Clayton Buckman was seen as a disgusting young junior at Raven High, Virgina. He ate pizza three times a day, got wasted every night and baked every morning.
His friends were anything but his actual friends.
They only hung out with Clayton so they could spill all the nasty stories about him to the school, even occasionally fabricating rumors about the poor boy, that spread like wild fire.
Clayton was completely oblivious of his "friends" devious disloyalty and lived every day in blind ignorance.
Clayton's "best" friend, Jonny, was the most popular boy in the school, a glorified senior. All the girls pined for him, freshmen, seniors and everyone in between. The closeted boys whispered their "forbidden" desires for Jonny between class periods.
One night, at Jonny's house, Clayton saw Jonny's mother collapse on the floor and begin drowning in her own vomit. She was a very robust woman who had increased size drastically since the last time Clayton came over, and this was curious since she had recently been prescribed diet pills. Jon came running, screaming, "Mom! What happened, are you ok?"
And he charged every which way in a hectic frenzy, then bolted into her bedroom to see if he could find any explanation for his mother's terrible state. "It's the diet pills! I knew it! Mom I knew those were bad news! Did you take too many? Well, mom, did you?" he was almost squeaking, wrinkling up his nose, reminding Clayton of an angry chipmunk. Though he knew Jon was far more scared than mad.
"Give me mouth to mouth!" Miss Abermath demanded between gargling, foaming gags.
"I can't, I can't, I don't know how," Jon admitted to her massive belly, hiding his face from his dying mother.
And then it hit Clayton hard. For one reason or another, he was always good at CPR when he practiced with those dummies in health class. He would often bring one of his greasy pizza slices to class and hide the fact that he enjoyed learning how to save the life of a plastic doll that smelled like a beach ball lathered with alcohol.
Would he actually touch his lips to the lips of big and grotesque, Margaret Abbermath? What would everyone say? Not only do I stuff my face with slimey, stinky pizza, but I like to get down with fat moms?
But without a moment more of thought, Clayton placed his knees on either side of Miss Abbermath's waste-line, scooped mucus and saliva blocking oxygen from entering her body and lowered his mouth to hers. The actual act of saving of Miss Abbermath's life was a little bit like a heavy night of drinking, in that he managed to black out the details of the next five minutes, and he thought about the girl he liked most in the school, Lisa Portly. They almost slept together once when they first met, but they had decided to be friends for one reason or another. She was the only girl he'd ever gotten that close with. He racked his brain why that was again, and before he could come up with a real, convincing reason, Miss Abermath was shedding tears of gratitude, relief and exhaustion and hugging Clayton harder than either of his parents had ever held him. Before he knew it, and beyond Clayton's control, his pituitary gland and hypothalamic neurons were releasing copious amounts of endorphins into the his blood stream, the spinal chord and brain, and whether or not he realized it then, he was hooked...to something...to saving lives? Maybe. All he knew is he liked what he felt and he caught Jon's surprised yet immensely gratified stare, quickly looking away once the stare became awkward.
Jon was standing still, in a state of shock and wonder, resembling an ice sculpture with bloodless cheeks and hands. "How did...I didn't know you could...thank you Clayton. I don't know what to say. How can I repay you?" and Jon approached the confused senior, who was still recovering from the hug, and kissed his stubbled cheek.
Clayton was a man of impulse. Without a moment's thought, he knocked Jon off his feet and pinned him to the floor. The sound of Jon's head whiplashimg against wood wasn't anywhere near pleasant.
"Don't you EVER say ANYTHING about this to ANYONE, do you understand me?" Clayton shrieked at Jon.
Jon nodded quickly while rapidly repeating "Yes" over and over until he was sure Clayton's rabid brain registered the sound waves.
"Good," Clayton answered cooly, smiling the way someone does for their Senior photos and released his tight grip on Jon's favorite Star Wars T-Shirt.
"There's not a morning that goes by that I don't thank Jon's mother for nearly overdosing that day, as weird as that sounds. I would have never started on my path towards happiness," Clayton shares with me, confidently. "I eat healthy now. My Jon taught me how to love celery. I have no problem with it now...as long as it's on pizza," Clayton beams, lifting up a lean slice of celery peanut butter desert pizza. "Vegan chocolate!"
Jon excitedly declares. "Now that Clayton's a certified physical therapist and life guard, I never again have to worry about health. My hubby takes care of me."
Apparantly, they had a chance to reexamine their opinion of each other on a school field trip to one of the biggest greenhouses ever built. They were there for their botany class, which was required of students enrolled at Raven High.
"What made you change your mind about him?" I, Donald Hues, reporter for the Raven High newspaper, ask Clayton while the three of us sit at the Raven High Diner across from the school, a popular hang out spot for after-schoolers.
"Besides the confusion that he caused me, which clouded the truth for a few weeks afterwards, Jon won my heart that day in the greenhouse."
"What did he do?" I pry, already knowing the answer, but genuinely interested in hearing it from the man himself.
Clayton pauses and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and sighing nostalgically.
"He approached me when I was flirting heavily with Lisa Portly. She was with her friends and I was trying to impress her in front of them by listing all the types of flowers I knew. I had a crush on her I guess. Looking back, I don't see how," Clayton begins.
"Clayton and I were still at odds then, but I had respect for him and had refused to deceive him anymore as a faux-friend," Jon interjects. "In fact, I made all my friends promise not to pick on him anymore. Of course, being the most popular guy in school at the time, the word quickly got out and not another finger was laid on the poor pizza poppin' fella I would soon come to love with all my heart. God, little did I know," and he lifts his finger to his chapped lips, lightly tickling them.
"Jon interrupted me during one of my bullshit speeches," Clayton laughs through his nose, simultaneously taking Jon's hand in his.
"He corrected me. I was saying some shit about a Hemoglobin flower, which does not exist, to my knowledge anyway, and Jon kicked my ass with an exact explanation of the particular flower's name we were looking at, including the scientific title." Clayton lowers his lips momentarily to their interlocked fingers and kisses them lovingly. They catch eyes for a moment and chuckle together.
I starte to wonder if I could doze off while resting my head against the seductively comfortable cushion lining the Raven High restaurant's only wicker chair out on the patio, when Clayton continues: "Then he really caught me off guard," he throws his head back, now firmly holding both of Jon's hands, and nearly tipping over both of their chairs.
"Jon said I was the most heroic asshole he had ever met, and planted a kiss right on my lips before I could count to one and three quarters. Bear in mind, this was in front of the girl I thought I wanted to marry one day, and her two best friends.
"That day was officially the end of my old life and the beginning of my new one, with my sweetheart. I kissed the silly flower boy back. I couldn't resist. He impressed me and I felt the rush of endorphins that was so foreign to me when I saved Jon's mother that fateful Sunday. I realized at that very moment, the endorphins were never for Miss Abbermath and hardly for the fact that I saved some old, obese woman. Sorry hun," he cheats a loving grin towards Jon. "The feeling was because of Jon. I liked him from then on, but was too scared to admit it, even to myself.
"Lisa, her friends and other students around us who witnessed what had happened, all froze in shock, and watched me as I confessed to Jon, 'I didn't only save your life that day I performed CPR on your mom. I saved mine too,' and I picked one of the flowers that Jon so gracefully provided a detail analysis of and placed it gently behind Jon's left ear in front of everyone on that side of the greenhouse. We definitely weren't allowed to pick the flowers in the greenhouse, let alone touch them, but I didn't care. I think I had to do detention the next day for that. I didn't mind. I was on cloud nine, but still in such a state of denial that I was unclear as to why I felt so damn good."
To this day, Jon receives a bouquet from Clayton of the same flower at the first of every month, and Jon refuses to call the orchids anything but Hemoglobins.
Clayton and Jon could not get married in Raven, Virginia because it is illegal for two men to be wedded to each other in that state, so they took a redeye to San Francisco only five years after Miss Abbermath's near overdose, and were happily married on a moment's whim. They later moved to San Francisco and now own a house in the suburbs.
We are back in Raven, Virginia this morning, after the couple so graciously agreed to fly out here just to be featured in a story here at Raven High. I think we are all a lot more tolerable here of men who love men or women who love women, and it's because of Jon and Clayton.
Little did naive little Clayton, the closeted and former Raven High Student anticipate that "Hemoglobins", which were actually orchids, would end up being the school flower. The nickname actually caught on fast after protesters for gay rights helped students see hemoglobin, which is actually the name for the blood cells that carry oxygen around the body, as as a symbol for what every person in the world has in common, regardless of their sexual orientation: blood pumping through their veins. And the oxygen we all breathe together.
Jon gave up alcohol, but on occasion, the two love birds still light up a blunt and toast to Miss Abbermath and the diet pills that changed their lives.
This is Donald Hues, senior at Raven High, signing off. Let's keep on turning Virginia, and the rest of the world for that matter, into a more suitable place for love. Oh, and GO HEMOGLOBINS!
