is?"
"Gay sex. Obviously."
"Like you know so much about it," he says.
"How much do you know?" I ask. "Have you even had sex? Like where you actually hook up with a real person and have it?"
"I really think that's my personal business." He chuckles, with a tinge of sadness that is obviously meant for me.
"So you haven't, then."
"Well," he says, "I did meet this one guy online. We chatted and stuff. He goes to NYU, to Tisch. He wanted to trade pictures? So he sent me one of him, sort of nude, but not showing his junk."
I didn't know any of this, but I try not to seem surprised. "Did you send one? Do you have pictures of your junk?"
"Well," he says, "no. I sent a picture of me as Tevye." Last year, at our school, Theo played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He was excellent. "I didn't hear back from him."
"But he was the only one?"
He chuckles again, in that sad-for-me style. "Oh, no."
"Anyone from our school?" I try to picture who it might be.
"I must say, Wesley," Theo says, sounding just a little bit English, "that I do think that's private."
"So you've never had sex, then."
"I didn't say that."
"You've done things? Like let guys fuck you in the ass and stuff ?"
He looks worried again for a moment, looks down and lowers his voice. "The thing is?" he says. "I'm sort of a top." He sneezes. "I think. I could be wrong, though. I've never actually hooked up. Maybe I never will! I don't know. Who has time? Why would I want to hook up when I could be learning new SAT words or giving back to the community?" Our school is famous for the concept of giving back, which they start beating into our heads in third grade. "We're here," he says.
We are, at Eighty-sixth and Second, right outside tae kwon do. I'm just coming back to it, as I had to take a few weeks off. I broke a toe at 2:00 A.M. at Dad and George's, from a stubbing I endured when I woke up hungry and went in the dark to the kitchen, where there are always eleven cheeses and foreign crackers and cookies made of ground-up nuts. I said, "Fuck!" very quietly, but George heard me and got up. He didn't even say anything; he just made an ice pack and grilled half a sandwich for me in his panini press. Then we talked for a while, also very quietly. We didn't want to wake my dad.
I'm fine now, though. "We should get in there," I say to Theo. I see a muffin on the steps, with no owner in sight, sitting there like it's just enjoying the day.
"Wait," he says. "Everything you say seems to be about George, pretty much. What about your dad?"
"What about him?"
"He's an old gay guy, right? So what's he like?"
"My dad." I look at the muffin again, and realize I'm starved. "Well, he's got green eyes, like mine, and a similar chin." I touch mine. We have clefts, my dad and I; Ben, my stepdad, says we could both keep change there. "And he's a fine person, of course."
"That I know."
"Like who doesn't." Sometimes I think I could mention my dad to a cop on a horse, or the horse itself, and they'd say, Oh, yes, I admire him immensely. "And there's squash," I say. "The game, not the vegetable. He plays at the Yale Club. He might teach me, even, when he's got time."
"Did George go to Yale?"
"He didn't go to any college. He was just in shows."
"I'll have to learn all this stuff, I guess," says Theo. "Not to mention new gay stuff. Maybe your dad would talk to me."
"So can I go now, with what I want to ask you?" I hear the chant that starts tae kwon do, but I don't care. "You can probably guess what it is."
"Why didn't I tell you I was going to do all that today."
"Why didn't you tell me you were going to do that today?" I ask.
"I totally would have," he says. "Definitely. Unquestionably."
"Stop using adverbs." I've picked this up from Mr. Frechette, who is passionate on the subject of their overuse. "Just answer."
"I would have," Theo says again, and more, too, but at just that moment girls pass, the kind of girls I think of as New York girls, although they can be from anywhere. I stop listening to Theo, or hearing, anyway. They're all texting and talking and smiling at their phones, like they were better than boyfriends. The girl with the fastest fingers stops for a moment. She smiles, not at me, I'm sure, but it's a smile in my direction all the same. And suddenly, standing there, I'm not there. I know just where I am, though, where I've gone, which is to a park, in my mind, where I lie on clean, warm grass while the fast-fingered girl texts all over me, my whole body and my cock, too, little secrets everywhere. And then I hear Theo again, and come back.
"And I guess the biggest reason I didn't tell you," he says, "is that I didn't know it was going to happen. It came out on its own, one might say. Like it had been waiting, for the right event."
"So have you been gay all along, do you think?"
"Probably," he says. "I don't think it was sudden, like a hive or a nosebleed. I don't think that happens, but there might be recorded cases. There are always recorded cases of things."
"But not yours."
"Well," he says, "this thing happened once." He puts up his hood, steps into the street, looks both ways as if he's shown up early for a gunfight. "If I told you anything, which I'm not saying I'm going to do, it would have to be really private."
"You came out in an assembly!"
"It involves a person you know."
" Really?" I try not to look too eager, but I can't help running through names in my head, like flash cards. Crispin Pomerantz. Micah Kinzer. Jared Zam. I don't know what makes them seem possibly gay. Maybe it's because I don't like them. But Theo's gay, or he is now, and I like him. I'll bring this up with him, but later. "Who?"
"Noah," he says, in a whisper.
We know one Noah. He can't be gay. I don't know why. But he can't. "Are you serious? Really? Noah Duberman? Really? Noah?"
"You sound like Fartemis." Fartemis is Theo's sister, Artemis. She's nine, and enthusiastic. "So forget about it."
"Sorry. I promise I'll be cool. Really."
He looks at me. He's going to trust me. "And when the specific thing took place? You were there."
"I was?"
"It was a day in gym, in eighth grade. Remember how we'd climb ropes and then drop down and do sit-ups, with a person holding down your feet? So I get Noah. And it was the time when—"
I can't help myself. That happens. "When that
