Along These Highways

Please Don’t

61 Please Don’t “Please don’t leave me alone,” Jonathan said. “You’re all I have.” Hearing those words coming out of his mouth, Jonathan hated himself . Is there anything more pathetic than begging to be loved? Who would want to be loved out of pity, just to not be alone? Jonathan would. Stephen rolled his eyes at this, and Jonathan grabbed him by the lapel of his black corduroy blazer. Stephen grabbed Jonathan by the wrist and, without much effort or force, made Jonathan side-scoot away an ass-length on the bench they shared, so as to not have his elbow bent back. Stephen gave Jonathan a look like you would at a dog who’d just pissed on the rug, or a kid who brought home a failing report card not for lack of effort but because he was just plain dumb. “Don’t touch me like that,” he said and let go Jonathan’s skinny wrist. “I’m sorry, baby,” Jonathan said. He put his palms on Stephen’s face and ran his fingertips through the hair on his temples. “Don’t touch me like that, either. And don’t call me baby.” Stephen pulled his too-tight blazer as shut as he could get it across his muscular chest, as if he had any shame left to hide. “I just don’t think this is me,” he said. “It’s not who I am.” “Oh, really?” Jonathan got up from the bench and kicked an empty Coke bottle that had fallen out of an overflowing trash can nearby. He’d meant for the bottle to fly into the water, but it died midair and landed only a foot away in the large rocks that separated the bench from the bay. “Now you’re second-guessing everything? Are you still afraid to tell your parents, or are you just in denial? Because you sure suck dick like a fag.” It felt good to attack, to level accusations and to play on insecurities and open wounds. But looking at Stephen, he didn’t see someone who was hurt. He saw someone taking the high road, and it made him feel all the smaller and shamed him for wanting love, and for wanting to cause hurt, and for wanting. Stephen was there, young and athletic and beautiful as he Rene S. Perez II 62 was, condescending from perfection to break up with Jonathan, just as he had done to be with him. They’d driven out to the park and sat down on a cold, windy night so that Stephen could be rid of Jonathan. Just over a hundred yards behind their bench was a huge series of connected wooden castles and turrets built not too long ago at Cole Park. The city of Corpus Christi called it Kids Place. It was built recently enough for Stephen to have played there as a kid, and that fact made Jonathan feel dirty. When he was a kid, the place was a couple of swing sets and three indiscernible statues of whales that had no real playground functionality. When he was in high school, Jonathan drove a girl out here to this park. After she gave him his first hand job, he told her he might be gay. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I mean us, me and you. Me and anybody.” There was compassion in his eyes, and it angered Jonathan to be regarded in such a way by someone just a few years out of high school. “So that’s how it is? I show you who you are, I give you some fashion tips and take you to some clubs, and you get your strength up to go out and cruise the world? I love you, and you up and leave me?” Jonathan heard his own voice cracking, so he punctuated his stance. “You fucking asshole.” “Well, I mean, yeah. That is how it is. I’m young. I’m at school and I’m meeting new people every day. And all you do is work and then hang out with me. I don’t want a boyfriend, much less a husband.” Jonathan looked at the outline the wooden castles in the distance cut in the night sky, the Harbor Bridge unlit and dead behind them on the horizon . It used to have lights that ran up its supports, making it look glamorous and somewhat futuristic. Now even the streetlights on...