by P. E. Ryan
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a fried pickle before,” he said when the food came. He bit into it.
“Like it?”
“Yeah, actually.” Mike’s chair faced the street, and he gazed out the window as he ate. People flowed in and trickled out. “Hoppin’ place.”
“You mean the diner?”
“Yeah—and the whole block. It’s like another mall, but without a roof.”
“It’s called Carytown. It’s sort of like its own little village.”
“A village with some beautiful ladies,” Mike said, his eye following a woman as she walked down the sidewalk past the diner. Garth glanced behind him. Two more women were coming from the opposite direction, walking together, both on cell phones. “Yeow,” Mike said. “That one on the right looks like my ex. Reminds me of why I hooked up with her in the first place.”
The comments sounded just as crude to Garth as when he heard jocks talking about girls at school. Then again, he’d probably be doing it too, if he could. Somehow, Mike picked up on this. “It must be a bummer not being able to say anything, when you see some guy you think is good-looking. Not even being able to make a casual remark.”
“Yeah, it pretty much sucks,” Garth said.
“Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“No.”
“Have you ever, you know, done anything?”
“Had sex? That would be a big fat no.” He looked down at the table and fiddled with his straw wrapper, a little embarrassed. He’d taken sex ed in the seventh grade and had felt like he’d learned everything he didn’t need to know—sort of like suffering through calculus when you never planned on using it. “Why?”
“Just curious. You’re definitely at the age where your mind’s got to be reeling all the time—”
Correct, Garth thought.
“—and your mom means well, but she’s kind of got you in a straitjacket.”
Correct again.
Mike chuckled. “No pun intended. I’m just a little worried you might go nuts in it, at some point. People start…exploring…pretty young.”
“So I’ve heard,” Garth said. In truth, he really hadn’t heard much—but he was curious. “How old were you?”
Mike smiled. “Fifteen. Mary Dalton was her name. I thought I’d have to twist her arm, but she was the one who made the first move.”
Garth stirred a curly fry through the mustard on his plate. “Things…worked out okay?”
“Let’s just say sex means different things to different people. It can be great, really great, and it can be lousy. And it can feel like love when it isn’t love at all; it’s just…sex.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Mike studied him for a moment. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.
He paid the bill, and as he accepted his change, he asked the man behind the register—point-blank, calm as could be—if there was a gay bookstore in the neighborhood.
For as full as his stomach was, Garth felt it fold in on itself.
But the man didn’t bat an eye. Yes, he told them, there was a gay bookstore not far away. He gave them directions. Mike thanked him, and they left.
“I can’t believe you asked him that!” Garth said, once they were out on the sidewalk.
“Relax,” Mike told him. “The world isn’t quite the battle zone your mom thinks it is.”
They walked several blocks and took the side street the man had mentioned.
“You’re going in?” Garth asked. He hadn’t given it any thought till now, but he’d assumed Mike would just wait outside for him.
“If you’re up for it.”
“But aren’t you worried people’ll think you’re gay if you’re seen in there?”
“What do I care?”
“Are you human?” Garth asked.
Mike laughed. “Last time I checked.”
“You’re so not what I think of when I picture the average grown-up straight man.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, too. I just think people should be able to be who they are, and be with who they want to be with.”
They’d reached the bookstore. A large rainbow flag hung on a pole sticking out from the front of the building. “Ready?” Mike asked.
“I guess so.”
They went inside.
Garth, of course, already knew of the store’s existence; Lisa had told him about it the day he’d come out to her and had offered to take him there, but he’d always been too nervous to do it. Somehow, with Mike, he wasn’t quite so nervous. In fact, stepping into the store made him feel like one of those kids entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory—which, he realized, made his uncle Willy Wonka (a hilarious thought). He pictured Mike bursting into song: Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.
But Mike had already wandered into the depths of the store and was surveying a rack of books. Feeling embarrassed, even guilty (of what?), Garth glanced at the woman behind the register.
“Hello,” she said, and smiled.
“Hi.”
“They’ve got some good stuff here,” Mike said, waving him over. “Just keep your eyes off anything too racy.”
There was a lot of “racy” stuff in the store. Photo books with half-naked men on the covers. Calendars. Comic books that basically looked like porn magazines with drawings instead of pictures. Garth wanted everything his eyes fell on.
“Here,” Mike said. “Some of these books are geared for guys your age.”
Garth read the back flaps, and they didn’t sound fantastical or horrific or even dirty; they seemed to be about guys pretty much like him.
“Will you read them? I don’t want to get them for you if you’re not going to read them.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “I’ll read them.”
“Good. Here, you should have some of these, too.” Mike walked over to a table and gathered a couple of safe-sex pamphlets, a copy of the local gay newspaper, and—to Garth’s shock—a handful of free condoms. “I’m not saying you have to use them. Well, yeah, you have to use them if you’re going to…have sex. But the point is to have them. Hide them away in a drawer, if you want. Oh—and throw them out after a few months if you don’t use them. They’re like potatoes: eventually they go bad.”
A few months? Garth thought. A few years is more like it. Still, he felt excited just to have them in his possession.
There were several racks of DVDs near the back of the store. He wandered over to them, and saw that one held porn and the others held regular movies with gay subject matter. He lingered in front of the porn rack until he felt Mike’s hands on his shoulders, steering him away. “That’s not why we’re here, Mr. Minor.” He repositioned Garth in front of the regular movies, then wandered off to another part of the store.
Nearby, a man was sifting through a stack of T-shirts. A woman old enough to be his grandmother flipped through a bin of calendars. And standing just a few feet away from him, he now noticed, was a guy around his age. He was tall and had sandy hair, and he was beyond good-looking (“an uberhottie,” Lisa would have said).
Garth forced his gaze back to the movies. For lack of anything else to do, he selected one of the DVD boxes from the shelf and stared at it.
“Ugh,” Mike said, stepping over and looking down at the box. “Can you pick one that isn’t violent? That looks like something your mom would conjure up in her nightmares.”
On the cover was a pair of guys in tank tops. One of them had a black eye and was holding his hands in the air. The other had a pistol leveled at the battered guy’s face.
“Have you seen this one?”
The voice wasn’t Mike’s. Garth looked over and saw that the sandy-haired guy was holding out a copy of a DVD called Beautiful Thing.
“N-no,” Garth said cautiously.
“It’s not violent. At all. It’s a great story—one of my favorites, in fact. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times.”
“Hmm,” Mike said. “
May I?” He took the DVD case from the guy’s hand and turned it over to read the back.
The guy offered Garth a slight smile. “You look familiar.”
Perfect. First time ever in a gay bookstore, and he was spotted, tagged, exposed. He had no idea how to respond and was afraid his voice would tremble if he spoke.
Thankfully, the guy answered his own question. “I know, we had Ms. Davis’s humanities class together last year.”
“We did?”
“But they switched me into Mr. Alison’s class after the first week—which is maybe why you don’t remember me. Also, you’re friends with Lisa Hogart, right?”
As soon as he heard Lisa’s name, Garth realized that was where he’d seen him. In the cafeteria, at lunch, when Lisa held court every so often with her “fellow artists.”
“I’m Adam,” the guy said. He held out his hand. “Adam Walters.”
Garth shook the hand, hoping his palm wasn’t sweaty. “Garth Rudd.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“And that old guy who’s with me is my great-granddad,” Mike said.
“Oh—sorry.” Garth turned and said, “This is my uncle Mike.”
“Hi,” Adam said.
“How’s it going?” Mike shook his hand, then said, “You a Richmonder?”
“Yeah. For the past couple of years, anyway. My family moved here from Seattle.”
Mike glanced down again at the DVD. “So this looks good. You said it’s one of your favorites?”
“Top five,” Adam told them.
“That’s a pretty solid endorsement. Look good to you?” he asked Garth.
“Sure,” Garth said.
“I’ll be right back.” He walked away, leaving them alone in front of the movie rack.
“So…,” Garth said with a slight sense of panic, searching, “…Lisa.”
“Yeah. She’s a trip, isn’t she?”
“You must be an artist—what does she call those things she holds in the cafeteria? Séances?”
“Ha. Salons. I’ve sat in on a couple, but I wouldn’t say I’m an artist; I just want to make films. I haven’t done much about it yet because I can’t afford any decent equipment, but I’m studying it.”
“Every time you watch a movie, I guess.”
“Pretty much. Or TV. Or even just walking around. I see everything in terms of shots.” He grinned, and Garth felt himself grinning back.
Aware of the fact that he didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation nearly as interesting as aspiring to be a filmmaker (“I want to take care of sick animals?”) he said, “So this is in your top five, huh?” Then he remembered that he wasn’t holding the DVD anymore; Mike had it and everything else at the register, and was paying the woman behind the counter.
“There are actually a lot of great films here.” Adam laughed. “A lot of bad ones, too. You have to wade through the garbage to get to the gems. So how do you know Lisa?”
“I’ve known her for a while. We met, like, three years ago? She’s pretty much my best friend.”
“She’s intense.”
“So we’re all set,” Mike said, approaching them, bag in hand. “I took your recommendation and bought the DVD.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” Adam said. “I could watch it over and over again.”
“Do you live in the neighborhood?”
“Just west of the Boulevard on Colonial.”
Mike glanced at Garth. “That’s close to us, right?” Then he looked back at Adam. “Why don’t you come over sometime and watch the movie with us?”
Garth’s mouth went dry. What the hell was Mike doing—playing matchmaker? He was beyond embarrassed, sure that Adam would hear the suggestion as some perverted invitation to an orgy. “He said he’s already seen it a dozen times. He doesn’t want to see it again.”
“I’d love to,” Adam said, laughing a little. “Maybe the thirteenth time will reveal a whole new subplot I’ve never noticed before.”
“Great,” Mike said.
There was a pause and they all just stood there, staring at one another.
“This is the part where one of you writes down his phone number and gives it to the other one, so that this might actually happen,” Mike prompted.
“Right!” Adam fumbled through his pockets, then spotted a mug of rainbow-colored pens on a nearby shelf. On a scrap of paper from his wallet, he wrote out his phone number for Garth.
Garth took the paper from him. “Thanks,” he said.
“Well.” Adam took a step to the side. His head dipped in a goofy—and adorable—way, and he offered a little wave. “Nice meeting you both.”
“Yeah,” Garth managed.
“You, too,” Mike said. “We look forward to movie night.”
“Call…whenever.”
Adam walked out of the store, glanced once through the front window, and then was gone down the sidewalk.
“What did you do that for?” Garth asked Mike. “He probably thinks we’re perverts!”
“Actually, what you just witnessed is how people meet. Get to know each other. Become friends. They open their mouths, form speech, and make plans to see each other again. I’m telling you, it’s been happening for years.”
“Well, at the very least he thinks I’m after him.”
“Would you chill out? I’ll play chaperone, if you want, ease the tension. He’s not going to think you’re ‘after him’ if your boring old uncle’s in the room. Anyway, consider today progress.” He hefted the bag. “You’ve got new shoes on your feet, a bag of…gay goodies…maybe even a new friend. It’s not panic time.”
Mike was right. Garth didn’t want to see it as panic time. He wanted to see it as the opposite, in fact. It was his mom who would do the panicking, if she found out.
“We can’t tell Mom we were in here.”
“Well, you didn’t break your promise, exactly, but I agree: she doesn’t need to know about it. She’d be all over my case if she found out.”
True enough.
“So it’s our secret, okay?”
Garth nodded. Just like when Mike had brought up Project Garth with his mom, he felt both thankful and uneasy.
“There’s something else she can’t find out about, too—something I’ve been working on that will have to be another secret.”
“What’s that?”
“Come on, I’ll tell you about it on the way to the car.”
Not that Garth had sensed anything ungenerous in his uncle’s demeanor, but it came as a surprise to learn that Mike had done charity work in the past. After eavesdropping on the conversation with his mom about gambling and Mike’s lack of interest in a real job, and hearing Mike talking on the cell phone to Marty and Stu about money they owed to someone named Phil, he’d assumed his uncle’s line of work was more on the shady side of what he was used to—but nothing too shady, more the stuff of an old Hollywood movie. So where did charity fit into Mike’s picture?
“Charity work,” Mike told him as they were walking back through Carytown, “has saved my financial neck more than a few times over the past few years. I’ve done some work for an organization that’s front-lining the fight against meninosis. Ever heard of it?”
Garth confessed he hadn’t.
“That’s part of the problem.” Mike went on to explain that almost no one had heard of the disease, which was affecting thousands of children all over the country, and the organization he’d worked for was devoted to increasing public awareness and raising money for a cure. Some charities operated solely through volunteers; others had enough backing to pay people to work their drives.
“They pay you to do charity work?”
“Exactly. And I know what you’re thinking. Why pay people when you can get volunteers?”
“Actually, I was thinking the whole thing sounds a little weird,” Garth said.
“And why’s that?”
“Well, if you’re collecting money for some organization, and they don’
t know how much you take in, how do they know you’re not stealing from them?”
“You’re a sharp guy,” Mike said. “Remember I told you that. But think of it this way: assuming you’re not robbing the organization, the cut actually functions as an incentive. The harder you work a crowd, the more you pull in. The more you pull in, the bigger your slice. And the best thing about it—other than the money, which can be good if you know what you’re doing—is that it’s temporary work, and that beats the heck out of a regular job.”
It still sounded a little strange to Garth. But then again, Mike seemed to know what he was talking about. In fact, he could have been reciting language from a training manual. And from what Garth knew about him, it made sense that Mike would go for temp work like this.
“So what does this have to do with us?”
“I’m thinking we should do it.”
“Here?”
Mike nodded. “Just temporarily. To generate some bucks for your college fund.”
Garth thought of how some bucks would be useful, in general. It might bring his mom a little peace of mind, for one thing. Still, he asked, “What do you need me for?”
“Hey, it’s your college fund, not mine. Besides, when it comes to charity work, two people are always better than one.”
Garth tried to picture them approaching strangers, asking for donations. “Isn’t it just like begging?”
“Completely different. It’s charity. It’s for a cause.”
“So why couldn’t Mom know we were doing it?”
Mike tsk-tsked out the side of his mouth and shook his head. “I just don’t think she’d like the idea. She’d find some reason why you shouldn’t do it—don’t you think? I mean, how could she not, if she’s such a worrier?”
Garth could easily imagine the frantic concern etching itself into her face. “Yeah.”
“So we’ll just keep it under wraps until we’re done.”
The idea of keeping such a secret from his mom didn’t sit well with Garth. Then again, she was the one who’d made him promise to keep a huge secret from the entire world. And if Mike was right, this was something that could actually help them, whereas what she’d asked Garth to do was only making him miserable. “All right,” he said.