He turns up the volume on the car stereo and bobs his head to the pulsing beat. Mags joins in, and they are as happy as can be. The music hurts my ears as my thoughts drift off to PJ. I wonder what he is doing today.
We walk around Georgetown, shop, eat, and walk some more. I buy a book from an indie bookstore. Mags picks up a new hair dye to try, and Neel finds a funky top hat he falls in love with. We eat cheap falafel sandwiches for lunch and sugary snow cones for dessert. We walk along the river and talk about everything. Everything, that is, except my coming out. I don’t understand why I keep clamming up on the subject when I have been on such a roll recently on what I’ve come to call my coming out tour. I know in my heart Neel won’t care, but I am still scared to tell him. Whenever I almost say the words, the alien wakes and attempts to claw its way out of my stomach. Mags keeps elbowing me. I know she thinks I should get it over with, but I ignore her.
The sun is getting low as we try to figure out what to do next. We conclude that after paying for our return Metro fare, we’ll only have nine dollars and change left between the three of us. A movie or bowling is out of the question. So, we walk to the Metro and catch the next train home.
Back in Rockville, we trade Neel’s car for Tom, and I drive us out to the closest Waffle House we can locate on the GPS. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I have never ventured in this direction before, and it feels like we’ve been driving forever.
“Are we there yet?” Neels repeats on a loop.
The parking lot is empty when we arrive at Waffle House. In fact, the whole area is eerily quiet, and there is not much around other than a gas station and a 7-Eleven.
“Where are we again?” Mags whines.
“Urbana,” I say.
“I feel like I’m somewhere in nowhere,” she says, looking around in disbelief.
Yep, that sums it up.
But I’m not referring to Urbana. My head is stuck on all the uncertainty in my life: 11:22 p.m., the alien in my stomach, and PJ.
16
Intervention at the Waffle House
We linger at Waffle House for hours drinking water and splitting two large plates of smothered and covered hash browns between the three of us. The waitress doesn’t mind. I’m sure she’s used to broke kids hanging out and not ordering much. We’re polite so she lets us stay unlike the group of obnoxious kids she kicked out earlier this evening.
Mags rambles on about her pink-and-blue-haired bubble tea girl until Neel suggests we play a game. Neel brings a book and a game wherever we go. Just in case, he always says. We play a spirited game of Magic: The Gathering, but I still haven’t come out to Neel, and Mags returns to elbowing me.
“Stop!” I yell.
But she keeps doing it, and Neel is concentrating too hard on the game to notice. We finish our plates of hash browns, and the waitress asks us if we would like anything else. No one knows what to say.
She looks at each of our faces in turn.
“Tell you what,” she says. “How about a round of drinks on the house?”
Neel gets a big smile and asks for a Coke. Mags asks for coffee, and I decide on a Sprite. When she returns with the drinks, she brings another large plate of hash browns. I must look apprehensive because she puts a reassuring hand on my arm.
“Don’t worry about it. You seem like a nice bunch of kids. You could be out in the world getting into mischief. I’d rather you be here. Safe and out of trouble.”
She gives us a big smile and walks away to greet the first new customers to come through the door in hours. Between Hector at Starbucks and this Waffle House in nowhere town, I have certainly scored a lot of free stuff lately. We finish our game and, as usual, Neel wins.
“Want to play another game?” Neel asks with a smile from ear to ear.
“Yeah, that’s a hard pass for me,” Mags says, and she throws her cards on the table in defeat. “Besides, Simon has something he needs to tell you.”
My face flushes scarlet, and I glare at Mags. She folds her arms across her chest in defiance and doubles down on her stance. Neel looks back and forth between us in confusion.
“O…kay. What’s going on, guys? Is something wrong? Wait! Oh, no! This is an intervention, isn’t it? Oh, geez, it’s an intervention. You think I have a problem? Don’t you? Oh, God, I’m talking about girls too much. You think I’m a sex addict. Oh, no, you guys, come on!”
Mags and I go wide-eyed, and we try not to giggle. Neel, unable to shut up, digs himself a deeper hole.
“I don’t masturbate too much, you know. Only once a day, sometimes twice on the weekends. I’ve even skipped a day and didn’t masturbate at all! See, I can stop. I did it three times in one day, but that only happened once, years ago. You know. When you learn you can do it.” Neel draws a large breath and continues. “Last year, my mom found my special drawer of lotion and tissues and made my father have a talk with me. It was the worst day of my whole life! But I’m not a pervert. What I do is perfectly normal. My dad said so. Read a book!”
Mags and I can’t hold back any longer and burst into peals of laughter. At first, Neel looks wounded, but before long, he is laughing too.
“TMI? It was TMI, wasn’t it? I guess I didn’t need to share so much about my masturbation habits, but I’m not a pervert, I promise you.”
