Totally Joe

by James Howe

  Without even thinking about it, I said, “Why don’t you come to my birthday party tomorrow?”

  He went, “Really?” You’d think I’d invited him to go with me to the Oscars or something. “Okay, that would be great.”

  And that’s how Zachary ended up at my birthday party, which brings me to the Main Topic: I’m THIRTEEN!!!!!

  (Okay, now that I got that out of my system.)

  I guess it is exciting. To be a teenager, I mean. Although when I look at Jeff, I’m not sure what’s supposed to be so exciting about it. He sleeps, like, sixteen hours a day!

  Some of my friends already are thirteen, and they said the main difference is that things are more expensive now. No more “twelve and under.”

  But, I don’t know, I feel more grown-up somehow.

  Not that you would know that from my party, which was totally fun and kind of goofy. After we went ice-skating at the rink (Zachary is an awesome figure skater), we came back and had what my dad calls “silly foods,” including hot dogs (Tofu Pups for Addie), which were barbecued outdoors (hello, there’s, like, two feet of snow on the ground!), sesame noodles, corn on the cob (see previous parentheses; my dad said even though it was the frozen variety, corn on the cob was a must because it’s my favorite food), four kinds of ice cream, and this five-layer cake Aunt Pam made, where the layers were all tipped in different directions and had different-color frosting. And when I say color, I’m talking TECHNICOLOR: fuchsia and magenta and aquamarine, to name a few! When Mom told her she should be a baker, Aunt Pam scowled and said, “Has our mother been talking to you?”

  (Grandma is always going on about how Aunt Pam needs to replace “rock ‘n’ roll” with “respectable ‘n’ responsible,” and it drives Aunt Pam crazy. As far as I can see, Aunt Pam is respectable and responsible; she just does things her way and not Grandma’s. Like I said in O, Grandma and Aunt Pam have their issues.)

  Anyway, Aunt Pam said she’d try to find the button for me (the civil rights one), and that it would be a little bonus birthday present, but her main present to me was this big stack of CDs. She said they were all singers I should know—Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Janis Ian, and Kris Delmhorst. Oh, and she also got me one by this band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers because she said I was a teenager now and it was time for me to “start rockin’!” (I swear I could hear Grandma say, “Oy,” all the way from Short Hills, New Jersey.)

  I’d never heard of any of these people, but I’ve sampled all the CDs and I really like them. (I have to be careful about playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers when my parents are around, though, because some of the lyrics are kind of embarrassing, if you know what I mean.)

  Aunt Pam said she’s seen Ani DiFranco in concert and she is guaranteed to blow my mind, and that part of her birthday present is to bring me to New York (on the train from Albany—by myself!) the next time Ani (that’s what she calls her) has a concert, and she’ll get us seats as close to the stage as she can, so I can have my mind blown, up close and personal.

  I got other CDs for my birthday, too. One of them was Colin’s leftover Christmas present. It was this double album with an all-white cover. I saw that it was the Beatles, and I figured out right away why he’d given it to me. Sure enough, I turned it over and there it was: #11 on Disc 1—“Blackbird.”

  His other present was a small silver hoop earring. I put it in right away, and everyone said it was totally me.

  “In which case,” Skeezie piped up, “you won’t be needing that stud. Can I have it?”

  I told him no, and he started whining about how we were earring brothers and that meant we were supposed to share, and, well, that wasn’t too embarrassing. (Especially considering that when he said it, his face was a mess of cake crumbs and frosting.)

  Anyway, I loved Colin’s presents, and I think he liked mine, too. I gave him a shirt from the Gap. It wasn’t the present I had under my bed. That was a Hawaiian shirt with about as many colors going on in it as Aunt Pam’s cake. But after our last IM, I knew it wasn’t fair to give it to him. That shirt was a lot more me than Colin. So I kept it and got him one of those polo-type shirts from the Gap instead. That’s more his style—even if it doesn’t have a little logo thingy on it. I did get it in purple, because, hey, I’m not about to feed the Straight (and Closeted Gay) Guy Drabness Monster. Besides, one of Colin’s secrets that only I know is that his favorite color is purple. (He tells everybody else it’s blue.)

  I won’t go into a whole list of my presents, because I wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a total Material Boy (even if maybe I am), but I have to tell you my two Very Favorites.

  Very Favorite #1

  This big box came from Grandma Lily and Grandpa Ray about two days before my birthday. For some reason, I decided to wait until my party to open it, which I’m glad I did, because it just added to the Goofiness Factor. It was a truck—a big yellow dump truck!

  I said, “I think the grandparents have finally lost it.”

  Took carefully,” my mother said.

  I took the truck out of the box and turned it this way and that until I saw that there, on the back bumper, was a tiny rainbow sticker. I couldn’t believe it!

  “It was Grandpa’s idea,” Mom told me.

  If all my friends hadn’t been there, I might’ve started bawling. I mean, this is my grandfather who has to leave the room for oxygen and who has never before exhibited a sense of humor we’re talking about.

  I asked Aunt Pam if she had put him up to this, and she said, “No way. He did call and ask me what kind of bumper sticker he should get, but he wouldn’t let me help him find it. He said, ‘I’ll go online.’”

  My grandparents? Online? This was getting scarier by the minute.

  Oh, the neat thing about the truck (besides the rainbow sticker)? The dump part is the perfect size to hold CDs! Finally, a truck I can actually use!

  Very Favorite #2:

  This one was from Zachary, and it was a toy, too. Nobody else got the joke, but I did, right away.

  “Now you’ll have something to write about,” he told me.

  “Yeah, me and everybody else,” I said.

  He smiled. (I tried not to notice his dimples.) “Maybe, but you’ll be the expert.”

  “You’re right!” I said.

  I started banging out “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss),” which is my all-time favorite Cher song.

  I was pretty good, for somebody who’d never played the xylophone before.

  If Cher had been there, she would have totally loved it!

  LIFE LESSON: Birthdays rock!

  U is for

  UNDERWATER

  THIS PROBABLY WONT SURPRISE YOU, BUT WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I WANTED TO BE ARIEL. YOU KNOW. THE LITTLE MERMAID.

  It wasn’t because she was a girl or because she had a fin (although the fin was way cool); it was because I loved swimming underwater. I was so jealous of Ariel, the way she never ran out of breath and never needed to come up to the top. The funny thing is, all she wanted to do was come to the top and live on the land, and all I wanted to do was go under the waves and live in the water.

  Once, when I was four, my family went on vacation in North Carolina, I think it was, where there was this humongous waterslide. I was too little to go down it by myself, so I rode down between my dad’s legs. Every time we splashed into the little pool at the bottom (which was more like a wading pool than a real one), I’d push away and start paddling around underwater, pretending to be Ariel. I could hear my dad’s voice, which I’d imagine was King Triton’s. I’d picture him puffing up all red-faced and muscle-y, going, “Ariel! Ariel! You come here this very instant, do you hear me?” And of course I’d disobey him, because that’s what Ariel would do. I couldn’t hear what my father was really saying. His voice was all gurgly. He probably was sounding like King Triton, telling me to hurry up, people were waiting at the top, this wasn’t the time to dillydally, blah blah blah. But I couldn’t help myself. I was on a big adven
ture with Flounder, and that was even more fun than going down the slide.

  I got to thinking about all this because of a song that’s on one of the CDs Aunt Pam gave me. It’s called “Waiting under the Waves,” and it’s by Kris Delmhorst, whose voice makes me sad and happy at the same time. When I listen to this song, I think about all the times I’ve been underwater and how I’ve always had the feeling of waiting but not knowing what I was waiting for. That time in North Carolina, I guess maybe I was waiting for my adventures with Flounder to begin. Other times, at the community pool in Paintbrush Falls, I was waiting for the kids who were picking on me to go away. That usually worked because I could stay under the water a lot longer than they could, and they’d get bored and go find somebody new to pick on.

  One summer, I discovered that I liked looking at boys—and some of them were the same boys who were picking on me! That was very confusing. That summer, I might have waited under the water for the confusion to go away.

  Mostly, I think what I was waiting for (or maybe wishing for) was the world above the water to feel as calm and peaceful and safe as the world under the water.

  Does that make sense?

  LIFE LESSON: In the words of a very wise crustacean (and a good friend of Ariel’s): “It’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from me.”

  MARCH

  V is for

  VICTIM (NO MORE)

  TODAY WAS NO-NAME DAY. KEVIN HENNESSEY CELEBRATED BY calling me a “flaming fag” before the first bell rang and then defended himself by saying it wasn’t “officially” school yet.

  I celebrated by walking into Mr. Kiley’s office right after the first bell rang and officially reporting Kevin Hennessey. Mr. Kiley invited Kevin to join us, and we spent first period together, the three of us, with me telling Mr. Kiley every single rotten thing Kevin has ever done to me and almost every single rotten thing he’s ever called me (like I said back in E, there are some things that are too disgusting to repeat). Mr. Kiley asked me why I’d never reported any of this before, and I told him, “Because I was afraid to.”

  He nodded, as if he actually got it, then stepped out of the room to ask Mrs. DePaolo to get Kevin’s parents on the phone. The minute Mr. Kiley was out of sight, Kevin turned to me with his face all tight like a fist and said, “You’d better stay afraid, Bunch.”

  “Of what?” I said. “That you’ll tell everybody I’m a queer? I am a queer. Big whoop.”

  “You’re sick!” he spat at me.

  “Then don’t get too close,” I told him, sticking my face right in his, “or you might catch it. Hey, Kevin, maybe that’s what you secretly want.”

  “Bite me,” he said.

  I told him I was a queer, not a vampire, and either way he wasn’t my type.

  Before Kevin could threaten me with physical violence, which I knew was the only thing he had left to threaten me with, Mr. Kiley came back into the room and asked me, “Joe, do you have any witnesses to the claims you’re making?”

  I’m sorry, but this cracked me up. “Only the whole school,” I said.

  Mr. Kiley honestly looked surprised. “And nobody has reported it?” he asked. “In all this time?”

  I hate to say it, but it suddenly dawned on me that Mr. Kiley needed some educating. “Kids don’t tell on each other,” I explained. “And teachers sometimes don’t see what’s right in front of their own noses.”

  He shook his head sadly. “It sounds as if we might need No-Name Day every day of the year.”

  “No joke,” I said. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but really: no joke.

  You should have heard it when Mr. Kiley got Kevin’s parents on the phone. Maybe you did hear it. First his mother got on and was yelling so loud Mr. Kiley had to hold the receiver away from his ear. But that was nothing compared with how loud Mr. Hennessey yelled when he got on the phone. Nice people, Kevin’s parents.

  I couldn’t make out what they were yelling about, but Mr. Kiley was saying things like, “This is not about disrespecting your religious beliefs, this is about your son disrespecting another student.” And, “I will not tolerate that kind of language, Mr. Hennessey. If you cannot speak civilly, I will hang up. What did you just say? Do not threaten me, sir!”

  Meanwhile, the whole time, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Kevin was getting smaller in the chair next to me. I mean it. Honestly. He was kind of folding in on himself, especially when his dad was hollering on the other end of the phone. I had this little flicker of sympathy for him, the way I did the time Jeff talked about how Cole treats him. I was thinking that maybe his father hits him, and that’s why he was shrinking the way he was. But that’s all the sympathy I could manage. Just a flicker. Because no matter what Kevin’s story is, I’m tired of how he talks to me and pushes me around. I’m tired of being a victim.

  I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was the fact that it was No-Name Day. Maybe it was because I was wearing the pin Aunt Pam had just sent me that says NO ONE IS FREE WHEN OTHERS ARE OPPRESSED. Maybe it was remembering how last week Kevin had said something really mean to Zachary and I’d just stood there and pretended I hadn’t heard it. Whatever it was, something finally snapped. It’s like Eleanor Roosevelt said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Well, today, I stopped giving Kevin Hennessey my consent.

  It was so cool the way the rest of the day played out. I mean, here it was—No-Name Day!—and Kevin Hennessey gets suspended for calling me a name! We had an assembly with a speaker, and the poster contest, and all kinds of other stuff for No-Name Day, but all everybody was talking about was Kevin Hennessey getting suspended for something he’s been getting away with for years.

  I have to admit I’m still a little bit scared that he’s going to beat me up the first chance he gets. Jimmy Lemon has already threatened me, but I’m not scared of Jimmy. He’s all talk and no muscle.

  At lunch, DuShawn told me, “Don’t sweat it.” He said now that everything is out in the open to the whole school—including me being gay! Oh. My. God.—Kevin isn’t going to mess with me. I guess he could be right. Because right after he said that, some boys (by which I mean guy-guys) came over to our table and told me they thought what I’d done was cool. They said that Kevin was a big seven-letter-word-starting-with-A and they were glad I’d “put him out of commission.”

  I’m, like, a hero!

  Mr. Kiley announced at the assembly that next year we’re going to have a whole week and call it No Name-Calling Week, and he’s going to try to get other schools in the area to do the same thing. And he called Addie and me into his office at the end of the day and said he is approving the GSA and that we can get it going whenever we want.

  At dinner tonight, I told my family about everything that happened, and they were really proud of me. Even Jeff grunted something about my being brave. Then my dad said, “I have to give Mr. Kiley a lot of credit, too. It’s nice to know that educators can be educated.”

  I said, “You know what’s even nicer? After No-Name Day, I have a whole week of No Kevin Hennessey!”

  LIFE LESSON: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”—Eleanor Roosevelt

  W is for

  WRITING

  I NEVER LIKED TO WRITE BEFORE. OR MAYBE I JUST NEVER KNEW I liked to write. But writing this alphabiography has been TF.

  So I’ve decided that writing is going to be my new interest. I’m going to write short stories and maybe a play, and, oh, big guess what: Skeezie and I are going to write a humor column for the Easel (like you don’t know what that is: the school paper. Hello).

  It happened this way:

  Kelsey (Bobby’s girlfriend, remember?) draws for the paper (she’s an awesome artist) (honestly) (maybe even as good as Aunt Pam), and she’s become, like, best buds with the editor, Heather O’Malley. Heather asked her if she knew anybody who was funny. Right away Kelsey said, “Skeezie and Joe.”

  So Heather said, “Well, which one should I ask?”
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  And Kelsey said, “Why don’t you ask them both?”

  So that’s what Heather did, and we both said yes. Now Skeezie and I are not only earring brothers, we’re writing partners! (I just realized this means we’ll be spending more time together, which means I am going to have to do something about Skeezie’s skanky eating habits.)

  Heather also asked me to write an op-ed piece for the Easel (Culture Note: “op-ed” stands for “opinion editorial”) on “Why We Need a GSA at Paintbrush Falls Middle School.” This was Addie’s idea (of course), but Heather really liked it, and she said that I should be the one to write it.

  Oh. My. God. Maybe instead of growing up to be a famous designer or actor or whatever, I’ll be a famous writer. How cool would that be?

  (Grandma Lily called tonight, and when I told her what’s going on, she said, “First you’re gay and now you’re a famous writer, who can keep up?” Then she told me not to put the cart before the horse. Whatever that means.)

  (Maybe it means I have to write something before I can be a famous writer.)

  (As Pooh would say: “Oh, bother.”)

  Well, I guess if I’m going to become a famous writer, I’d better get started. I have a lot to say about why we need a gay-straight alliance, because even though Kevin Hennessey is “out of commission,” he’ll be back, and besides, there are a lot of other kids in this school who think it’s no big deal to say “that’s so gay” or call somebody a faggot. They should only know how that makes me feel (and other kids, too, who might not even be gay)—and they will know, because I’m going to tell them!

  LIFE LESSON: I figured it out—when you’re writing, the person you’re talking to mostly is yourself.