How to Be a Normal Person

by TJ Klune

  God. California was so weird.

  Whatever. Gus was going to be amazing.

  Casey would too.

  Long-distance.

  It was going to be stupid cool and everything would be awesome.

  Gus really needed to stop hanging out with hipsters. His lexicon had taken a serious nosedive. He reminded himself to read the encyclopedia tonight before he went to bed.

  He started his mad dash across the street.

  He made it to the sidewalk when a moving truck passed by, splashing a large puddle up and onto Gus.

  “Goddammit!” Gus shouted.

  By the time he made it to the shop, he was scowling more than he’d done in three months. He thought maybe it would be best if he walked into the shop with a smile, but he had rainwater in his ass crack and that was not conducive to a smiling, happy Gus.

  He could do this.

  He was Gustavo Tiberius.

  Well.

  Not that that meant a whole lot.

  But still.

  He opened the door.

  The bell rang overhead.

  And he stopped.

  Gus said, “Uhh.”

  Because in this shop stood Bernice, Bertha, and Betty. And Lottie. And Xander, Josiah, and Serge. And Casey, of course, who was pacing back and forth, a worried look on his face.

  That is until Gus walked in.

  They all stared at him.

  Xander looked upset.

  Casey looked nervous.

  The others looked amused, exasperated, curious, and in the case of the hipsters, somewhat stoned.

  Gus couldn’t decide what to say first. He knew it was probably a bad idea to open his mouth without a clear thought in his head, but the silence was stretching and it was getting awkward and Gus couldn’t have that. He couldn’t let Casey think he had nothing to say to him, not if he was going to be the best boyfriend possible.

  So as he stood in the doorway to Lottie’s Lattes, dripping water onto the floor, an angry, wet ferret at his side, Gustavo Tiberius looked Casey Richards straight in the eye and said, “I want to be a lesbian with you and shave your pinewood beaver.”

  And meant every word of it.

  The problem with that is he hadn’t meant to say those words in particular. So while the actual verbiage was wrong, the inflection behind it was everything that he could put into it, all his love and hope. His fears and thoughts on the future. His dreams for the two of them, because yes, Gustavo Tiberius had dreams for the fucking future that involved waking and baking, working at the Emporium while Casey typed his latest literary drivel that would be consumed by fifteen-year-old girls who didn’t understand why the books caused aches in their groins. There would be trips to the grocery stores, smoking out of hollowed-out apples, family Christmas cards that went out where Gus was scowling in the picture because it was the stupidest thing ever, and maybe, just maybe, they’d be sitting on rocking chairs on the porch when they were seventy, holding hands and reminiscing about the day that Gus took down the overlord Steve Jobs because of something he read on the Internet.

  Unfortunately, it can be rather difficult to discern a love confession when you bust into a coffee shop and make what are potentially inflammatory comments about lesbians and beavers. It was about that time that Gus realized that it might have been better off had he been born mute. Surely at least then he could have avoided the way the acoustics in the shop seemed to echo his voice. He may have been bullshitting about testing the acoustics weeks before, but now he really wished he’d listened to himself then.

  And thought ahead.

  And had the power to disappear.

  He wondered if he could make it to Canada by morning if he left right now. He heard Canada was nice.

  That was a lie. He heard Canada was just really cold.

  But that was fine. He could hunt yak or whatever. Wear their hair for, like, boots and stuff.

  He told his feet to move.

  His feet said fuck you, we ain’t goin’ nowheres.

  He wondered why they sounded like 1920s gangsters in his head.

  He wondered how much time had passed since he’d burst into Lottie’s Lattes.

  He thought maybe it’d been five or six seconds.

  It was Josiah who spoke first.

  Like the waiter-stoner-wannabe actor that he was, he said, “Pinewood beavers. That sounds like a lesbian Boy Scout porn parody. If you make that into a movie, I want to audition for a role.”

  Gus blushed terribly.

  Casey made that strangled noise he did every time Gus’s face turned red.

  Lottie said, “Oh dear god. You two deserve each other.”

  “Is that what happens when you get exposed to the Internet for the first time?” Bernice whispered to her sister-lovers.

  “No,” Betty said. “I think that’s just Gus. Poor, sweet, innocent Gus.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be that innocent anymore,” Bertha said.

  “I can’t help but feel that this is partially my fault,” Xander said.

  “Honestly?” Serge said. “I might be a bit too baked to understand what’s going on. Why does Gus want to shave Casey’s beaver?” He blanched. “Oh my god, what the hell did I just say?”

  “I’ve seen things on the Internet!” Gus said, sounding rather like Harry S. Truman in that his voice was high-pitched and rather ferret-like. He knew he had to try and explain what the hell was going on in his head, but it was all just static noise. His mouth didn’t seem to care. “Things. Like. Things.”

  “Maybe we should have installed parental locks on your computer,” Bertha said with a frown. “It sounds like you’ve been looking up things a boy your age shouldn’t have access to.”

  “I’m almost thirty!”

  “He’s growing up so quickly,” Bernice said, sounding oddly tearful. “Pretty soon, he’s going to move away to the big city and become a stockbroker and do cocaine off the buttocks of high-class Indonesian call girls before he finds his one true love. Or loves.”

  “You need to stop reading DesRinaDale fan fiction,” Betty told her.

  “It’s not a problem,” Bernice insisted. “I can stop anytime I want. I only downloaded six hundred more fics last night to read. In four hundred of them, Martindale is a barista. A barista. Do you know how original that is? No one has ever done that before. And now I get to read about it four hundred times.”

  “Isn’t DesRinaDale that thing from Casey’s books?” Serge asked. “The bisexual three-way or whatever?”

  “Yeah,” Xander said. “People get weird about them. Young adult vampire/werewolf postapocalyptic dystopian fans can get really rabid. Once, a fourteen-year-old sent him pornographic fan art. I felt dirty even being near it. Fourteen-year-olds should not be able to draw explicit three-way bisexual sex scenes involving felching.”

  “We wouldn’t have to if someone would just finish the next book exactly as I want it to be,” Bernice said, glaring at Casey, who had yet to look away from Gus.

  “Gus, I’d like to audition for Pinewood Beavers now,” Josiah said. “I’ve just prepared a scene that I think would fit right in with the feel of the porn parody. And scene.” He grinned salaciously at Gus and arched an eyebrow. “Hey. Do you want to carve some wood with me, Boy Scout? I’ll help you earn your Got Wood badge. End scene.” He frowned. “Okay, that was a work in progress. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Oh my god,” Gus whispered fervently. “I have quirky friends. I have mischievous misadventures. My life is a fucking romantic comedy.” And maybe he couldn’t breathe so well after that. “Holy shit!” he squeaked. “I’m Jennifer Lopez!”

  And that pretty much killed the conversation because if there was one thing Gus was definitely not, it was Jennifer Lopez. For one, he was not a Latina. Two, he had never dated his own backup dancer. Three, he’d never had backup dancers. And four, he hadn’t squandered a promising start to a career with poor script choices and devolved into something that meandered around mediocre. A
lso, Gus had a bit of a flat ass. Damn genetics.

  “We should let them talk,” Bertha said. “Let’s all go into the kitchen where we won’t be listening through the door at all.”

  “We won’t?” Bernice said, sounding particularly aggrieved. “But I have to—ohhh. Right.” She winked obscenely. “We definitely won’t be listening to any conversation that will take place out here because that would be impolite.”

  Betty came and took Harry S. Truman’s carrier out of Gus’s hand. “I’ll take good care of him, Jenny from the block,” she said. Gus wanted to smack her for her insolence, but even he knew that Betty could kick his ass, and he didn’t want to have what he hoped to be a slightly dramatic love confession with a black eye or a lacerated liver.

  Lottie ushered everyone into the kitchen, the door swinging behind them, and Gus was sure the moment the door closed, they’d all pressed their ears up against the door.

  “Hey, man,” Casey said after a while, the first time he’d spoken since Gus had told him about wanting to be lesbians together. He didn’t look particularly happy.

  “Hi,” Gus said, suddenly very nervous. “Hello. Um. How are you? I am fine. Thanks for asking. Er. Not that you asked. Or anything.”

  Gus knew then without a doubt that this was going to be a disaster.

  “You kind of ran away,” Casey said, with no real accusation in his voice. “Hid for a bit, I guess.”

  Gus nodded. “Yes, yes I did. I had to think and look things up on the Internet and now I am here to have an adult conversation with an open line of communication.”

  “Okay,” Casey said, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Yeah, man. I can do that. Share space.”

  “Share space, oh my god.”

  “Share space,” Casey agreed.

  “Fine,” Gus relented. He could do this. “I’ll go first. I don’t normally wear Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, and jeans with holes in them. The only reason I did that was because I heard you call me abnormal and weird and strange and I didn’t like that because even though I pretended not to, I thought you were the most interesting person I’d ever met. So I went home, remembered I didn’t have the Internet, went to the library, got accused of gang-bang babies, spoke to Mitzi with i’s and y’s, got the Internet, found porn in the first three minutes, and then looked up how to be a normal person. Somehow, that ended up with me having a boyfriend like you and I’ll never regret it, ever, but I’m not a ball of sunshine or a Share Bear or whatever. Sometimes, I fake smile at myself in the mirror but it makes me look like a douchebag, so I try not to do it too often. I bitch about reading inspirational quotes but secretly don’t mind them. Well, a little bit. Also? I think posting pictures to Instagram is stupid. I like your face and your smile and I like it when you’re stoned and I like it when you’re sober and I would like it even if I had to do it long-distance. So. You can move away if you need to and that’s okay. Mostly. You can stay here too, and that’s fine. But I just want you to do what you want to do and I hope you want me to be a part of it too because I think you’re super cool. And I wished I hadn’t just said super cool, oh my god. Seriously. I don’t know why, but I sort of talk like you now and I swear to god, if you’re turning me into a hipster, I will unleash my wrath and it will be unlike anything this world has ever seen.”

  Casey gaped at him.

  “Oh, this is so awkward to listen to,” Bernice said from the kitchen. “I am so uncomfortable right now. Hush! I’m trying to hear every word!”

  “What the hell,” Gus groaned, his brain catching up with his mouth. “My life is a romantic comedy. This is the singularly most depressing thing I’ve heard since I found out Michael Bay was given money to make another movie. Why don’t they learn?”

  “I’m conflicted if I ever want Gus to meet Michael Bay,” Bernice said. “On one hand, Gus would probably end up in jail. On the other hand, we wouldn’t get Transformers 16: Vast Black Hole Dark Space Moon Star.”

  “I auditioned for Transformers 2,” Josiah said. “I showed up in a kid’s Optimus Prime costume I got at Walmart. They thought I was a sex offender. I didn’t get the part.”

  “You poor dear,” Bernice said.

  “Gus,” Casey said, voice shaking as he took a step toward him. “I’m so sorry.”

  And that made Gus falter. Because why would Casey be apologizing unless he didn’t feel the same way? Gus thought maybe this whole thing had been a mistake and he wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

  But then Casey said, “I’m so sorry that I made you think you weren’t perfect just the way you are. Because you are, okay? Gus. You are perfect.”

  Gus frowned at him. “Are you high right now?”

  Casey shook his head. “No.”

  “Because you like a lot of things when you’re high.”

  “I know. But I like you even more when I’m sober.”

  “Boom,” Bernice moaned. “Right in the feels.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gus admitted. “You thought I was weird.”

  Casey smiled sadly. “I did. I do, man. You are. But that’s a good thing. Gus, when I said that, I meant it as a good thing, okay? Man, you have no idea, do you? You’re just this… this dude, okay? You’re abnormal and weird and strange, but I like that. I came here because I was tired of fake people. I was tired of being told one thing and having it mean another. I was tired of being lied to, of being coddled and hand-held. So I came here to get away and instead found the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Gus, I don’t need you to be anybody but who you are, because who you are is just fine for me. You don’t berate me because I like to get stoned. You don’t give a shit that I’m sort of famous. You don’t care that I’m asexual.”

  Gus frowned. “Of course I don’t. Why would I?”

  Casey’s smile widened. “Exactly, man. And it’s the same for me. I don’t want you to be a normal person, okay? Or, if that’s what you want, that’s okay too. I just want you to have what makes you happy, Gus. And that’s what matters most. I would like it if that were me, but if not, that’s okay too.” He was close enough now that when he reached out, he could take Gus’s hand in his own. Gus squeezed him tight.

  “You’re leaving,” Gus said, trying to focus through his dizzying thoughts. “You’re going back.”

  “Yeah, man,” Casey said. “And that was not a conversation Xander should have had with you. I wanted to talk to you first before I did anything.”

  “My bad!” Xander called out. “Super sorry!”

  “I’m coming back,” Casey said, entwining Gus’s fingers with his own. “That’s what I was going to tell you. I’m going back to LA next month, going to pack up the shit I want, and then I’m coming back. Lottie wants to travel a bit, so I told her I would stay here and run the store while she’s gone. Serge, Xander, and Josiah will watch the house for me in Pasadena. Maybe I’ll sell it one day. Maybe I’ll keep it. I don’t know, man. But I want to be here, okay? I want to be here with you and I want that more than I’ve wanted anything in a real long time.”

  Gus said, “Wow. That’s cool, bruh. Awesome. Don’t ask me to go to California with you because that sounds terrible. You’re staying here? For real?”

  Casey said, “Yeah, man. I’m staying. I can write here. I can be happy here. You’re here. We can keep going on dates, man. Like, just, so many dates.”

  Gus said, “Yeah. Okay. I want that. For a long time, okay? And I might still wear floral-print shirts because I’m used to them now. But no Strawberry Festivals.”

  Casey said, “That was so wicked. I thought I was going to die and then I ate quiche and we played Stoner Scrabble and you got stoned and laughed and we still have to finish Monkey Island Adventures.”

  Gus said, “Cool. That’s so cool. You’re so cool. You’re like ice, you’re so cool.”

  Casey said. “Did you just make that up? I swear to god you come up with the best shit. I’m like ice, I’m so cool. God, you are abnormal and weird and strange and that’s a
wesome.”

  Gus said, “No, you’re awesome. I’m probably going to cancel the Internet, okay? I don’t need it anymore, so it’s good. I don’t want to accidentally find out if her mouth got pregnant or whatever.”

  Casey said, “Yeah, man. Right. I have no idea what you’re talking about. But that’s okay.”

  Gus said, “It doesn’t matter. Hey, I’m wet. It’s raining.”

  Casey said, “Cats and dogs, man,” and it was like the first time all over again.

  Gus choked out, “I’m going to hug you. Okay? Probably for an embarrassingly long period of time.”

  Casey gave him the brightest smile. “I was hoping you were going to say that. Bring it in, Grumpy Gus.”

  Gus did.

  And it was epic.

  Gus didn’t even mind when he heard a chorus of people say “Awww” in the background because he was far too busy congratulating himself for having an adult conversation, keeping lines of communication open, and holding on to one of the most important things in his life as tightly as he could.

  (Three days before he died, Pastor Tommy had taken Gus’s hand in his own and said, “I love you, Gussy. I love you more than anything else in this world. And one day I hope you get to love someone like I love you. If you do, and I know you will, you make sure you never let that go. It’ll be scary, but it’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to you if you let it. I am going to hold on as tight as I possibly can while I still can, okay? Enough of that, though. We’ve still got time. I think there’s a House Hunters International marathon on. Let’s watch it and see rich people make poor decisions, what the hell is their problem, oh my god.”)

  AFTER THE adult conversation which led to an outburst of feelings better left for a Lifetime movie starring actors from the eighties and nineties, it was decided that Casey and Gus would embark on the next stage in the relationship, that big step for couples that could reveal habits that could make or break a relationship.