Totally Joe

by James Howe

  2. I weigh 98 pounds. (Kind of skinny, but not a string bean.)

  3. I have thick, wavy, medium-brown hair, currently streaked with red.

  4. I have dark brown, close-set eyes. (On some people close-set eyes can be attractive. I’ll have to wait and see what the rest of my face does.)

  5. My nose is too big. (Not much hope there.) (Curse you, paternal genes!)

  6. I have nice ears. Not that ears matter much, but at least they don’t stick out like Jeff’s. His friends used to call him Dumbo. (Note to parents, if I ever let them read this: I have perfect ears for an earring.)

  7. I love clothes! Right now, I’m into oversize, long-sleeved shirts (oxford button-downs, mostly), which I wear over colored T-shirts. In warmer weather, I like wearing these big, baggy Hawaiian shirts (also over colored T-shirts). I’m into cargo pants or baggy jeans or shorts, worn with oversize belts. Or sometimes I wear these totally retro dress pants I find at the thrift shop on Main Street. What can I say? I have a fabulous and totally original sense of style.

  Now that I think of it, Colin has never said he likes the way I dress. He’s also never said anything about liking my streaked hair or the way I paint the pinky fingernail on my right hand. (Actually, Aunt Pam paints it for me. She does all these amazing tiny pictures. Like, right now, I have a sun/moon face.)

  Oh. My. God. Maybe Colin hates my clothes and my hair and my fingernail. Maybe he wishes I wore the kind of boring shirts he wears, with their Easter colors and little polo guys on them. Colin is pretty Ralph Lauren, when you come right down to it. So is his whole family. I’m sorry, I would rather eat raw tofurky than wear cotton pullovers with little thingies on them—polo guys, sailboats, whatever that Tommy Hilfiger logo is supposed to be. I am so not into logos.

  What if Colin and I are incompatible?!?!?!? What if I get an earring and he goes, “Ewww”?

  This is so Romeo and Juliet! True love torn apart by tragic differences!

  8. I just reread what I wrote, and I thought, I sound so shallow! That’s what Addie would say, anyway. She’s all about thinking about things, and I’m all about how things look. Well, excuse me, but it’s not like I never think. And one thing I think is that appearances matter. It tells the rest of the world who you are. And who I am is Totally, Awesomely Stylin’, Thank You Very Much.

  9. So, okay, some other things about me:

  a. I love cats, but my mom’s allergic, so we can’t have any. When I need my feline fix, I go next door and hang with Addie’s cats, Kennedy and Johnson.

  b. English is my favorite subject!!!!!!!!

  c. I hate Phys Ed. (Duh.)

  d. I love brownies and ice cream. (Especially peppermint stick ice cream. The Candy Kitchen makes this only at Christmas, which is totally unfair.)

  e. Christmas is my second-favorite holiday. My family gets into it big time. (Even if my mother is one-quarter Jewish.) (Which I guess makes me one-eighth Jewish.) (Who says I can’t do fractions?)

  f. I like movies, music, and magazines.

  g. I also like books, but I wish there were more books about boys like me. I mean, most of the books “for boys” are about guy-guys. The characters are always trapped in the wilderness, where they become friends with a wolf, or their biggest worry in life is how they’re going to score the winning point for the team. Yawn.

  h. I love to daydream, especially about the future.

  J is for Joe: The Later Years

  So, what is my future? Well, I’ll probably live in a big city—New York or Paris or Hollywood. I mean, I so don’t see myself in Paintbrush Falls for the rest of my life! And I’ll probably be famous. I don’t know at what, but I’ve got time to figure that out. I was thinking about being an actor or a singer, but I’d hate having to deal with the paparazzi all the time! And the fans! Always bugging you for your autograph. And some of them are totally crazy and live in the bushes outside your house, and then you have to have bodyguards. (Having bodyguards might be fun, but I don’t want people living in my bushes. That is so creepy!)

  With my natural style sense and all, maybe I’ll be a fashion designer. If I am, I will not use logos!!!!!!

  The only other thing I think about the future is that I definitely want to get married and have kids. What I forgot to say before is that during my wedding obsession year I insisted that my mother buy all the bridal magazines at the supermarket checkout. She was, like, “But honey, you don’t know how to read yet.” Hello, who reads bridal magazines? Of course, when I get married there isn’t going to be a bride, although it might be fun to ask Jeff to strap on some soccer balls and be my maid of honor.

  I wonder if Colin wants to get married someday, too.

  (I just remembered what Kevin and Jimmy said about Bert and Ernie getting married and about that being so sick it made them want to puke and all.) (They’re the ones who are sick.) (Kevin and Jimmy, I mean.) (Totally.)

  LIFE LESSON: There should be a magazine called Grooms.

  K IS NOT FOR

  KISSING

  OH. MY. GOD. YOU ARE SO NOT GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED on Monday! Okay, remember how in J I said I was worried that Kevin and Jimmy were going to tell everybody they saw Colin and me holding hands? Well, guess what. It was a whole lot worse! By the end of third period it was all over school that Colin and I had been seen kissing!

  I mean, hello. Kissing?!

  Third period happened to be art, which is one of three classes Colin and I have together. We were coming from English (which we also have together) when we heard all this giggling and laughing and “They did not!” and “They did sol” coming from the art room. The minute they saw us, everybody went, “Shh, shh, shh,” and turned their heads away, acting like we weren’t there. Some of the girls were still giggling, though, and some of the boys were making kissy noises and punching each other on the shoulder. Kevin and Jimmy aren’t even in our art class, but I was, like, one thousand percent sure they were behind whatever was going on.

  I looked across the room at Bobby, who rolled his eyes and shook his head, which didn’t tell me anything. I was all set to go over and ask him what was up, when Mr. Minelli came in and told everybody to get to their tables and take out their sketchbooks.

  Ordinarily, I am very happy that Colin and I sit next to each other in art. Mr. Minelli lets the class talk in low voices while we work, and Colin and I have this goofy thing we do where he’s Moonet, the famous cow artist, and I’m Pigasso, who draws three-eyed pigs playing guitars. We have other goofy routines, too, and we’re always making each other laugh and then bumping elbows to make each other stop. Sometimes, I think we do it just as an excuse to bump elbows. But no way were we bumping elbows on Monday. We weren’t even talking to each other!

  When the bell rang, Colin grabbed his backpack, mumbled something about having to meet up with Drew, and was out the door before I was even out of my seat. I turned to Kelsey, who sits on the other side of me, and said, “Okay, what is going on?”

  Her hair was hanging over her face, so I wasn’t sure I heard right at first, but when I asked her a second time, I got it: “Everybody says you and Colin were kissing.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous!”

  I expected her to say, “I know,” but instead she said, “Well, what if you were? It’s nobody’s business.”

  Bobby came around from the other side of the table then, and the three of us kept talking while we walked to history. It turned out that seeing us holding hands wasn’t good enough for Kevin and Jimmy (a.k.a. The Twin Faces of Evil). No, they had to tell the whole school they’d seen us kissing. When I reminded Bobby and Kelsey that they’d been with Colin and me the whole time, so they knew it wasn’t true, Bobby said that Kevin said it happened when we were standing by ourselves waiting to cross the street and no one was looking.

  “Look, Joe,” he said. “I don’t care if you and Colin kissed. It’s not a big deal, okay? It’s just so unfair that Kevin and Jimmy—”

  “The Twin Faces of Evil,” I cor
rected him.

  “Fine. The Twin Faces of Evil. It’s just unfair of them to spread it around school.”

  “But we weren’t kissing!”

  Bobby nodded, like, uh-huh, whatever.

  I know I said before that I liked kissing, that I called it “getting smoochy” and all that. But that was when I was little and wasn’t talking about doing the kissing myself. Not that kind of kissing, anyway. I mean, bumping elbows is one thing, and holding hands is awesome, but actually putting your mouth on somebody else’s mouth and exchanging saliva? Ewww!

  It got even worse after history. We went to our lockers. Mine had I ♥ COLIN on it, and Colin’s, which is across the hall from mine, had I ♥ JOE on it. Kelsey said we should report it to Mr. Kiley right away, but I said no, because I didn’t know if Colin had even seen it and I didn’t want to make things worse for him. Luckily, we were able to get the writing off both lockers pretty easily with some paper towels and soap. (Whoever did it must have used really cheap markers.) (As if I don’t know who did it.) While we were waiting for Colin to show up so we could walk to lunch together, I made Bobby and Kelsey promise they wouldn’t tell him what had happened.

  But Colin never showed up, so we walked to the cafeteria by ourselves. Guess where he was! Not at our table, where he’d been sitting for weeks. No, he and Drew were at their old table, sitting with their other friends. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was even worse than the Halloween party. It was like he’d turned me invisible—and all because of a stupid rumor that wasn’t true! I started to go over to his table, but Bobby pulled me back.

  “Don’t, Joe,” he said. “Just leave him alone.”

  I knew he was right. Whatever I would have said or done would only have made it worse.

  It was then that I noticed how everybody was whispering and looking back and forth between me and Colin. Well, maybe not everybody, but it totally felt that way.

  When we got to our table, Addie was blabbing away about what an outrage this kissing thing was, and how we needed to do something about it, and what we needed to do was start a GSA.

  “A what?” I said.

  “A GSA—a gay-straight alliance,” Addie explained. “It’s like a club where gay kids and straight kids meet and talk about things. And one of the things they talk about is how to make school a safe place for everyone. For heaven’s sake, Joe, if you and Colin want to kiss, you have every right to. It shouldn’t have to turn up as tabloid trash the next day in school!”

  (Addie talks like this, what can I say?)

  “We did not kiss,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “Whatever.” What was it with my friends?

  DuShawn grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” he said. “It’s sweeeeet.”

  “DuShawn!” Addie said, jabbing him and turning as red as the streak in my hair. I couldn’t help noticing she was smiling, though.

  All of a sudden I got this picture in my head of Addie and DuShawn kissing, but because I didn’t want to totally lose my appetite (or my lunch), I pushed it away as fast as I could.

  I honestly don’t remember much about the rest of the day. I was kind of in a state of shock or something. Even without thinking about Addie and DuShawn kissing, I could hardly eat my lunch. It wasn’t the rumors that were getting to me as much as the fact that Colin was sitting at his old table and never even once turned around and looked my way. Addie was going on and on about this whole GSA thing, as if being gay and twelve (or thirteen) (Colin is thirteen) and accused of kissing your boyfriend in public were suddenly her personal problems.

  I tried talking to Colin between classes later, but he just mumbled something about how he couldn’t talk right then and walked away. He wouldn’t even look at me!

  The next day we didn’t have school because of something called Staff Development Day. Ms. Wyman told us in math that it was a day for teachers to learn. I don’t know what they were learning, but I wondered what they would do if they learned about Colin and me and all the stuff that was being said about us. And that got me wondering if any of the teachers were gay and if they’d had things like the kissing rumor happen to them when they were in school.

  It’s good we had Tuesday off. I got to have an entire day to feel sorry for myself and try to figure out whether I should hate Colin or not. I mean, I couldn’t exactly hate him (he’s Colin, hello), but I couldn’t exactly like him either. I didn’t feel like talking to any of my friends, and Jeff was in his room clicking away on his computer. (Probably writing total porn to that girlfriend of his.) (Not that I would have talked to him about what was going on, anyway.) (Can you picture it? “Oh, sure, Joe, the same thing happened to me when I was in seventh grade and got caught holding hands with my boyfriend.”) (Yeah, that’s gonna happen.)

  I knew the only person I could really talk to was Aunt Pam. And that’s just what I was going to do. The minute she got home from work, I was going to say we should make a big bowl of popcorn and go up to her room and hang out and talk. I was even going to come out to her—I mean, I know that she knows, but I’ve never said the actual g-word, and anyway, I thought it would kind of make it official and get the ball rolling, family-wise. “Aunt Pam,” I was going to say to her, “I’m gay, and I’m having boyfriend trouble.” And she’d be able to tell me what to do because she’s super-smart and—remember?—she wants me to be so fine I’ll shine.

  But then when she did come home, I didn’t have a chance to say anything, because before I could even open my mouth, she was telling me that she’s moving back to New York right after Thanksgiving, which is only a few weeks away! She sounded all excited and happy. It seems her friend found them an apartment in this really cool part of the city and she’s getting to start her new job sooner than planned and blah blah blah. She said she’d miss me, and she was sorry it was so soon. I think she promised to come back for Christmas. I don’t know. After it hit me that she was really leaving, I kind of stopped listening.

  As days go, Tuesday totally sucked, and I was sure Wednesday would be even worse. I was right, but not for the reasons I thought. It turned out nobody was talking about Colin and me anymore. The kissing rumor was so over. Why? Because this girl had let this boy touch her under her shirt on the stairs right outside the main office, and now she was a slut and he was a stud, and that’s all anybody was talking about. It was like being inside some weird reality show on TV. Except in this case getting voted off the island was like winning. That’s what it felt like to have nobody talking about Colin and me kissing—like we’d been voted off the island and we’d won!

  I almost felt like a winner, until I went to my locker at lunch and found Colin’s note. After that, I was back on the island and the biggest loser in the whole world.

  LIFE LESSON: Middle school is like being trapped in a reality show where there’s no way off the island and you’re always a loser.

  L is for

  LEFTOVERS

  THANKSGIVING WAS THREE DAYS AGO. The relatives have gone away and we’re still eating the turkey loaf we made out of the leftover turkey. Usually, I love leftovers. When my dad and I make chili (which I sometimes make on my own) (it’s really good) (maybe I’ll be a world-famous chef when I grow up)… anyway, when we make chili, I always heat up what’s left over and have it for breakfast the next day. I even like it on school mornings, which probably sounds gross when you think about it being 7:00 A.M. and eating nuked chili, but it is so not.

  Next to chili, turkey is my favorite leftover. But not this year. This year, I hate everything about Thanksgiving—and leftovers. Because this year, it’s not just food leftovers I have to deal with, it’s people leftovers.

  (Oh, and I should probably mention that we have all this leftover tofurky, too, because Addie and her parents were here. Trust me that the tofurky is going to be left over for a loooooooong time.)

  Anyway, you’re probably wondering what I mean by “people leftovers.” What I mean is, the stuff people le
ave behind them after they’re gone. Aunt Pam moved out two days ago, and I keep finding her things all over the house. It’s like she packed so quickly she didn’t even notice how much she wasn’t packing. Or maybe she just didn’t care. Was she in that much of a hurry to get away from us? Like right now, I’ve got this hair-clip thing sitting on my desk. I found it in her room—her leftover room. I feel kind of bad about it because I gave it to her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and I know she liked wearing it. So why did she leave it out in plain sight on her dresser? Why didn’t it matter enough to take?

  She left tons of other stuff, too, mostly in her studio over the garage. She said she’s coming back for everything at Christmas. But what about the empty feeling she left behind? I don’t think she’ll be able to come back for that. That’s going to be around even longer than the tofurky.

  The reason I know this is because it’s been more than three weeks since Colin left the note in my locker, and the empty feeling I got after that hasn’t gotten any better in all this time. I guess I may as well tell you what he wrote:

  Joe,

  The guys on the team gave me a really hard time at practice last night. They Kept asking me if the rumor was true, and some of them—even Justin, who’s my friend—were saying things like, You’d better not turn fag on us, Briggs. Then they started making jokes about not wanting to shower with me, except I’m not sure they were all joking. I told them Kevin and Jimmy had made the whole thing up. I don’t know if they believed me.

  Joe, I feel really, really bad saying this, and I hope you won’t hate me, but I think maybe we shouldn’t hang out together anymore. I just can’t deal with what’s happening. Please don’t be mad at me.

  colin

  P.S. I still wish I Could be like you. I can’t, and that’s the problem.

  I’ve tried really hard to hate Colin, but it just doesn’t work. I miss him too much, and I guess I understand why he had to do it. I’ve never been on a team, but I know what it’s like for me in Phys Ed. When I first got his note, I was afraid he’d start making fun of me the way the other guys do. But that was stupid. Colin isn’t like that. I e-mailed him that night and told him it was okay, that we could just ignore each other in school. But he wrote back and said, “No way.” And he doesn’t ignore me. He always says hi when he sees me in the hall, and we even talk sometimes. We just don’t do Moonet and Pigasso in art class anymore. We don’t laugh or bump elbows.