there are pricks going up your spine. Your hands shake too much to even draw a semi-straight line.



You hate attention. You hate being stared at. Especially directly.



Of course, he could be looking at you just because it’s an art class, and right now, everyone is to draw someone else in the class, whether or not the person is aware. But the staring is too much, too intense. You can feel the eyes burning a hole in the back of your head. Burn, burn, burn, you want to turn around and say something, anything.



About five minutes pass before, finally, you give in and turn around. Sure enough, he isn’t even drawing. He’s just staring straight at you. Staring with a goofy, stupid lopsided grin on his face, his head resting on the palm of his hand.



He looks love struck.



The second he realizes you’ve noticed, he jumps, and a splash of red spreads all over his face. He fumbles around for his paper and crayon, accidentally knocking them to the ground. The class turns to look at him. Some people shake their head. Some laugh.



It takes him a minute to get situated again, and his face is beet red when he finally does. He meets your gaze and hesitantly mouths an apology.



Sorry?



Not good enough, you want to mouth back.



Mouth shut, you just study him as he furiously sketches you, his face still warm with a bright blush. He is truly a disaster. His unruly hair and slumping posture make him look like a caveman. His oversized glasses make him look insane.



An insane caveman. How charming. And this caveman has some sort of insane infatuation with you. You want to tell him off, say you’re not interested.



But you’re a coward.



So you turn back around, say nothing at all, and let him stare.



**



“In the long scheme of things, aren’t we all just trying to prove something? No matter our gender?” Mr. Connors paces around the room, occasionally focusing his attention on one student, then another. His mustache seems to twitch when he talks, and his highlighter-green shirt hurts your eyes. “Women try to prove they’re just as strong and independent as men, and men try to retain their image of power and dominance. Isn’t that just it? Aren’t we all trying to…to stabilize our place in this screwed up world?” He stares at you while walking past your desk. You worry he’ll point you out.



Instead, he turns to another boy in your class. “Brendan, Mr. Quarterback. How are you today?”



Brendan grins, eager for the attention. His dimples flash. “Pretty good, Mr. C.”



Mr. Connors walks over to him, crossing his arms. “I’m sure you are. How’s the team doing?”



“Pretty good, Mr. C. We play Bridgeport this Friday, “ Brendan says, smiling like they’ve already beaten them.



Mr. Connors nods, and then looks away for a brief second. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but… you were suspended last week, weren’t you?”



The boy looks shocked for a moment at the sudden change in topic and glances around nervously before answering. “Well…I. I mean, yeah, but it really wasn’t my"”



“"who threw the first punch?” Mr. Connors twists his lips and raises his eyebrows.



The boy stammers, his face growing red. “Who? Well, he…I mean…yeah, it was me, but only cause the creep was talkin’ s*** ‘bout me.”



Mr. Connors nods thoughtfully and then continues pacing. “You couldn’t talk it out?”



Brendan gulps. “Well, maybe, but…”



“But what? What happened to diplomacy? What happened to maturity? Gandhi. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nelson Mandela. All phenomenal leaders. When they felt oppressed, did they fight with fists or words? When Metternich wanted to avoid conflict with Napoleonic France, did he go over and punch Napoleon in the face?”



Now, Brendan looks panicked, thinking he’s about to receive another day of detention. “Seriously, Mr. Connors. The guy was talkin’ straight-up s*** ‘bout me. Like, all this s*** ‘bout how I can’t catch or throw to save my life, how I’m worse than a girl, and then all this other s*** bout my girlfriend bein’ a hooker or somethin’ like that. I ‘d look like a pussy if I took that all sitting down.”



Mr. Connors whips around, his small eyes wide with determination, and points at Brendan. “Exactly. I rest my case.”





**



Caden Peters can be seen from a mile away.



In a crowd of hundreds, he stands out. Maybe it’s because he towers at a little over 6’. Maybe it’s because he has a habit of slumping so far down and over that it looks like he’s praying, or knocked out. Or maybe it’s because of the mop of curly hair that falls into his face, the glasses that appear too large, the hands that seem too clumsy, and most of all, the fact that he is the president of the school’s GSA, a club he is not only exceedingly proud of, but a club that he makes sickening t-shirts for, complete with corny sayings like, “Taste the rainbow,” and “Once you go gay, that’s the way you stay, no matter what they all say!”



He disgusts you. Parading around like a baboon with his pathetic posse, it’s no wonder they are all a subject of ridicule. The guys write messages about them on the bathroom stalls. At pep rallies, there’s an entire section devoted to booing them. For you, if you see them in the halls, you turn away. Contact with any of them is minimal, if at all.



Silence and aloofness. Those are your weapons of destruction and reconstruction. They tend to keep most people away like insect repellent keeps away bugs.



Except Caden, that is.



**



“Y’know…I used to think you were somethin’ beautiful.” His voice, lacking any sense of humor, breaks the stern silence. You look down, staring at your feet.



“Really, that was the first thing that crossed my mind the second I saw you. I didn’t even give a flying s*** that you were a guy. I saw you, and I thought, ‘I wanna know him. I wanna…I wanna stand next to him.’ And that’s really all I wanted at first, really.” He pauses, and you glance up in time to see him look you up and down. Your face grows warm and, angry at yourself, your gaze averts. He continues, speaking so slow and quiet that you have to strain to hear him.



“I just thought you were beautiful…and I wanted to see how.”



How what? You want to ask. Your lips start to form the words, but then you notice him looking at you, his brown eyes soft and waiting.



The words fall just short of being spoken.



**



“Anthony?”



His voice shakes a little, and you internally sigh. Damn your good-hearted nature. Pure pity"and a bit of curiosity-- makes you turn around to face him. His eyes shift to the ground, a blush warms his face, and he shuffles his feet. In his hands is a large paper, most likely one of the drawings he’s done that day. Bashfulness drips from his bones.



The rest of the class is gone; the two of you are helping clean up the art room while Mr. Travis talks to a student about his grade.



You raise your eyebrows.



“I"I, uh,” he stammers. Eloquent, he is not. His eyes flick up for a second. “I’m sorry about…you know. I didn’t mean"I can’t"you…” Somehow, his face grows even redder, reminiscent of a tomato.



It’s pathetic.



“No biggie,” you say with a shrug. “You were just drawing…right?”



He stammers some more, finally gives up at his attempt to speak coherently, and then settles for nodding dumbly. His feet shuffle, his weight shifts from one leg to the other. You look down and note that his shoes are splattered with paint. It is silent except for the hushed murmuring of Mr. Travis.



Your eyes fall to the paper in his hands. “What is that?”



In his eyes, you can see that he knows that you know what it is. It is a truth as blatant as it is a sense of connection"a deep hope that this all will someday mean more than it does now.



He stammers again, and then folds the paper in half, hiding it behind his back. “It’s nothing, just…no, it’s stupid. Nothing. Never mind.”



You can almost never believe that this clumsy, incoherent oaf could be president of anything, much less a group of misfits. Often, he reminds you of a young child too afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they say everything at once, which of course, amounts to saying nothing at all.



You sure? The question lingers on your tongue. But no. Taking in the almost permanent blush on Caden’s face and his slumping posture, it escapes you before it can betray you, and in the discomfort of the silence, you find yourself walking out of the room without a second glance back to see if Caden is still staring at you forlornly, words of maybe-can-we and is-it-possible stuck on his tongue.





**



“Pussy.’ Wimp. Sissy. Girl. We, as a generation, have a habit of not only degrading someone if we feel they aren’t living up to their gender expectations, but think about it. How many of those insults have a correlation with being female?” Mr. Connors now stands in front of the class, his face hard and stern. Brendan slides down in his chair, looking down.



“What we, as a generation, have succeeded in doing is conveying this idea of a man being feminine as a negative characteristic. As a reason for being teased. Harassed. Abused both physically and mentally. Sometimes, it’ll be the primary reason a boy gets bullied. He fails at being what society defines a man as. And why? Why do we have this definition in the first place? Where did it derive from?” He walks around again.



Brendan tentatively raises his hand. “Um…Mr. Connors? No offense, but…I sorta think it’s their own fault.”



“Whose fault?”



“I dunno, all the wimpy, girly guys. They’re the ones who wanna act all girly, and they can’t handle it, so they whine ‘bout it.”



Stupidity has reached new heights. You feel a deep-seeded anger boiling in you.



“Can’t handle what?” Mr. Connors stops in front of Brendan, raising an eyebrow. Brendan sighs in an exasperated matter.



“I dunno, being girly?”



“And what is girly, according to you?”



“I dunno, like. Like gay guys. Like, first off, nasty. I don’t get why any guy wants something shoved up his butt and"”



“"Shut up, Brendan!” shouts a girl named Amber. The class goes wild, screaming at each other from different sides of the room. You get the choking-like feeling again, and breathe deeply through your nose until it leaves. The anger keeps boiling. Something makes you bite your tongue, keep the words inside.





Mr. Connors glances at you quickly, and then nods, pursing his lips. His beady eyes look around the room before he turns to the chalkboard.



“Let’s make a list then, shall we? Of what a real man is, in your eyes.”



The class is quiet for a beat, and then Brendan shouts out, “tough!” With that, more answers come out.



“Strong!”



“Chuck Norris!”



“Fearless!”



“He doesn’t take s*** from anyone!”



“Chuck Norris!”



“Tall, dark, and mysterious!”



The shouts come from all around the room, and it gives you a headache. Idiots, all of them. The hatred has now settled in your stomach, and you know it’s for them all. They keep yelling over each other and laughing obnoxiously. Headaches, all of them. Headache-inducing-lowlife-morons. You open your notebook to an empty page.



You draw a tall man with moderate-sized muscles, a mysterious gaze, and a suit like someone out of Sherlock Holmes. You imagine a life with him. Drawing in the park every evening, traveling to every art museum in America, and a few in France. Laughter that overflows like a fountain.



The choked feeling returns and, losing your calmness, you rip the paper out and tear it to shreds.












**