Jordan thought the call would come shortly after posting a link to the story on Facebook. That moment, hitting post, should have been the beginning. After all, the story was free to read, as long as you scrolled past the banner ads and could handle the grey Courier font on a mustard yellow backdrop. But that was three years ago, and Harry said nothing. Harry’s wife said nothing.
Now the beginning is here, one week after the book came out. It’s the beginning because Harry’s name lights up the cell phone screen. Harry never calls Jordan, not unless he’s responding to Jordan, and even then it’s days later, a begrudging politeness forcing him to hit call back. But actually calling Jordan, reaching out, when was the last time he did that? Not any time Jordan can remember. And certainly not now.
Jordan is in Minneapolis, microwaving his cold coffee. He walks in the living room to escape the appliance’s drone, then sits on the couch. He’s both relieved and disappointed to receive the call at home. Relieved because he can focus all his attention on it. Disappointed because, what an experience that would be, trying to keep his voice down, people at the grocery store or on the bus staring at him as he wondered how much they were putting together. A lot to mine from an experience like that.
“Hi, Harry,” Jordan says. When they were kids, in the early ’90s, Jordan couldn’t believe he had a friend named Harry. Such a Grandpa name. Then came Harry Potter, Prince Harry, Harry Styles. Now Jordan finds it funny. Anglophiles or ahead of the times Harry’s parents are not.
“Hi Jordan. Are you free? Do you have a minute?” Harry is trying to keep his voice bright and positive, but the speed at which he runs through the questions gives away his tension. It’s the call.
“Sure. What’s up?” Jordan never questioned that he would play it this way, like he has no idea what’s coming. He even leans back on his couch, free arm draped across the back cushions, as if Harry is there to see just how relaxed he can be. Harry has been feigning ignorance for so long, why can’t Jordan? But the moment he commits, he foresees the tangle of coded language to follow, all the waste produced when one person is unwilling to say what they mean. Anyone who’s talked with a barely-closeted gay man knows what this is like. But the path is set now and he can’t bring himself to break it. Besides, he’s curious to hear what words Harry is willing to say.
“Actually, I’m calling about the story,” Harry says. “The one in your collection. The Boy Scout one. Karen read it.”
“Just now?”
“The book came out last week, so yeah, just now.”
“Sorry, I just…that story was published three years ago. In a magazine.”
“When my friend puts out a book, my wife is going to go pick it up and read through and tell me about every story.”
“She didn’t read it before?”
“She read it now. It’s in the book.”
“She didn’t like the story or what? You sound like you’re upset.”
Harry huffs on the other end, like it’s some great injustice to have to say it. But Jordan will wait until he says it. “She already knows we were in Boy Scouts together. And basically everything in that Aaron kid. I mean, you said their moms worked together, he led quiz bowl. The glasses description. My parents still have that photo on top of their piano. It’s like everything she knows about us. It’s our whole childhood.”
“Lots of kids had those glasses back then. Look, writers do this all the time. We take things from our real lives, just little elements here and there, because that’s what makes a story feel real. So yeah I took your glasses.”
“Little elements.”
“And the picture on the piano. The two kids in the story are close, so I mined my closest friendship when I was–”
“It’s my house. My house from when I was growing up.”
“This is how inspiration works.”
“It is literally about me. The way you describe his mom is exactly my mom. Exactly. Even that necklace she used to wear.”
Jordan wants to ask, is that really how you see your mom? It’s a tempting question, considering that, in the story, Jordan compares her to a cloud of volcanic ash, intent on preserving human bodies via suffocation and burial. But now is not the time. Harry already sounds on the verge of an aneurysm.
“What do you want me to say?” Jordan says. “I took a thing that really happened to us, and I fictionalized it. I did it. Come on, didn’t you see this coming? Have you not read anything I wrote? This was a significant part of my life. Of course I’m going to–”
“You never dragged me into it before.” Harry is insistent, intense yet quiet, as if Karen might be in the other room. No way she is. For one, it’s the middle of a workday. Harry is likely at his office, door locked with an In a meeting sign taped to the outside. Only a writer bum like Jordan lounges around at home on a Tuesday. Even if it were a weekend, Harry would wait for Karen to run errands before calling. He would not make this call if she was within ten miles. “Maybe that fishing one, but this, Jesus, you might as well have named him Harry. You might as well have put my picture in it.”
“You know how many times I’ve gotten this? The story is about me, thing? Every male friend I have– ”
“The story is about me! It is exactly about us! She’s already told her friend Sierra. I know she has.”
“Did you talk to Karen about it?”
“About what?”
Jordan needs a second to process Harry’s confusion. Does Harry honestly think that by “it,” Jordan means how they used to fuck as teens? Of course Jordan didn’t mean that. Jordan has met Karen many times. She is a lovely, caring woman who doesn’t deserve to have every nasty white bitch in America suddenly take her name. She is nothing like that. A meme Karen would flip out and have a Jerry Springer moment if she discovered her husband used to have sex with his male best friend. Real Karen would break down sobbing and yet still try to be understanding of Harry’s feelings, past and present.
“Did you talk to her about my story?” Jordan says.
“Of course,” Harry says. “I told you she showed it to me.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it wasn’t true. I said you make stuff up. It’s fiction.”
“There you go.”
“She doesn’t believe me, Jordan. All the stuff you… She doesn’t believe me.”
“Would she believe me?” Jordan says. The obvious answer is no. Karen is sweet and endlessly supportive, but she’s no fool. Her management position in a health insurance giant is proof enough of that. But there’s obvious and there’s oblivious.
“She might,” Harry says. “It would help. Yeah, I think she would believe you. She always says you’re honest. She says that’s what she likes about you.”
Honest. Straight-girl code for “my gay friend speaks his mind and doesn’t give two fucks what you think.” Honesty as stereotype performance.
It takes Jordan a minute to recover. Going off on that tangent will not help things. “So you want the honest guy to call and lie to her.”
“Just tell her it’s fiction. That’s not a lie.”
Harry’s reasoning is so pathetic that Jordan has to pause again and take a breath.
“What about next time she sees your mom?”
“That’s… I’ll deal with it. I can still get it under control.”
“I don’t think…” Jordan almost says that line from The Princess Bride: I don’t think that word means what you think it means. That obviously won’t do. Other variations pass through his mind, and he settles on, “What is it you’re trying to control?”
“Oh, don’t,” Harry says. “Don’t even fucking try. Are you serious?”
“It’s a relevant question,” Jordan says.
“What, you think this story is going to push me?”
“Why would you need to hide things from your past?”
“I’m going to suddenly break down and drive all the way to see you?”
“She’s your wife,” Jordan says. “I don’t get why you can’t be honest with her.”
“I can’t believe you would do this to me. All these years.” Harry’s voice is starting to crack, and falls into a full-on rumbling quaver when he says “years.” He sounds like the Goat Boy character from SNL, and Jordan chastises himself again for letting the cultural references of their youth poison this very real moment.
“If you would just tell Karen, she would totally–” .
“And, I mean, just artistically, a Boy Scouts story? A fucking Boy Scouts story? I don’t read the kind of stories you write, but I have to think, isn’t that done already? Like…like fucking cowboys eating pudding?”
This is meant as an insult, but Jordan smiles. It’s a South Park reference, from an episode they watched together. Jordan isn’t the only one letting pop culture in. This is the common language they speak, one of many dialects they share.
“I’m just being honest,” Jordan says.
Harry continues. “You always used to hate movies for being stereotypical, and then you’ve got this fucking story. It’s like a joke. It’s a like a parody of itself. What’s next? Like a pool boy?”
References aside, Jordan can only ignore so many insults. “I don’t think Boy Scout stories are a genre.”
“She tells people all the time that I’m an Eagle Scout.”
“And even if it is, like, as an idea, it sounds silly, it doesn’t matter. The familiar is fine as long as you expose something new in it.”
“Oh, wow. The familiar is fine… What did you say? How did you say that? Fuck, you really have gone overboard.” Harry is trying to sound angry, but his voice keeps breaking, and the rush of his breath in the microphone shows just how desperately he is trying to hold back tears. “You going to start quoting me, like, French poetry next? What’s the big thing now? What are the literary bullshit… What’s hot? What do you have to do to get on NPR?”
“Nothing I did is unusual. I’m not the first guy to basically be autobiographical in his fiction. And look, it works. I got a book. You know how many writers never get a book?”
“I thought you were my friend.” Harry’s words come out half human speech, half mournful whale song. The attempt to hold it together has passed. His eyes will be shut, his nose and cheeks red, tears running over his thin upper lip and into his downturned mouth. Jordan can see that face so clearly, more clearly than he has in years, no matter how many times he’s tried to picture it in happiness, no matter the intervening years of polite dinners and drinks, no matter that Harry now sports a full beard instead of soft, blond fuzz.
“I’m sorry. I did this for me, Harry. Not to hurt you.” If Harry hears Jordan’s words, he doesn’t acknowledge it, which is fine. The words are only half true.
“Please call her,” Harry says, the tears on his lips causing the P’s in his words to pop. “Please call her. I’ll text you the number. You just have to tell her it’s made up, that’s all. Just… you took things from our childhood, and made up the rest.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all you have to tell her.”
“Okay.”
“Will you really?”
“I’ll call her.”
“Thank you, Jordan. Thank you.”
Not a minute later, and a message pops up. A number, Houston area code. It’s where they live now, and where Karen grew up. She wanted to go home, so Harry followed. Jordan taps his phone to call before he can think about it.
The phone rings, and Jordan stands, begins pacing the room. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say. First, there’s what Harry wants him to say. It makes sense, as long as you don’t look too close. The short story is only three thousand words, but it spans nearly six years. What’s he supposed to say if she asks about that? He’s always crumbled under her innocent curiosity. The first time they met, she dove right into the dreaded “when did you know” question, and instead of replying “when did you know you were straight?” he talked openly about watching The Wonder Years as a little kid, totally lost as to why a handsome boy like Kevin Arnold gave a shit about Wendy. His first crush, Fred Savage. He never told anyone that.
Karen answers and says “Hello?” the way many people their generation and older do, as if she’s picking up an old rotary phone and doesn’t see Jordan’s name on her screen.
“Hey Karen, it’s Jordan. Sorry to call in the middle of the day. How are you?”
“Um, good. Busy, actually. I have a meeting in a minute.” She does sound distracted, like she’s holding the phone between her head and ear while gathering things off her desk.
“I’m sorry, I can call another time.”
“No, what is it?”
“Well, I just talked to Harry, and he was concerned. He knows you read my story collection, and he thinks you might think the Boy Scout one is about me and him. I was just calling to tell you it’s not. None of that happened. I just used stuff from my childhood and his to make it more real. To make it read real.”
“Okay,” she says.
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. I don’t think you’d lie to me. It’s just… the story was uncomfortable to read.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”
“And I appreciate that you called, and that it’s not true, it’s just that… Did Harry tell you we’re trying to have kids?”
“No, he didn’t. That’s great. I think you’ll make great parents.”
“Thanks. The trouble is, well, we’re having trouble. We’re going to do in vitro. It’s just, Harry… he says it’s just stress, with his brother sick, and his supervisor is so awful to him. Has he talked about that with you?”
“No. We haven’t talked much recently.”
“His boss makes these contradictory demands, makes him work late. He makes Harry co-present at these conferences he doesn’t want to do, and you know Harry hates speaking in front of people. All this stuff. And it’s all gotten to Harry and so he suggested in vitro. But I read your story, and all that time with his boss, and it makes me think…”
He finally gets it, finally reads between the lines of “in vitro” and “stress.” Jordan feels the thrill of confirmation, but also the horror of Karen’s suspicions.
“It’s all made up,” Jordan says. “All of it. I used details from our childhood, but that’s it. All the rest is made up. Sex sells, so I included sex. And it ends sad because every literary short story ends sad. You should hang out with these people. A bunch of depressing alcoholics.” He tries to tell the last part like a joke, to cheer her up, but doesn’t get a laugh out of her. Maybe it’s too sad to laugh at. “If Harry says it’s stress, then it’s stress. I think you two should do in vitro.”
“I’m sorry to drop all this on you.”
“It’s fine.”
“You were just writing a story.”
“I should have never used Harry’s parents’ house. I wasn’t thinking how that would look, how people would take it.”
“God, I’m sorry, I really need to go,” she says. Jordan imagines that, besides prepping for her meeting, she now needs to visit the restroom to dry her eyes and hide her tear streaks. “I appreciate you calling. I hope you’ll come visit us soon.”
“I will. Goodbye, Karen.”
Jordan hangs up and holds his phone to his abdomen, like that microwave receiver might settle his suddenly queasy stomach. Karen is kind, she is loving, and those two things can sometimes hide how sharp she is. He remembers their wedding day, when he finally got a moment alone with Harry. What he wanted to say to Harry was, “She seems nice. Are you sure you want to do this to her?” Instead, he just gave Harry a hug and wished him the best. He should have said it. Instead, she had to find out via a story. What did she say? Something about his story and…time with Harry’s boss. The boss he worked late with and traveled to conferences with. Jordan was so focused on his own role he didn’t hear that part.
Jordan feels inspiration for a new text to Harry. He types it and hits send while his blood is up, and before any pesky doubts might deter him.
Just talked to Karen. I tried. But you know what she said? She said you can’t keep it up long enough to get her pregnant. Yet you have plenty of time for your boss. Can you keep it up for him?
Jordan expects to wait ten minutes or more for Harry’s response. Harry never responds to texts quickly. But the reply appears in less than a minute.
I don’t understand you. We were kids. I never loved you. Why can’t you let it go?
Jordan scoffs. Of all the things a gutless simp like Harry could say. Of all the blatant lies. Never loved him? After all they’d done together? Not on that first night of Boy Scout camp, between sixth and seventh grade, the two of them meeting on a sweaty Kansas summer, wary of other boys sleeping in the tent so they moved closer, whispering in one another’s ears, cheeks touching, hot breath spiked with Skittles and Starbursts, bodies slipping out from under the sleeping bags to meet on the relieving cold nylon of the tent footing? Or a seventh-grade sleepover in Harry’s basement, watching HBO’s Real Sex just for a fleeting glimpse of a penis, hands in each other’s pants? Or another Boy Scout trip, their tent pitched as far as possible from everyone else, humidity not a bane but a pleasure as they slid across one another, slick with sweat and semen, cicadas screaming with an incessant horniness that paled in comparison to what throbbed deep in their torsos? Or in high school, after they unsuccessfully tried anal for the first time? Jordan felt so inadequate, unable to relax and enjoy the thing porn told him gay men were supposed to enjoy. But Harry said it was okay and they came in the usual ways, and afterwards Harry held Jordan so tight, nearly squeezed the breath out of him, and said thank you for trying. Then they just lay there, Harry rubbing the scraggly hairs on Jordan’s chest, Jordan infused with such a warmth as he’d never felt before, like you could drop him in a frozen corn field surrounded by homophobic hicks yet he would burn it all down with heat, passion, safety, and the power that comes with all those things straight people take for granted. He tried to express this feeling during a scene in the Boy Scouts story but cut it for being too sentimental. His first writing teaching told him never give in to sentiment. It’s the death of stories.
Jordan reads Harry’s message several times before typing his reply.
You sure loved sucking my dick, he writes.
It takes time write this out, his fumbling fingers turning loved to lived, and Jordan struggling to hit the right letters while his hands shake and his eyes fill with tears. He hits send, then immediately takes a screenshot. He opens up a new conversation between him, Harry and Karen, and sends the screenshot.
A moment later and Harry is calling. Jordan dismisses the call.
Next, a call from Karen. This one, he lets ring. He watches the glowing name, feeling sorry for poor Karen, wanting to apologize but unable to pick up the phone.
Messages pour in, from both Harry and Karen, Jordan’s phone buzzing and beeping with each one. He can’t read them right now. He’s taking mental notes, cataloging how he feels, sure this kind of in media res moment will hook a reader. Because this is where the story begins. Not with publication, not with a call from Harry. It starts now, curled on the sofa, stomach clenched, phone buzzing, teeth chattering. Harry is right. The Boy Scouts focus is tired at best, a hackneyed trope at worst. Doesn’t matter that it’s true. It’s amazing Jordan got it published at all. Here is where it starts. This moment, right now, is how a good story begins.
