by John Goode
I glanced over at her usual register and saw Linda pointing to the back of store by the games. Nodding, I moved as fast as possible without breaking into a run, slowing down slightly to grab a few DVDs on the way. The electronics section was at the back of Better Buy in a quiet corner—well, relatively quiet corner. A dead-end department, it was designed to give buyers nowhere else to go once they’d stepped in its trap. From the looks of things, a bunch of people had stepped in at the same time. I scanned up and down the aisles for him, even standing on tiptoe once in an effort to see someone familiar. At the same time, I racked my brain to remember what he looked like. I had seen a recent pic on the website he worked for, but a picture and the real thing can be vastly different. I must have looked like a lost kid searching for my parents standing in the middle of the video games aisle.
And then I saw him walking away from me.
I held my breath, not sure what to do next. Should I just let him walk away? Would I not say a word and let the opportunity slip away? From what I could see, he was still in great shape. He turned his head to look at something and I saw his profile. He was as handsome as ever. I was so anxious I felt myself start to sweat….
“Matt!” my mouth called out against my will.
“What the fuck mouth?” I asked myself.
“Not like you were going to make a move, chicken,” my mind answered back as Matt turned to look at me.
“Now we’re in it,” I mumbled under my breath.
My Judas mind said nothing, but I could hear it chuckle as I walked toward him.
Matt
“IT’S ME,” he said as if someone could have forgotten him even for a second. “Tyler? Tyler Parker?”
“Tyler,” I echoed. Like a robot president at Disneyland, I suddenly came to life and shook his hand. “I’m Matt,” I added.
Our hands paused in midshake and he replied, “I know. I just said it like three times.”
I kicked myself mentally as I nodded. “Right, just seeing if you were paying attention.” And then kicked myself harder. My brain laughed uproariously.
He half laughed and half made a sound that might have been “Uh-huh” before he released my hand, which I’d forgotten about. Handshake… oh yeah. Handshake. “How weird seeing you here, huh?” he asked as dazed, Christmas-numb people milled around us.
“Right?” I said. I wasn’t sure what language was coming out of my mouth, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t English. “What are you doing here?”
He grinned as if waiting for me to add a “Just kidding” on the end of my statement. When he realized it wasn’t coming, he answered, “I live here. What about you? Kinda far from California, aren’t you?”
“You know where I live?” I asked, the dumbfounded look on my face returning.
“It’s a small town.” He chuckled. “And not many people get out and stay out, so yeah, I heard you had moved.”
“Yeah. I moved to California,” I said and went back to kicking myself. My mind, traitor that it was, continued guffawing.
He burst out laughing. “Well, to answer your question more accurately, I’m trying to get someone to help me but I think I’m SOL,” he said while looking around for an employee to corner.
How anyone could not drop what they were doing to come running to help him was beyond me. “You buying a gift?” I asked in what may have been the first normal thing I’d uttered since I’d seen him. He had some DVDs in his hand, so it was a fair guess.
“I wish,” he said, running a hand through his hair as he looked around in apprehension. “My computer committed suicide this week, and I did everything I know to get it working again. So I’m kinda forced to buy a new one.”
“How old is it?” I asked, suddenly in a world I could actually form coherent sentences about.
He paused for a moment, trying to remember. “Less than two years, but you know how computers are today.” Abruptly, he stopped and looked at me. “What am I saying? Of course you know how computers are, my bad.”
“You know what I do for a living?” I asked, once again shocked.
He blushed a little more. “Guilty,” he said. “I’ve read your column a couple of times. You’re pretty funny.”
I was pretty sure I was on the floor of Better Buy, body twitching in the throes of a brain-damaging embolism, but as fantasies went, this one was nice.
“So, yeah,” he continued, jamming his hands in his pockets and looking around again. “But at this point I’m better off just chucking a dart and buying whatever it lands on.”
“I can look at it,” I blurted out before my internal filter could stop me.
“What the hell?” my inner self asked me silently.
“Oh, you were never going to make a move,” I retorted. “Fuck off.”
Aloud I added, “I mean, if it’s that new, I’m sure it is just a power supply or maybe the hard drive. Both of those can be replaced for a lot less than a whole new system.”
I was praying I didn’t sound as desperate as I did in my own ears.
“Really?” he asked, shocked. “You’d do that?”
I tried to play it casual. “Of course. I mean, what are friends for?”
He looked at me for several seconds, and I wondered if he was going to point out that we had never actually been friends. “I mean, I know you’re down here for Christmas, and I don’t want to take you away from—”
“Please!” I exclaimed. “Take me away from them!” And we both laughed. “It wouldn’t be a problem at all, honestly.”
“Okay then, if you’re sure,” he said again, and I almost said, “I’d consider hitting my mother on the back of the head with a snow shovel if kissing you was in the cards.” But I thought that would come off as needy.
“I’m sure,” I answered, nodding.
“You remember where I live?” he asked.
“You still live there?” Now I wondered if he had seen me stalking him earlier.
He nodded. “My parents moved to Florida a couple of years ago, and they gave it to me. Never had the heart to sell it.”
“Yeah, I remember. Where you live, I mean,” I said after pretending I had to search my memory.
“Awesome!” Tyler’s face lit up, causing my knees to grow weak. “When is good for you?”
I forced myself not say now and instead offered, “How about tomorrow?”
He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it over to me. “That has my cell on it. Call me and let me know when you’re heading over, all right?”
The card had “Tyler Parker: Parker’s Sporting Goods” printed on its face. Out of nowhere, my mind added up two and two. “Your dad owned the sporting good shop on First?”
He laughed as if I was telling a joke. “Well, yeah, you didn’t know that?”
I put the card away. “I mean, yeah, just forgot. It’s been awhile.”
He gave me that three-second stare again and then laughed. “Okay! Well, awesome. Thanks for this, Matt. I owe you one. Uh, I’m going to go pay for these,” he said, holding up a handful of movies. I could see from the spines they were two animated movies and the latest sci-fi thriller.
“Those are great movies!” I exclaimed.
He looked down and nodded. “Yeah, I saw them in the theater, just never got around to picking them up on DVD.” He looked up and asked earnestly. “You sure this isn’t a problem?”
“Nah,” I said, trying not to imagine the different ways he could repay me. “It’s Christmas, after all.”
“Tomorrow, then?” We shook hands again, maybe holding on a little longer than was strictly necessary.
“Count on it,” I said, this time savoring the physical contact and really taking a second to soak in what I could see of him. Though I was a year younger than Tyler, he was in excellent shape, better than I was if I could tell by the button-up shirt and khakis he wore. He looked like a television model come to life. His teeth were perfect, and I could see a light dusting of freckles on his face that m
ade me want to stare even more than I suddenly realized I was.
He smiled before he turned walked away, and I had to admit he was as hot going as he had been coming.
I was in a daze by the time I got home. I resisted the urge to drive by his house to somehow verify he had been telling the truth and that the past two hours hadn’t been the culmination of a decade-long joke where I get my heart broken at the end.
Instead, I drove sedately to my parent’s house, packed the new system into my brother’s trunk, and walked back into the house as if nothing had happened.
Things had calmed down some; the smaller kids had been put to bed, and my brothers and dad sat around the TV watching what looked like Terminator 2 while the older kids sat on the floor transfixed by the old-time special effects. My mother was at the dining room table with the wives. She got up as soon as she saw me. “You were gone awhile; I was worried,” she said, grabbing my hands. “Come sit with us.” She tried to pull me toward the table.
It was bad enough that I was treated like a stranger every year because I’d had the nerve to leave the town and stay gone, but for some reason, being consigned to the women’s table was just too much for me. “I’m fine, Mom. I think I’m going to wash up and get ready for bed.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to hide being upset. “Well, I wanted to talk to you about Frances’s son because—”
And something snapped.
“Look, Mom,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “I am not alone. I am not lonely. I am not miserable, and I do not need my mother trying to hook me up with men on Christmas, okay?” She looked as if I had slapped her. “I just….” I tried to compose myself. “I just don’t want to talk about this with you, please.”
Her face hardened as she tried to hide the pain. “Well, fine,” she said, turning back to the table. “Fresh towels are in the closet,” she added. As if I hadn’t lived here for eighteen years. I looked around and saw that everyone was staring at me as if I had decided to defecate in the middle of the living room. They were clearly disgusted.
“I hate Christmas,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time and fleeing toward the shower.
Tyler
I RANG up the movies at Linda’s register. “So you’re a big cartoon lover now?” she said, scanning them in.
“Shut up,” I snarled at her, looking around as subtly I could without looking like I was looking. “They were the first things I saw.”
“Oh, and look!” she chirped brightly. “Starship Troopers. Didn’t this win an Oscar or something?”
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” I groaned, seeing the glee in her face as she bagged the movies.
“Oh, in so many ways!” She smiled back. “But you talked to him! That is a huge event for you. I’m proud.” I searched her face for signs of a dig, but I saw the sincerity in her eyes. “I mean it, three points for just showing up.”
I cocked my head. “Three? Are we playing basketball now?”
She pushed the bag of movies at me. “Shut up. I know those games have points and balls, past that I couldn’t care.”
I slid them back to her. “Keep them, give them to Kyle or Toys for Tots or something. We both know I’m not going to watch them.”
She put them behind her counter. “So, what are you going to do now?”
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and grinned at her. “Find a way to break my computer that seems legit.”
“Also,” she added as I walked away, “you might want to clear your browsing history.”
I wanted to say something snarky back at her, but I didn’t because she was right—again—and I hadn’t thought of that.
Matt
THE next morning, I got up early hoping to catch a moment to myself before the insanity began. I made my way downstairs and went straight for the smell of coffee. My father sat at the kitchen table, coffee mug in one hand, folded paper in the other. I thought about sneaking back upstairs, because the only thing worse than dealing with my family en masse was dealing with my father by himself.
“Coffee’s hot,” he said, not looking up. “Better get it before it’s gone.”
“Busted,” I muttered under my breath, sounding more like a seven-year-old than anything. A row of mugs sat on the counter next to the coffee brewer. I picked up the old green-and-blue plaid one with my name on it and poured myself a cup of coffee. My father didn’t move, but I knew he’d already told me to sit down without saying a word. I sat across from him and slid the business section out from the stack, hoping we could skip the lecture for once and just sit there in silence.
“We’re not stupid, you know,” he said from behind his paper.
No luck.
“I never said you were, Dad.” I sighed as I put the paper down.
He folded his paper up and looked across at me. I had always shrunk from his stare even as a little boy. It was as if I knew from an early age I was going to be the one who broke the mold. Two perfect little jock boys for Dad, and then there was me. We had never talked about it openly, but as an adult, I still couldn’t imagine I was anything but a failed son or, worse, a twisted daughter to him. That thought killed me a little more every time I had it.
“You act like we are,” he said as if he was Chuck Heston speaking from the top of Mount Sinai holding two stone tablets that both said “Thou shall not be gay” on them. “You’re short with us, and the sighing and the eye rolling makes you look like you’re still nine. I don’t know if you even realize you’re doing it, but it’s offensive.”
I was shocked because I had thought I had a better poker face than that. “I didn’t, I mean, I never meant to….”
He waved his hand indicating he wasn’t done. “You aren’t as smart as you think, Matt. Oh, you’re smart enough to fool yourself, and that’s always been your problem.”
This wasn’t the annual Christmas scolding I normally got; worse, this wasn’t about me snapping at my mom. This was something altogether different. At a loss and floundering, I asked, “Meaning what?”
“Meaning this,” he said, putting his coffee down and staring me straight in the eye. “Are you happy?”
“Yes,” I answered too quickly.
“No, don’t just answer. Think on it and then answer. Are you happy, Matt? I mean, you hated this town so much, you took off the second they put a diploma in your hand. I couldn’t figure out if you left because of the town or because of us, but I didn’t say anything. You said you couldn’t be you here, and that was fine. If you were going to be out there and happy, I was fine with that. But it’s been going on ten years, Matt, and you’re still as miserable as the day you left this house. So I ask you again, are you happy?”
This was the most my dad had spoken to me all at once in—well, ever. Normally my mom was the one who spoke for the family, and I assumed she did because my dad never really wanted to deal with me. But this was a level of insight that frankly was beyond my mom. I was stunned into silence. Evidently, I had been wrong about that and, from the sound of things, a lot more as far as my father was concerned. His insight came from a perspective my mom could never have, and it hit me hard.
“Because if being gay and being here makes you miserable? I can understand that.” He stood and grabbed his red-striped Christmas mug. “But if you’re gay there and still that sad, have you considered your being sad has nothing to do with Foster at all?”
He walked out to the kitchen, neatly avoiding my nephews, who came bounding down the stairs followed by their weary mothers, who no doubt loved Christmas break as much as I did. Within twenty minutes the house was bustling with activity, and my dad was back to being my dad again, but his words stung like nothing I’d ever felt before.
“So we’re going to throw the ball around,” John said, slapping my back. “You coming with us so we can kick your ass?”
Normally I would have joined in, at the very least to rub it in my brothers’ faces that at least one of us still possessed a waistline. But Dad’s words
had left me numb, and there was Tyler….
I felt a slight thrill knowing his name for some reason.
“I actually have to go help a friend fix his computer today,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe later.”
“You have friends here?” he asked with a goofy grin. “When did that happen, ’cause I know you didn’t have any when you lived here.” He burst out laughing as he walked away, no doubt to share his new joke with the rest of the family.
I would have told him to fuck off if he hadn’t been right.
I had stayed in contact with absolutely no one when I left town, since I believed everyone I actually knew only tolerated me because they were friends of my brothers. I’m sure my silence only helped my reputation of being stuck up, but I didn’t really care at the time. Now I wondered what was I pulling away from in high school—in fact, in my whole life.
The funny thing is that looking back, Tyler was the same type of guy I was. Though he had friends, I had heard more than once he was aloof, remote, even cold to most people. Of course, back then he could do no wrong so I’d ignored the stories, but as I think about it now, it made perfect sense.
We were both afraid and hiding in our own skins.
After breakfast, I grabbed my laptop, slipped it into my bag, and told my mom I’d be back before dinner. She was still mad and barely grunted as she helped my sisters-in-law make lunch for when the boys would be back. If there was anyone on Earth capable of feeding a grudge longer than I could, Mom was my first choice.