We went to the empty film room. Cole sat in the front row and I sat in the back row because the distance between us felt necessary, and then I realized the distance was ridiculousbecause the room was thirty feet long and I was about to have the most personal conversation of my life by shouting across it.
I moved to the row behind Cole. Not next to him. Behind him. So I could talk to the back of his head, which was easier than talking to his face.
"I need to ask you something," I said. "Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically," Cole repeated. His voice was neutral in the way that a man's voice is neutral when he knows exactly what's coming and is giving you the courtesy of pretending he doesn't.
"If a person had spent their entire life being attracted to one gender. Women. Only women. And then a specific person of a different gender entered their life and the person began experiencing responses that were inconsistent with their established pattern. What would that mean?"
Cole was quiet for a moment. "It would mean the pattern was broader than they thought."
"Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically. Sure."
"And these responses. If they were localized. To one specific person. Not a general shift in orientation but a specific reaction to a specific individual. Would that be... normal?"
"Define normal."
"Within the range of expected human experience."
"Yeah, man. That's within the range." Cole turned around in his seat and looked at me directly, and the neutrality was gone, replaced by something warm and direct and entirely too perceptive. "Wes. You don't have to call it hypothetical."
"I'm not ready to call it anything else."
"That's fine. You don't have to label it. You don't have to figure it out today or tomorrow or ever, if that's what works for you. But I'm going to say something, and you can do whatever you want with it." He leaned forward, elbows on the seat back. "Labels are useful until they're not. They give youa shorthand for communicating something about yourself, and that's valuable. But they're not mandatory. You don't have to be straight or gay or bi or any other word to know what you feel. You just have to be honest about what you feel. The label can come later. Or not. The feeling is the thing that matters."
"What if the feeling is terrifying?"
"Then you're doing it right. Anything worth feeling is terrifying. The stuff that isn't terrifying is the stuff that doesn't matter."
I sat with this. The film room was dark and cool and smelled like electronics and the faint residue of dry-erase markers. On the blank projector screen, nothing was being shown, which felt appropriate because the picture in my head was equally blank. Not empty. Just unresolved. Like a developing photograph that hadn't been exposed long enough to reveal its image.
"Can I ask you something else?" I said.
"Shoot."
"When you realized you were attracted to men. Not when you came out. Before that. When it was just you and the knowledge. How did you know it was real and not just... a thing?"
Cole considered this. "I didn't. Not at first. The first time I noticed a guy, really noticed him, I spent about three months convincing myself it was admiration. Athletic respect. The normal evaluation that athletes do when they look at other athletes. And then one day I was in the shower thinking about this guy and I realized that what I was feeling was not athletic respect. Not even close." He smiled, self-deprecating. "The body knows before the brain does. The brain is the last one to the party. It shows up after the body and the gut and the heart have already made the decision, and it tries to talk everyone out of it, and eventually it realizes it's outvoted and sits down."
"The body knows before the brain."
"Every time."
I thought about my body. About the full-body stillness when Luca touched my ankle. The held breath when he dressed me. The way my pulse elevated when he walked into a room, a response so subtle and so consistent that I had been attributing it to caffeine intake for three weeks. The fact that I had pressed my own thumb to my ankle in the dark and felt nothing, and when he touched the same spot, I felt everything.
The body knew. The body had been screaming for weeks. The brain was the last one to the party, and it was standing in the corner with its arms crossed, refusing to sit down.
"Briggs."
"Yeah."
"The hypothetical person in this scenario. If they were to act on these feelings. What would be the most important thing?"
"Honesty. With yourself first, then with the other person. Don't pretend it's something it isn't. Don't diminish it because the packaging is different from what you expected. And don't make the other person carry your confusion. If you're figuring it out, say so. Let them decide if they want to be part of the figuring."
"That's a lot of words from a man who communicates primarily through hockey metaphors."