This Might Get a Little Heavy

by Ralphie May

  I don’t think anybody could have made it out of a situation like mine mentally unscathed—every waking moment thinking you’re going to die if just this one time you forget to inhale or exhale and you let yourself go to sleep—but it did a number on me. It broke something in my brain.

  I got out of the hospital after nine days, but it would be a couple months before I was strong enough to travel. My in-laws, who had retired to Sarasota since Lahna and I got married, were gracious enough to open up their home and let me stay with them while I recuperated. As much as we had our differences, they were fundamentally good people, and they showed it in those months after my scare.

  Slowly my body got better, but something about my brain’s not catching up as quickly fucked with me. Having my wife and kids float in and out because they had things to do and lives to live, while I lay there in a house owned by people who I knew would never think I was good enough, ripped open issues from my childhood that, thanks to the embolisms, I could no longer cover up. The embolisms had damaged my lungs so badly, Dr. Katz told me I couldn’t smoke weed anymore, which I had been using for twenty-five years to mask all the pain.

  It was clear too as I worked to get out of there that my personal problems and my professional instincts were no longer just colliding. They were locked in a tug-of-war, and I was the rope.

  18.

  THE MAYS GO GAY

  I’ve done some reckless, thoughtless, stupid shit in my time—as a young’un and as a grown-up—but as a poor kid from small-town Arkansas who grew up in a shotgun shack, one of the things I will always be proudest of as a father is being able to show the world to my kids and to expose them to new and different experiences. I don’t say that to sound like some kind of humanitarian hero. It’s not like it’s been hard. I’m not Atticus Finch. Living in Los Angeles, it’s been a breeze. All I have to do is take April and August to school or to a restaurant or just open the front door and let them play outside. In any of those situations, I’m basically dropping them into a kaleidoscope of humanity where each sparkly bit belongs just as much as any other. As a result, I’ve been able to teach my kids one of the most important lessons of all: that there is no excuse for hating people as a group when there are so many reasons to hate them individually. Even as young children they know not to judge people based on their skin color or gender or sexual orientation, but rather on more important things, like whether they know how to merge onto a fucking highway or if they hold the door open for the person behind them or if they text in a movie theater.

  The thing is, you never know how well you’re doing as a teacher or as a role model with that stuff until you see how your kids respond in a totally foreign environment, around people who are nothing like them. My first big test came when I took the entire family to the gay wedding of our next-door neighbor Gay Tony and his longtime partner, Aunt Tim.1 When Tony and Tim got married, April was six years old and August was four. I wasn’t concerned about how April would handle being at the wedding of two men because she was in the wedding. She was part of the whole production as one of the flower girls in the processional. She couldn’t see what we saw. She didn’t have the good fortune of being able to sit back and take in the entire scene. Even if she had, girls are light-years more advanced than boys at that age, and she’d already been exposed to two years of structured public school where the focus is on sitting still and being quiet. If she had questions, she also had enough social grace to lean over and whisper them in her mama’s ear. August, on the other hand, was at that age where boys get superverbal but also haven’t developed an inner monologue yet. If a thought entered his brain, it was comin’ outta that little mouth. Like a baby eating pureed sweet potatoes—it’s coming out in pretty much the same form it went in … and quick.

  I had no idea what to expect from August, mostly because I had no idea what to expect period. None of us had been to a gay wedding before. Since moving to Los Angeles, Lahna and I had made a bunch of gay friends, but gay marriage had only been quasi-legal in California since 2008, and it had just become Supreme Court official when Tony and Tim got hitched, so these were our first legit, real-deal gay nuptials. It wasn’t just a symbolic gesture of commitment anymore. One of these guys could lose half his shit now. This was serious business.

  The ceremony was completely unremarkable in that it was impeccably decorated, the orchestral music was beautiful, and none of the flower arrangements were shaped like giant dicks. The grooms and the groomsmen were in perfectly tailored suits, and Tony and Tim exchanged vows that sounded more or less like every other set of wedding vows you’ve heard and only half-believed. It was just … a wedding. Which was the exact opposite of what I was prepared for after sitting through a pre-ceremony singing performance that has forever changed how my son looks at me as a man.

  * * *

  Prior to the live taping of every sitcom or late-night talk show, a person comes out to warm-up the studio audience. Usually it’s a decent stand-up comic who is good at crowd work, though sometimes it’s the star of the show themselves—Robin Williams used to warm up the crowd before tapings of Mork & Mindy. These warm-up guys are a lot like hosts at a comedy club or the opening act for a headliner at a theater gig. Their initial goal is to fill time while the audience settles in, and the performers and crew get locked in. But their larger purpose is to get the audience in the mood to laugh so they are more receptive to the jokes the performers are going to try to land.

  Weddings have their own version of this. It’s the perpetually single fat-girl cousin who gets up and sings that horrible song from Frozen or Titanic, but prefaces it with some rambling five-minute story about that time she went bowling with the bride and groom, and they had pizza, and they each grabbed for the last slice of pizza, then they decided to share it, and that’s what true love really is. Or sometimes it’s a possibly retarded brother, like my buddy Rusty Dugan, whose parents thought it was sweet that he wanted to learn how to play “Moonlight Sonata” on the recorder in his occupational-therapy class so he could surprise the bride and groom on their special day; only he ends up with a raging boner in the middle of the song and all you can think is Rusty must really love that recorder. Will you look at that, sweet Lord Jesus, is that boy musically inclined!

  Tony and Tim went a different direction with their pre-ceremony warm-up guy. Specifically they went deep, dark, and vertical: a six-foot-four-inch black male transvestite Cher impersonator named Sugar, with a Ch, who wore eight-inch platform boots, fishnet stockings with garter belts, a bustier, and a cape. Because looking like the love child of Grace Jones and Dikembe Mutombo was too subtle for Mr. Chugar, apparently.

  April didn’t get to see Chugar. She was back in the wings with Lahna preparing for the ceremony. August was in the audience with me, and he had so many questions.

  “Daddy, what is that?”

  “That, Son, is a transvestite.”

  “Wooo, that’s a big transmesmite, Daddy.”

  “Yes, Son, I reckon that’s about as big as they come.”

  “Yep, that’s a big’un.” Like every four-year-old who thinks he’s a big boy, August was now an expert on transvestite culture. “Biggest one I ever seen, Dad. Biggest one for sure. Transmesmites is big, Dad.”

  That satisfied August’s curiosity through the beginning of Chugar’s routine. And he was killing it. Or at least I assume he was. Cher always sounded like a bluetick hound to me, and that’s exactly what Mr. Chugar sounded like, so I just took for granted that he was great. His dance moves were on point too. During a catwalklike pivot-and-spin move, August finally noticed Chugar’s cape, which led to more questions.

  “Look, Daddy! Mr. Chugar has a cape. Do you think Mr. Chugar likes sword fighting?”

  “Oh-ho! I bet he does, Son!”

  “Do you think he brought his sword with him, Daddy?”

  “I’m pretty sure he packed it.”

  “Do you think he’d want to sword fight with me, Daddy?”

  “Maybe whe
n you’re a little older, Son. Mr. Chugar’s only allowed to sword fight with boys near his age. That’s the rules.”

  I’m not much for reenactments and cover bands and impersonators, but I know enough about live performance to know that Chugar was as good as they come. Tony and Tim did not find this dude hanging out in front of Donut Time on Santa Monica and Highland.2 He looked nothing like the kind of transvestite that Doug Stanhope and I saw ten or fifteen years earlier pick up a midget, set him on top of a newspaper box, and suck his dick. No, this was a trained professional. Thankfully too, because about halfway into his performance, his big ol’ dick and one of his balls fell out. Like any normal person, Chugar’s instinct was to panic, but that’s where the similarities ended between him and, say, a female Cher impersonator. If some woman’s ’giner lip falls out in the middle of a performance, do you really think she’d be so composed? Do you really believe she’d just fold that little meat curtain back in and demur to the crowd, like, “Hee hee, don’t judge. I made some bad choices in college. We’re good now.” Hell no! That show is over. Not Mr. Chugar. As a seasoned performer, muscle memory kicked in. He grabbed some double-sided tape from his pocketbook, turned around, stuffed all that junk back in, taped it in place, and finished the song.

  He also finished any shot I ever had of impressing my little boy.

  There’s an old joke about how dads sometimes engineer it so their young sons walk in on them peeing, because with their tiny little bodies and itty-bitty little wieners, young sons will think their dads have the biggest dicks the world has ever known. It’s like a cheat code for admiration, for feeling like a man, and Chugar had just taken it from me by accidentally exposing my son to a dick so big it had an elbow in it.

  It didn’t have to be this way. Chugar could have gone with a Young Cher look with long flowy pants, or even a 1986 Cher look with that big black Vegas-showgirl dress she wore to the Oscars. With outfits like those, this kind of wardrobe malfunction would be near impossible. But, no, Tony and Tim had to hire Chugar to do a modified 1989 “If I Could Turn Back Time” music-video Cher look—the one on the battleship with the fishnet bodysuit and the fabric V that covered her boobies and her ’giner meat—that made this slippage almost inevitable. I mean, what do you think is going to happen with a guy like Mr. Chugar, packing a python and a couple of gator eggs in those skimpy little britches?

  “Daddy,” August said finally, “Mr. Chugar sure has got a big ol’ pee-pee.”

  I couldn’t lie to my boy. “No, Son, you and I have pee-pees. That’s a dick.”

  “Yep,” he said reassuringly, “transmesmites gots dicks, Dad.”

  * * *

  After the ceremony, Lahna and I sent the kids home with a babysitter and went to the reception by ourselves. Kids have no business being at wedding receptions of any kind, in my opinion. They’re loud and run late, and the last thing you want is to be cradling a couple of tired, whiny babies at 11:00 p.m. while three hundred people are getting stupid and dancing their faces off. I had absolutely nothing to base this on, but I was also sure this unsuitability would be even truer at a gay wedding reception.

  And I was right. This thing was gayer than a George Michael concert, by which I mean it was the best wedding reception I’ve ever been to in my life.

  The reception started at 7:00 p.m. Being straight white people, Lahna and I arrived unfashionably on time. The other guests trickled in over the next half hour or so, which gave us time to scope out the refreshments and find our table. The food and drink was fabulously awesome. These gay boys went all out. They brought in at least one hundred cases of champagne. There was a prime-rib station. Not one of those cheap Palace Station Casino buffet types either. This meat was clearly from a cow—a fresh one. There was a seafood station too, where you could just walk up and grab a whole lobster like it was nothing. A whole lobster?! Red Lobster can officially suck my dick. This is for the seafood lover in me, motherfucker! There was even a real sushi bar, with real fresh fish, and real bona fide Japanese-y Japanese slicing and rolling it. Other weddings that try to do sushi end up relying on their caterer, who just plucks some Vietnamese guy named Hoa from the crew and the Hispanic guy from the kitchen with the lightest skin. Ideally, one who has narrow eyes because his great-great-grandmama fucked an Aztec or whatever. But not this time, jack. These fellas straight-up Tokyo-drifted over here.

  Our table was set toward the back behind the dance floor. Other people might take our distance from the head table as a personal slight, as a reflection of the thinness of our friendship bond to Tony and Tim. I took it as recognition of our closeness as neighbors—because they put us closer to the food. The tables were decorated with the same style and taste as the wedding ceremony itself. There were even party favors. At each seat, in front of the place cards (handwritten in calligraphy, of course), were three little pills.

  Lahna says, “Is that candy?” She thought maybe they were palate cleansers or mints for between courses.

  But I knew better. “Honey, I’m pretty sure I know every candy ever made.” I was especially familiar with every type of hard candy for which pills might be mistaken—Nerds, Tic Tacs, Jolly Ranchers, Pop Rocks, Necco wafers, Smarties, Pez, Atomic FireBalls, Now and Laters, Skittles (original and tropical), Jelly Belly, Life Savers, Werther’s Originals, Jordan almonds, Bit-O-Honey, those individually wrapped peppermints at restaurants that have little bits of poo on them according to Dateline. These pills were not those.

  “I don’t know what those first two are,” I told Lahna, “but that last one looks like pharmaceutical-grade MDMA from the early nineties.”

  “What’s MDMA?”

  “That’s ecstasy.”

  “Ohhhh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ohhh.” Lahna’s eyes dilated in recognition like she’d already started rolling on the shit. Yeah, you remember that now, don’tcha. It was a welcome moment of free-spiritedness from her, since we had not been getting along all that great after the little Guam incident.

  We didn’t have to wait long to find out what the other pills were. As everyone found their seats, one of Tony and Tim’s friends grabbed the microphone and got the festivities started. A little gay Ricky Ricardo–type fella named Diego, he was, I guessed, going to be the emcee for the evening. I don’t know if he was the best man, but when he turned on the mic, he gave the best wedding speech I’d ever heard:

  “Hello, party people, hello! Tonight, baby, we are going to party until three a.m., baby!”

  It was 9:20 p.m., jack. The nightly news hadn’t even started yet, and my man is calling 3:00 a.m.? I don’t think so.

  “Tonight, baby, we are going to wonderland, baby, just like Alice!”

  According to the 1951 animated film, Alice spent hours in a fever dream running from a crazy lady, being pushed along by some bipolar schizophrenic in a top hat, Flavor Flav dressed as a rabbit, and two fat guys on mopeds. All I wanted was some surf ’n’ turf.

  “On your table you have three pills in front of you: one will make you smart, one will make you talk, and one—the little Goldilocks pill—is just like Diego, it makes everything feel allllll riiiiiiighttt.”

  Well, when you put it that way …

  “So let’s take this pills, okay, baby? On three, everybody. One … two … three!”

  Diego popped all three at once like they were … well … candy. Most of the guests followed suit. Lahna and I paused. Lahna paused because she wasn’t sure. I paused because Lahna paused.

  “Should we take these pills?” Hesitation was in her voice, but also that little bit of mischief that was asking for permission to get e-tarded.

  “Fuck yes! These are gay drugs. You’re damn right we’re taking these.”

  I’d slang enough weed to enough people in my day to know where all the good, designer shit comes from. And gay drugs are the best kind they make. So we popped the pills together. No one was seated to my left, so I grabbed those pills and popped them too. Fuck it. Where I come from, if you’re gonna dance with the devil, you
might as well lead.

  * * *

  To this day I have no idea what those other two pills were, but let me tell you something: they worked. Have you ever eaten fresh lobster on ecstasy? It’s like burying your face in sweet, briny ’giner meat that’s made out of soft, milky titty flesh. The prime rib felt so good on my tongue and my lips and my teeth and all over my face that now I know where Lady Gaga got the idea for the meat dress she wore to the MTV Video Music Awards. She went to Lawry’s on La Cienega for dinner one night rolling her ass off.

  Together, the pills created a kind of sensory awareness that was otherworldly. Headed back to our table from the dessert station, Lahna and I were talking, entirely unaware of our surroundings except for each other, when a beam of light reflected off something shiny in my peripheral vision. It was a sequin, attached to a G-string, covering a nutsack, attached to a half-naked Puerto Rican man (according to the flag on the butt floss) gyrating on one of the four risers that sat on the corners of the dance floor. As I turned, I found myself momentarily eye to eye with the man’s junk. The five-pointed star in the middle of the flag G-string was pasted over his wiener and sticking straight out toward me like the tip of a Phillips screwdriver. With all the gyrating, the man’s dick was a split second ahead of the rest of his junk, which gave me just enough time to dodge a bulging ballsack headed straight for my nose and upper lip. Keeping my dessert plate perfectly level like a buffet veteran, I dipped my inside shoulder and arched my back, bringing my head down with it and sending a set of Puerto Rican meatballs sailing just over my face.