Garrard Conley - Boy Erased

“Still there?” Chloe said.

“Yeah.”

We arranged a date to watch a late-night movie at her house. There seemed to be something hidden in this arrangement, something we left unsaid but that we both must have known. When the time came for sleep, I figured Chloe could express interest in cooking a big breakfast with me the next morning and insist that I sleep in the basement, not far from Brandon’s bed. Her mother might slide her eyes at us, but she would eventually give in; after all, we had already spent the night in the same hotel room in Florida. We would be quiet. Safe. I could buy a twenty-five-cent condom from a gas station vending machine in a distant town, telling my parents I needed to go on another long drive to clear my head, to talk to God. Then, if conditions seemed right, I would sneak up to her room and see what happened between us.

When thinking about sex, I had never before wondered how long it would take. I had never wondered what postsex breakfast might taste like or what movie might be most appropriate before commencement. Most important, I had never wondered whether or not sex—not kissing or cuddling or grinding, but sex , jumping right into the very act itself and skipping all the other steps—might finally turn me, if not straight, at least into someone capable of performing straightness. I had never assumed I would want to go this far, that I would break one of the cardinal rules in our church. When I had fantasized about men, I’d always shut down the thoughts before I imagined myself entering the fantasy. It had always been one body, performing alone, performing only for me. What would it be like to do something with another person, a person you’d have to face for the rest of your life, both of you living with the knowledge of what you did in your most desperate moment? Would you ever be able to make it up to God? And what if it didn’t work? What if the transgression led to failure, and you were left alone to rot in your sin?

“Is it raining there now?” Chloe said, yawning. “It’s raining here.”

“No,” I lied, listening to the sound of raindrops pinging against the shingles. I wanted to keep our lives separate. Then I was afraid of what it would mean if I did. “I mean yes.”

“How can it be both?” she said.

“I don’t know. It just is.”

I sat back down on the carpet and pressed the start button on the controller. “It’s not both. I don’t know why I said it was both.” The cave was now directly in the avatar’s path. There was no other way around it. Whatever was hidden inside was probably going to be worth it.

IT WAS my mother’s treasures, her silver necklaces and gaudy rings, their shiny symbolism, the way many of them were handed down through the maternal line, the way these symbols could make up a home and present a family history with more than one plotline—it was their complexity I craved each time I urged my PlayStation avatar to open another treasure chest, to sink deeper into the cave with its quivering stalactites.

When I was nine, these treasures had taken on a literal quality that I could never quite shake from my mind. My family and I were on a soon-to-be-condemned pier. We were on vacation in Florida. The pier shook each time the tide slapped its splintering pillars. There was a groaning as the water made contact with its rusted metal joint bars. My father ruffled my hair. I threw a plastic Coke bottle into the water, and inside that bottle was a message.

Dear Pirate,

How are you? It’s nice to meet you even if I don’t know who you are. I’d like to know you, so please write back. Also, if you could, please send me treasure.

Your friend Garrard

We arrived back at our house, exhausted from a ten-hour car ride, to find a yellowed piece of notebook paper taped to the front door, a map of our yard with a giant X where the note claimed a pirate named Lonzo had buried his treasure. My mother feigned shock, pressing her fingertips to her cheeks and leaving ten red marks on her face after she dropped her arms. “This is wild,” she said. “This is just so wild.” My father helped me carry a shovel from the garage to the spot in the yard Lonzo had marked on his map. The X was spray-painted in silver on the grass. Together, we pressed our tennis shoes to each of the shovel’s shoulders and dug into the hard-packed clay. Three feet deep, we found a box filled mostly with costume jewelry but also with real jewelry that I would later discover belonged to my grandmother, items for which she had no further use. She and my grandfather had arranged the whole thing on the night my mother called to tell them about the message in a bottle.

After we ran water from a garden hose over the box, I kept the jewelry in the bottom drawer of my desk. I would take the shiny gold pieces out of the box and place as many of them as I could on my neck and wrists and stand in front of the mirror. Twirling. I did this again and again until my father walked in on me one day and told me I needed to stop, that Lonzo would feel sad if he saw me mocking his treasure that way.

“I want to live with Lonzo,” I said. “I want to be a pirate.”

“You probably wouldn’t like it,” my father said. “You’d have to mop the deck all day. He’d turn you into one of his slaves. You’d get sick of the water.”

THE COLD FRONT from the night before brought severe wind gusts that sent sheets of water from my pressure washer over the tops of other cars, leaving water spots on their windshields, the drops fizzling and evaporating on contact with the roasting metal. I stepped out of the service garage, shielded my eyes, and stared at the long line of car windows I would now have to Windex. Behind me, one of my father’s employees was pressing the button to a hydraulic lift, and Chloe’s car was being lifted to the height of the man’s shoulders so he could begin replacing the oil. I was to drive her car back to her house later that afternoon, leave my car at the dealership overnight, and carry out the plan.

Earlier that morning during Bible study, Brother Nielson had lingered in the showroom for a little longer than usual, holding himself upright with one hand on the side of the Mustang.

“I keep wondering,” he said, as I passed by carrying a handful of car keys, “if you’re ever going to answer my question.” I couldn’t tell if he was trying to test me or if he seriously wanted to know what I thought about the Middle East, to know that the next generation was secure in its fight against terrorism.

“Leave the boy alone,” Brother Hank said, sticking his head out of a nearby office.

“He’s not old enough to care about politics. Girls are all he’s got on the brain right now.”

“Girls, huh,” Brother Nielson said. “Nothing wrong with that.” He straightened his back as much as he could, wincing. “Just don’t forget there are bigger things in this world.”

He stuck his hand out in front of my path, and I moved the keys to my other hand and clasped his in a firm handshake that grew firmer with each second until the grip was so severe I thought we might crack each other’s knuckles. His eyes stared directly into mine, full of some secret knowledge. I felt almost as though he could detect the contamination I had passed into my palm earlier that morning before the sun rose, as though the condom I had purchased from the gas station carried a hidden scent or an oil undetectable except by the most righteous of men.

“We’re living in the End Times,” he said to me. “Stay sharp.”

I SET the pressure washer down on the concrete, grabbed the Windex bottle and some paper towels, and walked onto the blacktop lot to tackle the line of water-spotted windshields. In the distance ahead I could see the pine trees on the hills begin to sway in the wind, and I was grateful for this, for the relief of the current as it swept past me, even though I knew it might increase the chances of sunburn, my SPF-40 lotion already washed away by the water, the tips of my fingers already pruned.