Back then, Cal wasn’t what most people would call handsome. His face was too birdlike, all of his features too small to be considered traditionally attractive, and he was built like an I beam. But his confidence and charisma overshadowed all that. He was a player. And more often than not, he had the coolest girls in the room swooning.
On more than one occasion, Bob made it a point to tell me I was empirically better looking than Cal, as if this were something I should value or exploit. But I was one of the smallest kids in class, and I was shy and self-conscious around normal people, so you can imagine what I was like when I was in the vicinity of a girl I liked.
As the car pulled in to the Tower Records parking lot that night, Bob said, “You two better start putting as much energy into getting into college as you put into getting albums.”
Cal caught my eye and I shook my head, silently begging him not to say a word. Early on in our friendship, I made Cal promise not to mention our Brooklyn plans to Bob until the time came for us to go. He had agreed, but I think he found it disappointing that I wouldn’t tell Bob the truth.
When we got out of the car, Cal said, “Sometimes I question your commitment to our dreams, Harp.”
“You don’t understand. Bob would flip if I told him. He’d probably lock me in the house and homeschool me. And I know for sure he wouldn’t let me hang out with you anymore.”
That kept Cal quiet, but he was skeptical, and right to question my dedication. Unbeknownst to my best friend, I had already taken the SATs and ACTs and was working on applications to numerous California universities. I told myself I was just doing it to placate Bob, but there was a part of me that wondered if I was going to have the guts to go to Brooklyn with Cal.
I eventually applied to Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Santa Cruz. Stanford rejected me, but I got into the others.
“You’ll go to Berkeley, just like your old man,” Bob declared during the winter of my senior year as he stood over me in his kitchen.
I knew it was now or never, and I told myself to come out with it. After pacing around the deck outside and then calling Cal for advice, I walked back into the kitchen and asked Bob if I could talk to him about something important.
He made direct eye contact with me, and I started glancing around the room, looking for something distracting on which to focus. Bob’s kitchen looked like a dungeon. Everything was charcoal gray and blackened steel. The architecture of doom. Nothing calmed my nerves.
“Sit,” Bob said.
I sat at one of the tall stools flanking the breakfast bar and knew immediately that I’d chosen the wrong location. My feet didn’t touch the ground from there, and that made me feel already defeated.
I rested my arms on the cold countertop while Bob made himself an espresso. With his back to me, he said, “You’re not about to tell me you’re gay, are you? You and that Callahan?”
It was not the first time Bob had alluded to this possibility, and I suppose it wasn’t so far-fetched from the outside looking in. Cal and I spent virtually every moment together, and kids at our school called us fags all the time. I didn’t care. It was Bob’s tone that hurt me. He sounded like he was already against whatever I was going to say, and how was a kid supposed to have a heart-to-heart with his dad if his dad came to the table with such a bad attitude?
“No,” I sighed.
I was looking at the piece of art on the wall behind Bob’s head. It was a painting of three jockeys on horses, all racing toward a finish line. The two horses in the lead were neck and neck and were both painted dark gray, the same color as everything else in the dungeon kitchen. The horse on the far left of the canvas, a couple of lengths back, was red. I wondered why the artist had chosen to paint that horse red, especially because it was losing. It was the only splash of color in the whole room.
“Go on, then,” Bob said.
I hunched over the counter and mumbled, “It’s about Berkeley.”
“What about Berkeley?”
I can’t remember what I said after that. Something about how I was thinking of deferring for a year so that I could move to New York and get a job and live in the real world before I spent four more years in school. I tried to make it sound like I wanted to get some life experience, and for a brief moment it seemed to be working.
“What kind of job?” Bob asked.
Graduation was still a few months off, but Cal already had a lot set up in New York. We were going to crash with Terry’s brother Bill until we could afford an apartment, and Bill had promised us jobs at a bakery he ran in Williamsburg. In the meantime, Cal had been working part-time for a local landscaping company and had saved up enough money to buy a plane ticket.
Ingrid told me she’d buy me a plane ticket too. Her exact words were, “Follow your dreams, Joey, or you’ll end up a bitter old asshole like your father.”
“Well, what then?” Bob asked.
My stomach was a washing machine on spin. I couldn’t think of any good lies, and I kept hearing Cal’s voice in my head. When I’d told him on the phone that I was going to have the talk with Bob, he’d read me an inspirational quote about how a person’s success and happiness in life was directly proportional to the amount of uncomfortable conversations he or she was willing to have.
“You can do it,” Cal assured me. “He’s
