King Geordi the Great Read online

  “Diana, I have to tell you something,” Dad said, his voice as severe as the expression on his face.

  “What is it?” Mom said apprehensively, her eyes shifting back and forth between Dad and me.

  “You’d better sit down for this.”

  “Ben, you’re scaring me.”

  “Please, Diana.”

  Dad took Mom’s hand and led her to the sofa. She sat on one side of me and Dad sat on the other.

  “Now what is this about?” Mom snapped, anxiety making her hands twitch.

  “I just saw Geordi whacking off in his room.”

  Mom collapsed against the backrest of the sofa as if all the bones had been sucked out of her body. A grin of relief swept across her face. “Geordi’s playing with himself. Oh, come on, Ben. That sure as hell isn’t news to anybody.” She looked at me and chuckled heartily.

  I was really getting tired of being laughed at.

  “It’s not the whacking off per se you need to know about,” Dad said, still looking solemn. “It’s what he was whacking off to.”

  The worry came back to Mom’s face. She flicked her eyes at me and looked at Dad again. “What do you mean?”

  Dad took a deep breath. “He was masturbating while looking at a movie scene of some naked, curly-headed guy’s butt.”

  Mom put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes got wide. I think she stopped breathing for a moment. Then she drew in her own deep breath, looked at me again, exhaled, and asked, “Geordi, are you gay?”

  I didn’t answer when Dad asked me that question earlier. I didn’t want to answer it now. For weeks I’d been fantasizing about guys, looking at pictures of their bare bodies, and getting super excited, but I’d never really thought about what that meant. It was just something new I’d discovered about myself, and it felt natural to me. Gay was a concept I understood well enough. I’d simply never considered whether it applied to me.

  But here were my parents now, looking… disturbed. And they were asking me a question to which, I suddenly realized, we all knew the answer. Because straight guys don’t jack off while looking at pictures of naked men. They just don’t.

  That’s when the fear came fully down on me. I’d read stories on the internet about teen homelessness. Many homeless teens were on the street because they were gay, lesbian, bi, trans—something other than hetero—and their parents, for some awful reason, couldn’t deal with it. Their parents threw them away without a second thought.

  I didn’t want my parents to throw me away.

  Mom was giving me this really intense look. She leaned toward me, and I could see her body trembling, could hear how rapidly she was breathing. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  I started hyperventilating myself. Dad was staring at me too, and I feared what was surely to come from my parents: outrage, disgust, bitter tears, blistering curses. Neither of them had ever laid a hand on me in anger before, but maybe that was about to change. I cringed between them, shaking in terror, waiting for their wrath to thunder down on me.

  “Oh my God. It is true.” Mom’s entire face suddenly lit up with joy, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me to her in a hug so tight it made my eyes bug out. “My sweet baby boy is gay!”

  Behind me, I could hear Dad doing that crazed whooping he unleashed at football games when his team scored. “Way to go, son! Whoo-hoo!” And then he started clapping me on the shoulder with gusto.

  I exploded into loud, gasping, ugly-face sobs.

  “Oooh, oooh,” Mom cooed at me, rubbing my back with her hands. “What’s the matter, Geordi hon? Why are you crying?”

  “I’m so confused!” I wailed.

  “Confused about what?” Dad asked.

  “I thought you were mad at me for being gay. I thought you were gonna hate me and kick me out.”

  Mom pushed away from me so she could look into my eyes. “Mad at you? Hate you? Oh honey….” She wiped away my tears with her thumbs, the most loving smile glowing on her face. “Your dad and I would never hate you or be angry with you for who you are. We love you no matter what.”

  “Of course we do,” Dad added, slipping his arm around my shoulders and hugging me. “Your mom and I… well, we sort of suspected you were gay, and it’s just so wonderful to finally have it out in the open. This is not something for you to be ashamed of, son, not in the least. We’ve always been proud of you, and nothing has changed that. So stop that silly crying. This is cause for celebration!”

  I felt better right away, touched especially by my dad’s words. I didn’t really expect any kind of actual celebration, however. He was just speaking rhetorically or whatever when he said that, and I knew it.

  Yeah. Right.

  Stupid me.

  Chapter 2

  OKAY, FAST-FORWARD a couple of years.

  It was July, and my lazy summer days were spent mostly with Toff and my other best friend in the world, Jessica Sanchez. For the record, Jessica’s heritage is Mexican, my bloodline is African, and Toff is persuasion Caucasian. Mom said the three of us were diversity in action.

  Toff’s legal name, by the way, is Sandor Regis Toffler, after his mom’s dad. Kids kept calling him Sandy because Sandor sounds sort of snooty (or at least I thought so), and he hated being Sandy. “What am I? A beach?” he complained the first time I called him that. His attitude got me angry enough to want him out of my house, and I retorted with “So take off, then!” Only it came out sounding like, “So t’off, then!” He thought it was a nickname clipped from Toffler, he actually liked it, and he’s had everybody calling him Toff ever since. I envied him, being named after his grandfather, and I would have been proud to be called Sandor, or even Sandy, if I were him. My name is Geordi La Forge Quintrell. My dad was such a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he named me after his favorite character on the show. I suppose I should be thankful his favorite character wasn’t Worf.

  Anyway, Jessica and Toff showed up at my house the Saturday after Independence Day. It was completely unexpected, because we usually texted before dropping in on each other.

  “What’re you guys doing here?” I asked, happy to see them in any event.

  “We three are going to the movies,” Jessica said.

  That was news to me. The three of us OD’d on movies during the summer, making it a point to catch every single action, sci-fi, comedy, animated, horror, and superhero blockbuster the studios shoveled at the public. So far, we’d seen eight flicks with seven more still to come on our to-do list, but none of those were scheduled for release this weekend.

  “To watch what?” I was already pulling on my sneakers, which shows how little I cared about the answer.

  “I wanna see that new Godzilla movie again,” Toff replied.

  “Cool with me.” I’d spent all my allowance yesterday on graphic novels. Luckily Mom had given me twenty bucks out of the blue at breakfast this morning. She called it an advance on next week’s allowance, something she’d never done before, but I wasn’t about to question her on it. I grabbed the unexpected cash off my dresser and stuffed it in my pocket. “Let’s go.”

  At fifteen—well, fourteen for Jessica—none of us were licensed to drive, so we set out on foot for the twenty-minute walk to our favorite multiplex. We started out chatting happily with each other, but about fifteen minutes later, we sort of lapsed into silence. That wasn’t because we ran out of topics of conversation; we ran out of breath.

  “Whew!” Jessica gasped. “Could it be any hotter?” The pink midlength tank top and cutoff blue jeans she wore left her arms, shoulders, and legs bare. Her light brown skin appeared to be getting browner by the second. She was willowy at six feet, taller than either Toff or me, but one day soon, we were finally going to start gaining on her—I hoped. Because of her height, the rumor going around school this past year was that she was a total lez. I felt bad about that, because she was really pretty and as feminine as any other girl I knew, but she didn’t seem to be all that bothered by the allegation.
r />   “It’s barely noon, and it already feels like the temp has hit a hundred degrees.” Toff lifted the front of his T-shirt and wiped sweat from his face. He had wild glossy brown hair that he kept trimmed short in the summer. His body was lean and athletic, sort of like mine but in a better way, and he had a face that was cute by any standards despite being dotted here and there with tiny red pimples and occasionally weighed down by a hangdog expression. (My face is cuter, in my humble and completely unbiased opinion.)

  “We don’t have that much farther to go,” I pointed out, trying to cheer them on.

  “Who the hell do we have to screw to get a cool breeze around here?” said Jessica.

  “Don’t include me in that,” I protested. “I’m too innocent to know about such things.”

  “Yeah, right, Mr. Jackhammer.” Toff put a fist to his crotch and made rapid, obscene motions.

  My whole neck felt as if it were burning with embarrassment. I looked around quickly and uneasily to see if any passing motorist or pedestrian was offended. No one seemed bothered by Toff’s pantomime except me. Even Jessica laughed it off as she casually started checking text messages on her phone.

  I punched Toff in the shoulder, knocking him off stride. “Stop that. You look like a perv.”

  Toff punched me back, hard. I grabbed my shoulder as a streak of pain shot through it. “Oww-wy,” I groaned.

  Then Toff and I grinned at each other, the affection open and easy between us.

  “Oh my God,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes as she fired off a text. “Why don’t you two just make out already and get it over with?”

  “I’M STARVING. Let’s get something to eat.”

  I looked back at Toff and Jessica bringing up the rear as we emerged from the theater into the sunny, hot afternoon. My stomach growled for the entire last half of the movie, and I had a powerful craving for pizza, but mostly I wasn’t ready to go home yet and wanted to keep hanging with my friends.

  Toff shot a quick glance at Jessica, who said, “No, let’s just head back to your house.”

  “But there’s only fruit and nuts and salad fixings there,” I replied, aware that I was whining like a little kid. “You know, healthy stuff. It’s all my mom buys these days. Who wants that crap? Geordi needs pizza. Come on. The three of us ought to have enough cash to get a large sausage and cheese.”

  Jessica pulled out her phone. “I don’t have any more cash on me. I left my wallet at your house.” She started typing out a text message.

  “Wallet?” I looked at her as if she’d said she’d left her head at my house. “What wallet? You never carried a wallet before.”

  “It was a gift from Toff. He just gave it to me today, right before we came to your house.”

  I looked at Toff, and his mouth was hanging open in what looked a lot like surprise. An instant later, he closed it, nodded solemnly, and said, “Yeah, that’s right. I gave her the wallet… for her birthday, yeah.”

  “Jess’s birthday isn’t until next month,” I pointed out.

  “It was an early birthday present,” Toff shot back.

  “Whatever.” They were obviously up to something, but I was too hungry to try figuring them out. I turned back to Jessica. “Toff and I can spring for the pizza. See? Problem solved.”

  Jessica looked at Toff. Toff coughed and looked at me. “Uh… well….” He seemed slightly embarrassed as his eyes shifted uneasily. “I spent all my money on the movie. And popcorn. You know how expensive that movie theater popcorn is. Sorry, dude.”

  “Fine!” I was in a huff. “I’ll buy a small sausage and cheese pizza and we’ll split it three ways.” A third of a small pizza was barely a snack, but I was desperate for it. And although I could’ve claimed a bigger piece of the pie by virtue of funding the whole thing myself, it simply didn’t feel right to do that to my friends. After all, I couldn’t count the number of times Jessica and Toff had bought lunch or a movie ticket for me when I was short of cash. It was what we did for each other.

  “Well….” Jessica hesitated as she read the response to the text message she’d just sent. She smiled, apparently pleased with the answer she’d gotten. “I think we need to put this to a vote. Show of hands. Who wants greasy, oily, artery-clogging, cardiac city, glue-cheesy, hard crusty, choke-on-it pizza?”

  I felt my face go flat. “I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’ from you, Jess.”

  “Aren’t you smart, Geordi.”

  “I don’t want pizza either,” Toff added.

  “Okay, I’m outvoted, then.” Argh! “So what do you guys want to eat?”

  Jessica appeared thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I could actually have a salad.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” said Toff. “Topped off with some fruit and nuts.”

  “Now where can we get a snack like that?” Jessica looked up as if expecting the answer to write itself across the sky.

  “Fine!” I snapped. “We’ll go to my house!”

  “Oooh. Grouchy.” With the flat of her hand, Jessica whacked the back of my head.

  “Cripes, Jess!”

  “My, my. Still grouchy.” She whacked me again, harder than before. “How do you feel now, Geordi?”

  I clutched the back of my head and forced a grin that probably looked about as friendly as a shark’s mouth. “I’m good.”

  “Wonderful!” Jessica threw one arm around my shoulders and the other around Toff’s. “Let’s go, pretty fellas.”

  WE REACHED my house roughly twenty minutes later, only a little sweaty and a bit out breath. For some reason the trip back didn’t seem as arduous as the trip going.

  “So what’re we up to tonight?” I asked, leading the way across the lawn to the porch. “Video games at Jess’s?”

  “Nope. I’m burned out on games right now,” Jessica replied right away. “Let’s just watch TV or something.”

  Toff groaned. “Shit. The three of us seriously need some dates.”

  I felt relaxed and happy as I unlocked the front door and pushed it open. “Well, I’ll ask Jess out,” I said, looking back at Toff, “and she can ask you out, the three of us go out together, and voilà! Instant date.”

  I waited for Toff to respond, perhaps by kicking me not-so-playfully in the backside. I actually started to dodge away from him, but something ahead of me set off my alarms. There was a rush of movement from that direction, and my instincts told me to get the hell away. I flinched backward as I turned my head to face the oncoming menace, just as a shout blasted outward.

  “Surprise!”

  A short, stunned squeal yipped from my throat. “Oh, wow….”

  There in the living room was my mom, both sets of grandparents, Aunt Rita and Uncle Ronnie, Aunt Jo and Uncle Milt, my four cousins, Carson Meyer, Jessica’s mom and older brother, and six of my friends from the neighborhood. In the middle of this gathering stood my dad. Everyone was beaming at me as if I’d just found the cure for cancer while walking on water. All that adoration put a grin on my face as wide as the state of Tennessee.

  Jessica nudged me in the back, urging me into the living room. Then she and Toff stepped inside, and Toff shut the door as my family and friends surged forward to hug me, pat me on the back, and otherwise congratulate me.

  “We’re so proud of you,” said Aunt Rita.

  “You go, Geordi!” said Uncle Milt.

  “About time,” growled Grandpa Percy. Grandpa Roland, Dad’s dad, kind of stood back and scowled in his usual sourpuss mode.

  “Oh, wow. Wow.” I kept grinning, happy but confused. My birthday was last month, and my parents had treated me, Toff, and Jessica to a day of laser combat at Laser Zone, topped off with pizza, cake, and ice cream, exactly as I’d requested. A surprise party a whole month later was a total… well, surprise. My parents must not have wanted to break with the tradition of partying to commemorate the occasion of my earthly arrival. “Okay, you guys got me good,” I said to Mom and Dad. “But we already celebrated my birthday.”

  “T
his isn’t for your birthday,” Dad said. Then he paused dramatically, waiting for me to get it.

  I didn’t get it. I could feel my grin start to freeze. “Uh…?”

  Dad flung both of his arms out to his left, gesturing at something in that direction. I turned.

  That’s when I saw the huge, rainbow-colored banner that had somehow managed to escape my attention, hanging from the ceiling between the living room and dining room. It had a big picture of smiling me at the top, and below that, in bold, black letters, were the words, “Geordi Quintrell: Out of the Closet and Loving It!”

  “Happy coming-out day, Geordi!” everybody shouted.

  And then the voice of Diana Ross—the singer after whom my mom was named and whose songs my parents had played in heavy rotation for as long as I could remember—erupted from the house’s sound system warbling, “I’m Coming Out.”

  My body went cold all the way down to my toes.

  What the fu…?

  LET’S BACK up for a bit.

  Remember when Dad caught me doing the jack-handed solo to the sight of Corbin Bleu’s naked butt? Dad considered my admission of the obvious as the moment I came out to my parents. Never mind that it was more a matter of my dad barging into the closet than me coming out of it. He wanted to commemorate the occasion, so the next day he faked Mom out and sneaked me away to my favorite five-star restaurant—Burger King—for dinner, and then we went to a movie.

  Two weeks later, twelve-year-old Jessica took thirteen-year-old me up to the attic in her house and asked if we could make out.

  She seemed uneasy about the idea herself, so I said, “Why do you want to do that?”

  “My friend Teri made out with this guy from school. She says it was incredible and made her feel terrific. I don’t want to miss out on incredible and terrific.”

  I’d never made out with anyone up to that point, and I didn’t want to miss out on incredible and terrific either. Plus, I was just plain curious about the act. “Okay. Let’s go for it.”