2016 Top Ten Gay Romance

by Snyder, J. M. ; Black, Becky; Creech, T. A.

  The crying dude is mortified. He gapes up at me in horror, still clutching a handful of my shirt. Did I just do that? I laugh. He bolts to the bathroom, knocking over his chair and leaving me to extract myself from within his makeshift handkerchief as a bemused Seth looks on.

  “What’s goin’ on here?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit, balling my shirt into a trash can. It was a company shirt; I think I’ll go ahead and let replacing it be Jackie’s problem. “But I might go wash my…well, you know…” I was gonna say hands, but suddenly fear there might be a little more to it than that. I move my hands gingerly through the air to indicate, “My everything.”

  “You go do that,” Seth says, very assiduously not laughing at me.

  I am not surprised to find the bathroom door locked. I am not surprised to pull on the handle and generate a sniffled “Go away” from inside. I am a little bit surprised to hear the lock un-click after I tell him, “See, what just happened is, a handsome stranger just blew his nose pretty much all over me, and I’d kind of like to wash my hands. And maybe my hair.” But I seize the moment and slip in.

  He’s working on pulling himself together. His face is still pink, but the panicky purple has faded; his face is still wet, but from splashing it in the sink. He spares me a small smile. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Please don’t worry about it,” I say. “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t believe I did that. In case breaking down in a coffee house isn’t embarrassing enough…”

  “Don’t be embarrassed.”

  He laughs. “Oh, I’m embarrassed.”

  “It was just an old work shirt,” I insist. I step up to the sink, jarred for a second to see myself shirtless at work of all places. I run the sink and wash my hands. I splash my face, then wipe the water away from my eyes and scrutinize my hair. I pulled the shirt off from the back, obviously, but my hair’s really curly, and it’s longer than it probably needs to be, and, well, I figure you can’t be too careful when it comes to some random dude’s snot in your hair. Okay, so when I get home, I’ll shower, then eat again and go to bed. I put a hand on my belly to make sure there’s gonna be room for more of that duck, then shrug; I’ll get it in there.

  “You have another shirt or something you can put on?” he asks. “‘cause if you need to borrow one…”

  “It’s fine,” I assure him. “I’m about to go home, I’ll just throw on my coat.”

  “Can I at least buy you a coffee or something? I’m really embarrassed, and you’re being really sweet.”

  I shrug. “Hey, it needed out, you let it out. It’s good for ya; healthy. Can’t keep that shit bottled up inside.”

  “I could have asked for a napkin.”

  “Next time you’ll know.”

  He tries to grin, but bless his little fat-lipped mouth, he can’t. “It’s just…”

  I reach for the refill roll of paper towels under the sink.

  “What kind of person dumps you on Christmas?!”

  I hand it to him.

  “Only the worst kind,” I assure him. “A heartless monster. An evil queen. Maybe a serial killer…?”

  “He waited until I gave him his present.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did.”

  Must not have been a very good one, I am careful not to say. But he sees it on my face.

  “It was a scarf. A really nice one. Long and soft, his favorite colors. I made it for him.”

  “And do you know how to make scarves…?” I ask.

  He laughs in spite of himself. “It was gorgeous, thank you for asking. Gorgeous enough—he took it with him.”

  “And what did he get you?”

  “I don’t know. He took that with him, too. He said seeing as how we were through, there was no reason Bed Bath, and Beyond shouldn’t give him a refund.”

  “You’re kidding, of course.”

  He sniffles, shaking his head. “He even took the sweet potatoes I made. We were gonna go to his mom’s house? That’s the reason he came over, was to get me to go over there? I gave him the scarf, he put it on, said ‘There’s someone else,’ then took the sweet potatoes. ‘I mean, you did make them for her, right?’”

  “‘There’s someone else?’” I mimic.

  “He wants to be exclusive, right, this other guy? ‘Otherwise, you know, we could totally stay together.’ I’m like, wait, we haven’t been exclusive? He goes, ‘I don’t know about you, but I sure haven’t.’ He actually laughed, then he said ‘Thanks for the scarf’ and he walked out.”

  “With the sweet potatoes?”

  “With the sweet potatoes.”

  “And this was when?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe two hours ago.”

  “Well, I’d say you’re holding up remarkably well,” I commend him. “I feel like sacrificing a shirt is the least I can do for a guy when he’s that down on his luck.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks. Just another Christmas. I fuckin’ hate this holiday.”

  I gasp, only partly in fun. “You hate Christmas? Who hates Christmas?” He looks at me like Am I gonna need to tell that story again?, and I hasten to commiserate. “Okay, yeah, I get that today might not be Santa’s best work.”

  “It’s always something.”

  “Come on.”

  “Just the last three years, okay? Let’s see…Last year my boyfriend got arrested going through airport security. We were going to Mexico, you know, spend Christmas sipping margaritas by the pool? He dumped me when I wouldn’t tell the TSA all the heroin in his bag was prescribed by my doctor for my ‘brain pain.’ Fine. Year before that, my boyfriend takes me home to Philadelphia to meet his family. His parents come to the airport to pick us up, his mom gets one look at me and asks me, ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me? Shannon is a woman’s name.’ Then she says to him, ‘You’re not bringing any sexual deviant into my house.’ He tells her, ‘Mom, I’m gay,’ and she says ‘Not if you want the trip to Europe we got you for Christmas you’re not.’ Thirty-one years old, he goes, ‘I’ll send you a postcard’ and leaves me standing in the Philadelphia airport.”

  He’s kind of crying, but he’s kind of laughing, too. Probably because I’m cracking up. I can’t stop saying, “No, he didn’t.”

  “Year before that? Straight up and died on me, December 20th.”

  “What?!” I swear I try to stop laughing.

  “Okay, we might not have been technically boyfriends,” he allows. “But we were friends—well, our sisters were friends—and I wanted to be boyfriends.”

  “That is quite a track record.”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “This is just a preview of your beef with Christmas?”

  “It’s like I said, I hate this holiday.”

  * * * *

  December 25, 2008

  He’s back. Which doesn’t mean I’ve been obsessing about him for a year, it just means you never forget the first guy that blows his nose into your T-shirt on Christmas morning. Trust me on this.

  He’s wearing the same slip-on canvas shoes, and if it’s not the same hoodie he had on last Christmas, it’s the same color and from the same store. He’s about a month overdue for a haircut, so he’s got bangs everywhere, just like he did before. Guy’s definitely got his style.

  Not that I look so different, behind the same counter, fixing the same coffee. I’m probably wearing the same jeans—my tan ones—which, if I do say so myself, means if he doesn’t remember my face, my butt will jog his memory.

  He remembers something. “Oh, hey,” he says. “You’re you.”

  “I’m somebody, anyhow.” I grin my recognition. “How you doin? Merry Christmas…?” I venture.

  “Pfft.” He rolls his eyes. “You must not remember me.”

  “The Curse of the Christmas Boyfriend strikes again?”

  “He left me for Santa.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Oh yes, he did.”

  I
have the dregs of a triple shot of espresso puddled at the bottom of a paper cup. I fill it with drip coffee and walk with him to a table by the window facing Eighth Avenue. “What did he do,” I ask, “run off to the North Pole? Can you even do that? Like, do they have an airport? At least he’ll come crawling back when he finds out there is no Santa, right?”

  He laughs—kind of—which I figure is what he’s looking for, spilling his guts to the Human Handkerchief behind the coffee counter as opposed to, say, a close friend or mental health professional. “He ran off with the Santa at the mall,” he says. “We took his little nephew, who was like ‘I wanna see Santa, I wanna see Santa’ for weeks, we’re standing in line for like an hour, right? ‘I wanna see Santa, I wanna see Santa.’ Then it’s his turn to see Santa, he comes completely unglued, screaming for his life like Santa lunged at him with an axe. Philip’s trying to calm him down, ‘Look, everything’s fine, Santa’s a nice man.’ Sits on his lap, Santa says, ‘Oh, you’ve been naughty, I can tell.’ Next thing I know Santa’s on a ‘break’ and I’m waiting for the bus to take my ex-boyfriend’s traumatized nephew home to his mom.”

  “He didn’t even drive you home?”

  “Let’s just say his car was ‘unavailable,’ in terms of having a six-year-old anywhere near it.”

  I gape. There are no tears this year, so I ask, “Where do you find these guys? What is there, a dating website, Holiday Homewreckers dot com? Why would you even join that? If they ruin three holidays for you do you get a free gift or something?”

  “It’d better be a fancy one.”

  “I’ll say. It sounds like you should be like a Platinum member by now. Maybe they’ll ruin your Valentine’s Day for free.”

  That earns me a small lopsided smile. “Maybe.”

  “If they don’t, you should come here. Some of our customers are total jerks. I could set you up.”

  “Thanks, yeah. That’d be great. ‘cause I have a hard time finding jerks for myself.”

  “Obviously.”

  The place is dead. Seth’s not scheduled to come in for an hour, which means it’ll probably be more like two. I offer my friend the Grinch another Americano, top myself off while I’m at it. I load up a plate with the candy cane-frosted chocolate scones that our customers hate but me and Jackie love so she always orders a ton of them, set it on the wobbly little table, then plop back down into the low-slung metal chair across from him.

  “So, what’s your deal?” he asks me around a mouthful of scone. “You always seem pretty chipper for a guy who has to work on Christmas. What are you, like Buddhist or something?”

  “My family’s French,” I say.

  “Same difference…?” He narrows his eyes.

  I laugh. “We’re all about Christmas Eve,” I clarify. “By the time the sun comes up on the twenty-fifth, we’re pretty much over it. So I work Christmas morning so the people who don’t want to don’t have to.”

  “So you’re like Catholic? Midnight mass and all that?”

  I shrug. “My grandparents were. We’re more into the Santa Christmas than the Jesus one, although my mom drags us to church. I’m gay, my sister’s divorced, my brother has three kids with two women he never married—she says it’s not gonna hurt any of us come Judgment Day if God can put a face to the name, and midnight mass is the one He watches ‘cause it’s the only one that’s still in Latin.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Then we stay up all night and eat and drink wine and open presents, and then I come here.”

  “So you’re not so much ‘chipper’ as you are ‘half in the bag.’”

  I shrug again. I tear the corner off a scone and pop it in my mouth. I study his face: the sandy freckles that spray from his pointed nose, the light stubble on his sharp jaw. His mouth makes a little pink O, and his eyes huddle protectively close, as if he’s coached his features that a more expansive placement would be a careless betrayal of his vulnerability. He’s checking me out, too, and when our eyes meet, they pop off in different directions, then slide ever-so-casually back together, like maybe they’re acting independently as we sit innocently sipping our coffee, helpless to control their wanderings.

  “I’m Shannon, by the way,” he eventually says. “Have we done that already?”

  “I don’t think so. Not officially, anyhow. I’m Ben.”

  “You don’t sound French.”

  “You should hear me arguing on the phone with my mom.”

  “I mean ‘Ben.’ Doesn’t sound like a very French name.”

  “Maybe not, but Benoît is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Ben-what?”

  “Exactly.”

  I was born in France, but raised in Colorado; I’ve only been to France a handful of times, none of them recent. My mother was born in this country and raised in Washington, D.C., but by French parents. Her mother is ethnically Gujarati, but French by virtue of being from Réunion. We’re still parsing the extent of my French-ness when Seth rolls in, only fifteen minutes late.

  “Hiya, Benny-Boy” he warbles, planting a kiss on the top of my head as he swoops by; Seth enjoys flaunting his straight-but-not-narrow status. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “What you get is what you see,” I tell him.

  “Zis what Santa brought you?” He jerks his chin at Shannon, makes a show of sizing us up as a party of two. “You musta been a pretty good boy this year.”

  Shannon groans.

  “Ix-nay on the Anta-Say,” I scold Seth, although we’re all three laughing. I get up from the table and bus it clean by way of making preparations to call it a day.

  “Rough trip down the chimney, eh?” Seth says, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Pretty much the worst euphemism ever,” I assure him as I shrug into my jacket.

  He laughs, offers me a fist bump and a “Peace out,” both of which I return.

  “So…” I say to Shannon, sidling up to him. “I’m done here. You wanna get a drink or something?”

  “It’s like noon.”

  “Lunch, then?”

  “It’s Christmas Day.”

  “Dude, how hard are you gonna make me work for this? What, you never had Chinese food?”

  “It’s just, I’m supposed to go to my aunt and uncle’s…It’s not that I don’t want to…Maybe another time?”

  I shrug. “You know where to find me.”

  Chapter 2: Shannon

  December 25, 2009

  I guess I don’t know where to find him. It’s that seven-foot-tall rasta dude from Scotland—or whatever his deal is. He wears a kilt, anyway, and his dreads are like four feet long. A bunch of them are purple this year, that’s new. Nice enough guy, kinda sexy in that here’s-a-razor-and-a-bar-of-soap-I’ll-be-back-in-an-hour way, but he’s no Ben.

  “Naw, Benny bailed,” he tells me. “Three or four months ago. Benny was my boy, too. I kinda miss the little squirt.” I make to pay for my coffee, but he waves my money away. “It’s on the house, Freckles.” He raises a mug, touches it to my cardboard to-go cup, says, “To Benny!”

  “To Benny,” I say. I take a sip of my coffee. I can’t help it now, the way he’s getting all sentimental, gazing off at nothing in the middle distance—I have to ask: “But he didn’t die, right?”

  “Naw, he’s cool. He like finished school. Or started school. Wants to build a school? I don’t know, something. Kids today,” he says with an indulgent chuckle. Kids today. He’s like twenty-three.

  I slouch away to a table in the corner to watch it snow. It’s Christmas Day, my most dreaded of all days, and I’m mostly hoping that if I drink enough caffeine it’ll whiz by in a jittery blur. At least this year I was smart about it: no boyfriend for me. You gotta date me to dump me, so I quit going out when September rolled around and the dude who begged to fuck me at the sauna still hadn’t called. I haven’t even made eye contact at the grocery store in months. Of course the one time my sex life goes according to plan, it’s when the “plan” is No Man.

/>   I know I sound like a Scrooge; I’m not. I want to like Christmas. I used to love Christmas. When I was a kid I could barely handle Christmas: three weeks of fudge, two weeks off from school, and a house full of presents that were mine, all mine? Okay, and a bunch of pink shit for my sister, but I got to play with all that, too, when my dad wasn’t around—it was a downright bonanza. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

  When I was seventeen, I was fooling around with Byron Juarez after school on a pretty regular basis. We understood, Byron and I, that Romeo and Juliet were a couple of chumps who wouldn’t have known real love had it joined them that night on the balcony and, say, yanked off its sweaty T-shirt after baseball practice and let them lick its pits and chew on its tiny brown nipples, the way Byron invited me to do in the back of his Jeep with some frequency. It, therefore, also went without saying that Christmas of 1990 would be the most romantic Christmas, if not ever, then certainly since the one where Mary and Joseph fell in love all over again gazing into each other’s eyes across the manger. I say it “went without saying”—we said it a hundred times a day, and started giving each other trinkety little presents the day after Thanksgiving. We were like living advent calendars, counting down the days with keychains and flavored condoms and Seven Layer Burritos until at last it was Christmas Eve. He had a thing to go to at his grandma’s, but we met up first at a park out south by his house, famous for the dinosaur on its playground underneath which we first got acquainted. We fogged up his Jeep for about an hour, then giddily exchanged the matching gold bracelets we’d bought together the week before and pronounced ourselves Officially Boyfriends.

  This caused something of a stir at my family’s Christmas. Nobody cared that I was gay, you understand; we’d crossed that bridge pretty much for once and for all when I was thirteen and insisted on dressing up as Miss Universe for Halloween—for the fourth year in a row. But I kept scrunching up the right sleeve on my sweater to watch my most prized possession glitter and glow in the lamplight, and I gushed on and on about Byron this and Boyfriends that until my dad paid me fifty bucks to stop.

  It caused something of a stir at Byron’s family’s Christmas, too, as he explained to me on December 27th when he gave me the bracelet back, its clasp broken. On a topic completely unrelated to the spongy purple shiner behind his sunglasses, he took pains to assure me, his dad had decided Byron would get a better education at the same Catholic boarding school he’d gone to in Managua. He left for Nicaragua, which his parents came from but he’d never even visited, in January, and the Magic of Christmas went with him. Apparently, because I haven’t caught a glimpse of it since.