When Everything Is Blue(45)

Something for me to tackle another day.

I dress inside the bathroom, and when I come out, Chris has gotten me a glass of water and a Tylenol. He points to his bed and tells me he’ll sleep on the futon. I thank him again for finding my drunk ass and not telling my mom.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” he says.

As I’m drifting off to sleep, Chris reaches up and finds my ear, flicks it, and whispers, “Happy birthday, Theo.”

And despite all the bullshit of the day, I figure I’ll be all right, because in spite of being outed in the most publicly humiliating way, I still have Chris in my corner, and that’s really all I need.





Empty Boxes, the Damn Ball, and Other Metaphors for the Suckage of Life


I WAKE up around noon the next day to the sounds of a party revving up outside Chris’s window. Oh yeah, that. I peer through the blinds, squinting at the assault of daylight like a vampire. The headache is still with me, only a little more muted. My sister’s by the pool, one arm draped around Chris’s shoulder, laughing at something one of her friends is saying. I’ve only been awake for about ten seconds and I already feel like puking, which is only partly from the alcohol.

I scribble a note to Chris—Thanks for letting me crash here—then creep downstairs and sneak a muffin from the glass case in the kitchen that Paloma keeps stocked with an assortment of goodies. I jog across our driveways, keeping to the bushes like a ninja to avoid running into any of Tabs’s guests, and find my mom upstairs in our kitchen, doing dishes while singing, but the singing abruptly stops when she turns around and sees me.

I get the arched eyebrow—just one. My mom’s not very strict. In fact, she’s the exact opposite of strict. Around the time we started high school, my mom kind of shrugged and said That’s all I can do. It’s up to you now. Maybe it’s because she’s from Puerto Rico, where it seems parents are a little laxer and the kids more independent. In any case, as long as we come home at night and check in every few days, she pretty much stays out of our business.

But my mom knows something’s up, and the arched eyebrow says more than words.

I have this speech prepared for my mom, which begins with my first stirrings for Casanova Guerra and how my desires have manifested over the years, growing stronger and more unavoidable. Then I was going to reference a boy who is Chris-like but not actually Chris, and conclude with the relationship I recently ended as an example of me needing to be a little choosier about who I date. As she’s staring at me and I’m searching for the right metaphor with which to begin this great oration of my sexual awakening, I decide to cut to the chase and simply say, “I’m gay, Mom.”

She nods and sets down her scrubby and opens her arms to me. I walk over and get this great mama-bear hug from a woman half my size who has more strength in her two arms than most men I know.

“You want to talk about it?” she asks.

I shrug, still encased in her arms, thinking about when she taught me how to dance. I was ten years old, and she insisted it was essential to my growth as a man. You need to know how to lead, mi hijo. I doubt I’ll ever be leading a bride, but I’ll always have my mom to dance with, and that’s enough for me.

“I thought I did, but you seem to get it, so maybe it’s not necessary after all.”

“What happened yesterday?” she asks, pulling back to look at me, and I can only assume she knows most if not everything that went down.

“This picture went around school of me….” I clear my throat, and she holds up one hand to gesture that I don’t need to go on.

“Do you want me to call this boy’s mother?”

My sweet, old-school mother is a lot like Chris in many ways, only instead of beating a guy’s ass, she goes for the jugular—his mother.

“He doesn’t have the best home life,” I tell her, feeling bad for Dave all over again because he’s basically a runaway who had the good fortune of having an aunt with a spare apartment and no tenant. Then I kick myself for feeling bad for that asshole at all. “Besides, Chris already beat his ass. That’s probably enough.”

She nods. “Well, I can see why you call him Asshole Dave.”

We share a bitter chuckle at that, and even though my mom pretends to not know what’s going on in my life, clearly she does. Then she reveals perhaps more than she ever has about her relationship with my father when she says, “Make sure you fall for what’s on the inside and not what’s on the outside, baby. Otherwise you’re just buying an empty box.”

I nod and feel pretty bad at the same time. My father reduced to one sad metaphor, an empty box. I kiss my mom’s cheek and tell her I’m going to visit Uncle Theo at the home. She seems surprised at that. “You’re not going to the party?”

“Not my scene,” I tell her. Another part of me manning up is not doing shit I don’t want to do because other people tell me to. Even Chris and Tabs.

“Tell your uncle I said hello,” she says. “He was always very nice to me.”




I PICK up pulled pork sandwiches from Paula’s Pit Barbecue, including a pint of baked beans and a quart of their potato salad, even though it’s about a mile out of the way. I stuff it all in my backpack and arrive at Saint Ann’s in the early afternoon. The receptionist is different than the one I faced off with before—weekend crew. At first she thinks I’m delivering food and tells me they have a policy of not accepting meals from outside vendors, so I have to go through the whole exercise of proving to her I’m the nephew of one of the residents, producing my ID again, having her verify it with someone else, and finally they give me the pass to work the elevator to go see Uncle Theo.