“Nothing,” he says. “And they won’t either.”
I’m guessing some threats have been made. Chris is watching my back yet again. Not much has changed since sixth grade. Kind of makes me feel like a loser to the nth degree.
It’s super late when we get back to Chris’s house. I don’t worry about waking up his parents. They’re in the Cayman Islands for a few days, where they have a vacation home. Chris stayed back for Tabs’s party tomorrow. Rather, today.
Upstairs, I ask Chris if I can use his shower, but it’s not until I’m out that I realize I don’t have any clean clothes. I really don’t want to put on my soggy, grimy boxer briefs, so I wrap the towel around my waist and go out to Chris’s bedroom, where he’s reclined on his bed staring up at the ceiling.
“Hey, man, can I borrow some clothes?”
Chris looks at me then, head to toe and back again, and I swear there’s something hot and illicit in the way he sizes me up. A desire that is definitely more than friends. But then he snaps out of it and hustles off his bed to grab some clothes out of his drawers, pushes the stack at me, and won’t make eye contact. It’s a lot like that morning after Sebastian. Like this big, dirty secret he doesn’t want to talk about or even acknowledge.
Something for me to tackle another day.
I dress inside the bathroom, and when I come out, Chris has gotten me a glass of water and a Tylenol. He points to his bed and tells me he’ll sleep on the futon. I thank him again for finding my drunk ass and not telling my mom.
“Just don’t let it happen again,” he says.
As I’m drifting off to sleep, Chris reaches up and finds my ear, flicks it, and whispers, “Happy birthday, Theo.”
And despite all the bullshit of the day, I figure I’ll be all right, because in spite of being outed in the most publicly humiliating way, I still have Chris in my corner, and that’s really all I need.
Empty Boxes, the Damn Ball, and Other Metaphors for the Suckage of Life
I WAKEup around noon the next day to the sounds of a party revving up outside Chris’s window. Oh yeah, that. I peer through the blinds, squinting at the assault of daylight like a vampire. The headache is still with me, only a little more muted. My sister’s by the pool, one arm draped around Chris’s shoulder, laughing at something one of her friends is saying. I’ve only been awake for about ten seconds and I already feel like puking, which is only partly from the alcohol.
I scribble a note to Chris—Thanks for letting me crash here—then creep downstairs and sneak a muffin from the glass case in the kitchen that Paloma keeps stocked with an assortment of goodies. I jog across our driveways, keeping to the bushes like a ninja to avoid running into any of Tabs’s guests, and find my mom upstairs in our kitchen, doing dishes while singing, but the singing abruptly stops when she turns around and sees me.
I get the arched eyebrow—just one. My mom’s not very strict. In fact, she’s the exact opposite of strict. Around the time we started high school, my mom kind of shrugged and saidThat’s all I can do. It’s up to you now.Maybe it’s because she’s from Puerto Rico, where it seems parents are a little laxer and the kids more independent. In any case, as long as we come home at night and check in every few days, she pretty much stays out of our business.
But my mom knows something’s up, and the arched eyebrow says more than words.
I have this speech prepared for my mom, which begins with my first stirrings for Casanova Guerra and how my desires have manifested over the years, growing stronger and more unavoidable. Then I was going to reference a boy who is Chris-like but not actually Chris, and conclude with the relationship I recently ended as an example of me needing to be a little choosier about who I date. As she’s staring at me and I’m searching for the right metaphor with which to begin this great oration of my sexual awakening, I decide to cut to the chase and simply say, “I’m gay, Mom.”
She nods and sets down her scrubby and opens her arms to me. I walk over and get this great mama-bear hug from a woman half my size who has more strength in her two arms than most men I know.
“You want to talk about it?” she asks.
I shrug, still encased in her arms, thinking about when she taught me how to dance. I was ten years old, and she insisted it was essential to my growth as a man.You need to know how to lead, mi hijo.I doubt I’ll ever be leading a bride, but I’ll always have my mom to dance with, and that’s enough for me.
“I thought I did, but you seem to get it, so maybe it’s not necessary after all.”
“What happened yesterday?” she asks, pulling back to look at me, and I can only assume she knows most if not everything that went down.
“This picture went around school of me….” I clear my throat, and she holds up one hand to gesture that I don’t need to go on.
“Do you want me to call this boy’s mother?”
My sweet, old-school mother is a lot like Chris in many ways, only instead of beating a guy’s ass, she goes for the jugular—his mother.
“He doesn’t have the best home life,” I tell her, feeling bad for Dave all over again because he’s basically a runaway who had the good fortune of having an aunt with a spare apartment and no tenant. Then I kick myself for feeling bad for that asshole at all. “Besides, Chris already beat his ass. That’s probably enough.”
She nods. “Well, I can see why you call him Asshole Dave.”
We share a bitter chuckle at that, and even though my mom pretends to not know what’s going on in my life, clearly she does. Then she reveals perhaps more than she ever has about her relationship with my father when she says, “Make sure you fall for what’s on the inside and not what’s on the outside, baby. Otherwise you’re just buying an empty box.”
I nod and feel pretty bad at the same time. My father reduced to one sad metaphor, an empty box. I kiss my mom’s cheek and tell her I’m going to visit Uncle Theo at the home. She seems surprised at that. “You’re not going to the party?”
“Not my scene,” I tell her. Another part of me manning up is not doing shit I don’t want to do because other people tell me to. Even Chris and Tabs.
