Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

Author:Bill Konigsberg [Konigsberg, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780545509893
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“So a guy gets into a terrible car accident, and his body is okay, but he’s brain-dead,” Ben said.

“What kind of car was it?” I said, turning my head to look at him. He punched me in the arm.

We were lying on his floor, studying. Him philosophy, me World War II.

“So he’s brain-dead, but his body — fine. At the same time, another guy gets into a separate accident. His body is totally mangled, but his brain is intact, totally fine. There’s a transplant. The healthy mind and the healthy body are merged. So who is the person?”

“James?” I asked. Ben didn’t even look over and punched me again.

I rubbed my arm, closed my eyes, and pondered. I’d never had conversations like this with a friend, since Claire Olivia wasn’t the philosophical type. This was like exercising a muscle I hadn’t ever used before. I liked it. “I guess the mind,” I said at last.

We were facing opposite ways, our heads near each other, close enough that I could not only hear Ben’s breathing but sync mine with it. “So you think you are your mind?” he asked.

“I think so. I mean, the body gets told what to do by the mind,” I said.

“Yeah, but if you didn’t have a body, you wouldn’t exist.”

I had to think about that one for a second. Could I be just a mind without my body? The idea made my head hurt, but in a good way.

“So you think you are your body?” I asked him.

“See that? You’re doing the Socratic method without even trying,” Ben said.

“Cool beans.”

He laughed. “This is the kind of conversation people have in the movies when they’re high.”

I nodded. My voice sounded pinched when I spoke, and that made me think maybe I was high, in a way.

“Have you ever been?” I asked.

“High?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Once,” he answered. “You?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado for a while now, so it’s easy to get. I didn’t really like it, though.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I like my brain to be in control.”

“Because you are your brain,” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

We laughed. I could hear his head move, so I turned my face to the side. Our eyes met. His were literally a foot away from mine, and I got this amusement-park feeling in my stomach, this whirling, tumbling, delightful sensation in my gut. I felt suddenly disoriented, like I was seeing his eyes for the first time. They were pale blue and kind, like a lazy Sunday afternoon nap. I felt at home looking at him from so close, and his eyes, they were open. To me. They were letting me in.

I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him, but this, this was better than sex. Or at least better than the one time I’d had sex, sophomore year with Clay.

“That Hitler. He sure annexed most of Europe,” I said when the silence finally became too awkward.

Ben laughed and looked away. “Philosophy’s more interesting,” he said as he went back to his book.

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