Confessions - forgive me, Julian, for I have sinned on Labyrinth Gardens

Charlie B-F-R

August 29, 2015 4:10 AM

Confessions - forgive me, Julian, for I have sinned by Charlie B-F-R

Had Julian ever said anything about him liking boys? He wracked his brain…. Had he ever said anything to her about it? He was sure he had idly commented on the attractiveness of male models before he really felt anything, but had been equally prone to complimenting the girls. Maybe she didn’t think it… His Dad hadn’t. But his Dad was a rational, sensible grown up and - as had been demonstrably proved - he, at least, was an irrational bundle of hormones. Whilst he credited Julian with a bit more sense than himself, he thought it wasn’t impossible that she’d leapt to conclusions. Especially when, given his behaviour, it wasn’t so much a leap, not even really a hop, but more like taking a teensy, tiny step and there conclusions were.

He’d asked to meet her for a walk after class early on in the term. It was time for this to be over. Maybe he could even enjoy the rest of the term. Or at least focus on RATS instead of this. Unless Julian hated him. Or wanted sexy make out sessions. Both of those would be quite distracting, and had factored into his arguments with himself when he’d been tempted to put this off (or just fancied some idle day dreaming in his dorm room).

“Hi,” he smiled at her, trying not to seem weird or nervous, both of which were exceptionally difficult - the latter because he was it, and the former because the latter made him do things like lift up his fingers to wave and then realise that was a totally weird way to greet someone in this situation and simultaneously overload all neural paths with such an overwhelming feeling of self-consciousness that it was physically impossible for him to execute any sequence of motor movements in a normal way. It was too late to back out, so he waved awkwardly.

He took a path, trying to make small talk until he felt like they weren’t under the shadow of the school any more. Like really it maybe was just the two of them out here. He hoped he’d chosen a private enough place that they wouldn’t be interrupted.

“I… I need to tell you something,” he confessed. He’d thought of so many ways to phrase this that he wasn’t fully sure what horrible mismash version of explanations was going to come out of his mouth. He’d decided that was a good opening line because anything else about wanting to talk risked Julian thinking this was a reprise of last year’s conversation about her stuff, and that wasn’t fair. He was quite glad he’d managed to remember that. “I just…. and I’m not asking….” he shook his head. “I thought I should tell you... that one of the secrets last year… It was about me.”

13 Charlie B-F-R Confessions - forgive me, Julian, for I have sinned 252 Charlie B-F-R 1 5

Julian Umland

September 02, 2015 6:44 PM

Bless you, my son. by Julian Umland

When Charlie asked for another walk in the Gardens, Julian had almost wanted to make an excuse. The last time, after all, she had ended up saying far more than she really meant to, and while even partial confession felt good for at least a moment, Charlie was not a priest, separated from her by a screen and with too many parishioners (she always assured herself) to learn every voice well enough to match it to a face when it was heard again in another context. Relief faded fast when she thought of anyone knowing she was her and also had any of the negative feelings or selfish thoughts she sometimes did. She didn't think she was good enough to really be like her mother seemed to be - almost always calm, an inward serenity underlying and regulating the expression of appropriate emotions while inappropriate ones simply did not seem to occur to her, and even-closer-to-always doing and saying the right things and putting her own desires aside to take care of everyone else - but she could, if she disciplined herself to it strictly and didn't indulge other impulses until they became bad habits, maybe just manage to act as though she was more like that than she really was.

She had thought of all this and then smiled and said "sure, whenever you want". It was ridiculously vain to imagine this was the same thing as last time, and if she was asked about her holiday, it had been very nice. At the appointed time, then, she put on her favorite jacket and went out.

"Hi," she replied, a bit surprised by the awkward wave. That gesture would have been perfectly ordinary from John, especially if he was tired or distracted, but while she did put the two boys into roughly the same category - they were enthusiasts, deriving pleasure from the pursuit of their interests in a way that sometimes made her feel they were a bit younger than they really were and like she needed to protect them from the big cynical rest of the world - they did not have the same mannerisms. Charlie was warm and affectionate, not awkward and reserved; he was probably the most physically demonstrative person she knew. That wasn’t like him. She imitated the wave, though, and fell into step with him.

”I...I need to tell you something,” said Charlie, and though his manner made concern the first thing Julian felt, she tried to look merely attentive and encouraging. "And I’m not asking", along with the generally disjointed character of his speech, only increased the concern, though. And then….

For a long moment, Julian’s mind whirled at the admission. She had mentioned Charlie’s status as an adopted kid to John when trying to direct her suspicious sibling’s thoughts away from her, but...well, if Charlie believed the dead were aware of the living in some way (and that was as much his own business as anything she could possibly imagine), he could tell his mother all about himself or not as he pleased, but she really doubted a mean-spirited prankster was going to get that abstract. ‘G’ and ‘A’ couldn’t be about him, though; neither letter was particularly prominent in his name….

Then there was the other one, the first one, which had made Julian feel bad for Francesca Wolseithcrafte. Guess who likes girls? That one was….

Well, as much as she hated to admit it, that would be a bit of a surprise. They had been well into adolescence for a while now and he had...never really acted like an adolescent guy who wanted to attract girls. Not that many people here really did - prudish American purebloods and all - but...well, dressing up and wearing make-up and stuff could just be fun, could just be a means of expression, but during their fourth year, it had also occurred to Julian, if dimly, that clothing and hairstyles could also announce to the world how the person wearing them wanted to relate to others. The Head Boy and Girl of the day had inspired that thought, and the years since had just built on it: the way someone dressed could be coincidental or forced on them by someone else, but often was a statement of everything from economic security and perceived social position to personal interests to religious and political beliefs. Charlie’s style…well, it was crude stereotyping to say it was necessarily a banner meant to announce that he was not romantically interested in girls, but they were teenagers. They played parts. She was pretty sure that was the general assumption.

Of course, it was possible she was missing something altogether. She hadn’t heard of any other rumors, but then, her main source of gossip was Charlie himself. If it implicated him, he might well have not mentioned it to her, especially if he’d found the note the same way she had found that stuff in the Transfiguration room but hadn’t been inconvenienced by an annoying little brother at the time. Even if he hadn’t destroyed evidence, though, a lot of tales could have gone around without her noticing - she paused outside her dorm before entering it to make sure Gemma and Willow weren’t talking about her sometimes, but there ended her natural affinity for methods of intrigue. Julian had come to the conclusion that the less she knew, the happier she usually was.

“Okay,” she said calmly, only a little warily. One thing was clear: whatever it was, it was tearing Charlie up badly. If she said something wrong now on an assumption, she could possibly make it all much, much worse. She put a hand on his arm. “I don’t want to assume anything, but – whatever it is, unless someone’s accused you of murder and I missed the memo, I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she offered.

16 Julian Umland Bless you, my son. 254 Julian Umland 0 5

Charlie

September 04, 2015 5:59 AM

Thank you? by Charlie

Julian’s ‘okay’ seemed to last a lifetime. Really, how could it only be two little syllables? And was he imagining a slight tone of something that wasn’t really ok? Had that been tinged with… hostility? But then she put her hand on his arm, and tried to reassure him… Julian’s lack of surprise was confusing. On the one hand, perhaps she hadn’t assumed anything about him prior to now, and this wasn’t the shocking revelation he’d thought it would be. On the other hand, perhaps the penny hadn’t dropped. If there had been space for another hand, there was the possibility that Julian had figured it out or suspected she had, but really meant what she said and loved him nonetheless, but people didn’t really have three hands, so one option had to be dropped.

He contemplated the other two. Had she seen that rumour? For definite? He tried to recall whether it had ever come up but he couldn’t. He’d certainly done his best to avoid the subject, short of whispering a few red herrings here and there about Ava Fletcher, but he’d had more sense than to do that to Julian who would, one day, know the truth of the matter. And alright, when compared to murder this wasn’t that bad, but he couldn’t feel comfortable until he knew Julian knew what they were discussing. It was easy enough to say that anything short of murder was forgivable when you didn’t know what the person had done. But it was amazing how much more serious something could seem when it was real - and how someone could lose that perspective, given that the other suggestion was only ever a joke.

“They haven’t,” he responded, stepping carefully away, trying to make it look like he just want to keep moving. Until he felt sure Julian knew what he meant, he felt he didn’t deserve to be touched. Alright, a hand on his arm wasn’t exactly getting him all fired up but… the gestures people made were different between those they thought might like them, or even their sex in general, and those they thought would never see them that way.

“The first rumour… in the Cascade Hall… You know the one I mean?”

13 Charlie Thank you? 252 Charlie 0 5

Julian

September 09, 2015 8:55 PM

You seem unsure. by Julian

Julian supposed she could indulge her inner Aladren and buy a few more seconds by making Charlie confirm the rumor he was talking about, but could was not a synonym for should. Doing so would, she was pretty sure, just insult her friend, not to mention make it all that much worse for him. So she nodded instead. “Yeah.” Unfortunately, there ended her relative certainty about what the right thing to say was. “I didn’t realize, though….Wow. Oh, Charlie….”

She was surprised, if not as much as she thought she would have been if he had gone straight to the point, but mostly, Julian was just struck by the incongruity of the situation. She was no expert, but she thought this was kind of an inversion of the usual script. A guy liking girls was not usually the kind of thing gossips used to cause trouble for the guy in question. It was…expected, and it was the opposite she thought people who experienced it sometimes got blackmailed over and usually ended up anxiously confessing to friends….

Charlie’s case, though, was different. He had…well, she guessed he’d expected to be like his fathers. Sort of like how she'd once thought being like her mother would just come naturally and still tried for it, even as she sometimes resented the existence of a standard she didn’t think she could meet and was sure she would have never wanted to meet had it not been her mother’s and was occasionally intrigued by the other ways of being a woman she saw out there. She had never consciously included sharing a sexual orientation in that thought, other aspects of character and identity were what she worried about, but she had spent years, now, trying, to greater or lesser degrees, to conceal any interests she could not imagine her proper, reserved, read-more-serious-books-by-age-eighteen-than-Julian-would-in-a-lifetime, convert mother thinking about the same way she did. Oh, she thought she could relate to being anxious about admitting something that maybe most people would consider completely natural, all right.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize what was going on,” she said, trying to gather her wits and suppress useless guilt about not realizing that something was up beyond general seventh year busy-ness. “And that – someone did that to you at all. And that it was something you felt like had to be a secret.” She bit her lip. “Do you need to talk about it or…anything? What do you need?” When it had been her, she had not wanted to talk about it, but Charlie wasn't her and might want to rant or ramble or otherwise express further.

16 Julian You seem unsure. 254 Julian 0 5

Charlie

September 12, 2015 3:30 AM

I'll be sure when you're sure by Charlie

She knew. She knew what he meant, and she wasn’t throwing things or hexes. He released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. This was going ok. Her surprise mixed up his feelings a little - on the one hand, all his worrying about it felt vindicated, which was weirdly reassuring and satisfying on account of the fact it meant he hadn’t been totally crazy to think what he’d thought. On the other hand, it made his chest feel tight because the feelings that were being justified were guilt and worry.

He felt his eyes tear up at Julian’s words… He’d probably given her the surprise of a lifetime, and here she was, wanting to know how she could support and help him. And again, not throwing things. The not throwing things part was definitely a continuing plus.

“I need to say sorry to you. I’m sorry for keeping something from you for so long, especially when… I don’t know. I feel like it might have changed things. It’s felt for a really long time like I’ve been lying to you. Not directly, I guess, but lying by omission. I mean… Would it have been different? You let me dance with you, talked to me about boys you liked… And I feel like some of that had to come from the fact that you thought I was someone different to who I was. They’re girl friend or gay best friend jobs. It feels like I deceived you. And then the longer it went on, the harder it got to say, because at first I wasn’t sure… I thought maybe it was just… Anyway, then by the time I knew I should say something, it meant I’d already been doing something wrong for a while, and I just… got stuck.”

13 Charlie I'll be sure when you're sure 252 Charlie 0 5

Julian

September 15, 2015 7:27 PM

I'm reasonably confident. by Julian

Julian blinked when Charlie pointed out that he’d continued acting like a gay best friend after realizing he deviated in several crucial ways from the stereotype. She had not thought of it that way before – perhaps not surprising, as she had not had much of a ‘before’ to think of things in, but….

“Well,” she said, “if anything, I’d think you liking girls would make you an even better person to ask for advice about how to handle other guys who do. And my other option for a dancing partner around here was John, and I was taller than him back then.

“I’m not going to lie,” she continued more seriously. “I felt more comfortable asking you to the ball because I didn't think you'd get a romantic date, either, but that was just because I didn't feel like I was stealing you from someone you'd rather have the first dance with. I don’t think of it – like – ‘I can only tell Charlie this because he’s my gay friend.’” She wrapped her right hand around her left elbow. “I can’t say for sure what I would have done, because it’s not then, but now…I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m just used to not being close to anyone but a bunch of guys, but I’ve never thought of it like that. And I’m definitely not going to be the one to judge you for when you feel ready to talk about your personal business, or who you're comfortable telling about it.” She bit her lip. “Have you talked to your family about this at all?” she asked.

Privately, of course, she was less sure of herself than she sounded. She didn’t feel as though Charlie had done anything to her, or something wrong in general, but she didn’t know what was going to happen now. Was Charlie like her, someone who had tried to be like his parents but was now going to start experimenting with other mannerisms? Was denim-flannel-and-bear-wrestling Charlie going to become a thing? Did they go on being as affectionate as they had been when that might give his potential girlfriends the wrong idea? In her experience, though, the last thing someone who was troubled by something wanted to see was much ambiguity in others. When her parents and siblings hadn’t shown any about her over the past few years, she had gotten paranoid, sure they were hiding their real feelings in the name of propriety and unselfishness, but Charlie was not her.

16 Julian I'm reasonably confident. 254 Julian 0 5