Gaydar
by Sean M. Murphy

Who hears what's whispered in the closet of your mind?

Honey, you’re looking at him.

I’d never hit it off with women, other than as friends. Sure, I’d kissed a few in the odd moment, and the handful of dates I’d been on in high school were all with women--set up by concerned friends, even once by my mother, God forbid--but alone I found myself thinking about guys. Eric, the sweet-tempered, six-two kendo instructor at the local gym, smiling at me with those pale blue eyes as he worked up a light sheen of sweat going through his forms.

So what if he wasn’t real? Neither were the stories about gay heroes running around rescuing cats from trees and stopping trains from jumping the rails at the last second, and that didn’t stop me from enjoying them or telling them to friends. Besides, when you’re home by yourself with Indian food take-out--which is practically a fetish for me--and letting your imagination and your hands wander, well... real is a very flexible idea.

Mmm, flexible. Indian food and flexible men. Mmm.

Sorry. Besides, my real kendo instructor was a woman that no one--and I mean no one--would fantasize about. I’ll leave it at that.

So along about the middle of college, I started to understand that I likely wasn’t as straight as my friends and family wanted me to be--something my abject failure at dating women was making more obvious, whether they wanted to notice or not. So I tested it out, and went on a date with Tom, this local actor.

As soon as I pulled back from Tom’s kiss, though, I knew my feelings had been right. It wasn’t that I felt changed, or alive, or any of that New-Agey enlightenment crap. It was more like listening to the radio and finally dialing in the signal just right--you know, when the static suddenly drops out and the sound jumps up a notch, crystal clear and totally begging you to sing?

Tom’s lips were warm, just a little scratchy around the outside where he hadn’t shaved, and where they met mine they tasted like the honey latte he was holding--sweet and creamy, with a little espresso zinging underneath. My first real kiss. Revelation. I wish I’d had more time to focus on it.

That moment, though, as I felt myself sliding in tune with my identity, I also heard something else, like a station coming in clearly on a channel I couldn’t change.

Ugh, lips like soggy bread. When did it become my job to hold their hands and walk them out of the closet?

I sat back, looking him in the eyes. “What?” I asked. It sounded just like Tom’s voice, the one I’d heard all evening as we sat in front of the café on Grand Avenue, having coffee and watching other college students go blithely by. But I was kissing him when I heard the voice--soggy bread or otherwise--and I was pretty certain he hadn’t been talking while his lips were meshed with mine.

His eyes offered nothing back but tenderness. “What?” he replied, tilting his head to one side and smiling back at me. Whoa, Tom, came the voice again, getta grip. He noticed something’s off. Gotta be more convincing than that if you’re gonna call yourself an actor. Kiss him again, show him it’s all good. He moved toward me, eyes all ‘come-hither’, tongue parting his lips briefly and slipping back inside, his slouchy posture showing just an edge of desire as it leaned in toward me. This time, don’t react to his lips.

What the hell was I listening to? I swallowed the weirdness creeping up in my chest, closed my eyes and met his lips again.

More like soggy toast, the voice came again. Dried out, stale, then mushy.

It was Tom’s voice. I shoved him, spilling his latte across his suede coat and cashmere sweater, momentarily ignoring that I’d been kissing him again when I’d heard the voice, then a touch upset that I’d ruined his perfectly gorgeous outfit. He deserved it, though. At least, I was pretty sure he did.

“What the hell?” he said, looking at me like I’d gone nuts. I can’t believe I’m putting up with this bullshit, the voice added. “Fuck you, Andy!,” he said, this time aloud. “What’s your deal?”  He grabbed a handful of napkins from the table and started wiping the frothy milk off of his clothes. What a goddamn little prick.

Suddenly, something clicked for me. I wasn’t hearing him. Not in the sense of noise bouncing around through the air and then shaking those little bones in my ears. Something was missing, physically. You know, like, when you’re off balance a little, you can tell? You just know. Not because you can actually feel the liquid in your ears tilting off to one side or the other, but because there’s just a basic message coming in saying “Hey, idiot, you’re going to fall!”  Just like that. I couldn’t tell you, listening to someone talk normally, that the bones in my ears were rattling together.

But I could tell you right then that they weren’t.

Suddenly there was a world of difference between hearing and overhearing, a distinction I wouldn’t have drawn a moment earlier. Because I was clearly listening in on Tom. His mouth wasn’t moving at that moment, frozen in some kind of much rehearsed scowl, and I could hear the traffic in the street and the muted conversation from the other tables in front the coffee shop, and yet the unceasing string of insults coming my direction was in his voice and clear as a streaming web-cast. I even heard my name a few times, dagger-sharp and recklessly thrown.

I was listening in on his thoughts.

Oh... freaky.

“Soggy toast?” I asked bitterly. He stopped mopping at his jacket and stared up at me, his eyes going wide. “Fuck you, Tom.”  I stood up, tipping the small café table toward him, dumping the rest of his coffee in his lap, not caring that I was making a scene. The small glass vase hit the cement and shattered. “Bitch,” I added, purely for the spite of watching him sputter at the table as I turned and strode away. Let him pick up the damn cleanup tab.

I walked along the street, fuming at myself for ruining the first good date I’d ever had and trying to get a grasp on the fact that I’d felt so much more at home with Tom’s kiss--even though he was a jerk--than with any woman I’d ever gotten near. Suddenly, I was jarred out of my moping when I realized that I was hearing thoughts all along the way--it wasn’t just Tom I could overhear.

Every time I passed someone, I got buzzed by a brief flock of stray thoughts, like rolling along the dial and hearing the volume grow, lock in for a split second, then fade out. I heard a girl saying aloud that she didn’t need a particular coat in a store window, but thinking that hopefully the guy with her would see in her eyes how badly she wanted it and get it for her birthday. I couldn’t help but listen to the distracted mental chatter of a little boy whose mother was taking up the middle of the sidewalk gossiping with another woman, and I had to agree with him: the other woman was fat and loud.

The longer I walked along the sidewalk, the more I overheard, and the more anxious I got. I couldn’t find space to be alone, just by myself to get away from Tom’s bitchiness--or my craziness--and calm down.

I’d cracked. Clearly. You just don’t hear people’s thoughts. It simply isn’t done--can’t be done. My over-active imagination, wound up by the just-right feeling of kissing Tom, must have just taken a flying leap off the nearest cliff and starting babbling mid-fall, ad-libbing itself into catatonia.

I couldn’t tell if that meant I hated Tom or was in love with him.

I was passing my favorite bakery when I overheard something I couldn’t pass by: a frightened, wordless, feminine squeak came from inside. A glance through the windows told me nothing extraordinary. A customer was at the counter, bundled up against the Minnesota cold. One girl was behind the counter, assisting him. It looked perfectly normal....