I loop the tie around my collar with shaking hands and fumble it because I’ve only worn a tie a half-dozen times in my life. I know my dad’s about to pull up to the curb any minute, and I want to look like I have my shit together even though I feel like the opposite.
“Stop,” Chris says. “You’ll strangle yourself.” He comes over and carefully unravels my tie. I go still—fugue state—just staring at him, my upper lip sweating a little because he’s so close I can smell him, taste him. I inhale deeper even though I know I shouldn’t, and it sets my every nerve on edge. His tongue is doing that little pokey thing out the side of his mouth as he knots my tie. Please, not now, I tell my junk, which doesn’t seem to care that I’m begging. These pants are thin, and with terror I realize a huge hard-on has been erected in Chris’s name. There’s no hiding it. I bend my knees a little and curl inward so I don’t sexually assault him, praying he doesn’t have the sense to look down.
“There,” he says, patting my shoulders. His gaze flickers to my mouth, and I wipe the beaded sweat from my upper lip. Our eyes meet, and it feels different—time slows and gravity presses down on us more urgently. It’s like we’re meeting again for the first time. Does he see me differently now? Does he want me too? I still my breath so as not to spook him, but he only flashes his cocky grin and turns me toward the mirror.
“Not bad, huh?” he says as if to defuse the situation.
“Yeah, not bad.” I clear my throat and tamp down the disappointment threatening to consume me. He’s right, though, I do look pretty hot. Maybe that was all it was between us, a friendly appreciation. I’d totally get with myself, I think, and then laugh on the inside because I already have, many times over.
“Thanks, Chris.” I sigh a little and feel like I’m never able to express my gratitude to him. He’s gotten me out of so many jams. Then, because I don’t want my feelings to erupt like my uncontrollable boner, I get back to business. “Is this one of those shirts that needs to be dry-cleaned?” A lot of his nicer clothes have all these rules for washing. I keep throwing his old clothes into our dryer, and they come out looking like doll clothes.
“Machine wash. You can keep this one.”
“I’ll bring it back tomorrow, clean.”
“Fine,” he says, not wanting to argue with me about it.
I tell him goodbye and gallop down the stairs, exit his house just as my dad is pulling up to our driveway. He honks the horn because he’s said before he doesn’t want to deal with my mother, which I guess means knocking on the door and greeting her like a decent human being.
Tabs struts down our driveway like it’s a catwalk and claims the front seat of his Tahoe without question. I climb into the back. Dad reaches back to shake my hand, and I do it with what I hope is the right amount of pressure, even though it’s kind of weird to greet him after months of no contact with a handshake. Tabs kisses his cheek and calls him Daddy. It’s like she’s a grown woman at home, but when we get around my dad, she turns back into this little girl. Then I think, I’m probably not the only one who’s emotionally stunted because of his neglect. I make up my mind to do whatever I can to make the night go smoothly. Tabs deserves this.
Tabs keeps up the conversation on the way to the restaurant, thankfully. I sit in the back with my long legs stretched out, letting the cool air-conditioned air wash over me, and think about Chris tying my tie for me and all the other strangely intimate things we do for each other and wonder if that’s normal or if there might be something more behind it. It’s a constant cycle of reflection and self-doubt, which keeps my head spinning like a weather vane in a storm. I imagine a conversation between Chris and me would go something like this:
Me: Hey there, buddy, remember that time we jacked each other off?
Chris, suspiciously: Yeah, what about it?
Me: That was amazing, and I’d like to do that with you on the regular because, guess what, I’m gay and not only that, I’m in love with you and I have been for a while now.
Chris: I’m not gay.
Me:….
Chris: Why would you even think that? Do I seem gay to you? Wait, you like me? No, love me? What the….
“Pretty quiet back there,” my dad says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“Just enjoying the ride,” I respond lightly. I’ve got to get Chris out of my head. Hypnosis? Electroshock therapy? Lobotomy?
We arrive at the restaurant, and a valet takes the car. Dad tips him with a crisp bill, and I think, what a waste of money, because there’s a parking spot literally ten feet away. He could have paid me the money to park his car for him. Dad comments on my height now that we’re standing shoulder to shoulder. He’s pretty tall and I’ve finally caught up with him, which I guess makes me pretty tall as well. Everything is changing—my body, my emotions, my sanity. I wish it would all just slow the hell down and let me catch my breath.
“You two must have been busy this summer,” Dad says, trying to excuse his absence in our lives for the past six months, acknowledging without acknowledging how long it’s been since we last saw him. I would let that shit hang over us like a silent, brooding storm cloud, but not Tabs. As if on cue, she immediately starts filling him in on everything she’s been up to while I duck my head and follow them inside.
The restaurant is swanky and artfully lit, with high-end furniture and attractive servers. A model-looking hostess leads us to our table, and a server brings us waters almost immediately. Tabs fills the silence with idle chatter—maybe she’s nervous too. My dad orders a Coke instead of a drink, which is good. One of the rules of his visitation is that he doesn’t drink when we’re with him. My mom is strict about that.
“So, Theo,” Dad says rapping the table in front of me with his knuckles to get my attention, an irritating habit of his. “Your sister tells me you got a job.”
“Yeah, mowing lawns on the weekends.” Me and my squad, tearing up the neighborhood. Edging the shit out of Palm Beach’s lawns and keeping everyone legit with their HOA’s.
“Manual labor, huh?” The tone of his voice isn’t one of admiration for an honest day’s work, more like distaste. “You know, I could have gotten you a job at my office.”
Working for my dad sounds like one long, drawn-out panic attack. The few times I’ve been to his office, it’s this whole dog-and-pony show where my dad puts his arm around me and jokes around like we’re best buds in front of all his employees. How about those Dolphins, son? It’s the reason I stopped going to him to have my teeth cleaned—it felt fake as hell.
“It’s cool, Dad. I like being outside.”
“You’ve gotten pretty dark,” he says, like it’s a bad thing. My dad’s a little racist. So are my grandmother and Uncle Theo, for that matter. I’m not sure what he thought might happen when he impregnated a Puerto Rican. Maybe that his Aryan genes would be that powerful.
“The sun will do that,” I say.
“You could wear a long-sleeve shirt and a hat,” he says, like it’s a brilliant solution no one has ever thought of before. I’m tempted to tell him only middle-aged white dudes do that, but I hold my tongue.
My sister cuts in. “Theo’s saving up to buy a car.” I nudge her under the table. She kicks me back harder with the pointy toe of her shoe. Right in the shin. I hate it when she volunteers information about me to him. She’s probably angling for him to one-up me, which he does.
“A car, huh? How much you got saved?”
“A couple thousand,” I say like it’s no big deal, secretly proud that I’ve been able to amass that much cash on my own. Like a boss.
“I can ask Susan about the Range Rover,” he says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
My sister practically bounces out of her seat. “Really, Daddy?” she whines like a puppy. “Ohmygod, that would be sooo amazing.”
“How about it, Theo?” My dad levels his gaze at me, and it seems like a test. He wants the same reaction from me. In some weird way, it’s like he needs to be needed. I think
about all the things he should have been there for—teaching me how to ride a bike, how to drive a car, telling me what an erection is, which Chris had to do. What the hell is this? I asked Chris one day because I thought my dick was broken, and Chris explained it to me, without even laughing or making me feel stupid about it.
My dad stares at me, waiting for a response, and I feel trapped.
“That’s really generous of you Dad, but I’ll probably get a junker.”
“Too good for the Range Rover?” he asks snidely.
“No, I just want to do this on my own.” I also don’t want to owe him anything. There’s no such thing as no-strings-attached with my father.
His eyebrows raise, and he frowns so that his chin puckers. “Maybe you could talk to your mother about your child support, then. Wouldn’t mind getting that monkey off my back.”
I swallow down my rising tide of anger and study the design on the silverware. My mother hasn’t had it easy since their divorce. After being cheated on and discarded like yesterday’s headlines, she had to battle my dad’s army of lawyers for child support. Her English wasn’t exactly perfect at the time, which my dad took advantage of. Then it was the constant badgering over the years from my dad, trying to make my mom feel like a freeloader when she works harder than anyone I know. And for all that he’s put her through, she never says a bad word about him, always defends him, which is a hell of a lot more than he’s ever done for her.
What was it he used to call me? Oh yeah, mama’s boy. And that was before the divorce.
Our server arrives then to take our order, and I’m thankful for the distraction. After the server leaves, my dad switches the topic to sports.
“How’s soccer going?” he asks. Soccer is the one thing he used to show an interest in. He never came to my practices—that was my mom—but he’d come to my games. He was the dad on the sidelines yelling at the refs and telling the coach how to do his job. But near the end of middle school, Dad’s participation in our lives dropped off dramatically, which for me included soccer.
“I decided not to go out for the team. I’m more into skateboarding now.”
He squints at me. “Skateboarding? That’s hardly a sport.”
I rub my forehead; a headache’s coming on. Maybe he’ll ask me if I have a girlfriend next. No, Dad, but I’m getting really good at giving head. I can’t even imagine coming out to my dad. What a nightmare.
“That’s too bad about soccer,” he says. “I was looking forward to going to a few of your games this year.”
I started almost every game last year. My dad didn’t make it to one of them. Chris did, though. I almost smile at that, thinking how I could always count on him to show up, even if my dad didn’t. My dad stares at me, perhaps waiting for me to apologize or tell him I’ll go out for the team, but I do neither. I gave up trying to impress him a while ago.
“I’m trying out for the dance team, Daddy,” my sister says, trying to fill the silence. I feel bad for her. Needing his approval like that, wanting his attention bad enough to make everything nice for him. “You and Theo could come to one of our basketball games.”
Dad frowns. “I’ll have to check my schedule.” My sister and I exchange a look. We both know what that means.
My sister, God bless her, tries again. “I saw on Facebook that the baby’s a boy. Have you and Susan picked out a name yet?”
Dad fiddles with his tie. “William,” he says without meeting my eyes. William is my dad’s name. I got named after my great-uncle and his uncle before him. For whatever reason, the Theodores in our family don’t spawn. But I wasn’t named after my dad, which is strange, being firstborn and all. Maybe his heart was never in it to begin with. My sister looks at me with sympathy, which is worse. So much worse.
“When’s the baby due?” my sister asks with a little less enthusiasm.
“Sometime in December,” he says, and all I can think is, I hope he does a better job with this one, for the kid’s sake.
My sister asks more baby-related questions, most of which my dad can’t answer because he doesn’t have a clue, which only makes me worry for William IV, to think my dad could potentially screw him up too. I hope Susan can keep my dad’s alcoholism and wandering eye in check. My dad has a bad case of white male privilege, worsened by the fact that he grew up with money, which has given him the impression that whatever he wants in life, he can just reach out and take it, regardless of who else’s life he’s screwing with.
Maybe it’s better that my dad didn’t raise me. I’ve seen what that looks like on guys my age. Some of the guys on the soccer team have it. Huge assholes. The kind of asshole who fakes a foul, then picks a fight with the player on the other team when it doesn’t get called. The kind of asshole who would rather be red-carded than back down, then throws a hissy fit on the sidelines because he can’t play and it’s all someone else’s fault.
It’s why I switched to skateboarding. Skaters are a kind of asshole I can deal with, hating on shit because they don’t have enough confidence in themselves. Most of them skate to be alone with others and have a problem with authority. All of them seem to have a high threshold for pain. Get in where you fit in.
The server delivers our meal. I ordered salmon, even though my appetite is nada. I would have ordered a grilled cheese if I thought my dad wouldn’t have a fit about it.
“You still hanging out with that neighbor of yours?” Dad asks me, slicing into his rare steak and taking a big, bloody bite.
“Chris. Yeah.”
“Now that’s one strange kid.”
“He’s not strange.” That’s the last word I’d used to describe Chris. If anything, I’m the strange one.
My dad continues, “You think he might be….” He lowers his head so that it accentuates his double chin, draws his eyebrows together a little, and scrunches up his nose like he’s smelling someone’s farts.
“Might be what?” I ask, feeling hostile and aggressive without even knowing what he’s talking about. My dad can talk shit about me all he wants, but he better leave Chris out of it.
“You know….” Dad leans in closer. “Gay?”
I’m stunned silent. The way he says it, like it’s so repugnant he can’t even say the word. In a parallel universe, someone is laughing their ass off at my situation. But all I want is to find the nearest body of water and drown myself in it.
My sister answers before I can, “Oh my God, Daddy, noooo. Definitely not. He’s got, like, a million girlfriends.”
Dad shrugs, a little smirk on his face. He thinks it’s funny. “You never know,” he says while masticating his meat. “Kids these days.”
I stand up suddenly, dropping my napkin onto the floor.
“Enough,” I declare to the entire restaurant. I practically shout it from the rafters.
“What’s your problem?” Dad asks.
I glance at my sister, who’s giving me a death stare like I’d better not screw this up. I stride away from the table as fast as I can without actually running, make my way blindly to the bathroom, grapple for the sink faucet, and splash some cold water on my face, getting water on my shirtfront and not giving a shit except to wonder if it will stain Chris’s shirt.
“Fuck,” I mutter at my reflection. I’m going to puke. And I’m all dizzy and shit, my stomach cramping into the size of a golf ball. So much rage buzzing through me, I feel like a lunatic. I definitely can’t go back out there. I come out of the bathroom and look for another way out of the restaurant so I don’t have to pass by them. Seems the only way out is through the kitchen. I push through the swinging door, keeping my head down. The staff is too polite to stop me, just kindly tell me I’m going the wrong way. I find the back door and pass through it, loosening my tie along the way. I don’t know how the hell to get it unknotted, so I just end up ripping it off my head and shoving it in my pocket. I take in big gulps of fresh air, trying to calm myself down and work up the nerve to go back in. Right around the time I think I’ve go
tten myself under control, I get a text from my sister:
Dad says to get your ass back in here or he’s giving your trust fund to Sabine.
Sabine is my seven-year-old half sister, my dad’s love child with his second wife, the one he cheated on my mom with. I’m being held hostage. Screw him, I think. I don’t need his money. And I don’t need his bullshit.
Instead of texting my sister, I pull up my contacts and call Chris.
“What’s up?” he says, like he already knows something is wrong. I hardly ever call. We usually text.
I should have brought my skateboard, but I didn’t. I could walk home, but this is an area I’m not familiar with, where the houses are all cookie cutter and the streets look the same. I’m not sure I could find my way out if I tried. Oh, and look at that, it’s starting to rain.
“Can you come get me?”
“Sure thing. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I’m in Todesta.” I glance around, looking for a street sign to give him an address.
“I know where you are,” he says.
That’s right, Find My Friends.
Grilled Cheese
JUST THE sight of Chris’s Volvo coming up the street fills me with a full-body flood of relief. I’m hopping from foot to foot as he approaches, under the bus stop overhang where I’m waiting for him out of the rain.
“What happened?” he asks as I climb into the passenger side. I shake the water from my head like a dog and Chris shields himself from my spray with his hand.
“Dinner with my dad.”
I think back to this one time my dad came and picked me up for the day. One of the rare occasions it was just me because Tabs was busy elsewhere. We watched football at a sports bar and ate chicken wings until we were both uncomfortably full. I asked a lot of questions about the game, and my dad was pretty patient in answering. All in all, it was a good time. Then, when he dropped me off, he picked a fight with my mom about how bad my table manners were, how I didn’t say please or thank you and how he was embarrassed by my behavior while we were out.
When Everything Is Blue Page 9