Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture

by Chris O'Guinn

  I braved one of the cupboards to confirm a suspicion I had about the sort of things my Dad might have bought to stock the larder. He had an unholy love for Sloppy Joes. When I was a kid, I loved them too, but once my fastidiousness had asserted itself, I had come to regard them as punishment. Oh I ate them (and secretly enjoyed them) but I always made a fuss and asked if Mom could make me some Mac n' Cheese instead.

  “I'm sort of wiped from the plane flight,” I lied. I was a gold medalist in lying. When you have to hide who you are to survive, it's a talent you pick up. “So, maybe we can just make these and save the restaurants for another time?” I suggested, holding up the can.

  My father took in the can and my expression and read the entire apology and peace proposal in an instant. He nodded briefly to me, letting me know that all was forgiven and forgotten. My dad was not one to nurse a grudge, thankfully.

  “Sounds good to me,” my dad said.

  “Me too,” Shawn agreed, giving me a look of approval.

  I felt all warm and fuzzy inside at the praise.

  “Wonderful,” my mother said, getting up. “Now, let's see if I can make them without burning the place down.”

  * * *

  I winced as I plucked the final rogue hair from my eyebrows. I was used to suffering for my image, but I didn't like it. Pain was not among my favorite aspects of life, but I could endure when the occasion demanded it. I eyed my reflection critically, making another check for impending blackheads. Happily, there were none. My plain, boring face was unblemished.

  I didn't think I was ugly, but I just felt that someone had cheated and given Shawn all the best genes. He was taller by a lot and three inches for one. He had excellent bone structure in his face, giving his smile a radiance I couldn't hope to match. And he had gotten our mother's blond hair while I was stuck with my father's drab brown.

  I did what I could with what I had, though. I fought a constant war against zits, keeping my face as clear as possible; though those wretched pimples sometimes snuck past the sentries and took up positions on the high ridges of my brows or the trenches of my dimpled chin. I had excellent cover-up for those days, though.

  My ears were a constant nuisance. I was sure they were too big and sat too high on my head and on particularly bad days I was convinced they were lopsided. I had resorted to letting my hair grow over them. Mom called it my “emo phase.” I preferred to call it my “Please let me grow up to look like Zac Efron” phase.

  I went over to my closet and took out a fleet of shirts that I had unpacked after dinner. It had given me something to do while the Tums worked on my heartburn. Also, my clothes were of the type that tended to wrinkle, and since I was expected to iron them, hanging them up quickly had only made sense.

  There is a difference between couture and “clothes.” Most people just wear clothes; things that fit that don’t cost too much. What I wear is “couture”—high-quality, unique and fashionable outfits that make a very clear statement about me. I even love the word “couture”— it’s French and sounds so delightfully elitist. It appeals to my vanity, which I have a small amount of.

  I hung the shirts over the back of a chair and then held the first one up to my chest so I could look at it in the mirror. It was a gorgeous shade of purple, with white and gold filigree designs swirling elegantly from one shoulder across the chest to the waist. The buttons were all faux-brass.

  I sighed and shook my head. It would never do. As much as I might publicly deny it, privately I had to admit that I flamed just the slightest bit. It was something I tried to conceal, and oftentimes people were happy to not notice it, but a shirt like the one I was holding would make those flames dance around and sing “look at me!”

  I laid it on the bed and moved on to the next one. I didn't even have to hold it up to the mirror to know it was also too “out” for this part of the world. The delightful blend of burgundy, green and blue was one of my favorites, but it was just begging for someone to take its wearer and tie him to the rear bumper of a car.

  It hurt, going through one shirt after another and realizing that as much as I loved them, they were too attention-grabbing. Shawn was right, after all. I had to keep a low profile. There were things I was looking forward to doing when I was twenty-one and they would be more fun if I were not a paraplegic—or dead.

  About half of my slacks made the cut. They were sober enough or at least muted enough that no one would have any reason to believe the hips within were prone to swishing. A few pairs were also put aside because, though I loved them, they were getting just a bit threadbare.

  Some of my belts could be salvaged, but they would need new buckles. I had an embarrassing adoration for sparkly and glittery belt buckles. Some of them even spelled out words that would not go over well in the Heartland.

  I barely even glanced at the hand-me-downs from Shawn. I didn't understand why my mother kept giving them to me. I hadn't worn jeans in five years and the tee shirts, on top of being far too big for me, were nothing close to my taste. I could have used them as a disguise … like when I dressed up as Kurt Cobain for Halloween … but I really didn't want to. If for no other reason, I just didn't want to go to a new school wearing obviously handed-down clothes.

  I did have my standards, after all.

  I sadly took up the collection of rejected shirts and slacks and hung them back up, granting them the left half of the closet. The acceptable couture was granted the right side. Then I went back to the mirror and gave my reflection a very serious look.

  “Time to go shopping,” I said resolutely.

  Chapter 2

  THE INTERNET IS FOR MORE than porn, as it turns out. Since I had absolutely no desire to scour the entire town of Buford for acceptable stores, I turned to the web to find out what my shopping options were in the land of the hicks. There were a surprising number of stores that had websites, and they gave me a worrisome picture of what passed for couture in this part of the world.

  Plaid? And denim? Could they be serious?

  There were no outlet malls anywhere that I could easily get to. My parents had signed off on my shopping trip, but they had made it clear they were too busy unpacking to drive me anywhere, and that I couldn’t borrow Shawn for that purpose either. I had to hoof it, bus it, or forget it.

  The only thing remotely resembling a mall was located in downtown, but it did not have a single store I would be seen dead in, so that was a bust. I don’t much like malls anyway; the prices are outrageous because of the rents they have to pay, the selection tends to be sub-par and usually all you could find were chain stores. Give me a nice boutique any day.

  My Google-Fu is the stuff of legends, though. I discarded those options and dug deeper, desperately hoping I would not have to start shopping via the net. Granted, there are some great deals and selections on the web, but I never can tell how it’s going to look and feel until I have it on me. I usually end up exchanging what I buy back and forth for weeks when I buy online, and I just didn’t have that kind of time.

  Sulking was becoming imminent when a curiously named shop caught my eye. “The Grab Bag,” it was called, and it was far down the list of results, down around where the search results for “fashion + Buford, IA” coughed up things like massages in Taiwan. I was dubious that it was even actually in Buford, or at least my Buford, but I clicked anyway because it said it was “a slice of NYC in Iowa.”

  The website was surprisingly professional in contrast to a few of the small-shop sites I had visited. Flash animation and Hi-Res images exploded onto my screen triumphantly, proudly displaying pictures of hot young men in awesome clothes; followed of course by images of those girl people in whatever.

  Like the sun coming up after a rainstorm, the site brightened my whole day. The owner was a young, hip-looking guy named Jack Garber. His picture made him look like a fratboy who had learned somewhere how to dress himself. Oh, he wasn’t gorgeous or anything, just sort of cute for some ancient dude approaching thirty.
/>   “Would you like to get directions to my store?” the blurb under his picture asked.

  “Yes, I so would,” I replied cheerily and clicked.

  The Grab Bag was located somewhere in what was referred to as Old Buford Township, which a quick glance at the town’s website told me was the oldest part of Buford. My printer was still in a box somewhere, so I wrote down the cross streets and address and went looking for a bus schedule. That took a lot more digging, but soon enough I was on my way.

  The bus dropped me in this traffic circle that existed smack in the middle of OBT (which is what the locals apparently called it). For a moment, I thought I had been transported to Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland. Everything around me was just insufferably quaint and idyllic. Oh, sure, the scents coming out of the bakery made my mouth water and there was a candy store that definitely needed investigating, but, really....

  I followed the sidewalk around the circle and checked each street that intersected it. My store was of course not there in the traffic circle; that would be too easy. No, it was a few blocks away; I just wasn’t sure in what direction. I’m sort of useless when it comes to things like compass points, but I get by. When I don’t, I call Shawn and whine.

  I made a complete circuit of the circle and did not find the street I was looking for, which was not a good sign. I may be crap with directions, but I can at least read. How had I missed the street I was looking for? I glanced around at the wide traffic circle that was standing between me and the couture.

  “Whoa, dude, where did you get that shirt?”

  I stopped in the midst of my glaring at the town and turned around to find a small mountain speaking to me. Well, maybe I exaggerate, but he was huge. Almost as tall as Shawn, but with much broader shoulders and the biggest hands I had ever seen. His red-blond hair was a total mess, which of course had my inner stylist hyperventilating. He also had really nice eyes—both pretty and friendly.

  “Uh....” I looked down at the article of clothing in question. I had picked my most humble and muted top for this excursion—the maroon pattern that was so dark it almost couldn't be seen against the black silk of the rest of the fabric. “A little boutique called Détente, actually.”

  Oh God, did I miss that store.

  “I love it!” he enthused. “I’ve never heard of that place, is it new? Where is it?”

  Apparently, the plaid-over-tee look he was sporting was not to his tastes. Well, it was quite a relief to find someone in this town with appreciation for good clothing. I was also sort of amused. When a large guy stops you on the street in L.A., it’s to get your wallet, not to discuss fashion choices.

  “Los Angeles,” I told him.

  “Huh? Oh, when did you go there?”

  I started to laugh, but then I realized he wasn’t kidding. My survival instincts told me it would not be wise to remark on his lack of wit, not that I was tempted. He was a nice guy, so far as I could tell, who hadn’t done anything to deserve the sharp edge of my sarcasm. It wasn’t my habit to insult people for no reason.

  “I used to live there,” I told him patiently.

  “Cool,” he replied. “Where do you live now?”

  Must not laugh, must not laugh....

  “I just moved to Buford.” I held out my hand. “My name’s Collin.”

  “Keith,” he replied happily and took my hand.

  I winced as he nearly broke a few of my favorite bones. He clearly didn't mean anything by it, so I didn't complain. I saw him as sort of like a Labrador that knocks you over and gives you a concussion by accident just because he is happy to see you.

  “I wish we had a place like that here,” Keith went on. “It’s hard to find anything good that fits me.”

  “Oh, well, have you ever heard of The Grab Bag? That’s where I’m heading.”

  “What’s that?”

  He was definitely not keeping mental pace with me, which was fine. I just had to make a note to be more specific. “It’s a clothing store here in town. I found it on the web. I think it will have stuff like this shirt, only I can’t find it. Maybe you could help me?”

  “Sure!” When I handed him the address, he squinted at it and then frowned. “Sorry, I’m kind of stupid about numbers.”

  “Hey, no calling yourself stupid. I can’t find this place either, does that make me stupid?”

  Keith smiled gratefully at me and then turned. “Becca! Becca!”

  A few yards away, there was a flock of girls gabbing away. One of them turned at Keith’s insistent shouting. She seemed to be around my age, maybe younger. Her hair was very dark blonde and her face was dappled with freckles. She was also dressed in a very masculine way; jeans and a baggy tee shirt. Seeing him waving her over, she excused herself from her friends and walked up to us.

  The look she was giving me was not a friendly one. Her eyes were a pale shade of green that I thought would be very pretty on a boy. Come to think of it, they were very similar to Keith’s, and that’s when I started to notice the similarities between them.

  “This is my sister Becca,” Keith introduced her. “And this is Collin,” he told her.

  Her flinty gaze sized me up like a deer carcass she was deciding how to butcher. I was not sure what I had done to piss her off with all the “nothing,” I had said, but I had to take into account that she was a girl and they don’t need reasons for the things they feel. One of the upsides of being gay was not being burdened with needing to try to understand the chestier sex.

  “Haven’t seen you around before,” she commented to me frostily.

  “I just escaped from the asylum up on the hill,” I told her.

  “What?” she asked as Keith laughed.

  “Er, I just moved here.”

  “He’s from Los Angeles,” Keith told her.

  She turned her glacial look from me and gave a much warmer one to Keith. “What’s up?”

  “Need help finding a place. Collin found an awesome clothing store.”

  “Oh, the guy who just moved here found the best place to shop? “

  Keith passed her the address. “I can’t remember where Cherry is.”

  “It’s not Cherry in this area, it’s Canterbury,” she told him gently. “You know, where the soda shop is?”

  “Oh yeah. They have the best damn milkshakes, dude. You have to try them.”

  “Oh, but my girlish figure,” I demurred.

  Keith smiled in a way that suggested he didn’t get the joke, but he knew there was one and so gave me the appropriate response. Now that I knew the street I was hunting for had a different name in the part of OBT that I was in, I knew where to go. Canterbury was just a few streets away in one direction or the other, and I could easily find it on my own.

  However, Keith had been so excited that I couldn’t abandon him. “Okay, so, Canterbury. I can find it from there. You want to come with?” I asked him.

  He turned to his sister, who was back to glaring at me. “Let’s go, Becca. Mom wanted us to do some shopping for school anyway.”

  That took me by surprise. A brother and sister shopping together? Even Shawn and I didn’t do that, and we were closer than most siblings. Then again, I had been sent back in time to Mayberry, so I accepted that I was going to run into some cultural oddities.

  “We could even find you some girl clothes,” I joked with her.

  She gave me a smile that I imagined a shark might show to a scuba diver. “You think?”

  “Maybe,” I said, less certain of the wisdom of joking with her.

  The hostility in her expression lessened somewhat and she shrugged. “Sure, let’s go see what the new kid in town has found.”

  I decided against objecting to her condescending description of me, since I didn’t want her to rip my lungs out of my chest right there on the street. The three of us trooped off towards Canterbury, with Keith babbling away about stores that were closed; what they had been, which ones had been good, which had been lame. When we passed by a hobby store, he t
old us he had to go grab something and darted inside.

  Becca pulled me aside as I started to follow. “What’s your game?”

  “Gin rummy?” I replied, hiding behind my jokes like they might actually protect me.

  “You’re not the first to screw around like this, you know.”

  “I really have no idea what you are talking about. I just moved here.”

  “Yeah, you said that.” Becca shook her head. “My brother is a good guy. People think he’s stupid and that makes it fun for them to mess with him. They pretend to be his friend and get him to do something embarrassing or illegal and then have a laugh.”

  “I’m not one of those people,” I told her quickly. The idea of screwing with a nice guy like Keith in that way made me queasy. “Honest. You can ask him. He came up to me and I just asked him for directions.”

  Becca lowered her hackles and retracted her claws. “Okay, sorry. I have to watch out for him, that’s all. No matter how many times it happens, he doesn’t seem to learn that not all people are good.”

  “Few of them actually are,” I agreed.

  “Ah, you have some experience then.” That lowered her threat level down even further and she almost came close to doing something that in some parts of the world could be considered smiling.

  “A little,” I replied.

  She was quiet for a moment as she processed the idea that she wasn’t going to have to find a place to bury my body. “So, why’d your family move to this place?”

  “My agent thought it would be good life experience for me, give me a better shot at some movie roles he has lined up ....”

  Becca's eyes narrowed as she sensed she was being teased. She slapped me on the chest (which hurt, because yes, I am a great big wuss) and shook her head. “No, come on. How did you end up here?”

  “I'm in the witness protection program.”

  “Do I need to kick you in the shins?”

  “That's between you and your God— No! No, you don't.” I grinned at her feisty look and dodged back from her. “My dad lost his job, and the best job he could find was here. I wasn't consulted.”