Crossing the Line

"About what?" The eyes were instantly alert.

"About--well, once upon a time we called it the birds and bees."

Sam licked an orange drip of grease from between his fingers in silence, his eyes fixed on his grandfather's.

Owen considered how hopelessly unskilled he felt at once more playing father to an adolescent. "You . . . understand about Brock and me, don't you, Sam?"

"Sure." A huge bite from his sandwich. "You're lovers," he said when he'd swallowed enough to make speech possible.

That word resonated in Owen's head, and he looked for how it rang for Sam. He saw only seeming nonchalance. "Uh--O.K. You've known that a long time?"

"Yeah,"Sam carefully wiped the stub of his sandwich in the grease on his plate. "It's, like, you know, everybody knows that." He raised his eyes to look from Owen to Brock, apparently trying to understand why they'd brought this up now.

"Did your mom tell you?"

"Naw. I don't know."

Owen struggled with how not to let his grandson's attitude close the case he'd scarcely opened. "I never mentioned it to you before because--well--I wanted to be sure you'd . . . know what it meant." He picked up his fork, but merely turned it in his hand.

Sam stared fixedly at a point between Brock and Owen as if he guessed that something truly dreadful was coming next.

Owen plunged on. "We've been together twenty years--it'll be twenty-one years next summer--"

"It was the Fourth of July," Brock interrupted with a wacky grin.

"Right." Owen's smile felt lame. "There were fireworks." He hurried on. "Your mom was younger than you are now when we met. I'd been divorced three years, and, at the time, we . . . " He broke off and waved his fork to stop himself from wandering into the pointless tale of how they had transformed their initial affair into a holy commitment that had saved them both from ruin.

Brock tried to rescue him. "Listen, dude," he said, leaning in confidentially, "let me tell you something. I pretty well knew I was gay by the time I was ten or eleven years old. I hung out with the kid next door who was a couple years older than me--he was already so far past gay he was practically a lesbian by then. He's the one taught me how to do the dirty deed. Not that it took much teaching, since I think I pretty much knew what I was by then. If not what to do about it. So for years I pretended otherwise, but deep inside, I knew--I really knew--that I was what people like to call a pervert, if they got it right, or a prevert, if they didn't. And knowing I was one made me ashamed, and made me want to hide it.

Sam gradually shifted his gaze to take in Brock's face. "Did the other kids ever call you a faggot?" he asked, as if that must be the fundamental question lying in wait.

"Uh . . . ? Sometimes. And a queer."

Owen's mouth was open to ask his question when the boy said, "faggot is a word the guys use a lot at school."

"Have they called you that, Sam?" Shame and alarm darted through him at the thought that now Sam had to endure such taunting.

"They call everybody that. It's weird, but even the girls call other girls that sometimes." He turned to Owen with a look which seemed to say that he had voiced nothing more than a constant, if slightly distasteful, law of nature.

Brock found his way back. "Anyway, I hate to see any other kid--ever--have to go through all the questioning and doubts I went through. Because I finally learned there's nothing to be ashamed about. So, if you might have similar feelings and inclinations, you should know you've got a couple old guys who maybe can help and who understand what it's like when it's all new and scary, and who are here for you."

Owen failed to notice how Sam's suddenly dropped jaw was frozen in place. "Brock said it, Sam, we're both here for you. I know it's hard to think that anybody as old as we are can possibly have had the kind of feelings you have now about love and sex and so on, but believe me, we have and we want you to know that if you do have questions, or problems, or you're feeling like you can't talk to anybody about it, you can talk to us, and we just might be able to help a little. That's all."

They looked expectantly at Sam, who again stared wide-eyed between them. He seemed so incapable of speech that Owen's own odd-sounding voice broke the silence.

"Believe it or not, the two of us may know a thing or two that can save you some grief, if you'll let us."

Sam's mouth opened, though no sound came. Then a startling flush of red spread across his face. He let out an embarrassed chuckle. "O.K." he said, and ducked his head. For an instant, that was all, but then he raised his eyes and asked, "is it all right if I get some ice cream, Pappy?"

"Sam!" Now Owen's mouth came open. "Do you understand what we've been saying to you?"

Sam scooted back his chair, its legs scraping noisily on the tile floor. "I think so," he said, rising. "I guess you guys think I'm gay. Well," he shrugged his scarecrow's body, "not that I know of," rose, and turned back toward the service counter.