The World of Normal Boys Read online

  Books by K. M. Soehnlein

  THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  YOU CAN SAY I KNEW YOU WHEN

  ROBIN AND RUBY

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  PRAISE FOR K.M. SOEHNLEIN AND THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  New York Blade bestseller

  Washington Blade bestseller

  One of the 10 Best Gay Novels of the year as selected by Amazon.com

  A Selection of the InSight Out Book Club

  A Selection of the QPB Book Club

  “A stunning debut novel. While the setting is impeccably established, this is no nostalgic romp through tacky pop culture. Beneath the polyester veneer lies a work of uncommon craftsmanship which successfully chronicles the torrential turmoils seething within a thirteen-year-old as his life takes a sudden, dramatic change. Through Robin, Soehnlein explores a number of issues and dilemmas which readers of all ages will find relevant. Raw and painful (but in a good way), The World of Normal Boys may have to be put down several times, but you’ll soon find yourself picking it up again to discover what happens.”

  —Southern Voice

  “A gay teen’s coming-of-age tale with a nostalgic twist, The World of Normal Boys captures a familiar world where conformists are rewarded, and anyone different is tormented. Soehnlein is at his best when describing scenes in which Robin’s confusion runs up against the cultish homoerotic behavior of boys. By articulating the feeling of danger so well, Soehnlein sheds light on the threat of self-expression and discovery that must haunt many gay teenagers. It’s easy to get hooked on the plot of The World of Normal Boys.”

  —The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut)

  “Every once in a while a book comes along that grabs you, pulls you in, and—even after you’ve finished the last page—refuses to let go. Such a book is The World of Normal Boys. Flawless in its physical and emotional detail, the story of Robin MacKenzie is one boy’s spiritual awakening—funny, heartbreaking, but most of all, real—familiar to anyone who has ever dared to dream about the world beyond their front door.”

  —William J. Mann, author of The Biograph Girl

  and The Men From the Boys

  “Wonderful . . . a well-written tale.”

  —After Dark (Chicago)

  More Outstanding Praise for

  K.M. SOEHNLEIN and THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  “... captures that queasy, terrifying adolescent period of questioning sexuality.”

  —The Washington Blade

  “Soehnlein’s astonishing, heartfelt tale of growing up different in the suburbs is as vivid and fascinating as a page from a high school yearbook. The seventies unfurl here like a polyester shirt: sexy, ugly, utterly unsuitable to the demands of childhood. For everyone who was ever picked on in their youth, here is comfort, revenge and understanding.”

  —Stacy Richter, author of My Date With Satan

  “Compulsively readable . . . Because his characters are so engaging and his observations so acute, [Soehnlein’s] story is a welcome addition to the canon. In Robin, Soehnlien has given us a character ready to handle anything the world throws at him.”

  —The Lambda Book Report

  “Soehnlein skillfully depicts the background era of the late 1970s. He sensitively portrays Robin’s awakening homosexuality and is especially effective when detailing the family dynamics.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “The World of Normal Boys is so richly evocative of the year in which it is set, 1978, that the novel will have special meaning for those readers old enough to remember such scary ephemera as the Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever, feathered hair and powder blue leisure suits. The World of Normal Boys is often so true to life in its recollection of the bittersweet conundrums of adolescent queer love that it will prove painful for some readers. Others will be elated to revisit a time in life when emotions were never so vivid or held greater promise. Either way, readers will not fail to be moved by this engaging story of spiritual and mental awakening.”

  —San Francisco Frontiers

  THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  A NOVEL

  K.M. SOEHNLEIN

  Kensington Books

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Books by K. M. Soehnlein

  Praise for K.M. Soehnlein and THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to

  my friend Dave Hickey

  and my father, Karl Soehnlein.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The readers of the earliest drafts of this novel instilled a faith that sustained me through a long writing process. I happily offer my gratitude to these friends and colleagues, who were there from the start: Maria Maggenti, Dave Hickey, Gary Rosen, Robert Kaplan, Sonia Stamm, Christine Murray, John Vlahides, Alexander Chee, Alan Klein, Michelle Carter and Fenton Johnson. Similarly, at crucial moments throughout the years, Kevin Clarke, Joel Perez, and Barney Stein each made an invaluable difference.

  For advice and encouragement along the way, I thank Kenny Fries, Stuart Gaffney, Daven Gee, Garland Richard Kyle, Roberta Maggenti, Eric McNatt, Andy Moore, Michael Nesline, Jim Provenzano, Sarah Schulman, Michaelangelo Signorile, Mark Taylor, Trismegista Taylor, Jake Torrens, and Jack Walsh.

  My agent, Jandy Nelson, has worked tirelessly on my behalf, greeting each challenge with enthusiasm, intelligence and determination. John Scognamiglio at Kensington Books has been a thoughtful, attentive and accessible editor. My deepest thanks also to the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University, my former coworkers at Film Arts Foundation, and my beloved playmates and coconspirators in the World of the Cubby.

  Finally, I am indebted to my family for encouraging a writer in their midst. My mother, from whom I inherited “the gift of the gab,” died before I began working on this book but remains a constant guiding force. My father, my sisters and their partners, and my grandparents have offered support in countless ways. They have made this possible, and for them, I gladly make one thing clear: this is a work of fiction.

  Chapter One

  Maybe this is the moment when his teenage years begin. An envelope arrives in the mail addressed to him from Greenlawn High School. Inside is a computer-printed schedule of classes. Robin MacKenzie. Freshman. Fall, 1978. He has been assigned to teachers, placed in a homeroom. His social security number sits in the upper right corner, emphasizing the specter of faceless authority. Someone, some system of decision making, has organized his next nine months into fifty-minute periods, and here is his notification. This is what you will learn. This is when you will eat. This is when you go home to your family at 135 Bergen Avenue. This is how you will live your life, Robin MacKenzie.

  He has climbed out his bedroom window, onto the roof that covers the kitchen and back door below, with a pile of college-ruled spiral-bound notebooks purchased earlier that day at Woolworth’s. His transistor radio is tuned to WABC, just now starting up ABBA’s new song “Take a Chance on Me.” He bobs from his shoulders, trying to harmonize, but his voice—revolting against him all the t
ime lately—fails to hit a high note, collapsing into an ugly squawk, a bird being choked. He looks past the garage at the end of his buckled driveway and into the next yard, the Spicers’ yard, wondering if Victoria has returned from her summer visit with her cousins in Pennsylvania. He needs to compare schedules with her, to find out how many classes they’ll be in together; he needs to talk to her about high school.

  The Spicers’ lawn is a perfect spring green, stretching out from the cement patio and redwood picnic set to a neatly trimmed hedge that separates it from his family’s weedy plot. The Spicers’ graystone house rises up like a small mansion: slate-tile roof, royal blue shutters, and white curtains in every window. Only one thing upsets the serenity: a rebuilt ’69 Camaro jacked up in the driveway, surrounded by tools and oil spots; Victoria’s brother, Todd, has been repairing the engine all summer long, since he turned seventeen and got his license.

  He’s there now, Todd Spicer, rolling under the hood—all but his blue jeans and work boots disappearing from view—and then back out again, sitting up to swig from a paper bag stashed behind a toolbox. His sleeveless T-shirt is smeared with a greasy handprint; his arms tense up into lean ridges as he tries to make things fit into place. Even from his perch on the roof, two yard lengths away, Robin can tell the repairs are not going well, can feel Todd emitting frustration. When the hood slams violently, he knows the afternoon has been a failure.

  Todd lights up a cigarette, raises his eyes. Pins Robin in his sights.

  Caught staring, Robin blushes, embarrassment jetting up his neck, saturating his ears. He waves—what else can he do?—hoping the gesture reads as casual, just friendly, not eager. He knows—the way you just know how you’re supposed to act—that he shouldn’t pay this kind of attention to Todd.

  Todd exhales and yells up to him, “What’re you looking at, Girly Underwear?”

  Girly Underwear. Todd picked the name just for him. Robin has a clear memory of when it started: he was seven, Todd eleven. Todd was circling around the yard on his dirt bike while Robin and Victoria were acting out plays they had made up; without warning, Todd zoomed in to swat Robin on the butt. Having done it once, he did it again, and again. Then he pushed it further, grabbed the elastic band of Robin’s underwear and tugged up. His underwear that day—to his unending regret—was tinted pink; his mother had let something bleed in the wash. From then on it was, “Hey, Girly Underwear, watch your back,” “Hey, Girly Underwear, how’s it hanging?”

  When he was seven or eight “Girly Underwear” could make him cry. It let Todd strip him down; it was all his weaknesses rolled up in one. He’d look at himself in the mirror: the sweep of his eyelashes, the swell of his lower lip, the curve of the bones around his eyes. His face was girly. Not like Todd’s face: behind Todd’s eyes was a storehouse of secret knowledge—how to be cool, to be tough, to get what you want. And the tone of Todd’s voice, the weight of his stare when he called out the words—it was the way a guy teases a girl, an insult that shudders like a flirtation. It used to terrify Robin. But now, after years of it—years of watching Todd, thinking about Todd—now “Girly Underwear” leaves Robin feeling less assaulted than unnerved, as if enveloped in a nameless wish—a wish like wanting to leave Greenlawn and move across the river to New York City—something you can long for all you want, though there’s no guarantee you’re ever going to get it. Sometimes, “Girly Underwear” echoes later in his daydreams as a command, Todd’s order that Robin strip off his clothes. Sometimes, in private, with his clothes off in front of the bathroom mirror, he wonders how his body compares to Todd’s, wonders what Todd’s body looks like naked.

  On this late-summer day, the name and the disturbing longing associated with it evoke only anger. Maybe it’s the safe distance between Todd’s backyard and Robin’s roof that emboldens him. Maybe it’s the computer-printed class schedule he’s clutching in one hand, reminding him that a week from now he’ll be in high school just like Todd, that he’s no longer some little kid to be picked on at will. Maybe it’s just ABBA telling him to take a chance. When Todd yells, “Hey, Girly Underwear,” Robin gives him the finger. “Fuck you,” he yells back. “That’s not my name.”

  Robin picks up his stuff and retreats through his bedroom window, his pulse thumping at this rare display of nerve. He glances back once before pulling down the blind: Todd is still looking his way, smiling, half a smile really. He sees Robin and nods. He might, Robin lets himself believe, be impressed.

  Lying on his bed, Robin opens one of his new notebooks. High school. The hallways will be filled with boys, the speeding train of their conversation echoing off metal lockers. He thinks about popular boys from middle school, the jocks, boys whose names everyone knows. Their presence is inescapable, their actions gossiped about, their dating patterns speculated on by lesser beings like him and Victoria Spicer during late-night phone marathons. Popular boys are like TV stars: you don’t have to know them to have opinions about them. You can spend your time imagining how they will react to something you’ve said out loud in class, or something you’re wearing, when in fact they don’t even know you exist.

  On the top of a page he writes: TAKE SOME CHANCES.

  Must make an effort to make friends with guys

  Should get into a fight to prove myself

  Should find a sport to play

  Get a girlfriend

  Tell jokes in class—people like that

  Have not yet learned to smoke (buy cigarettes)

  Should stop making it so easy for other people telling me what to do, etc.

  The list pours out effortlessly, his handwriting uncontrolled, the tip of his ballpoint pen chiseling the soft paper. It’s all so obvious—it’s everything that he doesn’t do. Everything normal. At the bottom of the page he writes, “Pick one to do everyday!” and underlines it twice.

  The next day Victoria gets back from her cousins. Robin is mowing the Feeneys’ lawn, another lawn in a summer of lawns he has taken on at three dollars a pop. He wears his work clothes—cutoff shorts and Keds and tube socks, all licked with mint-colored grass stains. Victoria is a gusher of stories about her Pennsylvania trip: the excursion to Hershey Park, the raft ride down the Delaware, the trip to the Colonial hot spots of Philadelphia. Her return is not the reunion he’d looked forward to: for months, he’s been pushing the mower around the neighborhood, with just a couple of trips to New York City with his mother to break up the monotony, while she’s been hanging out at a swim club, going to parties, letting some guy named Frank stick his hand under her bikini top. By the end of the afternoon he has nothing to say to her. She has her high school schedule to show him, but it yields only disappointment—they have no classes together. Without warning he jerks the starter cable for the mower. The clamor swallows up Victoria’s voice and seals him into his own bubble of envy. Watching her strut away in her new pink satin jacket, like some tough-girl out of Grease, he can predict she’ll fit right in at Greenlawn High. Hands in pockets, shoulders back, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans accentuating her developing body, she looks like she’s getting away from him.

  Todd is staring across the hedge. “Hey—”

  “Don’t say it,” Robin interrupts.

  “What?” All innocence in Todd’s voice.

  “You know. Don’t call me that name anymore.” He pushes the lawn mower back into the garage. Speaking to Todd like that, telling him what to do, gives him the jitters—something bad is bound to follow.

  Todd is still standing there when Robin walks out of the garage. “All right, cool out, man. Robin.”

  Robin. Not “Girly Underwear.” It isn’t quite an apology, but he relaxes a little. He looks Todd in the eyes.

  “So,” Todd says, shifting his gaze away. “So, you wanna cut my lawn for me?”

  “I thought your mother had a landscaper.”

  “That faggot quit, and now my father wants me to do it.”

  Robin shrugs his shoulders. “I charge three dollars.”

 
Todd shakes his head. “No, see the idea is like this: you cut the lawn, and I give you a break on calling you—you know, that name.”

  His face is so sure of itself, Robin thinks. He sputters out, “Like I can believe you? I’m not stupid, Todd. I’ll cut your lawn, and then you’ll just go ahead and call me whatever name you want.”

  Todd moves a step closer, lowers his voice. “That’s the risk you take. That’s what life is about, man. Especially in high school. Taking risks. Don’t ya think?”

  Robin stares in amazement. Has Todd been reading his notebook? Or is he just reading his mind? “I don’t know.”

  Todd’s face falls. “Man, I’m not getting any money from my Dad for doing it, so I can’t pay you. How about if I give you a jay?”

  “A what?”

  “You know.” He pinches his thumb and middle finger and mimics inhaling.

  Robin gets the reference. “I don’t think so.” He turns to walk away, but Todd is suddenly through the hedge, right there at his back.

  “Think about it,” Todd says, and swats him on the ass.

  Each step across the lawn, back to his house, he feels that pull. That magnetic thing Todd sends out like he’s an evil Jedi Knight wielding The Force. The smell of cut grass and gasoline on his fingers, and Todd’s voice echoing back at him. “Think about it.” How weird to have Todd making some strange deal with him, Todd wanting him to take a chance.