“He wath at the party!” Grant declared.
“Can’t slip anything past you.” Thank god Emory was wearing more than when Patrick saw him last.
“He’s on TV?!” Maisie asked, clearly impressed.
Patrick hit pause and looked at the menu board for strength. It confirmed Patrick’s original appraisal: this pizza was the least awful choice. “You do realize I was on TV?”
The kids shrugged and Patrick threw his head to the side, hitting the café window.
“Ith he your boyfriend?”
“What?” Patrick spun around to face Grant. “No. Don’t be silly.”
“Yeah, Grant,” Maisie piled on. “Don’t be silly.”
Patrick raised his gaze to challenge Maisie. “Why is that silly?”
Maisie said nothing. Instead she spun the pizza crust on her plate, like they were playing Twister. Right hand on Emory.
“Is it because he’s too young? He’s older than he looks. I checked Wikipedia.” He didn’t inherently trust Wikipedia, but it was right about his own age. Unfortunately.
The crust came to a stop. “Is he your age?”
“Maisie.” Patrick exhaled, defeated. “No.”
“Why do you like boys?” Grant asked sourly, but with slightly more boredom than judgment.
“I don’t know, why do you like pizza?”
“Because it tastes good in my mouth.”
Patrick wasn’t about to go anywhere near that.
“Not everyone thinks that. Some people don’t like pizza. To them it does not taste good.”
“Why?” Grant asked.
“Why does it taste good to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you just like it, then,” Patrick explained.
“Yeah!”
“Sometimes it’s hard to articulate why we like something. We just do. We’re programmed that way.”
“Do you want me to like boys?” Grant asked.
“I don’t want you to like anything.” Patrick slunk in his chair as a woman walked by dragging two kids of her own. She glanced over at Patrick in solidarity. “Let me rephrase that. I want you to like whatever it is you like.”
“I like boys.”
“Congratulations.”
“As friends,” Grant clarified.
“Bravo. As you should. Boys can make excellent friends. And if anything changes, you’ll know as you get older. Grantelope.”
Grant beamed at his uncle. Patrick had a memory from first grade, around the time he was Grant’s age. It was the last week of school and a heat wave upended a Connecticut June. Classrooms were sweltering and there was no central air. His teacher told the boys that if they were wearing undershirts, they could unbutton their top shirts or remove them altogether. The kid who sat three desks over from Patrick was named Charlie and, man, there was just something about him. He had a twin sister in the other first-grade class—Heather, perhaps, or Leeza—they were the only set of twins in the school, which gave them a certain mystique, and both of their names sounded like low-cost department store fragrances. Charlie was blond. He was tall for his age and the other kids hung on his every word. His shirt was Western-style, popular back then, and had mother-of-pearl-colored snaps. As Charlie undid his shirt, each snap made a sonic boom in Patrick’s ears; he peeled it off and leaned back in his chair in a white Hanes T-shirt, looking like some sort of peewee prototype, a pint-sized Tab Hunter or Marlboro Man. He was effortlessly cool and Patrick knew he would never be that comfortable in his own skin. Not around other kids. As other boys removed their shirts, too, Patrick consciously buttoned his higher, as if removing it would expose him as an impostor. But he looked at Charlie that afternoon with his Steve McQueen swagger and thought, That’s what a man looks like. He remembered that thought distinctly; both of them were at most all of seven.
“Do you like being gay?” Maisie asked. It caught Patrick by surprise.
“I used to.”
“You don’t anymore?”
“It used to be cool. Being gay. Counterculture, you know. Rebellious. Now it’s all gay marriage, gay adoption. Assimilation. And some of that’s good. It’s progress. But I liked it more when it was different. Now everyone’s in a hurry to be the same.” Look at me, Patrick thought. Even I have kids.
“What’s wrong with being the same?”
“Nothing. It’s just not for me.” He reached for the napkin dispenser and held out a napkin for each kid. “You done?” Maisie nodded, and they all wiped their hands.