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Back You Exist Too Much Save as PDF
Chapters (23)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter 1
  4. Chapter 2
  5. Chapter 3
  6. Chapter 4
  7. Chapter 5
  8. Chapter 6
  9. Chapter 7
  10. Chapter 8
  11. Chapter 9
  12. Chapter 10
  13. Chapter 11
  14. Chapter 12
  15. Chapter 13
  16. Chapter 14
  17. Chapter 15
  18. Chapter 16
  19. Chapter 17
  20. Chapter 18
  21. Chapter 19
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. About the Author

We kissed once more and she rushed out. Alone again, I looked around the café and expected to see people staring, but no one was. “We’re not in Saudi Arabia,” Anna would say whenever I drew back if she tried to take my hand in public. “No one here cares.” I pulled the bowl of whatever she’d been eating closer to me—granola—and finished the last few spoonfuls. Then I looked past Brokeback and out the café window. I watched Anna wait dutifully for the walk sign to flash before jutting across the circle, underneath the Pavilion Theater’s marquee, and into the mouth of the subway.

Chapter 2

2

THE NEXT DAY ANNA AND I MET UP AT OUR APARTMENT before dinner. She was wearing a V-neck sweater and a corduroy skirt, an awkward effort to look feminine in spite of her boyishness. Maybe she thought it would better ingratiate her to my mother. But her efforts were in vain—I knew my mother wouldn’t be all right with this situation, especially if she looked even more like a woman.

We took the Q train into Manhattan, and as it hurtled across the bridge over the East River, I had a brief image of it derailing. Wouldn’t that make things easier? I felt nauseated with worry at the thought of the three of us sitting there, attempting to have a normal dinner, my mother potentially piecing things together. Before that night I’d tried coming out to her once; after things ended with Kate, my college roommate and secret girlfriend, and I was desperate for comfort. “I like both,” I’d confessed into the phone. I could practically hear my mother weakening down the line; all the strength she seemed to normally possess had disintegrated. “Is it official?” she’d asked.

I was unsure of what “official” meant, in the context of sexuality. I imagined it to mean “are you sure” or “is there no way you could just not be that way?”

She hung up before I could respond. In the weeks after, she would complain to me about her life, as though I were an objective observer. “I should’ve had better,” she’d say. “I deserved so much more than this.”

I supposed my phone confession counted as official, but still I couldn’t imagine how my mother would handle it, face-to-face.

“What are you thinking about?” Anna asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

It was dark by the time we ascended the subway steps onto Canal Street. We passed vendors folding up their makeshift shops selling fake designer bags and sunglasses. We turned the corner onto the narrow street where the restaurant was. We walked in and I looked around for my mother. She wasn’t there yet, a temporary relief. I checked my phone and saw a text from her: Still shopping. Will b there in 15.