Lightning, Rain, Gay Shame, and Love
How a midsummer storm shakes two friends
“Come back!” Jason ran through the cornfield, stumbling and shouting. Hot tears ran down his cheeks, but he didn’t notice he couldn’t see through them. Corn leaves sliced into the sunburned skin of his chest and arms, but he didn’t notice the tiny cuts that would torture him later.
“Come back! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say it!”
He stopped dead, panting, hands on knees that popped out just below his cutoff denim shorts.
There! Just ahead, a rustling. “Pete? Is that you? Look, can we just pretend I didn’t say anything? Please? I’ll never say it again!”
Another rustle, but no answer. Jason stood up straight. “I can hear you, I know you’re there. Do you really hate me?”
Pete’s voice drifted up over the tall corn, soft and formless, wafting on hot air. “I never hated you. I hate me. Please leave me alone.”
Heavy air pushed down on Jason’s shoulder like a hot towel, then traveled down his chest, forcing sweat bullets to bead up and run. “Damn it, man. It’s too fucking hot to run. Isn’t the creek just a few more corn rows over? Can’t we just walk there and cool down and pretend we’re just best friends?”
“Whatever,” floated over the tall corn like a limp hot air balloon, sad and deflating. “Follow me if you have to.”
Jason trailed blind behind Pete’s rustling, crossing against the rows. After fewer steps than he figured, he pushed aside corn stalks to reveal crabgrass, dandelions, thistle, and rocks.
And Pete! There! Just ahead, facing away, tee shirt clinging to his back, transparent with sweat. Too beautiful to describe.
“Can you smell it?” asked Pete without turning around.
“Um …” said Jason, remembering the smell of Pete’s slick skin, the sweet apple Starburst of his mouth.
“Storm coming,” said Pete.
Jason eyed the blue sky that stretched over endless cornfields to every horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
Pete turned around and took two steps toward him. “No, it’s coming. You can always smell it first.”
Jason blinked and took two steps toward Pete, not meaning to, just moving.
“I’m sorry I freaked out,” Pete said, his eyes grabbing Jason’s, not letting go. “Really.”
Jason ran his hands over his chest, forcing even more salty sweat into red corn-leaf cuts that were just starting to scream. “I’m sorry I said what I said. I shouldn’t have. I had no right.”
“You meant it, though. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t. And I TOLD you not to take your shirt off in the corn. Look at you, fool. That’s gonna sting for days.”
“So? So what if I meant it? Is that so terrible? I’m not stupid. I know you’re dating my sister. I know you’ve said the same thing to her. She told me.”
“That was a secret!”
“What if you marry her someday? What if you have kids? What if we know each other for the rest of our lives and we always, no matter how hard we try to forget, remember this summer? The part about us? You and me in the cornfields?”
“Don’t TALK about that! When you say the words it makes it real!”
“It IS real, god damn it! I can smell it like you smell the storm. Lie to yourself all you want, but don’t fucking lie to me!”
“Let’s just jump in the creek, OK? Wash that sweat out of those corn cuts? You gotta be miserable.”
Jason made his voice soft and friendly. “Yeah, but not from the cuts, asshole.”
Pete grabbed his tee shirt and yanked it over his head. “Fuck, I should wring this out. Gross!” He ran toward the bank and jumped high in the air, grabbing his knees and screaming as he fell.
Jason screamed too, from fear that grabbed his stomach and twisted. “Hey! You’re gonna break your neck!” He ran up to the bank and peered over. Twenty feet down! Dangerous as fuck if you didn’t check it out first. The creek was deadly shallow in places.
Pete’s head bobbed on the surface like an apple. His voice bubbled up the bluff, full of laughter. “Jump in, wuss! The water’s awesome. Deep!”
Jason got his breathing under control, stepped up to the bank and slipped his feet over the edge. He let himself fall, let himself knife into icy water toes first, silent. Cold sluiced all over him, stilling the burning on his chest, isolating him from the world. He held his breath and dreamed.
When his head popped to the surface, Pete was there, reaching for him, running his hands over his body. “See? Isn’t this better? Told you it was deep enough.”
A moan pushed itself out of Jason’s mouth as his skin responded with electric ripples. “Stop it! You could have died! And what, all because of what I said back there? You hate me that much?”
“Stop saying I hate you! I didn’t mean that. Hey, check it out. I told you a storm was coming.”
Jason looked up and saw black filling the western horizon, clouds piling up all the way to outer space, racing toward them. “Whoa! Gonna be a big one!”
“As big as you?” asked Pete, reaching for Jason’s shorts.
“Dude! Knock it off! You just gonna pretend that didn’t just happen back there? That I didn’t say what I said and you answer the way you answered?”
“You said you WANTED me to pretend!”
“And you believed me? Get your hand off my dick.”
“How come? It’s as hard as always.”
“Jesus, man. We go to college at the end of summer. We’re supposed to be adults now. We’re supposed to … I dunno, take shit seriously. And you wanna know something? I have ALWAYS taken you seriously. All my life. All our lives. You’re part of me, but I don’t think I’m part of you. And that doesn’t just piss me off, it makes me … Sometimes it makes me wish I was the one diving off the bank… and the water wasn’t deep enough after all.”
“Fuck, drama queen much, dude?”
“Stop it! Stop that game! Stop acting like I’m gay and you’re not because you date my sister. I know some secrets about that. Wanna hear em?
“No! Shut up!”
“She wonders about you. I don’t think she suspects about me, but YOU trip her radar. She thought it was her at first, that you don’t touch her. She thought she wasn’t pretty enough.”
“I’m not gay!”
“I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck. Damn it, look at the storm racing in!”
Pete sighed and looked up at the sky. “Told ya I smelled it. But you ain’t gonna argue with me? Not gonna tell me how you know I’m gay?”
“I said I don’t care, and I mean it. Whatever you call yourself doesn’t matter to me. You’re inside me, and you always have been. This summer? When you first … I dunno what to call it … gave in to yourself? Don’t you remember how perfect it was? How right it was? How it was always meant to be?”
“Shut up!”
“No! Look at you! Thirty seconds ago you were trying to unzip me under the water. Even after what happened before.”
“So I’m horny. Who cares?”
“Tell it to my sister, asshole. Maybe she’ll pretend to believe you … if you’re lucky.”
“What do you want from me?”
Jason looked at the sky, totally black, sun blocked out. “I want a do-over, like we were still in middle school, like we can pretend we didn’t say what we said to each other half an hour ago. I want you to try again.”
Lightning flashed, so unexpected that the blue flare seemed to stab out from Pete’s eyes instead of the sky.
Half a second later, thunder rocked their bones. Jason shouted, Pete jumped into the air, and rain splattered so hard into the creek Jason thought he heard bacon frying.
Another crash of thunder sent Pete flying into Jason, grabbing and shouting. “Trade places! Let ME say it first this time!”
Jason squeezed Pete around the waist and lifted him up, groaning. He put him down and pressed his lips into his best friend’s. “Aren’t we supposed to start like this? Kissing like we were before?”
That sweet apple Starburst hadn’t disappeared, just evaporated a little. Jason breathed it in and moaned, thrilled with the connection, terrified it would end.
Pete didn’t whisper into his ear the way Jason had before the fight. He shouted above the thunder. “I love you! I swear I really do!”
Jason pulled back and smiled. “I love you too. There, was it so hard to tell your best friend the truth?”
“Yeah, asshole, of course it was,” said Pete… just before he pressed in for a kiss that lasted for three long thunderclaps. “But maybe we should get out of the water before we get fried?”
“What are we gonna tell my sister?”
“I thought you knew everything. We broke up last night.”
“I know. So, what are we gonna tell my sister?”
“You’re really gonna make this hard, huh? What do THINK we’re gonna tell her?”
Jason took Pete’s hand and pulled, dragging his lover up to the narrow bank where the storm was drilling holes into the sand. “I think we’re gonna tell her we’re sorry for lying to her and we won’t do it again. Huh?”
“Damn, I love thunderstorms,” said Pete. “The way they clear the air. But I don’t know if I can do that. Even though I really do love you.”
Jason pushed Pete away from him, ready to scream again. Then he sighed and pulled his friend in for another kiss, choosing to forget what he’d just heard.
James Finn is a long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].
This story is a response to Prism & Pen’s writing prompt Stormy Weather!