Road home, p.1
Road Home, page 1
Road Home
* * *
REX OGLE
To anyone who’s ever been pushed away
or disowned for being different.
author’s note
What you’re about to read is a true story. This is my story. It happened to me.
And as painful as it was for me to write, it may be equally or more painful for you to read—especially if you’ve lived through something similar. So I want to offer you a warning. This book contains depictions of homelessness, violence, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation.
If you’re not ready to read this, please don’t. Instead, take care of yourself first. This book will be waiting when you are ready.
But know this: I lived this, and I survived. You survived your past too, or you wouldn’t be here reading this. We are both alive. We may have a few more scars than we’d like—inside and out—but we made it through. No matter how dark the past, or even the present, the sun will always come up tomorrow.
* * *
This story took place during the summer of 1998.
This was before cell phones were a common possession and before the internet was widely available. So it was difficult to reach out to people, and I didn’t have online search engines to google for resources. In fact, Google didn’t even exist at the time.
That meant I didn’t have easy access to resources. I didn’t even know a lot of resources existed. At the time, there probably weren’t many for LGBTQ youth. But there are now.
If you are experiencing, or someone you know is experiencing, home instability, or dealing with thoughts of suicide, there is help. Please reach out.
The Trevor Project
https://www.thetrevorproject.org
htps://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/resources-
for-lgbtq-youth-experiencing-homelessness/
988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline
https://988lifeline.org/
Or call 988
Road Home
the beach
The ocean roars in my ears, trying to swallow the happy cries of children running toward, and from, the Pensacola waves. A seagull pecks at the shore, raising its white wings at me, flaps them, then struts away. The sun hangs in the wide blue sky, watching over everything below.
I sit on my towel, toes dug into the sand, taking in the view. I lower my eyes back into my book—until Jill comes along and kicks sand at me with the end of her foot.
“Hey! I’m reading!”
“I know. Which is totally dumb. You’re on vacation! Enjoy the beach!”
“People read at the beach.”
Jill shakes her head. “Yeah, senior citizens.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Then why are you acting like a crotchety old man?” Jill steals my paperback book. She thumbs through it, then looks at the cover. She sticks her tongue out. “Interview with the Vampire?”
I try to take it back, but she holds it out of my reach. “Uh-uh. Not until you at least get in the water.”
“After this chapter.”
Jill takes three steps back, moving toward an incoming wave. “One of you is coming swimming with me, right now. It’s either you or Anne Rice.”
“Okay!” I hold my hands up in surrender. She hands the book back, and I tuck it carefully into my towel. I don’t want it to get wet. Or sand between the pages, which is a hard ask at the beach. I get up, dust myself off. Jill grabs my hand and pulls me toward the water.
I tiptoe in. After the blaring sun, the water is bracing against my feet and ankles. Stepping forward, cold up to my knees, I wait until my body adapts. Until another wave crashes against me, splashing and spotting me with cool drops. I’m done waiting. I dive in. My hot skin breathes a sigh of relief at the crisp fresh feeling. As my head pierces the surface, I inhale the early summer air. Salt water gently burns my eyes.
I run a hand over my shaved head, each hair a sharp bristle against my palm. There’s nothing like a fresh crew cut and fade. Especially to look my best for a long weekend with my coworkers, who invited me to join them for their Memorial Day trip to the beach. I don’t know Jill or Rich or Karen all that well, but I thought, Why not? It’s good to make friends.
And I should live a little before college starts in the fall.
So yesterday we drove down from Prattville, Alabama. Three hours, from a small town to a city on the ocean.
I dive under a wave, and let my momentum carry me. The water is blue, almost green, murky with particles everywhere. But the water feels like home. Like when I was three and we lived in Okinawa and Guam. My dad was stationed there for the Air Force. We lived on a beach. I would wade out into the water and just float. My first memories are of water.
Just floating.
Rich splashes me. “The water is perfect. Why didn’t you come in sooner?”
I shrug, awkward, trying not to look at Rich without his shirt on. His muscular chest rises just above the water. His body hair wet, gleaming. He smiles, and a small crush aches inside me. Even when Karen leaps on his back and ducks him and they come up kissing. Karen is nice, and I like them together. I wish I had someone to duck and wrestle and splash with. To kiss.
But I’m perpetually single. Mostly, I always have been. I had girlfriends in junior high and high school. But they never lasted.
Jumping straight into a wave, I drift under the surface, using cupped hands to propel me forward. The shark from Jaws comes to mind, but I push that image away. I punch up into the air, one arm pulling me after the other, following through, swimming out farther and farther, where the waves rise higher, where I can’t touch the shifting floor. Jill follows, then so do Karen and Rich. Our heads bob up and down like apples in a barrel of water.
We talk about work. About the blue vests we’re required to wear. About pushing shopping carts, stocking shelves, how we each manage to get out of cleaning the bathrooms. There’s nothing worse than cleaning the public bathrooms at Walmart. We laugh at the mere thought of the smells and sights that await us.
After a while, the others get tired and head back to shore.
But I’m enjoying myself too much. The waves raising me up and letting me down, up and down, again and again.
I can’t touch the bottom here. It’s too deep. But I’m a good swimmer. Good at treading water. So I tread. Holding myself steady at the crests of the tall waves.
From here, I look back at the beach. The land goes on and on in either direction. Tiny rectangles of blankets and towels. Circles of umbrellas. Adults and children tanning, building sandcastles, putting on sunscreen, throwing footballs and Frisbees. In the water, people swim, ride floats, call out “Marco” and “Polo.”
The farther you go out, the less people there are.
This far out, it’s just me.
Turning my head the other way, I watch the waves ebb and flow, washing toward me, as if bringing me a message. I can’t see the end of the ocean. It just goes on, out of sight, to unknown depths, as if toward oblivion.
I can’t help but think about the last book I read in high school. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. It ends with a woman swimming out into the Gulf of Mexico, never intending to come back.
A dull ache rises inside me. I’m not sure if it’s from being made to feel small, or being made to feel like I’m part of the whole thing. I spin myself in the water, watching the horizon. The sea draws on, until it meets land, and the land becomes water again. The world wraps itself around me, going in a circle forever.
I don’t know how long I’m out here. Alone. Just floating, where the sky meets the sea.
After a long while, laughter rises up behind me. A group of guys race out. They splash at each other. Chatting in a friendly manner. But I can’t hear what they’re saying over there. I’m too distracted. One of them keeps glancing over at me. Smiling.
A wave splashes me in the face, pushes me under.
I come back up. And he’s still watching me. Staring.
I find myself staring back. I can’t help it.
There’s some vibration between us. A chemistry. I can’t label it. It’s too raw. Too natural. And at the same time, forbidden.
The guy smiles again at me, from thirty feet away. Pink lips. Blue eyes. A mole on his right cheek. Short dirty blond hair. He’s busy looking at me when a wave hits him. He comes up laughing.
Letting the waves raise me up, drop me low, I’m still treading water. Trying not to be too obvious. His friends turn back, swimming toward the shore. I’m waiting for my viewer to go after his friends. But he doesn’t. One of his buddies calls out, “You coming?”
“In a minute,” he calls back, never taking his eyes off me. Like he knows something, something about me, something I’m trying to hide. And I can’t look away.
Just the two of us, out here among the waves.
“Perfect beach day, huh?” he calls out in a thick southern drawl.
Feeling my face flush red, I hesitate to speak. Before it gets awkward, I call out, “Yeah.” Hoping he can’t see me blushing under my fresh sunburn.
He keeps looking at me. Keeps smiling at me. No one else is near.
He swims a little closer, maybe twenty feet away.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Rex.”
“Rex,” he repeats. Still smirking. “I thought that was a dog’s name.”
“You’re not t
“Rawrf!” he barks. Then he barks again, more real this time. Like a beagle. Then he howls. He laughs. “I’m just joshing you. It’s a good name.”
“Thanks.”
He says, “I’m Russell.” He waves from ten feet away. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
I don’t know what else to say. Water splashes me. I take a mouthful and spit it at him. Not aggressively. Just playful. He spits water back at me.
Words fail me as I try to talk. I think I see a fish tail in the distance. “Ever see Little Mermaid?” I ask, thinking of the Disney heroine who makes a deal with a witch to transform into something new, something better, for the love of a prince she hardly knows. Then I realize how dumb it is to bring up a kids’ cartoon to a total stranger. A handsome stranger. And how pointed it is to bring up a story about love. “Sorry. That was a stupid question.”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay that you’re stupid. I like being the smart one.”
“I doubt you’re that smart,” I say. Then I worry I’ve offended him. But I didn’t. I know cause he’s laughing.
“You’re cute,” he says.
A huge wave punches me in the face, pushes me under. I’m glad for it. Cause when I come up, I can’t speak. Paranoid, I look around. I check back at the beach. Jill and Rich and Karen now at our towels, I breathe this heavy sigh of relief. Cause they don’t know. Cause nobody knows. Knows about me, the real me, here in Alabama. Maybe my stepsister, cause I’ve dropped hints. But I haven’t said it. Not out loud.
Why would I? I’m not even sure I am.
In junior high I thought, maybe. I’d had so many crushes. But on girls and guys. And I told a few close friends. They said I might be. But I didn’t want that label. I didn’t want to be . . .
You know.
Gay.
“Sorry,” Russell says, his grin gone. His eyes have a touch of uncertainty, like he might swim away. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it’s okay.” But I feel some of my strength gone. Like my legs can’t kick forever. Like my arms might give out. I’m still looking around. Making sure no one is close.
Russell closes the distance between us to five feet. I tread back a little. Scared.
He asks, “Are you . . . ?”
“I don’t know.” I ask, “Are you?”
He smiles and nods. “Yup. Gay as the sky is blue.”
I hesitate. But no one is near. Just me, Russell, and thoughts of Little Mermaid and Kate Chopin. Finally, I say, “Cool.”
He swims closer. Four feet. Then three.
The ocean has never felt this small.
Two feet.
One.
Looking at his lips makes everything in me go sideways. My body warm. Full of something new, unfamiliar, but in the best way. Under the water, his hand reaches out and grazes mine. He smiles. I smile back. He leans in.
I swim back two feet. Three. Four. Five. Looking back to the beach, I see Jill’s hand is over her eyes, like she’s trying to see out here.
“I . . . I can’t,” I say, swimming back farther. Six feet. Seven. Eight. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I can’t.
“Can’t what?”
“I don’t know,” I say. And then I’m swimming back to shore. Even as I’m thinking about Russell’s lips, his eyes, the way he barked at me. I swim faster and faster until I’m walking out of the sea, up the beach, sand caking my feet, to the towels.
“What did that guy want?” Jill asks. With one hand, she holds the small golden cross attached to the slender chain around her neck.
I look back to Russell. I don’t see him anymore. There are too many heads bobbing in the water. And no one is out there that far anymore.
“He just wanted to know what time it was,” I say.
Jill looks at my wrists. “But you don’t have a watch.”
“Right,” I say. “That’s what I told him.”
* * *
We go back to the hotel room and shower. Jill goes first. Then Rich and Karen go together, laughing the whole time behind the door. Jill shakes her head.
After the others have showered, I go last. My skin almost crimson, kissed by the sun. But that’s not what fills my head. I’m drunk with thoughts of Russell. His laugh. The touch of his hand. His lips as he leaned in.
I try to push him out of my mind.
I could have, but I didn’t.
And now he’s gone.
Forever.
An ache fills up inside me, like I lost something of value. Like I missed my chance at winning something. Gaining something important. Not being alone.
Even as I slip back into dry clothes. Even as we go to dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Even as Jill and Rich and Karen laugh. Even as Rich buys two six-packs of Zima, and we go back to our hotel room and sit on the balcony and drink until I feel fuzzy. Even still, all I can see is Russell, smirking in the water at me. Why didn’t I . . . ?
Why am I so scared all the time?
Is it cause I grew up in Texas? Cause I saw other maybe-gay boys get beat up? Cause I got called a homo and a faggot? Cause since I was little I got pushed around, even though I insisted I was straight? Cause my whole family’s Christian? Church of Christ on my mom’s side. Southern Baptist on my dad’s. Cause being gay is a sin? Cause I don’t want to burn in hell? I don’t even know if I believe in god or heaven or hell. I don’t know what I believe. I don’t even know what I am.
I’ve liked girls. But I’ve liked boys too. In secret.
So what am I?
* * *
Rich and Karen share a bed, Rich wrapped around her like Velcro. Jill and I share the other full-sized mattress. She places two pillows in between us, saying, “Let’s pretend Jesus is sleeping in the middle.”
But I can’t sleep. I feel like I’m still in the ocean. Still rising and falling. Up and down. Dizzy almost. Like I’m seasick, but on land. The vertigo is too strong with my eyes closed. So I get up gently, quietly, to slip on my flip-flops, grab my book, and sneak out.
The hotel is huge. It’s the nicest place I’ve ever stayed. Though that’s not saying much. I’ve never stayed anywhere but Holiday Inns with my family on road trips. The walls rise up twenty feet, to a painted mural on the ceiling. The lobby here goes on and on. The checkout desk, the elevator bank, the bar with people still partying. All of it with tanned columns, details of turquoise, and brightly flowered wallpaper. Then there’s a small nook, a sitting area with red carpet, nice chairs, and shelves full of books. No one’s here. I look around, as if I need permission. No one notices me. So I take a seat.
I open my own book, about a lonely vampire. And I read the same sentence fourteen times. I can’t focus. Cause all I’m thinking about is the ocean. About Russell. About him barking without a care. Smiling at me. Me. I feel the corners of my lips turn up, and I wonder what it would have been like . . .
To kiss him.
I’m grinning ear to ear as the thought rolls around like a persistent marble circling the inside of my skull.
“I like that smile of yours.”
I turn around. Russell is standing there. White linen shorts, a Hawaiian shirt all covered in big bright flowers as if he dressed to match the wallpaper. He’s taller and thicker than me, and he has a little gut, a belly, which I didn’t see in the water, but I find all of him adorable. And that smile. His smile is like sunshine.
“Russell?”
He barks at me. Laughs. Then says, “Rex.”
I stand up. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying here. What are you doing here?”
“This is where I’m staying too.”
We both chuckle. Then I remember myself, and crane my neck to look past him, wondering if Jill might be looking for me.
“Worried about your friends?” he asks.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “I remember what it was like.”
“What what was like?”
“Not being out.”
I look at my book, at my hands gripping the paperback like it might fly away if I don’t hold it tight enough.
