Tremendous Things

by Susin Nielsen

They said you need an intervention

  Not for booze, or crack, or E

  Had nothing to do with the usual addictions

  It was about saving me, from me

  From “Intervention” by Wilbur Nuñez-Knopf

  “Sit,” said Sal, his tone stern. He pointed to a straight-backed wooden chair that had been placed in the middle of the Persian carpet, strategically positioned to face the three of them.

  “Wait, I don’t get it—”

  “SIT.”

  Templeton and I both sat, me on the chair, Templeton at my feet. One of us started licking his nonexistent nuts.

  “I called Alex this morning because I was worried. Turns out he was worried, too.”

  “How many texts have I sent you over the past few days?” asked Alex.

  “A lot?”

  “And how many did you respond to?”

  “Um. One?”

  “Not cool, Wil, not cool. We’re friends, and friends don’t do that to each other.”

  Okay, I’ll admit it: I enjoyed hearing him use the word friends twice in one sentence. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve just—” I could feel my eyes welling up, and it was hard to swallow. “I’ve been having a rough time.”

  Sal’s tone softened. “I get it, kid. Unrequited love can be a real arse-kick.”

  “But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to Paris!” Alex blurted.

  “Exactly,” said Sal.

  “I can’t. It would kill me.”

  Fabrizio sighed. “It wouldn’t actually kill you.”

  “It might. I could get so distraught seeing Charlie and Tyler together, I might fall into the Seine and get swept away. Or step off the sidewalk and get hit by a tour bus—”

  “Dios mío.” He exhaled loudly again and crossed his legs, which were clad in bright red pleather pants.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Alex said, “I thought she liked you, too.”

  “Oh, she liked me, all right. Like a brother. Also, she told me I looked like a guy from an old movie. Napoleon Dynamite. Which I thought was a good thing until yesterday I looked him up.”

  “I know it’s painful right now, Wilbur,” said Sal. “But you’ll get over Charlie. No doubt she is a very special girl, but there are plenty of fish in the sea.”

  “Not in the sea of high school, Sal. Not for me. I have too much baggage. Besides, with my luck, the only fish I’d attract is the candiru.”

  “What’s the candiru?”

  “A fish that enters the human penis and eats it from the inside.”

  Alex squeezed his legs together. “Gaaaaaah!”

  “Why did you tell us that?” said Fab. “Now I’ll have the picture forever and always seared in my brain!”

  “Sorry.” But I wasn’t.

  “Wilbur,” said Sal, trying to get us back on track. “Set aside Charlie for a moment. It’s Paris. There’s a lot more to this trip than a girl.”

  “He’s right,” said Alex.

  “Easy for you guys to say. Sal, every time you went to the City of Love, you went with Irma. And you two”—I indicated Alex and Fab—“will be going on the trip together.”

  “But if we broke up tomorrow, I would still go,” said Alex.

  Fabrizio looked at him. “You would?”

  Alex thought about it for a moment. “Yes. I would. Wouldn’t you?”

  Fabrizio thought about it, too. “Yes. I’d keep my distance from you, and I’d probably say horrible things about you behind your back…but I’d still go.”

  “But then what if one of you started seeing some hot French guy?” I asked.

  “I would be miserable,” Alex conceded. “But at least I would be miserable in Paris. I would drown my sorrows in delicious French food. I would stuff myself with cassoulet and coq au vin.” His eyes widened just thinking about it. “I would take a cooking course at the Cordon Bleu school!”

  “I would sit in a café and drink absinthe and listen to Edith Piaf singing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ while gazing dolefully at the chic Parisians passing by,” Fabrizio continued. “My heartbreak would have so much atmosphere.” They both stared into the distance, picturing their separate post-breakup Parisian scenes.

  “What makes you so sure Charlie will get together with this Tyler kid, anyway?” asked Sal.

  “Because they got together here.”

  “So? Alex told me it was more of a—what did you call it, Alex?”

  “A hookup,” said Alex. “And there’s no guarantee it’ll happen again.”

  “Very true,” said Fab.

  “There’s no guarantee that it won’t,” I replied.

  Sal crossed his arms over his chest. “Boy, oh boy. You’re just rolling into a ball like a doodlebug and giving up, aren’t you?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “We always have choices, Wilbur. You can’t force someone to like you, but you can at least try.” Sal leaned forward in his chair. “When I met Irma at the Palais Royale, she was dating a blond Adonis from a wealthy family. All I had was my funny-looking face and a job at someone else’s furniture store.”

  “You don’t have a funny-looking face,” I said. A white lie.

  “Let me finish. We had a swell time dancing that night, so she agreed to let me take her to lunch one day the following week. I picked her up from her office job and took her to Fran’s. We enjoyed our conversation. So we started going once a week. She got to know me as a person. And she realized she felt a lot more for me than she did for Mr. Adonis. She broke up with him, and a year later, we were married. Her parents never accepted me, but we didn’t care.”

  “What a beautiful story,” said Fabrizio.

  “Didn’t I say that, Wil?” said Alex. “Didn’t I say women love character?”

  “But I don’t have character.”

  “Of course you do,” said Sal.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t. I’m not a lover or a fighter. I’m not you, Sal.”

  “Well, then, who are you?” asked Sal. “Who do you think you are?”

  A wave of emotion crashed over me. “A loser. A nothing. A zero!”

  Sal’s old-man watery eyes suddenly looked extra watery. “Really? That’s how you see yourself?”

  And it was like I was ten again and watching the Sarah McLachlan SPCA ad, because I burst into tears.

  Talk about humiliating. The room went deathly quiet. The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in Sal’s hallway.

  Then Templeton started to howl, upset that I was upset. I picked him up and put him on my lap. He started licking my tears.

  “That’s the same tongue that was just burrowing in his crotch—” Fabrizio started, but Alex squeezed his leg to stop him.

  Sal got up from his chair and came over to me. “Wilbur, if you don’t like yourself, this is truly a sad state of affairs.” He patted my shoulder. “We like you. Right, boys?”

  “Definitely,” said Alex.

  Fab cleared his throat. “I like Wilbur just as much as Wilbur likes me.”

  “We clearly see a better version of you than you do yourself,” said Sal. “But I can tell you over and over again what a great kid you are; if you don’t feel it yourself, it’s meaningless. Charlie, Paris…all of it is meaningless.”

  “Somehow we have to get you to like you,” said Alex.

  Fabrizio snorted. “If I can learn to like myself? Anyone can.”

  It was my turn to snort. “What? You’re one of the most”—I was going to say arrogant—“confident people I’ve ever met. You like yourself just fine.” Maybe too much.

  “I did like myself. Till I was about ten. Then I spent the last few years feeling the exact opposite.” Fabrizio’s voice cracked just a little, and Alex grabbed his hand. “Try coming out at age eleven at
an all-boys’ Catholic school. Some of the teachers were the worst. Even though I know for a fact at least two of them were also gay. Pretty hard to like yourself when everyone else is telling you you’re an aberration.”

  “You boys are breaking my heart,” said Sal.

  My heart wasn’t breaking. My heart was being kind of a dick. This is supposed to be about me. And somehow he’s made it about him. I am not proud that those were my thoughts.

  “It’s okay, Sal,” Fabrizio continued. “I worked at it. Really hard. Getting out of that school helped a lot. And now…I think I’m pretty great, just the way I am.”

  Alex kissed his cheek. “You are! You are perfection!”

  “I wholeheartedly agree,” said Sal, even though he barely knew Fab.

  “But with Wilbur, we don’t have the luxury of time. We barely have two months,” said Fab.

  We sat in silence for a while. It’s impossible, I thought.

  Then Fabrizio slapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh!”

  “What?”

  “I quite possibly have a genius idea.” He paused for dramatic effect, which, given that his dad runs a dinner theater and he’s sometimes recruited to stand in for a sick actor, is something he is very good at. “We do a Queer Eye.”

  “Huh?”

  But Alex was already nodding. “Yes!” He started to laugh his infectious laugh, and soon the rest of us had joined in, even though two of us had no idea why.

  “What’s a queer eye?” asked Sal.

  “It’s a makeover show on TV,” said Alex. “In one of the iterations, five gay men give a complete lifestyle and attitude overhaul to a straight guy—”

  “And simultaneously stamp out fear and ignorance and spread love and understanding, one hetero at a time,” added Fabrizio.

  “Sounds amazing,” said Sal.

  “And they do it in a really short period of time. The team is always trying to prepare their subject for some big upcoming event, like a party or a presentation.” Fabrizio looked at me. “Your event is Paris!”

  I just stared at them, trying to play catch-up in my head.

  “Count me in,” said Sal. “Wilbur? What do you say?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess?”

  “Let’s hug it out,” said Alex. We all stood and embraced, which was nice because the Mumps and I believe that men should be more in touch with their emotions in general. We pulled apart and Alex and I did our special handshake. I have to admit that for a moment I felt a bit hopeful again.

  Then Fabrizio pursed his lips and looked me up and down. “We’ve set ourselves a difficult—nay, perhaps impossible—task. We have a lot of work to do.”

  “And only eight weeks to do it,” said Alex.

  “Oy vey,” said Sal.

  Which took away some of my good feelings, I will admit.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.” I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror exactly forty-eight hours later, wearing nothing but my underwear, which were old and gray and saggy. I tried to smile, but it was more like a grimace; it was impossible not to notice the enormous whitehead in the crease of my nose. So I popped it. Some of the goop hit the mirror, so I cleaned it off before I tried again.

  “I love you. You are an incredible person. You are a winner!”

  A sallow-skinned flabby weakling with moobs and a potbelly stared back at me.

  He looked extremely skeptical.

  * * *

  —

  The four of us—“The Fab Four,” Fabrizio dubbed us, which in my opinion was remarkably self-serving—had reconvened after school at Sal’s place the day before. They’d made me stand in the middle of the living room while they circled around me, like I was a statue on display at a museum. They critiqued me like I was a statue, too—an inanimate object that couldn’t hear every single word they were saying.

  Fabrizio: “His height is an advantage. But his hair looks like an out-of-control Chia Pet.”

  Alex: “He has terrible posture. It doesn’t help with his overall physique.”

  I gave Sal a beseeching look, and he spoke up. “He’s got no class, no style. He looks like a schlub.”

  Me: “Might I remind you all, I can hear you. And also, I feel there’s an undertone of body-shaming going on here.”

  Fabrizio: “Not true. I’m fat—”

  Alex: “Me, too—”

  Me: “See, I would use words like stocky, or powerfully built—”

  Fabrizio: “Thank you. But my point is that you can be any shape or size. You just have to know how to rock it.” He swept his hands down his body; he was wearing a shirt with lemurs all over it, and his bright green pants. “I know how to rock it.”

  Sal bent down to give Templeton a belly rub. I heard his knees crack. “Fellas, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. None of this outward appearance stuff is going to matter if we don’t work on Wilbur’s insides.”

  “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my insides, too?”

  “You have many outstanding qualities,” said Sal. “You’re kind, thoughtful, generous—an excellent friend. And you’ve got real promise as a writer.”

  “Very true,” said Alex. “We’ve even turned some of his poems into songs.”

  “You have?” asked Fabrizio, with just the hint of a pout.

  “Yes, and they’re not half-bad.”

  I stood a little taller.

  “You have a lot of great features,” said Alex. “We just have to figure out how to draw those out and try to help you improve on the…less great ones.”

  “Number one, you are woefully lacking in self-confidence,” said Sal.

  “Even the way you walk,” said Fabrizio. “It’s like you’re trying to make yourself smaller.”

  “And you always try to fade into the background,” said Alex.

  “So true!” said Fab. “Half the time I forget you’re even there!”

  “Aaaaagh!” I collapsed onto Sal’s couch, head in my hands.

  “Don’t fret,” said Fab. “I brought help.” He picked up his Herschel school bag and dumped the contents onto the floor. “I thought these could spark ideas.” They were books with titles like The Blueprint: How to Be a Better You, Learning to Love Yourself, and “I Should’ve Had the Jalapeño Chicken Sandwich”—How to Live Life Without a Million Small Regrets.

  “Where did you get all of these?” asked Sal.

  “My dad ordered tons of self-help books when my stepmom left. We were two guys feeling lousy about ourselves for different reasons. So he’d finish one and pass it on to me, and vice versa. We even highlighted a bunch of stuff.”

  Sal bent down again and picked up some of the books. “Keep in mind, we need to tackle this in bite-sized pieces. Otherwise it’s going to feel overwhelming, for Wilbur and for us. We want to set him up for success, not failure.”

  “That makes sense,” said Alex as Sal handed each of us a book.

  “Okay,” he said. “Start reading.”

  * * *

  —

  That’s how I came to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, repeating the same words over and over. Alex had found the idea in a book called Self-Esteem in Six Simple Steps! “The book says that if you repeat your mantra every day for at least five minutes, you’ll start to believe it.”

  So I tried again, with more feeling. “I love you. You are an incredible person. You are a WINNER!”

  “Did you say something, pickle?” Mum shouted from down the hall. “You need a fresh roll of TP?”

  “No, I’m good!”

  I said the next few rounds in a quieter voice.

  And crazy as it sounds, by the time I was done with my five minutes, I could almost believe I was a winner.

  Well.

  Maybe not a winne
r. But just a tiny bit less of a loser.

  Sal was standing on his porch, bundled up in a thick wool sweater, when I stepped outside to go to school. It was way too cold to be outside; I was pretty sure he was simply waiting to see me. “Remember, Wilbur,” he said. “Stand up straight. Be proud of your height. Hold your head high. Look people in the eye. Smile!” Then he added his own special Charlotte’s Web message to me: “You’re terrific! Radiant! Some pig!”

  I gave my best friend a hug. “Thanks, Sal. You’re all those things, too.” He waved goodbye as I started my next assignment: the long solo walk to school.

  They’d told me I had to walk alone for at least a week. And I wasn’t allowed to keep my head down. I had to walk with confidence. My insides quivered, because Torontonians generally don’t like it when people look them in the eye. It’s not that they’re less friendly than other Canadians; they’ve just learned strategies to avoid weird encounters, which happen more often when you live in a big city. I still remember when we first moved here, a friendly-looking man smiled at me on the street, and when I smiled back, he opened his raincoat to reveal that aside from shoes and socks, he was totally naked underneath. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than having random strangers see Jeremiah at his softest and tiniest, but this guy seemed to take pride in it.

  So walking with my head held high and looking people in the eye took some serious effort. “Remember, you don’t have to feel confidence,” Fabrizio had said to me the day before. “You just have to project confidence. It’s what I did for ages. It’s what I still do once in a while. Fake it till you make it!”

  For the most part it went okay, except for one very big guy with a neck tattoo who glared at me and said, “What are you looking at, muppet?”

  I was relieved when I arrived at school. Alex and Fabrizio were waiting for me by my locker; whether they’d intended it or not they were in matching color schemes, purple on top, black on bottom.

  “Did you practice your mantra this morning?” asked Alex.

  “I did. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel like it made a tiny difference.” I took off my coat and hung it up, waiting for them to congratulate me.