Fighting Back

A week after the incident, Bradley suggested that we host a cookout at our house on the coming Saturday. He told me that it would be good to socialize again. I wasn’t sure that I was ready, but by the time I got around to protesting, he’d already sent out the invites, so there wasn’t much that I could do. He assured me that they wouldn’t talk about what had happened, which only helped a little.

The day before the cookout, I busied myself with the preparation work. I made a list for Bradley of the food we needed so that he could run to the store, and washed off the dusty lawn chairs we kept in the shed. I baked a chocolate cake for our dessert and covered it with chocolate icing. Staying busy helped me feel better, but I was still dreading having everyone over.

On the day, we spent the afternoon getting everything set up. Bradley prepped the fire pit and got the grill in position. We spent so much time apart during this, that we didn’t really talk all day. As his friends began arriving, I felt like a stranger in my own house. I watched through the windows as they gathered on the back porch, too scared to go out myself.

Partially to distract myself, and partially because it needed doing, I prepped the meat for the grill, heated up the beans, and pulled the potato salad out of the refrigerator.

Bradley entered the kitchen from the patio and asked, “Hey, are we ready to grill? I’ve got it going.”

“Yeah, it’s all here.” I opened the fridge and pulled out the plates of meat, handing them over. Bradley took them and disappeared outside again.

I had hoped that he would take me out with him. I couldn’t bring myself to open the door on my own. I didn’t find myself on a stage very much at all, but it felt that I was waiting in the wings, and I was terrified to step out and face everyone.

Soon, I had the rest of the food ready to go, and there was nothing else left to do but take it all outside. I gathered up several pans and used my elbow to open the patio door.

Everyone went silent and looked over at me. Well, or at least that was how it felt, I couldn’t be sure if it was everyone. I was terrified, so I tried to break the tension. “Hey everybody!” The chatter started back up a bit, and I continued over to the table that we’d set up for the food.

I took a few more trips to get everything set out, and then went to Bradley to check on the meat.

“How’s it coming?” I asked.

“Pretty good, just waiting on a couple of burgers to finish.”

“Okay, good. I have everything else ready, so we can start soon.”

“Sweet, thanks babe.”

I hesitated a moment, and then realized that I should sit down with everyone else. There was an open lawn chair, so I walked over to it as subtly as I could manage and sat down. The group was talking about a football game, and I listened in, relieved that I didn’t have anything to add.

The others occasionally gave me a glance, but otherwise left me there. After a long five minutes, Bradley announced to everyone that the food was ready. My chair was furthest from the food, so I waited as the others formed a line and got their plates.

I was so worried about how this would go, but the thought crossed my mind that I may have overreacted. As I picked up my plate in the line, I calmed down. I was excited to be eating all of this food, as I hadn’t been in the mood to cook much in the last week, and therefore hadn’t eaten much.

As I was the last in line, there weren’t any chairs left for me to sit in. I perched myself on the arm of Bradley’s Adirondack chair and began to eat.

The conversation shifted to work, as most of the guys worked with Bradley at a mechanic shop. They swapped stories from the last week, gossiping about their coworkers and customers. I listened intently, trying to follow who they were talking about.

We were almost done with the meal when attention turned to me. Carl looked over and asked, “So, Christopher, Bradley ever take you out to dinner?”

It seemed like an rhetorical question, but I replied, “Yeah, of course he does.” I looked to Bradley and smiled. He was busy eating his burger.

“I bet so.”

I put on smile in response, but I was unsure what Carl was trying to say. Was he suggesting something?

Desperate to steer the conversation, I asked, “So, how’s the Volvo problem coming along?” Bradley had told me about a semi that had been in their shop for the last week, and they’d been struggling to find what was causing its problems.

The conversation, thankfully, picked up at that, and I was back to listening. In fact, it may have been too good of a topic, as they started trying to figure out a fix.

I finished my food and slipped back into the kitchen to get the dessert out. I picked up the cake, grabbed a carton of ice cream out of the freezer, then headed back out. Everyone perked up at the appearance of sweets, and soon we were all digging in.

Once I was propped back on the edge of Bradley’s chair with a piece of cake, things took a turn. This time, Brock asked, “Did someone really spray paint your car?”

I immediately tensed up. I mumbled, “Yeah,” and kept eating. Bradley had told me that no one was going to bring it up, but I should have known that that hadn’t meant anything.

“How’d you get it off?”

“Oh, Bradley cleaned it off.” I motioned towards him and he replied, “Yeah, just got some thinner from the shop and scrubbed it down. Wasn’t too bad.”

Brock nodded, then asked with a smirk on his face, “Did it really say faggot?”

My heart sank. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Bradley was quiet behind me, and I was desperate for him to speak up.

After a moment, I got up and went inside. I didn’t look to see, but I was sure that they were all watching me go. I set down my plate and went into the living room and sat on the couch. Everything was swirling around in my head again, a mixture of embarrassment at what just happened and renewed fear from the incident.

I pulled my legs up on the sofa and wrapped my arms around them. I tried to do a breathing exercise to calm myself down, but it didn’t seem to help very much. I’d never felt more alone in my life. Bradley had been helpful before when it was just the two of us, but that had seemingly vanished in the presence of his friends.

After a long five minutes, Bradley came inside and looked around the house until he found me. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, standing in the doorway.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I was obviously not okay, and mad at him.

“The guys are still here, don’t you think you should come back outside?”

He was so far off base that I couldn’t hold back. “Come back outside?! With those assholes? No!”

Bradley looked genuinely shocked. “Whoa, they’re not assholes.”

“Then why were they bothering me about what happened?”

“They weren’t bothering you, Brock was just asking questions.”

I stood up from the couch and backed away.

“No he wasn’t, he was trying to provoke me.”

Bradley looked confused and replied, “No, he was just asking. What’s the big deal?”

“What the hell! I knew this whole thing was a mistake, I can’t believe I let you bring all your friends over. The big deal is, something horrible happened to me and I’m trying to hold it together over here. You told me that no one would bother me about it, but here we are.”

“Babe, come on, calm down. It’s not that bad. You’re overreacting.”

I stared at Bradley. For the briefest moment, I considered that I could be overreacting, but I was beginning to see that I’d been under-reacting for quite a while.

“You know what, it is that bad, because I say that it is. It happened to me, I’m the only one who gets to say how bad it is. In fact, you’ve been downplaying it, and it’s beginning to make me feel crazy!”

“Downpla—”

“I’m not done yet!” I interjected. “Your husband was the victim of a hate crime, and not once have you condemned what happened to me, or come to my defense, or unequivocally said that what happened was horrific and wrong. You’ve been so preoccupied with how easy it was to wash off my car, but what about the emotional damage that this has wreaked on me? What about that?”

“Babe, I know, but I don’t know what you want from me. Can we just go back outside? The guys are going to be wondering where we went. Come on.” He gestured for me to follow him, which was the last thing I was going to do.

“I want you to tell me that you’ll move heaven and earth to protect me from whoever did this to me. And I want you to tell your friends to shut their traps if they start asking me judgmental questions!”

At this, I realized that they could likely hear me yelling. Damn our old farmhouse and its thin walls. I turned and faced away from Bradley. He grunted, started to say something, and then left. I heard the back door close.

I couldn’t bear anyone else seeing me, so I went upstairs and hid in one of our spare bedrooms overlooking the front of the house. I laid down on the bed and rolled on to my side and cried. I was emotionally raw, and had probably said more than I should have, but it felt good to have finally stood up for myself, as uneven as it may have been.

A few minutes later, I heard trucks going down the driveway and speeding off down the road. Bradley must have asked everyone to leave. Part of me felt bad for ruining the party, but I was also relieved that they were gone. I calmed down a little and wiped my eyes.

I heard Bradley in the kitchen. It sounded like he was putting away the food, and it wasn’t as gentle as usual. He was probably mad at me, and I was scared to know what he was going to have to say. After the refrigerator closed, I heard him walking through the house, likely looking for me again. I didn’t move a muscle. He was going to have to come to the bedroom to find me.

When he came in, he was already angry. “Well, I sent them all home. You happy?”

I was facing away from him, and I didn’t move or reply.

He continued. “I thought we’d have a cook out, invite the guys over, try to do something normal, but you just messed it all up.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to keep having this fight, but I rolled over and sat up. Quietly, I said, “I messed it up? What about your friends? Don’t you think that they messed it up?”

“You were literally just yelling at me!”

“I was yelling at you because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend that I’m okay. I can’t just get on with my life.”

“Well, I’m going to be hearing all about this for weeks now, who knows what they’re going to be saying about me.”

I looked at Bradley straight in the eyes. “You! What about what they’re saying about me!?”

“Well, I can’t do anything about that!”

“I wish you would! You could do plenty about it!”

“What does that even mean? Like what would I even do?!”

“Can you really not see this? Can you not see how we’re different? You have privileges that I’ll never have. There’s a reason why I’m the one who got his car vandalized, and not you.”

“Wait, what? That could’ve happened to either of us.”

In disbelief, I laughed. “Unlikely! I can’t hide my sexuality like you can. I’m like a walking target around here, and you can blend in. Your friends probably forget that you’re even gay.”

“Whoa, now hold on. Believe me, they don’t.”

“I bet they do. They were treating me like the first gay person they had ever met.”

“That’s crazy and you know it. They know we’re both gay, obviously. They all know that we’re a couple. I don’t get the difference.”

This was harder than I ever thought it would be. Apparently we should have talked about this a long time ago. I barely had the energy to talk about it then.

He continued, “I’ve been so lost this whole time. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t… I don’t know what the right thing to do is, nothing like this has never happened before.”

This hit me in a new way. He’d hadn’t said anything about being lost. In fact, I had been interpreting his nonchalance in the last week as a lack of concern, not confusion.

Bradley continued, “I’ve just been doing whatever I can. I fixed your car and I went back to the store and then I thought this cook out would be helpful. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else I could possibly do.”

I started to think about the last week again from his viewpoint. It was possible that he had been doing everything that he could. I began to regret some of what I’ve said. I knew that I shouldn’t expect so much from Bradley, but the idea that he had been giving it his all pulled me further into desperation.

“All I needed was for you to be there for me! I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life, and you just left me to fend for myself today. There I was in the kitchen, making food, while you all were outside having a great time without me. I felt like such an idiot.”

Bradley had his eyebrows furrowed, and after a moment, he darted from the room without saying anything else. To be left hanging was more than I could take, and I curled back into myself on the bed and continued to cry. Downstairs, I heard the outside door close, then heard Bradley’s truck going down the driveway.

Hours later, I pulled myself off of the bed and went downstairs. Bradley still hadn’t returned, and in the kitchen, I looked around at the mess left from the party.

Like a robot, I put away the remaining food, washed the dishes, and brought in everything from outside. The emotions of our fight weighed heavy in the air.

I thought more about how Bradley must have been feeling in the last week, and about the things he’d done and what I’d said with what I now knew. I had wanted so badly for him to be everything that I needed, and I hadn’t been in a place to look at things from his point of view.

On top of our fight, the nebulous feeling of fear was ever present. The unknown of who had committed the crime still had a hold on me, and I needed answers and I needed them soon. I still wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to leave the house again.

At least for that moment, I knew how to scrub the cake platter in the sink.

It was late when Bradley returned, and he avoided me for the rest of the day. He went to bed before me, and he was asleep by the time I came into our bedroom. It was probably for the best, as I wasn’t sure what I would say to him anyway.

I laid down next to him. It was uncomfortable to be so close to him with how we left things. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t.