The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [43]
While the others conversed, Blue thought, I wish I had a close friend. Blue couldn’t even trust Jackson completely. Initially, gaming together had cemented their friendship. When Jackson and Blue, who had won a few thousand dollars in gaming tournaments, teamed up junior year for their first tournament together, they not only lost, but, worse, they lost to noobs (inexperienced newcomers). Jackson refused to speak to Blue for three months.
From the top of the jungle gym, Stewart lazily turned to Blue. “Would you rather have stayed in the closet?” Actually, most people didn’t know Blue was gay. Sometimes students didn’t even believe him, because, as they insisted, he wasn’t effeminate and didn’t appear stereotypically gay. He came across as tough, having been in several fights (always to defend people he cared about).
Blue was still working up the courage to converse with Jimmy, whose sexuality was unclear. If Blue had a puppy crush on Jimmy, however, he was thoroughly infatuated with Nate, a senior at Jackson’s school. The best gamer on Blue’s tournament team, Nate had quick reaction times, superb aim, and a rough style of play. Blue believed there was a chance that Nate was gay because Nate knew Blue liked him yet was still nice to him. On a recent, rare group outing to the movies, Blue happened to sit next to him. Halfway through the movie, Nate’s arm brushed Blue’s on the armrest they shared. Blue could feel his body heat.
“No,” Blue answered Stewart, “I don’t have any regrets, because otherwise I would have never been satisfied with myself or with my relationships with other people.”
“It’s not like you talk about girls or anything, anyway,” said Stewart, teasing him. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
But to Blue, it did. While Blue knew that his credibility among his friends had dropped along with Arwing’s demise as a gaming club, Jackson had told him point-blank that he took Blue even less seriously because of his sexuality. This admission hurt Blue more than he let on. Now Ty and Stewart ganged up on him more frequently, mocking his alternative perspectives, advanced technological gear, hyper-organized bedroom, and aspirations to compete in a Modern Warfare tournament in Sweden next summer.
As Blue lay on top of the jungle gym, staring toward the edge of the galaxy, he realized now that they probably weren’t targeting him because he was gay, specifically. They targeted him because he was different.
ELI, VIRGINIA | THE NERD
The summer before Eli’s senior year, he was one of sixty students selected to attend a three-week intensive academy known informally as Spanish camp. The campers attended classes, gave presentations, did homework and projects, and were forbidden to speak English. Eli had viewed Spanish camp as “a second chance at starting school again.” He said, “In my high school, everyone already knows who I am, so it’s hard to branch out. So I figured these people don’t know anything about me and I could be who I wanted, outgoing and friendly with everyone.”
The first three days of the academy were exceedingly awkward, even by Eli’s standards, as the campers tried to get to know each other while speaking only Spanish. But by the fourth day, Eli felt as if he’d known the campers for years. By the end of the session, Eli said he had made “the best friends of my life. I know them better and they know me better than my high school friends. I’ll even call some of them family. It was refreshing to meet people who actually cared. I’ve never met people like that before.” The campers gave him the Nicest Guy superlative award. Eli called those three weeks the “number one best experience of my life.” On the last day of camp, Debra, the only other attendee from Eli’s school, asked, “So are you going to talk more in school now? This is completely different from the Eli I know!”
Once he returned home, for much of August, Eli IMed with camp friends until two in the morning. He met up with a few fellow