The next fourteen hours of Taylor’s life were spent in the fetal position in his bed, the stuffed giraffe clutched to his chest and the blankets pulled over his head. After the recognition of his aroused state, he had practically leapt into a freezing cold shower and then buried himself in bed, wanting to be left alone, basically for the rest of his life. He knew that his brothers were expecting him to go to Isaac’s house for brunch and he was really hoping that they’d forget all about it so he could spend the rest of his day in the exact same position. Almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, his cell started to ring on the bedside table. With a big sigh, he finally emerged from his cocoon long enough to snatch the phone from the table and then went right back under the covers.
“Yes?” he answered, rolling his eyes already after seeing Isaac’s picture on the screen of his phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Isaac asked, not even bothering to say hello.
“Why? What time is it?” Taylor asked, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.
“It’s 11:30. You were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago. Get over here, your food is getting cold,” and with that he hung up. Taylor threw off the covers dramatically before getting up to throw on some more presentable clothes, taking three Advil and heading out to his car. He hadn’t driven in a long time, but was more than excited to get behind the wheel of his self-proclaimed “pimptastic” black Chrysler 300 and speed across town, even though he knew that he probably looked more like a homeless man who had stolen the car than the celebrity who had purchased it on a whim because “it was just so cool!”
His head was only pounding slightly despite the half bottle of tequila he’d drunk the night before. Instead of continuing to dwell on the confusing thoughts circulating through his brain, he cranked up the music and drove across town singing along with the radio loudly.
Isaac’s house was about twenty minutes away from Taylor’s condo and the mid-morning Thursday traffic was proving to be quite minimal and before he knew it he was pulling in behind Zac’s stupid yellow Jeep.
They had agreed to have brunch to discuss what their next course of action would be, or rather, when they would head back to the studio. It was generally agreed that at least a month would be taken off after a tour, but they still always sat down and talked it out. Taylor killed the engine and trudged his way up the driveway. He let himself in and found Zac and Isaac sitting at the table, Zac texting someone on his phone and Isaac watching CNN with obvious disinterest.
“So nice of you to join us,” Isaac said blandly, not bothering to move his visual focus from the TV set to Taylor’s face. Taylor rolled his eyes before moving to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“I had a late night, so fuck yourself,” he replied, taking a seat to Isaac’s left.
“Had a late night doing what?” Zac asked, finally putting his phone down. Taylor stared into the blackness of his coffee instead of answering directly. He knew that he needed to be honest with his brothers. They’d never lied to each other about anything, no matter how often they didn’t approve of the other’s actions, well… mostly Zac’s. But, he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
“Fucking your girlfriend,” Taylor stated. Zac punched him in the arm before grabbing another donut from the box in the middle of the table.
“Yeah right. She was with me all night thank you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have slept with some other girl who has a boyfriend with a virgin’s stamina and a two-inch penis.” He tried not to wince as Zac punched him again, this time significantly harder.
“So what were you doing? Partying with Tre?” Zac asked, moving quickly past his annoyance with Taylor’s comment.
“Um… Flannery and I got in a big fight, I drank a lot, and yeah…” he started, finding himself quite unable to finish the sentence.
“And yeah what? Why are you being so weird?” Isaac asked, shutting off the TV with the remote before finally turning his attention to his brothers. Taylor sighed and closed his eyes tightly, thinking as hard as he could in the hopes of finding the best way to broach the subject.
“Flannery accused me of being gay,” Taylor said, not telling the whole truth, but enough of it to explain the situation to his brothers.
“So? We accuse you of being gay all the time,” Zac shrugged. Taylor wanted to smack the smug look right off of Zac’s face, but instead found himself replying honestly.
“So…” he took a deep breath before continuing, “I think she might be right.”
Isaac and Zac sat there staring at him, neither of their expressions changing or showing even the slightest emotion they were feeling. Then, without warning, they both cracked up as if Taylor had just told them the most hilarious joke they’d ever heard.
“Oh man… you almost got me there for a second,” Zac laughed. Taylor furrowed his brow in annoyance and shook his head at them.
“I’m not joking. I really think I might be gay.” And with that the laughing ceased immediately.
“Taylor… there’s no way you can expect us to believe you’re serious about this. How the hell do you just decide you might be gay?” Taylor didn’t want to tell them. Rather, he couldn’t find it within him to admit that he’d gotten a raging erection from watching two guys have sex with each other on TV. And not even real sex… cable sex.
“It just brought up a lot of thoughts, that’s all,” he partially lied, wishing he could drown himself in the remaining inch of coffee in his mug.
“Do you like to have sex with girls?” Zac asked seriously. Taylor stared at him indignantly, wondering how even he could manage to ask such a ridiculous question. Zac knew that Taylor had been with girls, many girls in fact since losing his virginity at the age of sixteen.
“Yeah, I like to have sex with girls, Zac,” Taylor replied slowly, hoping desperately that Zac would be able to understand him if he did so. Zac had a tendency to just ignore things that were easy to brush over, so Taylor made sure that Zac heard every syllable of his response.
“So, can a girl give you a stiffy?” Taylor saw Isaac roll his eyes out of the corner of his eye and was thankful that for once in their lives, Isaac was agreeing with Taylor that something was stupid instead of telling Taylor that he was stupid.
“No, I usually fuck them with a strap-on,” Taylor said sarcastically, “Honestly, where do you come up with this shit?” Zac sighed as if he was severely annoyed.
“If a girl can give you a stiffy, then you’re not gay,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah! Maybe you’re bi!” Isaac cheered with mock enthusiasm, “Because that would be so much less ridiculous and untrue!”
“You two are such bastards. I can’t believe I even told you,” Taylor muttered.
“I can’t believe you just wasted our time with such a stupid idea. You’re not gay, you’ve never been gay, you’re just bored.”
“I’m questioning my sexuality because I’m bored the day after we get off the most grueling tour we’ve ever done. Yeah Ike! You’ve got me all figured out!”
“Would you just put yourself in our shoes here, Taylor? What would you do if Zac came to us one day and said that he wanted to become a woman?”
“Hey! What the fuck?” Zac exclaimed.
“Don’t you dare compare my situation to that! They are not comparable in the slightest!” Taylor spat.
“Well what the hell else am I supposed to do, are we supposed to do, when you come in here and make such a ridiculous declaration?” Ike shouted, his voice rising in intensity to match Taylor’s.
“Oh gee, I don’t know! Maybe just listen to me since I’m your brother and you love me instead of being a know-it-all for once in your life!”
“I do love you, Taylor, I just need you to stop being ridiculous so we can get our work business discussed so we can all get back to our lives without each other.”
“Yes please,” Zac mumbled, sitting back in his chair, his thumbs working over the keys on this Blackberry like crazy, sending messages rapid fire to Sheridan.
“I want at least two months off,” Taylor demanded, pissily crossing his arms over his stomach and glaring at Isaac.
“Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“I need time to figure my life out, so no. I don’t think it’s excessive.”
“You expect us to sit around not working towards producing a new product because Flannery put some bullshit idea in your head?”
“It’s not a bullshit idea, it’s a real concern for me, Isaac. I’m going to need you two behind me on this, not against me. Do you think this is easy for me?” Taylor looked from Zac, who was still texting and showed no signs of being at all engaged in the conversation, to Isaac who was staring stubbornly at the wall. “Whatever, I’m out of here. Fuck both of you! I’ll see you in two months.” He slammed Isaac’s front door shut as hard as he could, but it didn’t give him the sense of satisfaction that his door slamming escapade at the hotel two nights prior had. Now all he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep for the next sixty days.
He shoved the gearshift roughly into reverse and sped out of the driveway and down the street, secretly wishing he didn’t love his car so much, because if he hadn’t, he would have eagerly and gladly rammed it repeatedly into the back of Zac’s Jeep. Instead, he just got himself home as quickly as he could before immediately climbing back into bed and hugging the giraffe tightly as he started to cry for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
Taylor wasn’t a stupid man, and he had been well aware of the fact that his announcement to his brothers probably wouldn’t be well received. But he never in a million years would have thought that it would lead to a fight. Another confrontation had been quite possibly the last thing in the world he had needed at that point.
The fact that he was even laying in bed considering whether or not he was gay still baffled him. He still didn’t understand how he could go from being a completely content heterosexual one day to a questioning person completely unsure of what side to choose on the next. Just as he was about to get upset again with his brothers for their response, he couldn’t help but think back to Flannery the night before. He now knew that she had been expecting the evening to go much differently than it had, just as he had been expecting them to be at least somewhat receptive to his thoughts when instead they had just managed to drive him away. And he really couldn’t completely blame them. His predicament was coming out of left field to them and probably did sound a lot like one of past obsessions like wanting to run the New York Marathon or when he was six and really believed that he could fly if he tried hard enough. He wished that he had some way of showing them that this wasn’t some strange flight of fancy. But why wasn’t it?
The first twenty-four years of his life, he’d never once questioned his sexuality. He’d never had the slightest inkling towards liking guys. He’d had his first kiss with a girl, had his first wet dream about a girl, lost his virginity to a girl, and all without an general feelings of discomfort or unease. He’d never had trouble getting aroused by women, and had honestly never had sexual feelings about a guy before. All of those things would have told anyone listening to his inner dialogue that he was in fact a heterosexual and that all of his confusion could end immediately.
However, that was not the case. His past sexual exploits were precisely what made him do the questioning. In the past, he’d had encounters with women not because they were his only option, but more because they were the only option he’d ever considered. He’d never been horrified by the men who had made passes at him, and had always just made himself brush it off. Other celebrities who had come out of the closet had always struck Taylor as being either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid because sometimes, after their personal announcement, the only topics of conversations that followed them had to deal with their sexuality. The world was supposedly becoming more supportive of gay people, and yet when a new celebrity broke the news, it was just as shocking as it had been with the last one.
It really bothered Taylor that he possibly had never wondered why those gay rumors seemed to follow him like they did because he was afraid of the consequences. What if he really was gay? What would that mean for the band? For his family? For himself? Isaac had already made it quite clear how he felt about Taylor’s decision making process, Zac was too absorbed in having text message sex with his girlfriend to care much about anything, but it was his parents he was most worried about. Sure, he knew that they would always love him no matter what–that was something they’d made very clear over the years, mostly when they knew he was doing something he really shouldn’t have been doing. But this was different. This was him, his life, his outlook, his general being on the line. How would they react to finding out that the son they’d always known was wondering if he’d been living his life in the wrong way? That the son they’d raised might not be the son everyone thought he was?
What was sitting the heaviest in Taylor’s mind was what it meant for him and his own perception of himself. He felt close-minded and naïve. How could he have been so stubborn to think that his best friend in the entire world would be wrong about something so huge, so crucial. How could he have yelled at Flannery and called her a liar when she’d only be stating what she thought to be completely obvious. And she clearly wasn’t the only one who thought so. The fans had been speculating for years, his brothers had been joking with him about longer than that, and the final piece of the puzzle had been someone who truly knew him, and that was Flannery. He knew that he still had a lot of thinking and personal searching to do, but he knew that he owed it to himself and to everyone who knew him to figure it out.
Once he had calmed himself down enough to be composed, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket and called Flannery.
“I’m ready to start being mature,” he said before she could greet him or start apologizing, both of which she was actually planning to do.
“What do you mean?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you…” he responded, ignoring her question.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I feel so bad for how it went down. It was just something I’d been wanting to talk to you about for a long time and it just came out all wrong. I never should have said something in the first place, it wasn’t my place.”
“Yes it is your place! You know me better than anyone in the world and I should have listened to you instead of just getting all weird and defensive. And plus, I think you might be right.” She didn’t respond for a beat, taking a moment to digest what he had just said to her.
“You think I might be right? Seriously, Taylor?”
“Yeah… I don’t really know what to do, but yeah…”
“You’ll figure it out, hun. You always do. And I’m here to help you however you need me to. Do you want to have dinner tonight?” she asked. Taylor shook his head even though she couldn’t see it.
“No, I don’t want to do anything today. Tomorrow maybe? Lunch?”
“Sounds good. I’ll come pick your lazy ass up at noon. Please don’t make me wait,” she smiled.
“Whatever. I’ll see you then. Bye Pumpkin Tits.”
“Bye Puppy,” she said before speaking again, “Hey… you’re snuggling the giraffe, aren’t you?” Taylor smiled despite himself and pulled it closer.
“Shut up,” he replied, “That’s none of your damned business.
“I’m glad you like it,” she laughed, “Bye.” And with that, the line went dead. Taylor set the phone down next to his head and got resituated.
“I’ll snuggle you if I want,” he mumbled to the stuffed animal before nodding back off, feeling the most relaxed he had in the last three months.