The Boy with no Gaydar

The boy with no gaydar arrives late to church with his family. 

He does not sit with them, sliding instead into the second to last row,

Where he sits between Willa and Peggy, his adopted aunts.

These ladies are frends, roommates, in their 50’s, from the south.

Their country home has a huge barn, home to Peggy’s grand woodshop.

Beside him, Peggy croons hymns in a warbly low tenor. 

The boy with no gaydar watches too much after-school television. 

His favorites are the funny ones, with those hilarious celebrity guests.

On Hollywood Squares, Jim J Bullock wears outrageous pastel shirts and acts like a silly goof.

Charles Nelson Reily on Match game is fabulously bizarre.  He wears huge glasses and bright ascots.

The boy admires both men, yet pities them for allowing their wives to select their wardrobes.

Both speak with peculiar enunciation, which shows that they are both very cultured.

Hollywood celebrities must all want to be like that.

The boy with no gaydar spends Sunday afternoons at the home of his adopted aunties.

He believes he has explored the whole building,, but has yet to find the third bedroom.

Peggy’s son, Jim, occupies one of them.

Peggy says the other is her room.

But when he asks Willa, she claims the second room is her own.

He can never figure out which of them is teasing him,

Or where the door to that third bedroom might be.

The boy with no gaydar is called “faggot” by the big kids

Who sit in the back of the school bus.

The first time he uses the word against another child

He doesn’t know what it means.

The big kids tell them it means, “you’re a butt-fucker.”

This notion is both hurtful and confusing.

The second time he calls another child “faggot,” he knows.

The boy with no gaydar gets hand-me-downs from Peggy’s son, Jim.

Jim has the most stylish mullet of anyone he knows

And is in high school.

And is on the math team.

Jim takes the boy’s Swedish exchange student to the prom.

The boy with no gaydar tries to grow his own stylish mullet.

Jim lets the boy hang out with him every Sunday afternoon

But only because Peggy makes him.

The boy with no gaydar expands his vocabulary on the school bus.

He sits in the back now.

Nicknames a younger girl “it”

And another boy “homo”

He is kicked off the bus for a week.

It does not change this choice of words.

He knows these insults mean power

The back of the bus means power

This is what the big kids do.

The boy with no gaydar begins high school.

Jim is in college and has moved away.

Willa and Peggy give him a gold chain for Christmas.

Gold chains are what cool kids with mullets wear in high school.

His father is upset, calls it a necklace,

Forbids him to wear it. 

Doesn’t want his son turning into a girl.

The boy with no gaydar learns in high school

To say words like “gay” in hushed tones

And that nobody says “faggot” anymore.

There are whispers about the boys on the color guard

Rumors about one of them and a pepperoni

The boy wonders how that kind of thing is even possible.

He assumes it isn’t true.  That boy goes to the Catholic church.

How could he be both gay and Catholic?

The priests would never allow such a thing.

The boy with no gaydar makes a boomerang in Peggy’s woodshop.

He asks her, now that Jim is at college and

living with his father in the summers, if

She thinks she will date again and marry another man.

Peggy’s pause is long and thoughtful.

Her answer, measured and certain.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I’m happy where I’m at right now.”

He doesn’t believe her.  He thinks she will be alone.

The boy with no gaydar watches in wonder

The first time he sees two girls kissing.

They are sitting on the floor, outside the band room,

closing their eyes and using their tongues.

They are his friends, and when he hears a passerby

joking, “Lez-be friends”

It bothers him

In a way it has never bothered him before.

The boy with no Gaydar no longer visits his adopted aunties.

They come to the house, sometimes, on holidays.

Peggy’s mother in Florida is dying. 

She is not around as much.

Willa is starting to show signs of early senility.

The boy with no gaydar and his friends are treated

To a concert of piano and belted-out showtunes

Each morning in the school band room

by David,

a fair-skinned boy who performs in the theater.

David can sing like Ethyl Merman and enunciates his words just so. 

It means he has culture, just like those Hollywood stars on TV.

There are always girls around David,

But David is aloof, never accepting their advances.

The boy with no gaydar goes to college.

He cuts off the mullet, because they are no longer cool.

In college, being gay is no longer scandalous fodder for rumor-mills.

Half the girls claim to be “bi”

Perhaps because it’s true

Perhaps because it’s trendy to say so.

The boy with no gaydar goes to a new church

He still arrives late, but he sits with his parents.

There’s a guy with a Flock of Seagulls hairstyle.

They always go to the same shows, recognize each other,

Give each other a nod between sets.

For some reason, they never really talk.

In college there are clubs for just about everything

The guy with Flock of Seagulls hair is in the club for gays.

He no longer shows up at church.

The boy with no gaydar makes the connection for the first time

At the next show he asks, “Where’ve you been?”

The guy with Flock of Seagulls hair shakes his head.

“It’s too hard to be there,” he says

“Everyone knows.  I see how they look at me,”

“The way they look at my parents.”

“I see the way my parents look at me and  I - Ican’t.”

The boy with no gaydar wishes he had been a friend sooner.

That he had chosen to sit in a different row

That the Faithful would be quicker to love than to judge

That certain words had never escaped his lips

That the guy with Flock of Seagulls hair would get a haircut

Because maybe that was why they looked at him that way.  

Maybe they really didn’t know.