In One Person

go-between, but I didn’t for a moment delude myself by imagining that Miss Frost would ever make herself available to me again. “You have to understand,” I said to Elaine. “I think Miss Frost is pretty serious about
protecting
me.”
    “As first experiences go, Billy, I think you’ve had a pretty good one,” Elaine told me.
    “Except for the interference of my whole fucking
family
!” I cried.
    “That’s just weird,” Elaine said. “It can’t be Miss Frost they’re all so afraid of. Surely they didn’t believe that Miss Frost would ever hurt you.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked her.
    “There’s something about
you
they’re afraid of, Billy,” Elaine told me.
    “That I’m a homosexual, or that I’m bisexual—is that what you mean?” I asked her. “Because I think they’ve already figured that out, or at least they
suspect
it.”
    “They’re afraid of something you don’t know yet, Billy,” Elaine told me.
    “I’m sick of everybody trying to
protect
me!” I shouted.
    “That may indeed be Miss Frost’s motive, Billy,” Elaine said. “I’m not so sure about what’s motivating your whole fucking
family
, as you say.”
    M Y CRUDE COUSIN G ERRY came home from college that same Christmas break. In Gerry’s case, I use the
crude
word affectionately. Please don’t dismiss Gerry as a stridently angry lesbian who hated her parents and all heterosexuals; she had always loathed boys, but I’d foolishly imagined that she might like me a little bit, because I knew she would have heard about my scandalous relationship with Miss Frost. Yet, at least for a few more years, Gerry wouldn’t like gay or bisexual boys any better than she liked straight ones.
    Nowadays, I hear my friends say that our society tends to be more accepting of gay and bi women than we are of gay and bi men. In our family’s case, there was little apparent reaction to Gerry being a lesbian, at least compared to almost everyone having a cow about my relationship with Miss Frost—not to mention my mom’s horror at how I was “turning out,” sexually. Yes, I know, it’s true that many people treat lesbians and bi women
differently
than they treat gay and bi men, but Gerry wasn’t
accepted
by our family as much as she was simply
ignored
by them.
    Uncle Bob loved Gerry, but Bob was a coward; he loved his daughter, in part, because she was more courageous than he was. I think Gerry deliberately misbehaved, and not only to build a barrier around herself; I think she was aggressive and “crude” because this forced our family to
notice
her.
    I had always liked Gerry, but I kept my fondness for her a secret. I wish I’d
told
her that I liked her—I mean, sooner than I did.
    We would become better friends when we were older; nowadays, we’re quite close. I’m truly fond of Gerry—okay, in an odd way—but Gerry was not very likable when she was a young woman. All I’m saying is that Gerry
purposely
made herself unlikable. Elaine detested her, and would never like her—not even a little.
    That Christmas, Elaine and I were up to our usual but separate pursuits in the yearbook room of the academy library. The library was open over the Christmas break—except for Christmas Day. Many of the faculty liked to work there, and Christmastime was when a lot of prospective students and their parents visited Favorite River Academy. My summer job, for the past three years, had been as a tour guide; I showed prospective students and their parents my awful school. I got a part-time job as a tour guide over the Christmas break, too; the boys among the faculty brats frequently did this. Uncle Bob, the admissions man, was our overly permissive boss.
    Elaine and I were in the yearbook room when my cousin Gerry found us. “I hear you’re queer,” Gerry said to me, ignoring Elaine.
    “I guess so,” I said, “but I’m attracted to some women, too.”
    “I don’t want to know,” Gerry told me. “No one’s sticking anything up my ass, or anywhere else.”
    “You never know till you try it,” Elaine said. “You might like it, Gerry.”
    “I see you’re not pregnant,” Gerry said to her, “unless you’re already pregnant again, Elaine, and you’re not yet showing.”
    “You got a girlfriend?” Elaine asked her.
    “She could beat the shit out of you, Elaine,” Gerry said. “You, too—probably,” Gerry told me.
    I could be forgiving of Gerry, knowing that Muriel was her mother; that couldn’t have been