Totally Joe

by James Howe

  The hardest is lunchtime, sitting at the table with Kelsey and Bobby, and Addie and DuShawn, with them acting like couples, and hearing Colin’s voice from across the cafeteria. That’s the time I really do get mad. But then we’ll be leaving and I’ll see Colin on the way out and he’ll give me this little shy smile, like he’s saying, “I’m sorry.” Of course, it might not mean that. It might not mean anything. Maybe it never even meant anything that he told me he liked me.

  Addie got really furious about it when I first told her. She said she was going to talk to him, but I begged her not to, and for once she listened. Then she said, “This is all the more reason we need a GSA in this school!”

  Whatever. We haven’t even gotten this no-name-calling thing off the ground yet, and here goes Addie with another cause. She has more causes than her parents’ car has bumper stickers. I guess it’s cool to care so much and all that, but sometimes Addie wears me out. And, well, I’m not sure if having a club with the word “gay” in it would help or just make things worse.

  Usually, I love Thanksgiving weekend because it’s the first long break from school. And I was really looking forward to it this year because I thought it would give Colin and me a lot of time to hang out together. Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.

  Addie and her family left for the weekend the day after Thanksgiving, and Kelsey’s been away the whole time. But Bobby and Skeezie have been around. They came over to my house this afternoon (Sunday). We were hanging out in my room eating turkey loaf and leftover sweet potato pie. Skeezie est un cochon, vraiment! Really, he should wear a bib. I wouldn’t have been watching him, except I had to keep an eye on where the sweet potato pie was going to land. I mean, bright orange on my lime green shag carpet would not have been pretty.

  Bobby noticed the new painting on my wall right away. It’s kind of hard to miss, since it’s almost as big as the wall, but of course Skeezie, who was looking right at it, said, “What painting?”

  “Pam painted it, didn’t she?” Bobby asked.

  I told him yeah. “She gave it to me when she moved out,” I said. “She wanted me to keep it.”

  “Oh, that’s a painting,” Skeezie said. “I thought it was, like, wallpaper.”

  Bobby shook his head but otherwise ignored Skeezie, which is usually the best thing to do. “That was really nice of her, Joe,” he said to me. “It’s something to remember her by.”

  “Yeah, that and all the other things she left around here. Except I guess she’ll be coming back for those.”

  Bobby said, “She’ll be back for Christmas, right?”

  “That’s what she says,” I told him. “I really miss her. Who’s going to streak my hair or paint my fingernail?”

  Skeezie said, “I’ll do it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “like I’m letting somebody who can’t get sweet potato pie from his plate to his mouth without half of it ending up on his shirt anywhere near me.”

  Skeezie looked down at his shirt and went, “You’re exaggerating, JoDan. That’s nowhere near half.”

  Me: Even if she does come back at Christmas, it won’t be the same. She’s just going to turn around and leave again.

  Bobby: You’re lucky she comes back. I miss my mom a lot at Christmas. It’s the hardest day of the year for me. Well, the day she died is hard, too. And her birthday. And Mother’s Day. I hate Mother’s Day.

  Skeezie: Every Father’s Day, I take a picture of my dad and burn it.

  Bobby: Sometimes I have these dreams where my mom comes back for a visit. I know she’s dead and all—I mean, I know it in the dream—so I don’t get all freaked out the way Scrooge does when he sees Marley’s ghost. It’s kind of natural, her visiting. In this one dream, we went to the Candy Kitchen and had ice cream, and I told her what was going on in my life.

  Me: I remember that your mom had a real sweet tooth.

  Skeezie: Like you.

  Bobby: Yeah, we liked our ice cream, all right. Rocky Road. That was her favorite. Another time, I had this dream where she was sitting next to me in school. Nobody could see her or hear her but me, but she was so real sitting there. She kept smiling at me and telling me how proud she was of me. I said to her, “What are you proud of? I’m not doing anything.” She said, “You don’t have to do anything to make me proud. I’m your mother.”

  Me: Aunt Pam says … said … that kind of thing to me, too. She said I’m good just the way I am. She told me I was going to do fine without her.

  Bobby: My mom said that, too. That I’d do fine without her.

  Skeezie: She said that to you in a dream?

  Bobby: No, in real life.

  Me: She talked about that with you? About … not being here anymore?

  Bobby: Uh-huh. She told me that she was very sick and she was going to die. We didn’t talk about it a lot. I was only seven. But she wanted to make sure I knew I’d be okay. We even talked about Christmas. She said she felt bad that she wouldn’t be here to give me presents on Christmas or my birthday. She asked me to put her favorite picture of me under the tree every year. I don’t know why it’s her favorite. It’s just this dopey picture of me sitting on Santa’s lap.

  Skeezie: Oh, yeah, I know that picture. I wondered why you always had it under your tree.

  Bobby: Last year, I noticed for the first time that her hand is in the bottom corner of the picture. It’s blurred because she’s waving or motioning or something, but I can tell it’s her hand. She was probably getting me to look at the camera. Or maybe she was telling me to sit still. I was always squirming around. Anyway, when I saw it, I completely lost it.

  Skeezie: You lost the picture?

  Bobby: I lost it. I started bawling my eyes out. Because she was there in the picture, you know? But she wasn’t. Just her hand was there, and that was a blur.

  Skeezie: The only thing my dad left was pictures. And us. I don’t think he took one lousy picture with him. Man, he knew this was a permanent move, even if he was telling us it wasn’t. “Trial separation,” my butt. Whenever I look at the pictures he left, it’s like what you said, Bobby—he’s there but he isn’t. The guy in the pictures is smiling, like he’s happy to be where he is, happy to be with his little family. But that’s not who he is. It’s probably not who he ever was. He was probably lying to us the whole time. And then he left pictures behind to do the lying for him. That’s why I have to burn them. It’s them or me, get it? Pictures are killers.

  After Bobby and Skeezie went home, I took out the one picture I have of Colin and me. Aunt Pam took it after we got into our Bert and Ernie costumes. It’s kind of like the picture Bobby has of his mother’s hand, or the ones Skeezie was talking about where his father’s smiling and he doesn’t know whether to believe the smile or not. It’s like Colin and I are there but we’re not there—because we look more like Bert and Ernie than ourselves. And Aunt Pam’s kind of there but not there, too, because she’s the one who made the costumes and the one who took the picture.

  That picture is full of people leftovers. Skeezie’s right—pictures are killers. I don’t want to burn it, though, because, except for the few notes Colin left me in my locker and Aunt Pam’s painting on my wall, that picture is all I have.

  LIFE LESSON: People leftovers last a lot longer than the food kind.

  DECEMBER

  M is for

  MERRY CHRISTMAS

  AFTER THE WORST HALLOWEEN AND THE WORST THANKSGIVING EVER, CHRISTMAS TURNED OUT TO BE PRETTY GOOD. REALLY GOOD, actually. Aunt Pam came back just like she promised, and she gave me the best present! At first, I thought it was a joke. I opened this big box, which was so light I was sure there was nothing in it. It turned out I was almost right. The only thing inside was a needle.

  “Cool gift,” I told Aunt Pam, thinking, Oh, great, she’s moved back to New York City and she’s doing drugs again. Except, of course, it wasn’t a drug kind of needle. It was the kind you sew with.

  My mother figured it out right away. Meanwhile, I was so, like,
duh.

  Mom said, “I thought you were going to take him to the mall to do it.”

  “I can do it,” Aunt Pam told her.

  I cleared my throat. “Does anyone mind telling me what ‘it’ is?”

  Jeff was, like, “Use your brain, numb-numb.”

  At that point, even my dad got it. “Your ear?” he said.

  I couldn’t believe it. My entire family not only had it figured out before I did, but they were telling me it was cool to get my ear pierced! They were even better about it than my friends!

  FLASHBACK

  I’m at the Candy Kitchen with Bobby, Addie, and Skeezie two weeks ago. I tell them I’m hoping I can get my ear pierced for Christmas, and they’re all, like, “Way to go, Joe!” And, “That is so cool!” Stuff like that. But then Bobby gets worried that maybe having an earring will make me more of a target for being called “faggot” and “fairy” and other delightful f-words. And that gets Addie and Skeezie worried, too.

  I say, “Come on, you guys, I’m not going to be wearing a big dangly thing, just a little stud.”

  Of course Skeezie has to make a joke, saying I’m a little stud, ha, ha, ha. So funny I totally forget to laugh.

  “Anyway,” I say, “Kevin Hennessey’s brother, Cole, has an earring, and nobody calls him names.”

  “Duh,” says Skeezie. “They don’t call him names because he’ll rearrange their body parts if they do.”

  “Well, my point is that Kevin can’t really make fun of me for having an earring if his very own brother wears one. Besides, there are other guys who wear earrings and nobody says anything to them. Even Mr. Keller has one.”

  Mr. Keller is this new science teacher who all the girls swoon over.

  Everybody’s real quiet, and I get to thinking about the guys in our school who wear earrings. None of them is the kind you’d call “faggot” or “fairy” or other delightful f-words. They can get away with wearing whatever they want because they’re guy-guys. I, on the other hand, am not a guy-guy, so I don’t get away with anything. Isn’t that special?

  Finally, Addie says, “Well, I still think it’s cool, Joe. I think you’ll look good. Hey, I’ll bet my mom’s got some singles you can have.”

  “Singles?” I ask.

  “The ones left after you’ve lost one of a pair.”

  This makes me laugh, thinking of wearing Addie’s mom’s leftover earrings, and pretty soon we’re all laughing.

  “Hey, JoDan,” says Skeezie after we settle down. I try not to notice that most of the sprinkles from his ice-cream cone have taken up residence on his face. “Would it be okay if I get one, too?”

  “An earring?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about it, but then I tell myself I don’t want to do it because, you know, my dad had one and all. But it would be cool if we both did it. I mean, if it’s cool with you.”

  “It’s cool with me,” I tell him.

  “We’ll be earring brothers,” he says.

  “That is so weird,” I say back, but I’m thinking how Skeezie and I don’t really have much in common, even though we’re friends, and how I like the idea of being earring brothers. I just hope he won’t get in the habit of telling people that’s what we are.

  BACK TO CHRISTMAS

  Aunt Pam gave me some other really cool presents, too—except she gave them to me privately. She said they were for after I came out to the rest of my family. Oh, yeah, I told her I’m gay. It happened this time when she called and I was the only one home and I was feeling really sorry for myself because of Colin. After I told her, she said, “I know you’re gay, Joe. I’ve always known it. It’s just part of who you are. You’ve always known who you are, too, and you’ve never been ashamed of it. That’s one of the things I admire about you. Don’t worry about your parents. They’ll be fine. Jeff might have a hard time at first, but he’ll get over it. And he’s probably had it figured out for a long time, anyway.”

  “You’re forgetting,” I said, “that Jeff doesn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us. He’s in cyberspace.”

  Aunt Pam laughed at that, and that’s when I told her I wished she didn’t live so far away. And that’s when she told me she’d be back at Christmas and she’d have some special presents for me.

  So, anyway, on Christmas afternoon we were hanging out in my room and she gave me this box of presents she said she got in a part of New York City where a lot of gay people live. There was a rainbow candle and a little rainbow flag (she said rainbows are, like, this gay symbol or something) and a book of stories called Am I Blue? There was also a T-shirt that says I’M NOT GAY BUT MY BOYFRIEND is. It’s an XL, because Aunt Pam said I’d probably want to wear it as a sleep shirt—and only after I told my parents about being gay. She said she thought maybe it would help me laugh about Colin. I laughed about the T-shirt, but not about Colin. Actually, thinking about Colin still makes me sad.

  Anyway, there were other things, too. Some really cool pins, and, oh yeah, one of my favorite things was a mug with the names of all these famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people on it (only they’re called “queer” on the mug). I mean, I knew about Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres, but did you know that Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were queer? Wait until I tell Kelsey, she’s all into artists. And Eleanor Roosevelt is on there! She was the wife of a president and the subject of my fourth-grade “Great American Women” report! I sure didn’t read that about her in any of those books I read back in fourth grade!

  I had just finished putting all the stuff back in the box when my mom knocked on the door. She said she had one more present for me, but she didn’t know how I would feel about opening it in front of everyone, so she wanted to give it to me now. I was freaking out a little, wondering what it could be. You’re not going to believe it! She gave me the exact same book Aunt Pam had just given me—a book of short stories that all have gay characters in them! Mom and Aunt Pam laughed, and I said, “Does everybody in this family know everything about me before I do? First the earring, and now this!”

  “You may as well get it over with, Joe,” Aunt Pam said.

  So I got everyone to come into my room, and I took all the stuff out of the box Aunt Pam had given me, and I said, “Does this tell you anything about me?”

  Jeff looked bored and said, “Can I go?” But my father grabbed him by the shoulder and made him stay.

  “Why don’t you tell us what it says about you?” Dad said.

  Oh. My. God. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was going to say the words. Right out loud. To my mother and my father and my brother and my aunt (who already knew). I was going to say, “I’m gay.”

  And I did.

  Jeff said, “Okay, can I go now?”

  Aunt Pam was right. EVERYBODY ALREADY KNEW!!!!!

  Nobody said, “You’re only twelve, how can you know you’re gay?” Nobody said, “It’s just a phase.” Nobody said, “You can’t be gay (sniff, sniff)! Where did we go wrong (sob, sob)?” My mom and dad hugged me and told me they loved me and said they’d kind of figured out that’s who I was and all they wanted was for me to be happy.

  And that’s when I started crying (sniff, sniff, sob, sob), because I wanted to tell them all about Colin and how he made me happy. But I couldn’t tell them because it wouldn’t have been fair to Colin, and besides, he wasn’t making me happy anymore.

  I guess maybe I was crying for another reason, too. Even though nobody was acting like it was a big deal, we all knew that it was. I’d said it. Out loud. “I’m gay.”

  I took one of the pins Aunt Pam had given me and put it on my shirt. It said CELEBRATE DIVERSITY. Then I took it off, thinking I’d give it to Addie, because it’s one she’d really like, and I put on another one. I like what it says best of all: BEING WHO YOU ARE ISN’T A CHOICE.

  The next day, Skeezie and Addie and Bobby came over so we could all exchange gifts. I gave Addie the pin, which she loved, and told them all about what had happened. They all s
lapped me five and said I was awesome. Then Aunt Pam took us to the mall, which was a total zoo, since it was the day after Christmas and all, and Skeezie and I picked out our earrings.

  When we got home, Aunt Pam sat us down in the kitchen, numbed our earlobes with ice cubes and—Oh. My. God.—stuck a needle through our ears! Ice or no ice, it hurt! But now I have this way cool yin/yang earring on my left lobe. And Skeezie has a silver skull on his. (Are we predictable or what?) And we are now officially earring brothers.

  I love Christmas, and this was almost the best Christmas of my life. The only thing that kept it from being the best ever was the present under my bed, the one I’d bought for Colin before he broke up with me. I know it’s stupid, but I’m keeping it there just in case we get back together. If birthday wishes can come true, maybe Christmas wishes can, too.

  Hey, I’m a poet.

  LIFE LESSON: Being who you are isn’t a choice.

  JANUARY

  N is for

  NAMES

  IT’S FUNNY, BUT SINCE I CAME OUT TO MY FAMILY ON CHRISTMAS, being called names doesn’t bother me as much. Like, when I got back to school, practically the first thing I heard was Kevin H. (who else?) calling out, “Hey, faggot!” And all I thought was, Yeah, that’s me. So?

  I didn’t say it, but just thinking it made me feel better. It was like, Okay, that’s who I am. Who are you but somebody who calls people names? Aunt Pam said that sometimes guys who call other guys “faggot” and other homophobic names are deep-down insecure about themselves. Like maybe they’re gay and just can’t deal with it.