I Hate Everyone, Except You

by Clinton Kelly

  RENÉE: Does religion not play a big role in your life?

  ME: It doesn’t. I don’t really see the point, to be honest. I can have a relationship with God without all the middlemen. If I shut my eyes and say, “Hey, God, thanks for all the good stuff around me,” what difference does it make if I’m in a church or on the subway? Did you know I’m kind of obsessed with the New York City subway system? There are few things in life that make me as happy as seeing an Arab, some Hasidic Jews, assorted blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, gays, and European tourists peacefully coexisting on an uptown express train in the middle of the afternoon.

  RENÉE: When did you realize you were gay?

  ME: Hmm. I can’t point to any moment in particular. But I do remember not feeling quote-unquote “normal,” whatever that means. Just less aggressive, drawn more to the beautiful things in life. I remember being around seven years old and throwing rocks in our suburban neighborhood. That’s what kids, boys especially, did back then, roam around looking for things to do and throw. The rule was be home before it gets dark. Can you imagine telling your child that now? You’d be shamed out of suburbia. But it was a different world. The entire neighborhood was the playground, with mothers everywhere keeping eyes on kids who were not necessarily their own. At one point—it must have been early summer, because I wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, I remember it clearly—I found myself atop a mound of dirt. Which seemed substantial to me at the time, but may have only been a few feet high. The boys were throwing rocks into a nearby bush, and so I picked up some rocks and began to do the same. “Why are we throwing rocks into that bush?” I asked one of the other kids. “Because there’s a rabbit in there,” he said. Horrified, I dropped the rocks I held in my hand and ran down the dirt mound and stood in front of the bush. I threw my hands in the air, waved them the way one might surrender to opposing forces, and yelled, “Stop! You might hurt the rabb—” when a rock hit me so hard over the right eye that I fell back into the bush and blacked out.

  When I came to, maybe five minutes later, my eye was filled with blood. I closed it and looked to the mound of dirt, where a half-dozen boys had been standing, and saw that it was now empty. It was the first time I had ever felt profoundly alone, deserted. I rose to my feet, my head aching and my stomach wobbly, and heard the pack of boys yelling. They were coming my way with my mother in tow. “Mrs. Kelly, Mrs. Kelly,” they yelled. Because she was Mrs. Kelly then. “Clint’s eyeball’s hanging out.” And I had an image of myself as a deformed monster, my beautiful blue eyes, which even complete strangers complimented me and my mother on, were ruined forever. Terri grabbed me by the shoulders and looked at my face. “Is my eyeball hanging out?” I asked. “No,” she said, “but you’ve got a bad cut. I’m taking you to the emergency room.” “I was trying to save a rabbit,” I said. She was holding my arm as we walked through the neighbors’ backyards to our house. “Well, now you’re going to the hospital,” she said.

  I didn’t know if she was mad, inconvenienced, or frightened. Maybe a combination of all three, plus some emotions I wasn’t yet aware of. Anyway, that was probably when I realized I wasn’t like the other boys. But of course it wasn’t sexual back then. I don’t think I was sexually attracted to men until high school. Not that I acted upon it. That didn’t happen until college in Boston.

  RENÉE: Do you think the country is ready for a gay president?

  ME: Hell no. [laughs]

  RENÉE: What’s so funny?

  ME: It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The country would go apoplectic. People talk about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. Damon and I are completely monogamous, but a heterosexual couple can swing every weekend, and somehow their marriage is more sacred in the eyes of God than mine. I’ve got a real problem with Chinese restaurant–style religion. “I’ll make two choices from Leviticus and three from Deuteronomy, and ignore the rest because they inconvenience me.”

  RENÉE: That probably won’t endear you to a substantial portion of the American electorate.

  ME: Probably not.

  RENÉE: So what do you think your chances of winning are?

  ME: I’d calculate them to be somewhere in the neighborhood of zero. But if I really thought I’d win, I wouldn’t run. That job’s gotta suck. I’d like to go to bed now if that’s OK with you.

  RENÉE: Sweet dreams, Mr. President.

  YOU YOUNG, ME RESTLESS

  The bare masts of sailboats rock back and forth in Biscayne Bay like metronomes keeping different tempos. The sky is clear, thank God, except for a few puffy clouds to the south. It’s been raining for days, making me grumpy as hell. I’m hopeful my foul mood will lift today, but I’m not placing any bets; it’s only eight o’clock in the morning. From my seat at the table—Damon usually sits to my left, but he’s not here now—I look directly out the sliding glass doors of our terrace into the tops of palm trees. Sometimes an iguana riding the fronds will stare back at me, but not today. To my right is an unobstructed view of the water and, across the bay, the cranes that relieve the enormous flat-decked cargo ships of their burdens in the port of Miami.

  We bought this apartment to escape the winter doldrums of the Northeast. I need to see blue and green, and birds that aren’t pigeons, I told Damon when attempting, successfully, to convince him we should shuffle some of our money around. We’ll probably sell it soon, now that I’ve renovated and redecorated it. I need a new project.

  My hand is curled around the mug that holds my cappuccino. Despite how pretty it is, with its pink-and-white arabesque pattern, the cup reminds me that I am a failure. I designed it along with coordinating plates and bowls for Macy’s, but the line was not reordered. Sales were fine, the buyers said. Not great. There’s no room in the retail world for fine, I’ve discovered. I wonder if I should have tried harder to promote them and give a little shrug.

  The caffeine seems to be waking me up, albeit slowly, so I decide to check my social media accounts. Usually someone is out there, somewhere, wanting advice on what shoes to wear to an upcoming wedding or how to break into the world of television. I enjoy answering them. Nothing of any interest on Twitter today, just a few people saying nice things about my recipes on The Chew. I tap the little heart icon to let them know they’ve been heard. On Instagram, I discover some old messages in my inbox. (I didn’t even know I had an Instagram inbox.) There’s one from six months ago that catches my eye, from a fan who’s attached a screen grab of a young, fairly pretty comedian’s post. She, this comedian I’ve never heard of, has taken several images of me on a recent episode and arranged them into a collage and written a caustic caption about what a terrible haircut I have. Many of her followers have chimed in, some with LOLs, others with derisive comments about my face or sexuality.

  It stings a bit, considerably less than the things I read about myself online thirteen years ago, when I first began my television career. He’s so ugly he’s so gay he’s not funny he’s got no style. The usual stuff. Over time, skin grows thicker and one learns not to go self-searching. I consider composing a private message to this comedian, informing her that she will never find love and most probably die alone because she’s a shitty human being. But then I realize she’ll figure that out on her own anyway. Best not to waste a moment of this beautiful day fanning online flames.

  Perhaps Facebook will be less bitchy. I log in to my fan page and see that overnight I have received dozens of private messages written in Spanish and Portuguese, languages I don’t speak. After copying and pasting their e-mails in Google Translate, I learn these people, mostly young men and women in their twenties, are raving about a show called Amor en Linea or “Love Online.” It’s what executives at Discovery networks have apparently renamed Love at First Swipe, a makeover show I created, executive produced, and starred in for TLC. After one season, the president of TLC told me she chose not to renew the show because it “couldn’t find an audience.” Evidently it has found an audience—in South America, but at this point
it is too late. I close my laptop.

  Suddenly, a fast-moving blur out the window to my right catches my eye. I quickly turn my head and see a bird flying directly toward me and—bang!—right into the center of the hurricane-proof glass. The suddenness of the sight and sound causes me to jump in my seat, my heart racing a bit. I get up and look out the window. Nothing. Just the same blue skies and green palm treetops.

  Maybe the bird survived, the optimist in me thinks. I pace around the apartment for a few minutes before I decide to go downstairs and see for myself. I put on my flip-flops, take the elevator down one flight, and as I walk through the lobby toward the courtyard, I realize that if the bird is not dead, he may be crippled. What would I do if I found him with a broken wing or a shattered beak? I wonder. How horrible it would be to see an innocent creature suffer. Now I hope he is dead.

  I search the ground directly below our dining room window. Nothing. No tiny avian carcass. No peeping invalid. Not so much as a weightless feather lying in the mulch. The little guy must have hit his head and shaken it off. I am relieved.

  And then I find him, dead and curled up in a philodendron. He is lying in what strikes me as the sweet spot of the plant, where the firm stem meets the floppy leaf—a little hollow like the palm of a cupped hand. He is roughly the size of a sparrow and the gray of a dove. He is not a bird one would look at and say, “Now there is a gorgeous animal.” Yet I find his abject simplicity attractive. He looks like the type who, when alive, may have been content with what little he had. What would that be like, I wonder, to be happy with less, to live simply? I was once, I did once. I think. The past is getting hazy. All I know is that now my little bird has nothing, except what appears to be a comfortable spot to begin his inevitable return to unconstrained atoms, some of which may float to the sky, or in my window.

  Back upstairs, I notice a very faint stain on the glass; I assume I left a smudge, perhaps with my hand or forehead, when looking for the bird earlier. But the smudge is on the outside, left behind by the bird, an almost perfect three-inch imprint of itself, head turned to the side, wings spread, eye open. A little bird ghost. I consider taking a picture to show Damon, but decide that the impression is too faint. And for some reason to do so seems like a breach of trust. Evidence of the bird’s stupidity will remain my secret, until a rainstorm washes it away.

  I need to leave this place, have some breakfast elsewhere. I decide on a nearby restaurant situated amid cycling and yoga studios and a boot camp–style gym. Some class or other must have recently ended because everyone around me is in perfect physical condition and wearing athletic wear.

  I sit down at a table near the window and contemplate the menu. I should have the oatmeal because I’m trying to lose ten pounds, but when the waitress arrives, I order the combo platter of scrambled eggs with cheese, a biscuit, and potatoes. At the table next to me, a blonde with perfectly beachy curls is drinking a green smoothie. She must be a model. She has the most flawless golden skin I have ever seen. I don’t know how she could possibly achieve such a color, except by sitting in the sun for no less or more than seven minutes a day, every day, and taking regular baths in rainbows and the blood of angels. She has a little star tattooed on the inside of her left wrist, I assume to remind herself that she is one. Her sunglasses cover three-quarters of her face.

  The man she’s with is not a man, despite the fact that he is the perfect specimen of manhood. He is a boy, at least he must be because he has not a wrinkle or a pore, not so much as a freckle. And where did he get all the muscles? One must work for those, right? And yet he looks as though he’s never worked at anything a day in his life.

  I was this young once, wasn’t I? Certainly never Roman-statue-quality like these two, but cute enough. Right? Except . . . I didn’t feel cute at the time. There was always something wrong with me. My jaw wasn’t square enough, my shoulders not strong enough, my clothes not cool enough. This couple is literally everything I was not.

  I despise them. No. I despise the fact that I want to be them. Just for a day. Either one of them. Or both of them. I don’t care. I want to ride a bicycle shirtless. I want to dance in a club with strangers lusting after me. I want to look in the mirror after taking a shower and not wonder who will eventually win the battle to destroy my body: Father Time set on degrading the strands of my DNA, or Mother Earth with her incessant pull of gravity.

  I want to live to be one hundred years old for the sole purpose of tracking these two down. I will find them sitting in a café like this one and reach out both of my withered hands. I will touch them on the slack, mottled skin of their forearms.

  “I knew this would happen,” I will tell them.

  “What would happen, old-timer?” the boy will say. He will be in his late seventies now.

  “The skin. The hair,” I’ll say. “It’s gone. You have been betrayed. You thought you wouldn’t be, but you were.”

  “Go away, old man,” she will say, brushing her hand at me. Her star tattoo is gone. Perhaps she had it lasered off when it began to blur and fade.

  * * *

  “I hate to bother you,” the girl says. She is speaking to me.

  I am snapped out of my trance. “No bother,” I tell her.

  “Are you Clinton Kelly?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I love you.” She has taken off her sunglasses so that she can look me in the eyes.

  I am surprised that a human being this beautiful even knows of my existence in the world. It is always strange to hear I love you from a stranger. My instinct is to say I love you in return, but that seems to me disingenuous, condescending. What I really want to say is, You know some of me, and I’m glad you love that part of me but if you knew all of me you might not even like me. Nevertheless, I hope that someday a stranger tells you how much they love you, because it feels pretty good.

  “That’s very nice of you to say. Thank you.”

  We talk some more. Her name is Maddy, short for Madeleine. Her friend’s name is Preston. He does not know who I am. I tell her there’s a song I love called “Madeleine” from a musical called Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. She suggests we look it up online right now and listen to it. There is no need, I say. I have it on my phone.

  “Let’s hear it!” she says excitedly.

  It takes me a minute to find the song and I begin to feel self-conscious, they probably think I don’t know how to use modern technology. I press play and the song begins. The four-part harmony sounds like a barbershop quartet sung in double tempo.

  “That is old school,” Preston says before the first verse is over. Maddy shushes him. Other patrons in the restaurant are looking at us, and I realize I am being self-indulgent, playing a song written in the sixties, probably before the parents of this young couple were born: “I’m waiting for Madeleine / In front of the picture show.”

  “You don’t need to listen to the rest,” I say, hitting the pause button. “Basically, the guy’s in love with Madeleine, but she keeps standing him up. He waits for her in the rain and catches a cold. The end.”

  “Do you think Madeleine is toying with him?” she asks. It’s a question I hadn’t thought of before, but I get the impression she, this real live Madeleine, is toying with me. She’s being flirty, charming, staring me in the eyes with a broad close-lipped smile. Is she interested in any of this, honestly? Or is this the way she might talk to any old man feeding pigeons on a park bench?

  “Perhaps,” I say. “I don’t usually consider Madeleine. I’m more focused on the guy getting soaking wet in front of the movie theater.”

  “Maybe she’s watching him from the window of the coffee shop across the street,” Maddy says.

  “That’s mean. Maybe his cold turns into a really bad case of pneumonia,” I say.

  “Maybe she rushes to his bedside and declares her undying love for him,” Maddy says, “and they live happily ever after.”

  “They’d pro
bably be in their midsixties by now.”

  “I can see them holding hands and walking through a little park in Paris.” She turns her gaze to Preston. She touches his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. It’s her signal to him that they should get going.

  Preston removes some cash from his wallet and places it on the table, and before they depart we exchange pleasantries. I’m doubtful I will ever see these two again, but even if I do I will probably do my best to avoid them. I feel like some kind of youth vampire in their presence and I don’t like it. I fear I just might bite one of their necks if it would make me look five years younger.

  While I eat my breakfast—everything my doctor has suggested I avoid due to my elevated cholesterol levels—the waitress clears the green-smoothie glass and white ceramic bowl, which contained oatmeal, I think, from the empty table and resets it. I ask for my check and extract a credit card from my pocket.

  The host seats a woman in her midthirties and her young daughter, who is about four, where Preston and Maddy had been sitting just a few minutes before. Perhaps they were never really there in the first place. The mother’s eyes are glued to her cellphone, the girl’s wander around the room and land on me. I smile politely and lift my hand in a halfhearted wave. I usually don’t like children, but this one seems quiet and introspective, the way I like to believe I was fortysomething years ago.

  She sticks out her tongue at me, just a little, probably because she knows she might get in trouble should her mother catch her. I return the gesture, very quickly, I don’t particularly want to be reprimanded by her mother either.

  The little girl shrugs and for the first time in days, I laugh. Not too loudly, because it really isn’t all that funny, but the way she lifts her shoulders and rolls her eyes reminds me of something an old lady might do while saying, “Eh, who cares.”