Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger

tactics all paid off when the Psych 101 professor named me the head of group 3. In addition to Charleen, I chose four other students—the one sitting in front of Clayton, the one sitting to the left of Clayton, the one sitting to the right of Clayton, and the one sitting behind Clayton. Now he was getting pissed.

    4. Create an event not to invite him to.
    That one fell right into my lap when the Boathouse sponsored a dollar-a-brew talent night for any Harvard kid who thought he had an act. Even though I’d never actually performed in front of live people before (except for the boy who still owned my heart), I pulled out the acoustic guitar anyway, along with a set that—if not exactly calculated to give his testosterone a run for its money—would at least force him to pay attention (I hoped). Charleen and I ran off fifteen hundred fliers and handed them out to every professor and every freshman on campus. Except Clayton. He noticed.

    5. Whatever you wear onstage, make it tight.
    Try a sprayed-on T-shirt, sprayed-on jeans, Reeboks without socks, and no underpants. “You think it’s too much?” I asked Charleen apprehensively, just before I went on. She glanced down for a long moment.
    “That depends,” she finally replied. “What are you selling—circumcisions?”

    6. Let him have it.
    I’d figured on warming them up with a little Laura Nyro until I saw Clayton’s silhouette leaning against the packed bar. There were maybe two hundred people crammed into the joint, but when I kicked in to “Light My Fire” instead, I was playing to an audience of one. And he knew it.

    7. Start reeling him in.
    Half an hour later, covered with sweat and holding my trophy, I ran into him staked out by the front door. We were face-to-face.
    Together at last. Neither of us said anything, but I swore I wasn’t going to be the one to cave. So he didn’t have much of a choice.
    “Not bad,” he grunted. I gave him the once-over like I was trying to figure out where I knew him from. Then I shrugged and said,
    “Thanks.” And I left.

    ‚How come you stopped trying to get into my pants?‛

    ‚Because it was easier getting into Harvard. And my mom said you deserved to squirm.‛

    ‚Your mother hates me.‛

    ‚Come on, Clay! What did she ever do to make you think that?‛

    ‚She told me so. There wasn’t any guesswork involved.‛

    I knew I was making progress a few days later when he bumped into me in the Co-op and mentioned this tai chi class he was taking. He didn’t actually invite me to it, but it was the way he didn’t invite me that got me to go along with him—and to suspect that maybe he’d arranged the whole encounter. (I was right.) And within a week we were sitting together in the cafeteria and seeing Casablanca at the Brattle Theater and having brief but meaningful conversations over fries and cream sodas at the Tasty.

    “You ever been whitewater rafting?” he asked hesitantly 'managing to avoid my eyes while he was doing it—which I loved).

    “No.”

    “Oh.”

    But it was the riot that clinched things.

    ‚Remember our first time?‛

    ‚Like I wouldn’t? December 7, 1978. Harvard Yard. You were singing
    ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and I had a hard-on.‛

    ‚I didn’t even know you were there.‛

    ‚The hell you didn’t.‛

    Right around Thanksgiving, San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed by a twinked-out homophobe named Dan White. By the time we’d gotten back to Cambridge after the holiday (Charleen and I had done the turkey thing in Aryan Darien(, White’s attorneys were already planning an involuntary manslaughter defense by implying that Milk was just a queer who didn’t rate a murder rap for their client. Now, if it hadn’t been for Travis, I might have slept through news like that the same way I’d slept through most of my life before I’d met him. But he was the one who’d taught me about getting mad and getting even—all