He said he was going to change and walked out of my room. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” When I looked at my crotch, to my complete dismay I saw it was damp. Had he seen it? Surely he must have. That’s why he wanted us to go to the beach. That’s why he walked out of my room. I hit my head with my fist. How could I have been so careless, so thoughtless, so totally stupid? Of course he’d seen.
I should have learned to do what he’d have done. Shrugged my shoulders—and been okay with pre-come. But that wasn’t me. It would never have occurred to me to say, So what if he saw? Now he knows.
“我在楼下等你。”他说他要去换衣服，然后走出了我房间。我看着裤裆，这才惊慌地发觉有印湿的痕迹。他看到了？他当然看到了。所以他才要我们一起去海边。所以他才走出我房间。我握起拳头敲自己的头。我怎么这么不小心，这么没脑子，这么蠢不可及？他当然看到了。
我应该学学他可能有的反应：耸耸肩，不在乎看见我湿了。但我不是这种人。我永远不可能觉得“就算他看见又怎样”。这下他知道了。
What never crossed my mind was that someone else who lived under our roof, who played cards with my mother, ate breakfast and supper at our table, recited the Hebrew blessing on Fridays for the sheer fun of it, slept in one of our beds, used our towels, shared our friends, watched TV with us on rainy days when we sat in the living room with a blanket around us because it got cold and we felt so snug being all together as we listened to the rain patter against the windows—that someone else in my immediate world might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was. It would never have entered my mind because I was still under the illusion that, barring what I’d read in books, inferred from rumors, and overheard in bawdy talk all over, no one my age had ever wanted to be both man and woman—with men and women. I had wanted other men my age before and had slept with women. But before he’d stepped out of the cab and walked into our home, it would never have seemed remotely possible that someone so thoroughly okay with himself might want me to share his body as much as I ached to yield up mine.
我从未想过，就在我身边，竟然有这么一个人，住在我们家，陪我母亲打牌，和我们共进早餐、晚餐，纯粹为了好玩而在周五背诵希伯来祷词，睡我们的床，用我们的毛巾，结识我们的朋友，雨天和我们一起坐在客厅里裹着同一条毛毯看电视——天气冷了，我们觉得大伙儿聚在一起听外面雨打窗权，感觉温暖又舒服——仿佛是另一个我一般，喜欢我喜欢的，想要我想要的。我从未起过这样的念头，因为除了在书上读到的、从谣言里猜测的和无意中听闻的淫言秽语外，我仍然活在这样的错觉里：我这个年纪的人没有谁想要同时扮演男人和女人的角色，或是同时想跟男人和女人在一起。我也曾经对同龄的男孩怀有欲望，也跟女孩子在一起过。但之前似乎连微乎其微的可能性都没有——像他这般完全接受自我的人，竟然想要和我分享他的身体，而我也同样渴望奉献出我的——直到他走下出租车、来到我家中。
