Aftermath of Dreaming(100)

At a café near the museum, Reggie pulls a chair out for me at an outside table, but before I can sit down, he gives me a hug. “Maybe we’ll make it a perfect road trip and stay over somewhere. The San Ysidro Ranch has got some great bungalows.”

“Where the Kennedys honeymooned—yeah, right,” I say, playing along with his silly idea.

He presses himself in close, more of him on me than usual. “I’m getting a woody just holding you,” he says in my ear.

I can’t believe what I just heard. Reggie? A woody? About me? Oh, please tell me I didn’t hear him right, but I know I did. And that term. Where’d he get that? The school yard? It quadruples the embarrassment I feel—a woody. Like Pinocchio. Not an association I want with sex. Nor is Reggie. Oh, good God.

I try to laugh, but it comes out like a snort, so I take advantage of that and say, “Gee, I need to blow my nose, be right back.”

As I head into the restaurant, my eyes adjusting to the lower lights inside, I try to remember the last time I used the exclamation “gee.” I decide I never have and wonder if it came out as the unfulfilled wish of what I hoped our day would be rated. I guess his suggestion of us spending the night was serious. Oh, good Christ. I mean, I love Reggie, he’s my best friend, but part of the comfort of him is that since he’s not a girl, I don’t have to deal with weird female stuff like with Suzanne or Viv, and since he’s not really straight, or has never seemed so to me, I could talk to him like a girl. And sexual tension has just never been an issue between us. Or maybe it always was and I just couldn’t see it. Or didn’t want to.

I suddenly have an urge to take out my cell phone and call…well, Reggie, actually, because he’s who I call when people behave oddly or confusingly or try to switch their role, all of which he just did. The friend I want to talk to not only isn’t home, he’s the reason I need to call, as if Reggie could somehow also be a separate person in his apartment for me.

In the bathroom, I wash my hands and put powder on my face. I hope my eyes won’t betray me when I go back to the table with their loud conveying of the no-longer-want-to-hang-out-with-him that I feel. Was I wrong to say yes to this day? Maybe I crossed some universal line for friendship that gave him a signal that that was okay. No, I’ve been behaving exactly as I always have, though now that I think about his diet and this day, maybe he’s been planning some kind of relationship change for us ever since I stopped seeing Michael. Oh, good God.

I’ve powdered my nose five times and can’t think of anything else to do to stall my appearance at lunch. Fuck. This is so weird. I make a small prayer to Mary that Reggie was being temporarily weird or got so overcome by all the beauty, sex, and love we saw at the museum that that energy just slipped out at me. But I doubt it. Finally, I join him at our table.

I can tell Reggie knows that he flipped me out because he immediately starts talking about his work, about editing a commercial he actually did like because of the director’s vision, a nice neutral topic that makes me sort of relax. “His spots are like short films, really beautiful and telling the story visually. I wouldn’t mind him shooting my script.”

“I thought you wanted to do it.” The pasta I ordered is heavier than I expected, with too much cream. The first few bites were comforting and nice, but now the richness is making me sick.

“Honey, let’s be realistic. I’ve been here too long to not know the score. First-time director without film school or a movie to his credit? Who are we kidding? I need something to happen in my life, it’s been the same for way too long. If this guy can get it going, I’d be thrilled. Let him do this one, then maybe some doors will open; otherwise, this wait I’ve been in will be my whole life.”

We walk on the beach together after lunch, and the sun, the sea, the sky, the sand are so encompassing of our senses that we are content not to talk. As we stand at the surf ’s edge watching the winter sunset’s early decline, I wonder how long Reggie’s transformation has been going on. Was it a sudden moment of change or an on-going one that started with the protein shakes that made Reggie lose weight and wait diligently?

“I’m going home to visit my father for the weekend,” Reggie says on the drive back to L.A. as we head south into the night. We have yielded onto the freeway, becoming one of many commuters, but without the day’s work.

“Yeah? Are you looking forward to it?”

“You know, he’ll call me ‘son.’ He’s done that for so long, I think he thinks it’s my goddamn name. Ever since Mom died, he’s called me and my brother ‘son’ for what, twenty years now, like he needs to reinforce the family bond for fear it’ll disappear like she did.”

“You’re probably right. If so, it’s sad and kind of sweet.”

We ride along in silence on the rhythm of the miles. Reggie was a godsend when my momma died, flying down to Mississippi to be at the funeral with me and letting me spend the night with him that first week back in L.A. so I wouldn’t have to be by myself when the darkness of night came down and I had to adjust my thoughts of Momma being not in her bed but in the ground. He’d known what that was like.

The first time Reggie and I got together after we met, he showed me a black-and-white picture of his mother. She was twenty-one when it was taken, a lovely, young, open-faced woman wearing a gingham shirt. “Ain’t she a tomato?” he’d said loudly, causing the other people in the café to all turn and look. He was so comfortable in his exuberance about her, so resolved with her absence in his life that he didn’t notice the public reaction, just kept on showing me pictures of her. Riding in his car on the freeway, watching lights speed up close and away, I long to have that about my father, though I know that it’s easier when the parent is dead and not just gone.