The tenor of their conversations might seem to shift, but they are always the same. Justin pushes. Chris resists. Always, always the same. JC listens to their arguments and agreements, to the rise and fall of their voices, and seems to be soothed by them, like it's the rise and fall of the ocean. Joey thinks that's weird, but quintessentially JC, and spends his time watching his friend on these 'boys nights.' He believes this is because C is like no other guy he knows. Not just because he's gay, because Joey knows other gay guys — Chris and Justin are gay — and they aren't like C. He's not like girls, either, though sometimes he seems effeminate. Except that's not it either, and now it might be the beer, but he wants to understand for himself what JC is, what he means.

'Ok,' he thinks, 'break it down.'

C is, he's dreamy for one. He's off in the clouds half the time, totally unaware of things happening right in front of his face. Like he and Lauren will be talking about some movie they saw, how great it was, about how the actor really got into his role, or something, and JC would catch maybe one word in ten and an hour later would say, "Oh, so how was the movie?"

That annoyed him at first, having to repeat himself. But he got used to it. And when C was running on one of those dreamworlds he came out with the most fascinating stuff. Lauren tended to laugh at him, not in a bad way, but she laughed. Joey laughed sometimes too, but he almost always ended up turning what was said over and over in his mind, sometimes days later. And if he brought it up again, C would always remember and they'd have a conversation about it.

Other times, JC is dead-on alert. He'll not only know what you're talking about, he'll be three or four steps ahead of you in the conversation, and your brain will be running to catch up. Usually these conversations are about music, and Joey loves them because he loves music and no one at his school talks about much besides food. It's ok, he likes to talk about food, likes every aspect of food really, which you can tell by the gut he's getting. But sometimes he wants to talk about David Bowie or Steven Sondheim, not the ten ways to bone a salmon filet.

Sometimes, when Lauren thinks he's spending too much time with JC, she accuses him of having a crush on him. And Joey always denies it, because he doesn't. He's straight, for one thing, and taken for another, and he tries to be monogamous at least. It's just that C operates on a different level from anyone he's ever known, and he wants to know that level too. Or at least try.


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