Superheroes

Rated T for slash and language.

Because We All Want To Be Superheroes

She’s yelling again, standing in the doorway of my room with her face scrunched up like a child’s.

Her voice is like a siren, shrill and constant.  Annoying.  Desperately, I try to tune her out without showing anything on my face.  It works.  She says something about me not caring one way or the other.  I want to tell her that she’s wrong, but I don’t have the strength.

Eventually, her tirade trickles down to nothing, and she stops, abruptly, like in mid-thought.  She does that a lot.  Like she forgets what she’s going to say, and decides to just leave a sentence unfinished, expecting everyone else to understand somehow.

She’s disappointed.  I can see it in her eyes, now that I have the courage to look up.  I know I should be disappointed too but all I feel is a simmering anger, boiling just beneath the surface of my skin.

Her gaze moves from me to the papers scattered on my desk, papers that I don’t have the stomach to read anymore because it only makes the failure more apparent.  She sighs, deeply, like all of the weight of this is on her alone.  She tells me, softly now, but with a quietness that is almost as annoying as the siren voice, that I’m simply trying to do too much.  No discipline, she says, no patience.

My mother looks at me and says, “You can’t do it all, Chris.  Not unless you’re Superman or something.”

Yeah, Mom.  Because we all want to be superheroes.

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My name is Christian.  

I kinda hate my name.

(Because people always automatically assume I’m the most religious asshole ever, and because it’s paired with the worst family name to ever have.)

So I get everyone to call me Chris.

I like to think I’m some sort of hero in disguise.

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There’s this guy at school.

It’s funny that I should say that, because it’s always seemed to me that the worst stories start this way.

I’ve thought about it a bit, and it’s not so funny anymore.

His name is Stephen.  He’s a little the same as me.  He hates his name too, for one thing, so most everyone just calls him Steve.  I call him Steve too, but in my head, he’s always Stephen.  

We’re not really friends.  I mean, we are.  We hang out and stuff in during our breaks, and we’ve snuck into each other’s gen ed classes a few times too.  But we don’t really see each other outside of the building where we go to college.  We don’t really know who the other is outside of school, so I can’t truly say that we’re friends.  And yet, I feel closer to him than I feel to anyone else I know.

Stephen is known as a handsome guy, I guess.  He gets girls and all that.  I don’t, although I’ve been told that I’m not bad-looking.  Maybe it’s because I hang out with Stephen so much that I get overlooked.  He’s bold and charismatic, talkative and outrageous, and a bit of an idiot, while I’m quiet, shy, meek and too smart for my own good.  He wears Lacoste and designer shoes that he can’t afford.  I wear long-sleeved button-down shirts, black jeans, leather shoes and glasses.  He has three piercings in his left ear that he fiddles with when he’s trying to talk his way into a girl’s pants.  I’ve considered getting my ears pierced, but never got beyond thinking it.

So you see, we couldn’t be more different.  We’re the odd, mismatched, painfully cliché pair of school buddies that you normally only see in sitcoms and bad teenage movies.

Sometimes I wish I was in a bad teenage movie.  Because that way, at least I’m sure to have a happy ending.

I’m in love with Stephen.

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When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Batman.  Not for the reasons you might expect an eight-year-old liking Batman, though.  Most kids my age adored Superman for his super strength and heat vision, while others admired Spider-Man for his infallible spider sense and ability to climb walls unassisted.  

I loved Batman because he was smart.  Lacking superhuman powers, Bruce Wayne put his brains to the test instead.  He created gadgets and vehicles that fascinated me, and a hideout which made me green with childish envy.  He spent his nights selflessly scouring the city for criminals to apprehend.  Also, to me and my silly eight-year-old mind, Batman seemed a little lonely.  Even back then, I was very aware that Gotham’s richest man had a gaping wound in his heart that even his perky, trusty sidekick couldn’t fill.

Although I only cursorily watched Batman TV shows and movies after my childhood, I never really forgot the effect that the character had on me.  Sometimes, I even had the gall to compare myself to Batman.  I was the stunningly intelligent, stingingly lonely Christian during those moments, the boy with no destiny and no purpose, fighting crime simply because it had to be fought.

Except there was never any crime for me to fight, and even when there was, I wasn’t brave enough to face it.

One time I saw a guy getting mugged across the street.  It was late and I was walking home with a friend, whose house I would be staying at that night.  Some thug came bounding out from an alley and whacked another pedestrian across the face, then shook him and shouted for his wallet and wristwatch.  I stopped for only a second, safely out of sight across the street, in the shadow of a building, and for that one fleeting second I heard this distinct voice in my head crying: “Chris-man, go!”

It was the call of the superhero within me.  But I didn’t answer it.

I turned away from the scene and left, walking only a little faster than before to catch up with my friend, as I listened to the sound of the poor man being beaten into the sidewalk.

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I’ve been in love with Stephen ever since my second year in college.  He had been in college longer than me but had switched to my program as I was arriving, so we were in all the same concentration classes.  

During those times, he was a constant presence in my life.  At home, I was alone, of course, but I didn’t consider those moments “living”.  I didn’t do anything at home worth calling life.  I stayed in my second floor room all evening and did my homework, or played on my computer, while my parents and sisters moved around in the kitchen and living room underneath me, close enough so I could hear their voices, but far enough so I couldn’t ever hear what they were saying.

At home, I lived in a sort of bubble, my own secret hideout.  At school, around him, I could be myself.  I could shed the mild-mannered alter ego.  I could wear my emblem blazing proudly across my chest.

At times, I could allow myself to think that I was his sidekick, that he was the mastermind and I was the follower, the cheerful helper.  But now that I think about it, we were more than that.  We were partners in crime, or two sides of the same coin.  Because it’s clear to me now that he’s done just as much wrong as I have.

We had sinned together, like the best of friends.

It was no secret that Stephen actually went for both guys and girls.  No one really spoke of it, though.  Our classmates were the relaxed sort, open-minded and all that.  So no one really cared who went for whom, or what.  Which suited me just fine.

Me, I had been hooked on guys for a while.  I had dated a girl in high school, and we had even gone to prom together, but on the first week of college, I had broken up with her, on the grounds that our relationship was “stale” and “dishonest”.  So we had gone our separate ways.  She still acted friendly to me, but I avoided her when I could.  Somehow, speaking to her, her with her sweet airs and polite conversation, took an immense toll on me, tired me out, so to speak.  She was so good and nice and perfect that it annoyed me to no end, so I shunned her, expelled any and all thought of her from my mind, and after a while, just forgot about her.

Stephen was an extraordinary find after a girl like that.  He was, as I mentioned before, of a certain, inalterable presence.  He was a constantly burning flame, drawing people to him with his warmth and his light.  Most times, he didn’t discriminate.  He was easy to get along with, and had many friends, most of whom I didn’t know.  As far as I could tell, he paid attention to almost everyone, like some great universal friend, the guy that everyone knew.

But what everyone also knew was that when he set his sights on someone, he wouldn’t let go until he had gotten what he wanted.  And when he was in that state, nothing and no one else mattered, like he was alone in the world, just him and that person.

I was still a virgin back then, and excruciatingly shy still, so coming out and relaying my feelings to him directly wasn’t my first choice of strategy.  I had long since decided to bide my time, telling myself, stupidly maybe, that “one day” I would get my chance to speak to him honestly.  But for some reason, that day didn’t seem too keen on coming.  Or maybe, I was the one who was resisting the fact.

It’s wrong!

So life went on as usual, tinted by that tense, vague, familiar feeling you get from knowingly procrastinating on your homework, or being somewhere you should clearly not be.  My watery, wishy-washy resolve kept my existence uneventful and safe.

Then, I unexpectedly got my chance.

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One time, shortly after we had first met, I asked Stephen why he did what he did.
“Steve,” I said.  “Why don’t you date?”
Of course, by then I was quite aware of his tendency to not date, just as he was aware of mine.  But even in that similarity, we were different.
He looked over to me and shrugged, saying, “I dunno.  Too much trouble?”
“Mm.  I guess so.”
“Dude, I’ve been in enough relationships to know it blows.  They make you miserable.  Suck the fucking life outta you.  So now I just do what’s fun.”
“The obvious.”
“Duh.  And that way, I stay happy.  So it can’t be bad, right?”
And that was the end of that conversation.

Since then, we didn’t really talk about that stuff anymore.  I didn’t ever tell him that I thought he was wrong, that a relationship was something wonderful and selfless, not something troublesome and draining.  

I think it was hard for me to stand up to him on that point because I knew that he was a little right.  My own experiences were proof of that.  I hadn’t ever had a sweetheart I didn’t regret having at some point.  All the weird, uncomfortable memories always overpowered the sweeter ones.

So I couldn’t really say that I believed in love.  I had lived long enough to develop a mild distrust of it.  But I guess there was always something, some naive optimism written into me, that was constantly making me search it out.

I’m a combination of the heroic and the forlorn, the righteous and the tragically desperate.  

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The day it happened, my mother yelled at me again, for reasons that I can’t even remember.

School was a blur and my mind could hardly keep up, although it seemed that my body was doing just fine.  I moved systematically through the building, attending class as usual, speaking to friends as usual, but I really wasn’t all there, like someone had stepped on a power cord up there and neglected to plug it back in.

After my last class, I went to the boys’ washroom on the ground floor, and there was Steve.

“You jerk, you jerk!”

There was a girl.  A girl in the boys’ washroom.  My mind was officially blown.  But then she turned away from Steve and brushed roughly past me, pausing only to scream once again “You fucking jerk!” before she whirled out of the room.

The door swung closed behind her, and we stood staring at each other in silence.

Then he sighed, and shook his head, and turned to use the urinal.

I went to the urinals too and selected one two spaces from his.  We zipped up at the same time, and I moved quickly to the sink to wash my hands.  I scrubbed like I always did, making sure my fingers were absolutely clean.  In the mirror, I saw him looking at me as though amused.  He sidled up beside me and washed his hands in the adjacent sink.

Over the sound of the running water, he said, “Sorry you had to see that.”
Still in the mirror, I smiled at him and shrugged like I was unconcerned.
“It’s fine.  Means you’re single again, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“I’m glad.”
“Yeah?  Why?”
“It’s just...better that way.”  I paused under the pretence of reaching for the paper to dry my hands with.  Somehow, I had the feeling that I had to choose my next words carefully.

His eyebrows in the mirror were arched at me.  Even indirectly, I couldn’t meet his eyes.

Slowly, I said to him: “I feel better when you’re single anyway.  It makes things easier.”
“How?”
“It just does.”
“You want me to yourself?”
“Something like that.”
“I never saw you as the jealous type.”
I smiled despite myself, continuing to towel my hands over and over even though they were already completely dry.
“I’m not.  It just feels better.  So I don’t feel like...”
“Like what, Chris?”
“Like...like a sidekick without a superhero.  Kinda like that.”
“Pff.  Dude.  That’s so...”
I frowned to myself and finally crumpled up the paper towel and tossed it out, turning away so that Stephen wouldn’t see the discomfort in my face.
“It’s what?  Really childish, huh?”
“Nah,” he said as he came up beside me and dropped his paper in the same bin.  His voice was very close as he said offhandedly: “I was going to say ‘gay’, but on second thought, it’s not so bad.”

I turned toward him as he turned away, but I still caught the glint in his dark eyes, that familiar spark that I thought would never be directed toward me.

“Maybe I do have superpowers,” Stephen told me in a weird, grave-sounding voice, a voice that I’d never heard before from him.  “X-ray vision, maybe?  ‘Cause it looks like I’ve seen right through you.”
“Dude.  Worst pick up line ever.”
He shook his head, laughing.  “I know, man.  Sorry.”

And then he backed me up against the counter, where I was already waiting with open arms.

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I lay on the floor of Stephen’s messy bedroom, humming the original Batman theme song under my breath.

My body ached and my skin burned with some strange inner heat.  Listlessly, I rolled onto my side and toward his bed, liking how the sheets were tangling around my legs and waist.  The floor was wood, smooth and cool, but not cool enough to dissipate the fever coming from my skin.

I stretched and sat up as he emerged from the adjoined bathroom.  His brows came together and the corner of his lips twitched with amusement as he saw me there on his floor.
“What happened to you?” he asked from the doorway.
Comfortably, I leaned against the side of his bed, my elbows up on the still-warm mattress.
“I fell,” I said simply.

He shook his head at me – a familiar gesture by then – and came toward me without hesitation.  His bare arms were hot as he embraced me, the warmth consuming me as we fell against each other and onto the floor.

We began again, right there on the floor of his basement bedroom.  I think I may have resisted a little, perhaps for show, but the moment that villainous spark appeared in his eyes I stopped, and let him.