I think that last thing put him over the edge and he had me pinned on the ground in about two seconds. It was kind of stupid on my part to forget he was a state champion wrestler. He leaned down into my face and went ballistic. “Don’t talk about Mary like that, don’t you ever! You’re trying to drive us away from the church, you’re evil—some kind of demon who’s only mission is to ruin me and take me down to hell with you. Reverend Jim was right, there’s no hope for you Jacob. He and I, we agreed you’re beyond redemption! You’ve turned your back on God—”
I couldn’t take hearing him talk like that anymore. I put a move on him that they damn sure didn’t teach in high school wrestling, something I learned somewhere by somebody—I couldn’t remember the details of the place and the time but the move was automatic—Danny went head over heels into the pool and was stunned. He started sinking under the surface and I dove in after him. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled his head out of the water, his eyes were rolled up in his head like some shark chomping on a boat or whatever. Bo was whimpering, growling, undecided if he was going to jump into the fray. I knew who’s side he’d be on if he jumped in.
“HE’S MY GOD TOO, DANNY! You self-righteous moron!” I dunked his head back under the water, counted to three, and raised him back up. “When I go through the pearly fucking gates I don’t think you and God and asshole Jim are going to be sitting at a table judging me, like heaven is some kind of fucked up American Idol audition! When the time comes I’ll make my peace with God and I doubt there’s any kind of application you’ll need to sign off on, shithead!” I pushed his head back under the water, 1…2…3, and I yanked him back up again. This time he coughed up some water and then starting gasping for breath. “You’re my brother Danny, I love you! But you, Bo, you are coming in way too hot on this whole God thing! You need to live a little, Bro, you’ve got plenty of time to repent if you screw up.” Back down, 1-2-3 again, and when he came up this time he was struggling like a bass on a fishing hook. I realized tears were streaming down my face.
“Don’t drown me, Foster!” He had genuine fear in his eyes and I started crying even harder. I pulled him to the edge of the pool and we both hung on the edge, gasping for breath. I wiped all the snot and tears and shit off my face and put an arm around Danny’s shoulder.
“I wasn’t trying to drown you, to hurt you like that.”
He looked doubtful, skeptical. “Then what would you call it? It sure felt like attempted murder to me.”
“No, well yeah, maybe. I’d call it water boarding but in this case that’s not exactly right. Let’s consider it a reverse exorcism, you know—I was just trying to get Reverend fucking Jim out of your soul. I want you to see he’s as bad as you think I am. He’d love for you to leave his church all that money and then watch you disappear to Tibet, whatever! Within a month he’d have the nicest house in Dutchville and would be driving something a lot more expensive than Paul’s Porsche or my car. He’s using your faith to turn things around his way! Just think about it, okay. If I decide to stay here for the summer—”
“Oh God help us all. All summer?” He looked like he had just seen a Tasmanian Devil heading straight at him.
“I dunno, maybe. I haven’t decided. But if I do stay maybe we can work on us, you know, being brothers again. We’ve gotten away from that, maybe that’s my fault but I’m not sure. But if I do stay there’s a whole lot that we need to talk about.”
“I’m just not sure I’m ready to talk about…well, for knowing everything about you. I’m the one that threw out all those DVD’s I found in your room, and I’m not sure I can think too much about that—it’s just too much for me to accept, to deal with. It, whatever—it changes a lot about who I thought you were.”
That felt like a gut punch to me, and I realized that not everyone was waiting for me to talk to them about coming out—that some people didn’t want to hear it, even my own brother. “Okay, Danny, okay. We don’t have to solve everything, to resolve everything today. But at some point we’re going to talk about everything, and you’re going to listen. And--oh shit!” I heard the reminder beep going off on my phone. “I’ve got to meet a guy—you, know, an old friend—I told him I’d meet him for dinner. I’ll be back around nine and we can just hang out for a while.” He nodded and gave me a small smile.
I ran inside and up the stairs and straight into the shower to get the chlorine off of me. I toweled myself off as I walked into my room and checked out the clothes in my closet. I wondered what was cool to wear for an I-used-to bully-you-but-it’s-good-to-see-you-again dinner. I threw on some jeans and a John Deere t shirt that made my biceps look good, then I dry-swallowed some Adderall to counteract all the weed and alcohol that was still in my system. I fumbled with the buttons on my fly as I launched myself down the steps and out the front door.
Saturday, 7pm
I hauled ass to the Pizza Hut and checked my text messages, nothing important, and then fired up a joint because the Adderall had me a little too wired, I guess—I was doing a bad job of balancing out my chemical mix this weekend. I took two or three hits off of it and then flicked it out the window. It just didn’t seem too smart to get the munchies on the way to a pizza buffet.
I got to the restaurant and whipped into a parking space, coming in a little too hot and almost taking out a family trying to cross the parking lot. I started to yell at them for getting in the way but I decided they really weren’t worth the trouble. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw how wrecked I looked, all the pot and the crying and the chlorine had turned my eyes blood red. My hair had this stubbly spikey thing going on because I forgot to tame it down with some product. I threw on a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses and hopped out of the car, hoping I looked cool and not like a serial killer or anything.
Jeremy was in a booth and he started waving when he saw me come through the door. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and the purple in his hair was especially swoopy tonight. He stared at me and seemed a little pissed, “Are you so embarrassed about having dinner with me that you needed to wear a disguise? Really Foster? If you want you can just head out the door, don’t worry about it.”
“No, really I’m not, Jeremy! I just, well, I just took a course this semester, you know—Intro to Ducking the Paparazzi—I’m just practicing what we learned or whatever. And I may go out to California to visit my mom, they’re starting to follow her again.”
He looked confused, “So you’re afraid the paparazzi are stalking you at Pizza Hut?”
“No, not that.” I took off the hat and sunglasses and he did this little gasping thing that immediately got on my nerves.
“Holy shit! Did you just wake up from a coma, or something?” His shocked look eased up and he said, “Are you--”
I realized the waitress was standing there and she asked, “Are you boys, well, are you two having the buffet or did you want to order something?” We both told her the buffet was fine. She kept looking at my eyes and Jeremy’s hair. “Anything to drink?” She looked at me again and her face lit up. “Wait, you’re that guy, you’re her son, you know—”
“Yes!” I was so loud Jeremy and the waitress jumped a little. “We’ll have a pitcher of beer—”
“Uh, Jake, I don’t drink.” He looked at the waitress, “I’ll have a Diet Coke and I guess he’ll have a bottle of—”
“Nope!” I tried to keep my voice under control, “Go ahead and bring the pitcher, and uh, one mug.”
When she walked away Jeremy said, “I guess you were right about the disguise, I hope she’s not calling Inside Edition.” He had a smirk on his face.
We got up and filled our plates with pizza and then we sat down and ate in silence. I really couldn’t remember anything from high school that I thought he would want to relive, and I was starving. I got up and filled my plate again.
When I sat back down he said, “So, I’m not exactly what we’re doing here, Foster. I mean, we weren’t exactly buddies in school, and we don’t h
ave anything, really, in common. On the drive over here I kept wondering if you wanted to apologize for all the shit you and your jock buddies pulled on me, but that just really doesn’t seem like something you’d do.”
“No, well yeah, I do feel bad about that shit at Reagan, but you’re right—this wasn’t about an apology or anything. I just saw you last night and you know, catching a meal with you, shooting the shit, all that—it sounded good to me at the time.”
He stared at me like some kind of zoo animal. “And here we are. So what would you like to ‘shoot the shit’ about?” He kept giving me that weird look and just sat there, waiting for me to keep talking.
I looked around again but nobody seemed to be listening to us. I downed my mug and realized the pitcher was empty so I caught the waitress’s eye and raised my mug, she nodded and scooted off. “I guess, and you know, well it’s kind of hard to talk about, but you being… you and all,” and I kind of pointed at his hair as if that really meant something. “You’re you know, like, well you being gay I thought maybe we could talk about—”
He looked puzzled then a little shocked. “You’re a ‘mo, oh my god!” he was squealing like a girl meeting her favorite boy band.
“No—what, wait, whadda ya mean by that?”
“Oh, c’mon Foster, you know what I mean. You play for my team, you like guys, whatever you wanna call it. I guess my gaydar hadn’t kicked in back then. I absolutely would have never guessed—I probably dreamt about it, but never would have figured it out. You always had girls chasing you, you played all those sports, you just—well you truly had everyone fooled.”
I turned a little red thinking about Pete. “Well, not everyone—”
“Oooh, child do tell! Who was it? Which one of those fine young rednecks did you—”
“No, Bo—I mean ‘mo, what the fuck ever Jeremy. I never did, not once in high school—I was too trying to prove that I wasn’t by hookin’ up with every girl in school. I didn’t want anybody to know, I didn’t want to lose the image, the friends, all that. I didn’t want to end up—”
“End up like what, Foster? Like me? Do you think that’s the only reason I didn’t have any friends and got kicked around on a daily basis, because I was gay and wasn’t hiding it like you were?”
“No, Jeremy, that’s not what I meant, that’s not what I was trying to say!” The waitress set the pitcher down and just stood there, I waved her off. I poured myself another mug of beer and downed it. “I wasn’t worried about getting bullied because I could kick anybody’s ass at school who would be stupid enough to start something. I just couldn’t face everybody, I couldn’t deal with the hassle.”
“You didn’t want to lose the Foster reputation—jock, pussy hound,” his nose wrinkled at that, “the born athlete, the boy next door. You didn’t trust your friends to accept the real you. Sounds like you just chickened out to me.” That stung a little but he was probably right, it was probably true but maybe not.
“Well it’s not my fault I had some pretty uptight friends back then. I thought I was goin’ to move forward this summer, but I tried to talk to my brother today and he pretty much shut me down. He didn’t want to hear it.”
Jeremy laughed. “Your brother is insane, Foster! He’s so far up that fascist Reverend Jim’s ass he’s peekin’ out of Jim’s mouth. Don’t take too much stock in what Danny thinks.” I downed another mug and burped, Jeremy winced and waved his hand in front of his nose.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s just a lot for me to deal with, I don’t really know how all this should play out. But let’s just take a break and talk about something normal, we can talk about this other stuff later—maybe some other time.” I tried to think of something else to talk about. “So air conditioning repair, or whatever. What made you decide to take that at school?”
“Well,” he paused and daintily wiped his mouth like he was afraid he’d mess up his lipstick or something. “Well, at first I just liked the idea of ringing somebody’s doorbell and telling them I was there to check out their unit.” I kind of choked on my beer and laughed. He grinned back at me but then got serious. “But you know, I like it. I never would have guessed but I actually have a knack for it. How about you, are you doing anything interesting at Hawthorne?”
I figured I’d be honest. “Fall semester I dabbled in drug dealing, and this semester I basically flunked out of terrorism school.” Saying it out loud kinda made it seem worse than it really was.
“I know the feeling”, he sighed. “I flunked out of physics the first time I took it,” he confessed. “But wait, terrorism? Maybe it was supposed to be, like counter-terrorism, maybe you flunked because the coursework was too, I dunno, too vague.”
“Maybe, I guess, but really not. I think I had it right but it just wasn’t a good—it just wasn’t a skill set that I excel in, I guess. But I’m going to get a degree in Recreation Management, so it really doesn’t matter. I just need a break, you know? A little time here at home and just take things easy for a change.”
He nodded and looked at his watch, I noticed it was neon green. “So what have you done in the last day or so, are you getting back in to small town mode?”
I considered that, “Well, I went to Joe’s last night, that was fun. Then today I had sex with an old friend, then met another guy I may or may not be interested in, and I tried to drown my brother.”
“Right, right.” He nodded. “Small towns don’t really change much, sounds like you’re back in the swing of things to me—just like your high school days. But all that—the drug dealing, the terrorism thing, the drugs you’ve obviously been taking, the sex, the violence—it’s all got to take a lot out of you. No wonder you look a little tired and all.”
I sighed. “Thanks for understanding, nobody else seems to care how much effort I put in to things. I don’t think anybody understands how hard it is to keep up this kind of pace.” I felt a little bit of all the burdens easing up from just being able to talk about it.
“So what about dating Foster, any special young man in your life? You can tell me, you know I wouldn’t gossip. I wouldn’t even tell Ernie.”
I was lost, “Who, what, is an Ernie? Your dog or something?”
He giggled. “No, silly! Ernie is my boyfriend, my partner, my whatever-is-pc-these-days person. You should meet him, we could all go into the city and hit the clubs, go shopping, whatever—all the fun stuff you can’t do around here. But tell me, are you seeing anybody—some lucky guy?”
“Yeah, honestly no. I’m not sure if anybody could keep up with me right now. But seriously, ‘Ernie’? That’s his name, huh? Well,” I tried to stall but at the same time it did sound like an option, “I’ll think about hanging out with y’all sometime. You know, that could be a good break for me. I have this other friend who wants me to meet him in New Orleans, but it’s for some kind of gay political thing. I don’t know about getting into all that.” But I knew seeing David to talk about all this stuff might be better for me than club hopping with Jeremy and an ‘Ernie’.
“I don’t blame you, political stuff just puts me to sleep. But you need to keep in touch whatever you decide—this has been so fun!” He looked at the check and I grabbed it.
“Yeah, Jeremy.” I shook his hand. “It has been good. I’ll take care of this, don’t worry about it.” I looked around and spotted the men’s room, “I’m gonna take a leak before I leave. But give me your number and I’ll catch up with you soon, I promise.”
I walked into the men’s room and felt like my bladder was going to explode. I fumbled with my fly and headed straight for the urinal. I was sighing with relief when I heard the door open and Jeremy came in. He started checking himself out in the mirror and making messing with his hair, adding swoop or something.
“Jake, I hate to even ask, but with a nickname like ‘Foster’—”
I should have expected this. “I know what’s coming next, but really Jeremy? Sometimes, you know, showing it off, or whatever—it kind of makes me feel
like some kind of freak.”
“Sure, I understand. You think with hair like this I don’t get some stares?” I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s not exactly the same, but c’mon Foster! Give me something to talk about with the girls in spin class! You’re a friend now—just a glimpse, a quick look, something?
I finished pissing and slowly turned to face him and took my time tucking it back in and zipping up.
“Oh, oh, my! Wait ‘til I tell those girls about that thing!” I grinned and headed out to the parking lot.
Saturday, 9pm
When I got home Daniel was in the living room doing pushups in front of the TV. I put a foot down on his back and he didn’t even slow down. He was wearing cutoff sweatpants and a wife-beater t shirt, puffing out a count as he went, “781, 782,--”
“Don’t bullshit me, Daniel.” I grinned down at him. “I bet you’re at about ten or eleven you wuss.”
He stood up and grabbed my bicep, “Do you even lift, Foster? So, how was your dinner?” I burped in his face and he grimaced. “Oh, wow. I can smell pizza and beer—you must have gone to Pizza Hut.”
“Yeah, and you smell like a rancid moose, little brother.” I wrinkled my nose and pushed him toward the hall, “How ‘bout you go shower up and meet me back down here?”
“Yeah, Foster, that would be okay. Mom called and she and Paul are coming back Thursday, Maria and Vince will be here tomorrow. So maybe you can stick around for a while, you know, just ‘til I get out of school in June, or maybe you could even stay the whole summer? I dunno, maybe that would be good.” I flashed back to when we younger and he followed me everywhere, thought I was some kind of superhero. I think after today things weren’t going to be the same and I was a little sad but still tried to be hopeful.
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