I didn’t point out that Trent was sharing Chip with me in particular. That we studied together. And I’d even been to his house. And sometimes, we sat together on the bus, and talked about nothing, and Chip rested his hand on my knee.
I couldn’t point any of that out.
I still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Well,” Gabe said, “I know I’m supposed to have school spirit or something, but I hope he gets creamed at the homecoming game.”
I grinned.
“That would require him getting off the bench.”
TIRED OLD QUEERS
That night, Landon cooked another one of his famous dinners for us: asparagus risotto with Italian sausage. After, we lay on my bed facing each other, with one of my arms under Landon’s head and the other draped over his hip.
Landon had his own hands folded together in front of him. I loved how, when the light caught them just right, his gray eyes had little streaks of blue in them.
Landon Edwards had beautiful eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“How beautiful you are.”
He beamed at me, and leaned in to kiss me on the nose.
“You’re beautiful too.”
I shook my head, but he gently grabbed my chin to stop me.
“You are.”
“Thanks.”
“I wish you weren’t so down on yourself all the time.”
I looked down at Landon’s hands so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
“I can’t help it sometimes.”
That’s what being depressed does. It’s like a supermassive black hole between your sense of self and your actual self, and all you can see is the way you look through the gravitational lensing of your own inadequacies.
“Hey. Don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say sorry all the time.” Landon rested his hand on my cheek. “I wish I could reach in and scoop all that depression out of your brain. So you could be happy.”
I wrapped my fingers around his. “I am happy,” I said. “I’m just depressed too.”
My depression was part of me. Just like being gay was.
A part, but not the whole.
Landon bit his lip. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m just . . .”
I thought about Dad, and his depressive episode.
And I thought about Sohrab, who was worried maybe he was depressed too.
And I thought about how sometimes, telling people I was depressed felt like its own kind of coming out.
“Being depressed doesn’t mean I’m not happy. It’s like, happy is one color. And depressed is another color. And you can paint happy, and then paint a little depression around the edges.”
Landon traced his index finger down the bridge of my nose. I shivered a little.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
He traced his thumb along my bottom lip, and then down to my chin.
“Sorry I missed your game.”
“We lost anyway,” I said.
“Hey.”
“It’s okay.”
Landon’s thumb moved down to my collarbone, feather-light strokes that gave me goose bumps.
“Homecoming is coming up. Isn’t it?”
I swallowed hard. My heart thumped.
“Yeah,” I squeaked.
I cleared my throat.
“So.”
“So?”
“Have you thought about . . . maybe . . . going together?”
“Um.”
I’d never thought about that before.
How did you ask another guy to homecoming?
How did anyone ever ask anyone to homecoming?
“Wow,” Landon said. He started to roll away from me.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s just, I’ve never gone to a dance before.”
“Never?”
“Not a school one. I’ve been to plenty of Persian dances before. But those are different.”
Landon chuckled.
“I guess . . . I never really thought about it before.”
“And now?”
My face felt like a fusion reactor.
“Do you want to go to homecoming with me?”
* * *
I said bye to Landon and then curled up on the couch with my new American Lit reading: The Chocolate War, which was even more of a let-down than The Catcher in the Rye.
We had to do an essay on its “themes,” which as far as I could tell were “people are awful and bullies always win.”
I yawned, marked my place, and went to make a bowl of matcha. I had fifty more pages to get through, and I knew I’d never make it without something to keep me awake and focused.
“Will you be able to sleep after all that matcha?” Oma asked as I sieved the emerald powder.
“I’ll fall asleep without it.”
“Is there any water left?”
“Yeah.”
Oma made a pot of Genmaicha while I whisked my matcha. I used the M-method, just like Mr. Edwards taught me, moving the chasen—the bamboo whisk—in the shape of an M to get the optimal froth, though I threw in an occasional sweep around the circumference of the bowl to grab any particles I might have missed.
Oma and Grandma had set up on the couch, each with her own iPad, playing one of those puzzle games where you match colored dots on a grid to make them vanish. I took my book and folded myself into the armchair with my legs splayed out.
If I’d been back in Yazd, with Mamou and Babou, maybe we would have talked about my day. And drank tea, and eaten dessert, and shared old family stories.
But instead, we sat in silence, except for the music of Oma’s game.
I found my place and started reading again, but I’d only gone a paragraph before Grandma asked, without looking up from her iPad, “What were you and Landon talking about?”
“Huh?”
“In your room.”
I blushed.
I knew we hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
Why did I feel guilty?
“Just talked. About homecoming.”
“That’s coming up?” Oma asked.
“Yeah.” I looked down at my book. “We’re gonna go together.”
“Really? Your school’s okay with it?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Grandma got this wistful look in her eyes. “Just like that?”
“What?”
She locked her iPad and looked at Oma for a long moment. And then she said, “You know, when we were growing up, two guys never could have gone to a dance together. And we were lucky we were married long before Oma ever came out.”
Oma patted Grandma’s hand.
“There were times I thought we might not get to stay married, once I started transitioning. But now . . .” She pursed her lips for a second. “You and Landon can just walk down the street holding hands like it’s no big deal.”
“Um.”
“What your grandmother means,” Grandma said, “is that things are so much easier for you now. You don’t have to fight for acceptance as much as we did.”
I blinked.
Some days it felt like I’d done nothing but fight to be accepted. For being depressed. For being Iranian. For being gay.
I couldn’t tell them that, though.
Not when they were finally opening up to me a little bit.
“But you know, you’re always going to have it easier than us,” Grandma said. “As a cis man. You’ll always have it easier in life.”
“Oh.”
I sank back into my chair, my ears aflame.
I didn’t know what was happening.
It felt like my grandmothers were mad at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
Oma studied me for a second. “You don’t have to be. You’ve got your own problems. It’s not like it’s exactly easy now. We’re just a couple of tired old queers.”
I shook my head.
Grandma chuckled. “We are. Spend enough of your life fighting and you’ll be tired too.”
“I wish you didn’t have to fight.”
Oma shrugged. “It is what it is.”
I’d never talked to Oma and Grandma like this. Not ever.
I didn’t want them to stop.
“Um.”
I picked up my matcha and took a sip. And another.
And then I said, “Maybe we can go to Pride together next summer.”
Grandma sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve done our marching. You were so little you probably don’t remember, but we used to be up here every month marching for one thing or another. For years. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. DOMA. Prop 8.” Oma shrugged. “After a while you run out of steam.” I didn’t even know Grandma and Oma had gone to protests before.
I wanted to know every protest they’d ever been to. What their signs said. What they chanted.
But before I could ask, Grandma opened up her iPad and started playing again. And after a second, Oma did too. Conversation over.
I didn’t get my grandmothers.
I used to think there was a wall between me and Mom’s side of the family: a sort of force field that time and distance had created between us.
There was no wall between me and Grandma and Oma. Just a door. But no matter how many times I opened that door, they always closed it again.