The Book of Joe

watching Cheers, when Lucy let me in. She took one look at my sweaty, panicked expression, and her smile vanished. “Oh, no,” she said, closing her eyes. For a minute it looked like she might faint, and I reached out to steady her. “He can’t go through this again,” she said, fighting back tears, and I thought, Again?
    Since neither Wayne nor Sammy had seen fit to tell me that they were even friends again, they pretty much knew something was up when I didn’t seem surprised to find them together. “What’s up, Joe?” Wayne said awkwardly while Sammy stared at me apprehensively.
    “They know,” I said, still panting slightly from my frantic bike ride. “Everybody knows.”
    “Everybody knows what?” Wayne said, but I could tell he understood. No one said anything for a full minute, and then Sammy said, “Fucking Muser,” and sat back, a look of abject misery on his face. On television, Diane kissed Sam and then slapped him across the face and the laugh track laughed.
    “I just wanted to warn you,” I said. “You know, before you showed up at school tomorrow.”
    “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Wayne said in a hushed voice, his face devoid of any expression.
    “Wayne,” Sammy said.
    “Fuck!” Wayne shouted, getting to his feet. “I have to get out of here.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Sammy said, starting to get up.
    “No,” Wayne said. “I want to be alone.” He grabbed his jacket from a chair in the kitchen and ran out the front door.
    Sammy’s eyes filled with tears. “You’d better go after him,” he said to me. “This is going to kill him.”
    “What about you?” I said.
    Sammy turned to me, the tears running unchecked down his cheeks, and gave me the most pathetic look I’d ever seen.
    “Everyone knew I was a faggot anyway,” he said softly, and for a fraction of a second I felt a powerful urge to reach out and strangle him. Instead, I turned and ran for the front door, muttering a jumbled farewell to Lucy, who hadn’t budged from where she stood in the front hallway, staring at the wall, a stricken expression frozen on her face.
    When I got outside, Wayne was gone and so was my bike.
    It took me a half hour to walk home, and when I got there, I was surprised to find my father waiting for me in the kitchen, with a frown on his face. It wasn’t the frown that surprised me; it was the part about his waiting for me.
    “I just got off the phone with Coach Dugan,” he said slowly, absently clasping his massive fingers as he cracked his knuckles.
    “Yeah?”
    “He said Wayne Hargrove is a homosexual. Him and that kid who worked the press last summer.”
    “Why the hell would he call you with something like that?” I said.
    “He’s looking to verify it.”
    “Is the coach looking for a date?”
    “You watch your mouth, Joe,” my father said sternly. “The coach has a whole team of boys to think of. This is serious business.”
    “This is no one’s fucking business,” I said.
    He gave me a sharp look and then tilted his head slightly, as if a new thought had suddenly occurred to him. “Are you a homosexual?” he said, squinting at me.
    “What’s with the sudden interest in my sex life, Dad?”
    “Just answer the goddamn question!” he yelled at me, pounding the table with his fist.
    I leaned against the doorway and sighed. “Dad,” I said softly. “I have a girlfriend.”
    He squinted at me in surprise. “You do?” he said a little too skeptically for my taste.
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
    “I just didn’t know,” he said, looking relieved.
    “I can’t imagine how it never came up in all those meaningful talks we have.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Oh, please,” I said, heading for the stairs. “Spare me.”
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “To smoke some crack. You see? There’s something else you didn’t know about me.”
    In the hallway mirror I caught a glance at him, mouth agape, staring dumbstruck at the back of my head, and I figured it would be a few more years before he attempted another conversation with me.
    Wayne showed up at around one in the morning, throwing pebbles at my window. I went downstairs to let him in, and we tiptoed back up to my room. He collapsed on my bed, still shivering, his face taut and raw from the cold. “I can’t get a handle on it,” he said, bouncing up and down nervously on the bed as he blew into his hands. “It changes from minute to minute. Sometimes I think