Man Up!

by Ross Mathews

  It’s fair to say that my steamy character Sex totally eclipsed the inexperienced real me. To really express the push and pull of addiction, I lifted Aubrey into the air a la Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing. Granted, I could lift her only a few inches off the ground (I’ve always had the upper body strength of a four-year-old girl), but still, it was quite a moment.

  In the months that followed, we took our show on the road and performed in countless gymnasiums across the state. My career with the Straight ’n’ Narrows came to a screeching halt, though, when my secret, hard-livin’ past finally caught up with me.

  It happened at a local high school in the midst of yet another flawless, crowd-pleasing Total Eclipse routine. I was twirling with passion in my sweat-drenched, skin-tight, threadbare T-shirt featuring iron-on letters that spelled S-E-X across my heaving man boobs. After my turn trying to seduce Aubrey, I looked out into the audience and saw a face that somehow seemed familiar.

  He seemed to know me, too. We locked eyes, but I couldn’t place him. Wait, I thought. Do I sit next to him in Driver’s Ed? Or is he the kid who bags groceries at Food Pavilion? Wait, what’s he doing now? Is he flipping me off? No, he’s just brushing his greasy bangs away from his—OH MY FUCKING GOD IT’S DEALER DUDE!

  Any possibility that he perhaps didn’t recognize me flew right out the gymnasium window when he suddenly stared me right in my guilty face and blatantly started smoking a phantom joint like some marijuana-mad mime. Busted!

  And as if it wasn’t bad enough that my less-than-sterling life choices could possibly mess up my future, I had just messed up the choreography!

  The very next day I respectfully resigned from the Straight ’n’ Narrows, making up some flimsy excuse. I couldn’t risk my unsavory past rearing its ugly head to possibly taint this amazing anti-drug group with a drug-​​related scandal. So I quietly folded up my Sex T-shirt, placed it in a plastic Food Pavilion grocery sack, and left it on Aubrey’s front porch—along with my teenage passion for philanthropic dance.

  You think I never would’ve touched the stuff again. But I did. Oh, I’m almost positive that I should just stop here and save myself any further embarrassment. But for you, dear reader, I will tell this story.

  Most people will assure you that it’s not possible to overdose on marijuana. Even bona fide doctors with training and fancy medical degrees will say so. But let me tell you, I’ve been there.

  It was Thanksgiving weekend of 2003. I had returned from college to spend the holiday back in my hometown, but it was certainly no vacation. My mother was down in Seattle at a special cancer hospital where my father was slowly dying. Fun story already, huh? Don’t worry, it gets funnier in a bit. Stay with me.

  One night, I found myself all alone in the big, empty house I had grown up in. God, what a sucky time. This Thanksgiving it was hard for me to feel thankful at all. It was hard to feel anything. I just wanted to escape.

  I called my brother. “Eric, do you have any pot? I just wanna, like, zone out for a bit.”

  He got it. He was under the same stress I was. “Sorry. I don’t have any weed, bro. But I have some pot butter in the freezer that’ll do the trick. I could bring that over.”

  Pot butter? The idea of getting high by simply snacking on something scrumptious sounded exactly like the perfect cure for the moment, even if it was in the form of fattening butter. This was no time to think of my waistline; I just wanted to get wasted. “How soon can you be here?”

  God bless my brother. About ten minutes later he came bursting through the front door. Before I knew it, he had sliced off a Paula Deen–sized portion of the pot butter, melted it in the microwave, and poured it over a piece of toast. “Eat this and you’ll feel great in about twenty minutes.”

  Eventually, my brother left, informing me on his way out that he had put the remaining pot butter in the fridge in case I wanted any more. Trust me, I didn’t want any more. In about three minutes, I was tripping my ever-lovin’ nards off. I’d never been high like this before. It was fun, but scary, but fun. But scary. So I did what I always do when I’m scared: I called one of my best friends, Lisa.

  Lisa still lived in our hometown and came over right away. By the time she arrived, I had calmed myself down and was in a warm and fuzzy place. Seeing how blissfully high I was, she immediately wanted in on the action. “Fire up the toaster, I want some of that!”

  I did exactly as I had seen my brother do and made Lisa a delicious slice of pot-buttered bread. She made a face when she took the first bite. “Ugh! It tastes like a skunk wiped its butt on this.”

  In no time at all, we were laughing and smiling so much, our faces hurt. At one point, we laughed so hard that we began coughing, and I had to leave the room to get us both some water. When I returned just a few moments later, I found Lisa staring straight ahead with eyes like those creepy dolls that blink. She was as quiet as a stoned little mouse and she had two fingers on her neck, checking her pulse.

  Still smiling, but confused, I asked, “Are you okay, honey bunny?”

  She responded in the most serious tone I’d ever heard from anyone in my entire life. “I think my heart’s going to explode.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Stop it,” I said, trying to calm her. “Your heart is not going to explode.”

  “Ross, you don’t understand.” She was insistent, fanning herself with her hands to keep from crying. “While you were in the kitchen getting water, I was looking at a magazine and I swear to God, everyone in the magazine was looking back at me and now I’m freaking out. I’m not an expert or anything, but the pot butter must have mixed with my birth control or something and, I’m telling you, it’s going to make my heart explode. I need you to call an ambulance.”

  I tried to reason with her. “Lisa, you’re not even making sense! I am not calling an ambulance.”

  She got right in my face. “Ross, I’m not fucking around. I’m asking you as a friend. Please call a motherfucking ambulance!”

  I should’ve just wrapped her up in a blanket and sang a soothing Enya song, but she had just used the F word twice in ten seconds. She’d never done that before, and it chilled me to the bone. Against my better judgment, I dialed 911.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The operator was already freaking me out.

  “Um, I’m visiting from college and have been superstressed out, so my best friend and I did some pot to relax. It was very The Big Chill, you know? And now we’re kinda, I don’t know…her heart might be exploding? So can we get, like, an ambulance or whatever? And is it possible to request that they don’t turn on their sirens, ’cuz I mean it’s like ten o’clock at night and I don’t want to bother my neighbors, you know?”

  “Ma’am,” the 911 operator told me flatly, “that’s up to the driver’s discretion.”

  Maybe it’s because I was stoned out of my mind, but I swear before I even hung up the phone, I could hear an ambulance barreling into the driveway with sirens wailing like a dying Tyrannosaurus rex. The next thing I knew, we were in the back of the ambulance, still parked in front of my parents’ house. I was kind of relieved. At least now there were medical professionals attending to Lisa, and things had settled down a bit. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Lisa sat up and declared, “Oh my God, this is what it’s like to die.”

  We all looked at her, and then at each other. She continued, “Yes, I get it now. Oh. My. God.”

  Holy shit, she was really beginning to lose it. Her delusional epiphany was building momentum at an alarming rate. “Oh dear God, I’m dying. Tell my parents I love them. Everything makes so much sense now. I never really thought Seinfeld was funny before, but now I get it. I fucking get it! I fucking get Seinfeld!  ”

  Up to that point, I thought maybe calling an ambulance was overreacting. At that moment, I realized perhaps I’d made the right call.

  As the ambulance pulled away with Lisa strapped in the back and me buckled in the front passenger seat, I turned to the drive
r and asked, “Is Lisa gonna die?”

  “No,” he responded sweetly. “She’ll be just fine.”

  “Oh good.” I was glad Lisa was going to live. “Am I going to die?”

  “No, you’re not dying, either.”

  Everything was spinning, my heart was beating overtime, and I was beginning to sweat profusely. “Are you sure? Because I really feel like I might be dying. My heart is beating super-hard.”

  The driver, keeping his eyes on the road and his left hand on the steering wheel, grabbed my wrist with his right hand and checked my pulse.

  “Ted,” he yelled to the medic tending to Lisa, “we’ve got another one!”

  They rushed a mumbling Lisa and me into the emergency room in matching wheelchairs and booked us into a shared room. It was like a trauma slumber party. They gave us both something to calm us down and hooked us up to IVs filled with fluids. A nurse came in and asked me to sign something. I was confused. “Is this for my insurance?”

  “No, it’s for me,” the nurse shamelessly replied. “Can you make it out to Nancy? I love you on Leno !”

  Are you fucking kidding me? But I signed it anyway. Sometimes I’m just too nice.

  Eventually, after Lisa had thrown up all over her hospital gown and I had eaten three servings of butterscotch pudding from the cafeteria, the doctor came into our room. “Okay, guys,” he said in a patronizing tone, checking his clipboard, “you’ll feel better soon.”

  I could feel his judgment. How dare he? I mean, we were good kids. We had just made a stupid mistake. I spoke up. “You know what, Doctor? We’re good kids. We just made a stupid mistake.”

  He paused at the door and looked back at us, over his glasses and down his nose like a cliché doctor character from a lame after-school special. “Yes, and that’s why we don’t do drugs.”

  As he left the room, Lisa and I looked at each other with shame, but then slowly began to chuckle. Even then, hooked up to EKGs and IVs, we just couldn’t help ourselves.

  We took a cab home and slept about ten hours that night. In the morning, Lisa and I could barely face each other, the humiliation hanging in the air as thick as the scent of vomit wafting from her hair. Like soldiers who had survived battle together, we now shared an unspoken bond that was even stronger than before. There was nothing more to say. We just hugged (I held my breath).

  I knew I had to come clean when my mom finally got home from spending the night at the hospital in Seattle with my father. I knew if my mother forgave me, I could forgive myself. That’s what parents do for us, right? I spent most of the day looking out the living room window for her blue Chevy Malibu to round the corner. When she finally arrived, I greeted her at the front door, ready to unload my tawdry tale of tainted toast.

  She uncharacteristically slammed the door behind her. “I’m done!” she screamed, clearly exhausted and at her breaking point. “I am so sick and tired of it all. If I hear one more thing about a fucking hospital, I swear, I’m gonna punch someone in the goddamn face!”

  I discreetly covered the hospital bracelet I’d purposely kept around my wrist in hopes of enhancing the story that I’d so looked forward to telling her. As she stormed through the house swearing like a sailor, I thought to myself, Well, I guess it can wait. She can just read all about it in my book one day.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Kwan and Only

  As proud as I am of the person I’ve become, I also must acknowledge that I’m a complete and total failure. Sure, I’ve managed to cross off a few amazing items from my bucket list, but there is one item that, barring a small miracle or a major change in the rules for the Winter Olympic Games, shall forever remain on that list, glaring at me in all its annoyingly unfulfilled glory.

  I’m like those Nerds candies that were my absolute favorite when I was a kid. The best flavor of Nerds were the ones that were Green Apple on the outside, but slowly dissolved in your mouth to reveal a hidden coating of Sour Red Cherry flavor on the inside. Sure, my personal outer coating may appear to be that of a well-rounded ball of happy-go-plucky positivity, but if you took the time to really delve deep into my psyche, you’d discover that inside me lives a tortured and embittered should-have-been Gold Medal–winning figure skater.

  Wow! Total shocker, right? The gay guy loves figure skating! Whodathunk? Pick your jaw up from the floor and deal with it.

  Figure skating! There is absolutely nothing more graceful than someone seemingly floating across the ice, alternating between flying through the air and spinning over and over and over again without vomiting on themselves. It’s the perfect balance of athleticism and artistry.

  I used to daydream about skating like that. And, oh, how my daydreams felt so real. I could almost feel it—the wind whipping my impossibly shiny hair as I spun through the air, the crowd leaping to their feet as I safely landed on mine. My purple-cotton-poly-blend pantsuit with matching chiffon cape, although flatteringly formfitting, would allow me full range of motion to express my innermost emotions on the ice. And, oh, how I would! The dazzled crowd would be on the edges of their seats and on the verge of tears as I dramatically ripped off my cape at the climactic crescendo of my signature performance music—the Dawson’s Creek theme song, of course.

  Yes, I always felt certain that I had that virtuoso skating ability living within me, just waiting to pop out like confetti or that scary baby monster thing in Alien. So when I finally did try figure skating for the first time, I was convinced that I would step onto the ice and instinctively glide effortlessly around the rink. I mean, sure it would take a few minutes before my first triple toe loop—that was understandable—but I knew without a doubt I’d finish my first lesson with a perfectly executed death spiral.

  Well, it didn’t exactly turn out like that. I never achieved a perfect death spiral during that first lesson, but I did very nearly spiral to my death. Instead of exploding onto the figure skating scene like some sort of red hot ingénue, I remained frozen in my skates, my legs wobbling like Bambi in that scene when he first learned to walk. It became suddenly clear that ice skating involved much more than just smiles, spandex, and sequins. It also took sweat, strength, and surprisingly sturdy ankles. Sadly, I had none of the above. I spent most of my first lesson facedown on the ice and faced with some cold, hard facts.

  Although black and blue after my one and only attempt at figure skating, what hurt the most was the knowledge that as much as my mind could envision it, my body just wouldn’t allow my inner gift to flourish. I felt like a marionette with severed strings, or one of those delusional people on American Idol who think they can sing but obviously can’t. As frustrated as I was then, however, my love for the sport has never wavered and I have come to terms with—and even learned to love—my role as a mere spectator.

  I don’t want to brag or anything, but I was into figure skating way before it was cool. You know, before the entire world became interested in the sport during the gory glory days of the Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan tragedy. What a wonderful game changer that was! Sure, Nancy’s knee and Tonya’s freedom were both sacrificed, but it was a magical time that finally brought figure skating into the mainstream. The whole thing was like a soap opera on skates. The crime! The video footage! The “will they or won’t they compete on the ice” cliffhangers! And, the best of all, the so-bad-they’re-good made-for-TV movies that followed! For a gay kid with a love of both figure skating and drama, it was almost too much.

  In case you’re an idiot who didn’t follow every second of the excitement back then, or you’re too young and haven’t done your homework (kids these days…), let me fill you in on what went down: In order to secure Tonya Harding a spot on the US Olympic team, her husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired a big, scary guy to whack Tonya’s biggest competition, Nancy Kerrigan, on the knee with a lead pipe (“WHY ME?!?!?”). I know it sounds like a game of Clue, but it really happened. What followed was a media shit storm the likes of which had never been seen before. This was pre–O. J.
Simpson, pre–Michael Jackson molestation trial, pre–cat playing the piano on YouTube. It was huge. It was all anybody was talking about. It was nasty and tasteless. And, in my teenaged opinion, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. I was glued to the coverage 24/7.

  All of this brouhaha built up to the day Nancy and Tonya finally skated at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, making an already thrilling event downright electrifying. I remember it like it was yesterday. Even though it was happening like nine time zones away, I was a nervous wreck. I remember frantically watching the clock in my seventh-grade Language Arts class and biting my nails, knowing that it was all happening right at that very moment. Lacking both logic and even one single ounce of human decency, my teacher wouldn’t allow us to skip that day’s chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird, even though I’d politely pointed out about fourteen times how easy it would be for us to just roll in the TV and watch, oh, I don’t know, actual history in the making?!? I mean, I’m sorry, but classic literature will always be here. Harding vs. Kerrigan only happened that day. Get your priorities straight, lady.

  It may shock you to learn that I was solidly in Tonya’s corner. Yes, she was obviously guilty of orchestrating a violent attack on her biggest competitor and—almost as bad—had the most horrendous hair I’d ever seen, but I preferred her for two reasons. One, I like a little “trashy” in my women. Honey, a few bad highlights, permed bangs, and French-tipped acrylic nails never hurt anyone.

  And two, Nancy had done something I could never forgive. Here’s a little figure skating history lesson, dear reader: It was the 1994 US National Figure Skating Championships—​six months prior to the Olympics—and Tonya Harding took first place. Nancy Kerrigan couldn’t compete that night because she was still healing from her unfortunate knee injury. Sure, they were the most talked-about women in the world at that time, but for me, they were overshadowed that night. I remember watching it in my parents’ living room, a bowl of Triscuits with a side of onion dip next to me, when I saw her. She may have been only thirteen years old and weighed about as much as the onion dip I’d devoured that night, but she took my breath away. Her name was Michelle Kwan, and she was undeniably the best figure skater I had ever seen. She soared with a weightless and effortless fluidity, like a sweet, romantic, otherworldly poem on the ice. I instantly became a faithful Kwanatonian and from that moment on have been loyal to my Kwan and Only.