I Wish You All the Best(2)

It still looks like Christmas in here. Mom and I actually agree that people don’t appreciate the holiday nearly enough, so she tends to leave the tree and decorations up until the first of the year. I’m not really sure if that’s how other families do it, but it’s my favorite of her mom-isms.

She’s already decided that Elf is the movie for tonight, except we don’t own a copy of it, so it’s my responsibility to find somewhere we can rent it.

“We can watch Lampoon next.” Dad crunches on a piece of popcorn.

After a little exploring, I find it, enter Mom’s credit card information, and settle in. It’s weird, I usually love this movie to death, but tonight? It’s almost irritating. But I don’t think that’s actually the movie’s fault. I feel uncomfortable, no matter how I sit, it’s like I have to escape my body somehow.

And then the movie gets to the weird scene where Will Ferrell’s character is singing with Zooey Deschanel while she’s in the shower, and I get that his character is supposed to be na?ve or whatever, but it still creeps me out a little.

“Now, that’s a woman.” Dad chuckles, feeding himself another piece of the chocolate-covered popcorn. “Right, Ben?”

“Right.” I try my best to act like I’m in on the joke, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. I wonder if they’ve ever seen through that disguise, if they’ve ever entertained the idea that I was anything other than their perfect son.

I don’t like lying to him.

Or Mom.

I’m basically always living a lie. They don’t really know everything about me.

And that’s what I’ve been working up to tonight, or really, the past few weeks. It’s the reason I didn’t have an appetite, the reason why I couldn’t really focus on anything over the past week. Christmas break seemed to glide by at a snail’s pace because I promised myself it’d happen now, at some point over the break. Tonight feels like the right moment, even though I can’t really explain why. Maybe I’m riding some magical Christmas high.

’Tis the season, I suppose.

Too bad I don’t feel very jolly right now. Maybe I should’ve donned some more “gay apparel” to lighten the mood.

Some commercial starts playing, and a car company is running a sale for the “Ho-Ho-Holidays,” and out of the corner of my eyes, I see Dad shake his head.

“Ain’t right,” I hear him mutter.

Mariam walked me through this half a dozen times; I just have to wait for a good moment, a lull in the night, when we’re all feeling pretty good.

It was going to be fine; Mariam kept telling me that.

Everything was going to be fine and I was finally going to get this huge thing off my chest and it was going to be great and they’d respect what I was telling them.

And it was all going to be fine.

I keep telling myself that now is the right moment. Over and over again as the movie keeps playing and commercial breaks keep coming. But every time I open my mouth, the words fail me, and I can’t force them out.

I shouldn’t be scared.

But for some reason I am, no matter how much I’ve willed myself to not be. I can’t get over this feeling. Maybe it’s an omen or something. A sign that I shouldn’t do this. Except I have to do this. I can’t explain it; I just feel it inside me. And underneath all that, I really do think it’ll all be okay.

It’s cheesy, but I wait until the end of the movie, when everyone is together and happy and I see a smile on Mom’s face.

Dad looks indifferent, but he pretty much always looks that way.

It has to be now. I can actually feel it.

“Hey, I wanted to talk to you two about something,” I say, my voice really dry.

“Okay.” Mom leans back on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her and balancing her head in the palm of her hand. “What’s up?”

Dad reaches for the remote and turns the volume on the TV down.

“I …” I can do this. Just keep breathing.

There’s that tightness in my stomach, like something is just twisting and twisting and it won’t let go until the moment is over. And everything will unravel, and I’ll feel free.

“I wanted to tell you two something.”

Dad looks at me now.

This is it.

It’s kinda funny actually; the script I wrote for myself, the one I typed in Word so I’d cover everything I wanted to, it’s just totally gone from my memory now. Like someone zapped it all away.

Maybe that’s for the best; maybe this is how I’ll be the most honest with them.

If it just comes from me and not some rehearsed version of myself, maybe that will help; maybe that’ll be better?

I tell them. Slowly.

At first, relief floods over me. I think I can actually feel myself relax.

I just wish that feeling could’ve lasted longer.





“Please pick up. Please pick up,” I whisper into the receiver of the pay phone, bracing against the sharp chill of the night, watching the glow of Christmas lights still hanging in shopwindows, even though it’s New Year’s Eve.

Just an hour, that’s all it’d taken for my life to crumble around me. And now I’m here, walking around downtown without any shoes, calling collect to a sister I haven’t seen, let alone spoken to, in a decade.