AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 22
“I don’t remember ever being this angry,” Will said. Patrick was perched on the armchair in Will’s living room, watching him pace back and forth with a glass of red wine and listening as he recounted what happened to him and Faye after the story hour. “I could throttle them. Set them on fire. Walk them over a thousand upturned plugs.”
“I’m so sorry.” Patrick didn’t know what else to say. He had come to Will’s straight from the set, excited to finally see him after spending all day so distracted it had taken him multiple takes to deliver a single line. But his hopes for the evening had evaporated when Will opened the door, eyes wide with hurt and fury, and Patrick had pulled him into a hug before even thinking to ask what had happened. And now he sat listening, frustratingly helpless. His instinct when a friend was hurting would usually be to leap into solutions-offering mode, but what was the solution here? Fix structural, systemic homophobia single-handedly?
“It’s just so dumb,” Will continued, gesticulating with his glass so hard he nearly stained the carpet crimson. “The whole homophobia thing. Just utterly stupid. It makes no sense. Hating us, attacking us when we’ve done nothing, deciding that we’re what’s wrong with society, that we’re the threat to children. All because what? Some absolute wally mistranslated a Bible passage into Greek and fucked us all over. Threw us in jail. Chemically castrated us. Forced us to justify our existence, to beg and scrape for the barest human dignity.” He turned to Patrick. “And you still can’t tell the world you sleep with men in case you lose your job.”
“That’s not exactly how I would probably put it,” said Patrick, but Will had already resumed his brisk, furious laps of the living room.
“Because heaven forbid the world find out their favorite superhero is a fag.”
Patrick wrinkled his nose. “I hate that word.”
“Oh, grow up.” Will rolled his eyes. “We’re post–reclamation of hate speech now, darling. It’s practically a term of endearment.”
“Sorry I’m not as with it as you,” said Patrick, edgy now, and Will paused momentarily, casting him a contrite look.
“Sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s OK. You’re upset. I hate that you’re upset.”
“I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I can be such a gobshite sometimes.”
“Excuse me?”
“A gobshite. It means…ugh, never mind.” He looked down into his wine, then added: “Faye lost most of her friends, you know.”
“She did?” Patrick didn’t ask how, or when. Didn’t need to.
“Yeah. Saw the world turn against her and everyone she knew. Weathered that. Survived that, somehow. Lived long enough to be bestowed with a fraction of the respect she is owed, by us, if not the rest of the world. And to be treated so…” His pacing faltered. “I’ve never seen her like that, Patrick. She looked so…old.”
“What can I do?” Patrick asked.
Will looked at Patrick, and Patrick knew he’d asked the wrong question. There was only one thing he could do, he knew: one thing in his power to effect any kind of change, to move the needle even a fraction of an inch.
Come out. Talk about his personal life. Risk tanking his career and inviting hordes of those same protestors onto his own front lawn.
“There is something,” said Will, “that might make me feel better.”
“What is it?” Please don’t ask me to do that, he thought. Anything but that.
“Right. Don’t judge me…” Will said, pausing in front of the coffee table where his laptop lay. He set down his wine, opened the computer, and started typing.
Thank god, it’s a sex thing, Patrick thought. He leaned forward in his seat to get a better look, prepared to indulge Will in whatever pornographic fantasy he liked. But when Will swiveled the screen around to show him what he had looked up, Patrick was confronted with a streaming site’s loading screen for an early 2010s slasher entitled Pledge Week: New Blood. The Photoshop rush job of a poster showed several up-and-coming actors from that time, including one baby-faced Patrick Lake, superimposed over the front door of a fraternity house.
“They’re dying to get in,” intoned Will gravely, echoing the movie’s tagline.
“What’s happening right now?” Patrick asked, aghast. “Where did you find this?”
“Again, I say, don’t judge me.” Will took a gulp of red. “But I’ve sort of been watching your back catalog.”
“You what?”
Will gasped and pointed at him. “Oh my god. Did you hear yourself? You sounded so English just then!” He screamed with laughter, so clearly the wine was taking effect. “You what, mate?”
“You’ve been watching my movies?” Patrick continued, ignoring him.
“Yeah. It’s probably silly. I just…” Will shrugged. “It felt like another way of getting to know you.”
