by Chris Lynch
“Elvin?” Mikie tried after what may have been an extended pause on my part. “If you are not going to school, where are you going?”
“I am going to the gym,” I said, my voice exhausted already.
“Why?” he asked. “Are they making you because you did that to your hair?”
“You know, that’s a very good question. I don’t know. Alex, why am I going to the gym?”
Alex got very businesslike with me. “Because, like I said to you before, Elvin Bishop, I am here to help you.”
“Right,” I said. “I appreciate that, but can’t you help me at the movies, or at a Chinese restaurant or something?”
“That is precisely the kind of help you do not need.” He poked me in the stomach, in case I had missed his meaning.
“Cut that out,” I said, slapping his hand away. “I thought you were here for redemption?” I said it in a broad sarcastic, teenagery way that made redemption sound stupid and therefore would make him feel stupid, which would serve him right for poking my belly and feeding me fruit.
“The two are intertwined,” he said with a sort of gentle respect that wasted my effort.
“Listen,” Frankie said, “we have to go. Have a fine time at the gym, guys. And Elvin, we’ll do something about your hair after you get that bod all buffed up. If it isn’t grown out by then. And whatever you do, don’t tell anybody you did this to look like me. That couldn’t do either one of us any good.”
“Thanks. Your concern is touching.”
He nodded and clapped me on the shoulder. Frank’s inability to take offense was a phenomenon. It had to be his towering self-esteem that allowed the good ship Franko to navigate the choppiest waters so smoothly. Bastard.
Frank headed for the door. Mikie headed for me. “Pace yourself,” he said. “At the gym today, take it easy. You could get hurt, or worse, if you go at it the wrong way and you haven’t been... y’know, taking care of yourself.”
“Hurt, or worse? You mean dead, right? There is nothing between hurt and dead. You are hurt, either a little or a lot, and then, when you are worse than hurt, you’re dead. You never hear somebody saying that a guy is worse than hurt. Oh, how is the victim, is he hurt? Oh no, he’s worse than hurt. Are you saying, Mike, that you believe I am such a mess that I might die by going to this gym today?”
“Yo, Mike, we’re gonna be late. Come on.”
Mike checked his watch. “I don’t have time, so yes, El, I think it’s a possibility you might die. Please be careful.”
“Fine. Get out of here.”
Once the door had shut and we were alone again, Alex finished his drink, wiped his mouth neatly with his napkin, then pointed in the general direction of my friends.
“I like them,” he said. “Though they could show you a little more respect.”
I picked at my fruit, dabbed at the yogurt. “Ya, I guess they’re okay.”
“It’s a nice thing you have going with them. You should value that.”
“I will value it,” I said.
“It’s quite sweet, the way that Mikie one fusses over you, looks out for you. I suspect you probably need a lot of that.”
“Your suspicion is totally unfounded.”
“And it is plain to see why you are so obsessed over that Frankie one. You’re right, he’s stunning.”
“I am not obsessed with anyone, and he is not stunning, well, he is, but I didn’t say that, and really, I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff....”
“Calm down, Elvin... hey, I bet people have to tell you that a lot, don’t they? To calm down?”
“They do not. Nobody ever tells me that, in fact, so you are wrong again. Don’t go into the fortune-telling business, Alex, because you’re, like, wrong all over the place.”
Once I had put old Uncle A firmly in his place, I grabbed up my mug and took a triumphant sip. It burned me. It was cool, temperature wise, but it burned.
“What is this?” I demanded.
He smiled. “Chai tea plus. I made it a little extra spicy. Stick with the spicy foods, Elvin; that’s a good tip. With the hot stuff you can’t eat as fast, you can’t eat as much, and you sweat. Sweat is a great thing, Elvin.”
“You don’t have to tell me about sweat. I know sweat better than anybody. Want to see? I can sweat on command. I’ll sweat for you right this minute if you like.”
“Ah, you should probably save it. Anyway, what I was saying before... I wasn’t criticizing you. I think it’s lovely what you’ve got. Don’t be self-conscious, Elvin, and don’t hold yourself back. Live like you want to live. But if I were to give you any advice, I’d say you stand a better chance with the gay one than with the pretty one. You gonna finish that?” He reached across and casually lifted some foodstuffs or other from my plate. It did not matter; as I sat there slack-jawed, he could have stolen all the food and my clothes and the chair out from under me, and I’d have had trouble reacting.
He saw. “Relax, will you, Elvin?”
I spoke very relaxed. Almost dead, even. “What gay one?”
“Mikie.”
“Mikie is not gay.”
“He’s not? Hmm. Okay.”
Well, that was easy enough. I felt better already, having addressed the issue and stated my—
“What do you mean I would stand a better chance with the gay one than the pretty one?”
“I just mean, I think that Frankie is a kind of tall order. That he’s probably got so many—”
“No, no, no, not Frankie, we all know about Frankie, this is not about Frankie, why are we always talking about Frankie... I mean, what kind of chance am I supposed to be after with anybody?”
I may have finally been scaring him. He stared at me in a kind of wonder, which may have been fear.
“You seem to have a little crush, that’s all.”
“A what?”
“A crush.”
I let it sink in so I could discuss it in a more rational and mature way.
“A what?”
“A crush.”
I whipped down my chai tea just as quickly as I could. Then I thumped my cup on the table loudly. I fixed my uncle with a steely stare, as if I had settled something. Then I called my dog.
The only time Grog responded to her name was when I called her from the kitchen table. I couldn’t be just in the kitchen, or even near the table, but had to be seated, with some kind of food action plainly visible in front of me. She wouldn’t even get excited like a normal dog if I was standing by the front door with her leash in my hand because she felt exactly the same as her master about physical activity, which meant I had to throw sticks and stones at her in the park in order to exercise her.
But she came right to me when I called, and I almost even detected a wag of one of her back parts as I produced the tea bag.
I looked at my uncle, then at my dog.
Munch. Gulp.
She loves used tea bags. I found this out when I caught her tearing through the garbage, climbing over perfectly delectable chicken bones and moldy cheese to devour our many soggy tea bags.
And from the look of it, chai was her new favorite.
“There,” I said smugly, “would a gay guy’s dog do that?”
Alex grinned from ear to ear and shook his head. “Elvin Bishop, my nephew, whatever it is you are, I am glad you are it.”
“Good,” I said. “I am not gay. Mikie is not gay. Nobody is gay. Now I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Fine,” he said, clapping his hands, “go get your gym gear.”
Gear? My gym gear? My gym gear? Even that sounded painful.
The power of suggestion. You know how when you become aware of something you don’t think you should do and so you become overwhelmed with the urge to do it, like pressing a button that says emergency or laughing when you’re in trouble, or eating a stick of butter? Well, I had one of those now. I could not stop thinking about Frankie. And about... the other issue.
“Mikie is not
gay,” I said to Alex as we stood in front of the wide and clean glass-front entrance to the Bantamweight Sport and Racket Club.
“Right, you told me.”
We stepped through the automatic doors and were immediately greeted by two receptionists with excellent teeth and fat-free arms that looked like braided rope off tall ships’ rigging.
“Hello, Alex, good morning, Alex,” they said brightly.
“They know you? Just like that?”
“I’m a member,” he said. “So are you.”
“How is that? I have never even been to a gym. I have never even walked along the same side of the street as a gym.”
“I got you a membership. But you have to be sixteen, so you are sixteen. And I got one for your mom. You’re paid up for a year.”
“Who’s your friend, Alex?” the lead receptionist asked.
He said, with shocking but obvious pride, “This is my nephew, Elvin. My late brother’s boy. Lester’s boy. Elvin Bishop.”
“Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Elvin Bishop,” she said, and held out her hand. I took it, and she squeezed me too hard. That was okay, though. It was very okay. “Will you be a guest with us today, Elvin?”
“Oh no, he’s a member in his own right,” Alex said. “He just needs to get his picture taken for his ID.”
“Super,” she said, and led me over to a microcamera mounted on her desk, like a sinister surveillance thing that always distorted your appearance far worse than you ever could have distorted it yourself.
God, no. My distortions. Now not only was I going to be photographed with the fish-eye lens that would make me look like a snowman in a fun house mirror, but there was also the other, stupider distortion.
I reached up and felt my head, to check for the thousandth time if it was all a horrible dream.
It was, unfortunately, a horrible reality. The Nerf fluff and texture were still there. I wondered how heavy my head was going to get when I jumped in the pool and absorbed half the water.
I stood in front of the camera because I was told to. It clicked, not waiting, not caring whether I had primped enough to look presentable, and within microseconds I was holding in my hand a card declaring my membership in the Bantamweight Sport and Racket Club. Or so I would have to assume, since no way was I looking at it.
I followed my uncle past the reception desk to the turnstiles, where you had to swipe your card to get in. We went in side by side and swiped together.
A little bleep sounded when the bar code was read off the cards. Followed by, yes, our member photos, flashing high on the television monitors mounted above the turnstiles.
“Oh crap,” I said, scurrying past the monitors and shielding my eyes from the burning rays of my image. “Why do they do that, so they can do, like, before-and-after pictures if you get in shape, or don’t-let-this-happen-to-you pictures if you don’t?”
“They do it so staff can see that the person using the card is the actual member.” Alex steered me down a corridor toward the locker rooms. “Everybody’s picture is bad, Elvin, so it’s nothing to get worked up about.”
“Not as bad as mine. I bet they’re talking about it right now at the desk. I bet they’re making copies of my picture right now and turning it into their screen savers.”
He pushed open the door to the changing rooms.
“It’s important in life to appreciate that the whole world doesn’t exactly revolve around you, Mr. Bishop.”
“You know, I wish it didn’t. But until I receive reliable evidence to the contrary, I’m going to continue believing that it does.”
My uncle laughed, then half backslapped, half shoved me into the room.
It was mostly filled with old guys. Not bashful old guys either. Naked, or nearly naked, all over the place. Getting into or out of tiny bathing suits on their way to changing out of or into tiny underwear, it was bikini geezer town everywhere I looked.
One shiny-head guy sat on a bench in front of a mirror blow-drying a vast field of snowy chest hair. When I walked past he looked up, nodded, and winked at me. Another one had his feet pulled up onto the bench and was blow-drying the spaces between his toes—as well as the scrotal area between the spaces between the toes. I averted my eyes from him, which of course was averting toward this other one, so I finally just put my hand right over my eyes.
Which was when Franko popped back into my head. He even had chest hair now, auburn and curly like all the rest of his hair—
Stop that, Elvin. Stop that right now.
I stared at my feet, as staring at my feet always calms me, and I finally made it to the locker next to my uncle’s.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” I said, “about Mikie being gay.”
“Well, firstly, I’m not anymore, you are. And secondly, what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” I said, because no other possible answer sounded any good. “Anyway, you can’t tell just from looking at a guy anyway, right?”
Alex stared at me then, which made me squirm.
“What?” I said. “What? Do you see something? I can explain—”
He grinned, shook his head, and said, “Item number four fifty-two on the Elvin Project: acquaint subject with the broader spectrum of humanity.”
“Hmm,” I said, “I’m kind of having enough trouble managing the spectrum I know.”
My phone bleeped just then. The screen said it was Ma. “See,” I said to Alex, shaking my head solemnly at the burdens I faced.
There were many phenomena that went into making my communication with my mother the precious tribe-of-two closed system it was. One of the least helpful, however, was that whenever we talked on our mobile phones to each other, we sounded like we were on string-connected tin cans and there were fifteen of us on the party line. Very shy people at the heart of it, we Bishops, and to be out there, in the world, right in front of people, felt sordid, dangerous, and vaguely embarrassing, causing us to speak quickly and repetitiously and in alien tinny voices.
That was my story, anyway. She, actually, couldn’t get enough of it. I think she would actually work it out on a little map somewhere, the point at which I’d be at my most awkward.
“Ma.”
“Elvin.”
“Ma.”
“Elvin.”
“Ma. Ma, what are you doing, Ma? I’m with, like, the guys here. Everybody’s naked, and I’m embarrassed enough.”
“Really? Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t let any of them snap you with towels. I know how those locker rooms can be. And if they make fun of your mole—”
“Ma! Nobody’s interested in my mole.”
“Did you wear your good underwear?”
I had to go cool. “Mother, all my underwear is good.”
“Hmm,” she said, in that tone.
“Fine, don’t believe me. You didn’t call to talk about my underwear and my mole, though. What is it?”
“Hmm,” she said, but differently. “I just wanted to check in on you. Just wanted to make sure things were all right, with you and Alex and all.”
Just then Alex started tapping me on the shoulder to get moving.
“Ma says hi,” I said. “Listen, Ma, I have to go.”
“Okay,” she said, oddly tentative.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “God, you are such a worrier, Elvin.”
“I know,” I said. “So why don’t you just leave that to me.”
“Call me later,” she said.
“I’m a very busy man,” I said. “I’ll try and fit you in.” I hung up.
“Do we belong to a seniors gym?” I asked Alex when three more muscular history professors walked in.
“No,” he said. “It’s just that time of day. There are a lot of retired guys now, after the pre-work rush hour and before the power lunchers. It’s my favorite time, actually.”
I found myself staring very slyly around the room while changing.
“Do they com
e every day?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Probably most. Why?”
“They’re all in better shape than me.”
“Well there you go, the benefits of regular exercise well into the autumn years.”
“No, I mean, like way better shape than me. Like, probably every one of them could beat me up. Scarylike.”
There really were a lot of muscles in the room. Some very rounded bellies, some elasticated bums that didn’t come all the way up off the bench until the owner was already standing, but really, a good deal more tone than I had come to expect off these kind of—
“Alex,” I said, alarmed, grabbing his arm. “That guy there blow-drying his armpits, he keeps winking at me.”
“That’s okay. They do that. It means, hello, how’s it going.”
“Well, he’s asked me how’s it going twice already.”
“Maybe you should stop staring at everybody while they’re dressing then.”
I was indignant. “I was not...” I had turned, finally, to face Alex, only to find him ready, in long, brown sweatpants and charcoal T-shirt, while I stood with my street clothes still on, albeit around my neck and my ankles. I shut up and faced my locker and got the job done.
“It’s okay to peek, though,” Alex said as we entered the gym proper.
“I was not peeking,” I whispered angrily.
“’Course you were peeking. Everybody peeks. How else are you going to know?”
“Know what?”
He led me to a mirror wall. “Do what I do,” he said, and spread his feet very, very, unwisely wide. Then he reached for the floor.
“Do I have to—”
“Yes.”
I did what I could, within reason. I watched the two of us in the mirror, with the background of healthy people of various sizes and ages bouncing and pumping merrily along on machines behind us. Alex had his hands close to the floor, head down, fingertips almost touching the carpet. I looked very much like a bullfrog, knees bent like the big cheater that I was, almost squatting, arms resting on my thighs.