Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend by Carrie Jones
At the German restaurant, I find Bob and corner him by a giant replica of some Bavarian hussy with monster boobs and equally oversized beer steins.
“Have you heard about Eddie Caron?” I ask him.
“Yeah.”
He wipes his thick glasses, which have fogged up because the air in here is humid like at the Y pool.
I glare at him. “Does Dylan know?”
He shrugs. “We’re not worried about it Belle, we’ll take him.”
“You’ll take him?” I echo.
My mouth drops open and thick-glasses, no-muscles Bob says, “I got to go find a seat. I don’t want to get stuck with Herr Reitz.”
“You’ve never been in a fight you’re whole entire life,” I hoarse shout after him.
He whirls around. “Every day in my life is a fight, Belle.”
He lets that sink in and then says, “And Damien Derr stuck my head in a toilet once.”
“That doesn’t count,” I say. “That was second grade.”
Tom walks up beside me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and steers me to a table. “It counts. Believe me. It counts.”
“Eddie Caron is huge,” I say, my fingers trembling. “He’ll kill them.”
Tom nods and sits down across from me. His foot stretches out under the table and hooks under my ankle. “It’ll be okay.”
My foot tingles and then rests next to his. It feels good and warm and safe. Will Dylan ever be warm and safe? Will Bob? I put my napkin in my lap. Tom tucks his into his shirt collar, but I glare at him. He laughs and snaps it out like a waiter and then puts it in his lap, too.
“Just teasing,” he says.
Herr Reitz stands up at the end of the table. He’s changed into some bright pink lederhosen. He claps his hands.
“No songs!” Crash shouts. “Not in public!”
Herr Reitz puts on a fake sad face. “How about God Bless America?”
We all groan.
He smiles and claps his hands again. “Okay. Everyone! Let the festivities begin!”
A waitress with neither beer steins nor enormous breasts plops a big plate of bratwurst and sauerkraut in front of me, waiting for me to pick up my fork and cut into it, break it into pieces, devour it, until there’s nothing left but crumbs. It will wait a long, long time.
Eddie Caron is bratwurst fingers, squinty mean eyes, and YMCA muscles. He is not a guy you want to tangle with. I mean, we used to be bus friends when we were little, which was great and he was always, always, always protecting me from the big-kid bullies. He’d fight anybody, anybody, all the time.
All dinner, I think about Eddie Caron’s bratwurst fingers connected to his hammer hands and tree-trunk muscles. I imagine those hands that used to build me dirt castles hitting Dylan, lean, golden Dylan. Dylan with the clear skin. Blonde hair mats with blood. Golden skin turns green and black and broken.
I can’t even swallow my cider.
“Eat up, Fraulien,” Herr Reitz yells at me from down the table. A glob of sauerkraut sticks in his beard, hanging there, a pale worm clinging in a mass of brown. I shudder.
Herr Reitz raises his non-alcoholic Feuerzangenbowle. All the guys look at it with envy eyes. “Belle, eat! You’ll get too skinny!”
I stab the bratwurst with my fork and he smiles.
“Yummy bratwurst!” Crash kids, making his soar near my mouth the way a mom does when she’s trying to get a little kid to eat peas or something. “Open up. Here comes the airplane. Let’s open the hanger.”
I crack up. There’s nothing else to do.
If you can tell a man by his car then Tom Tanner is solid and safe with big tires, a lot of duct tape holding him together, and a moderate amount of chrome. His fenders are a little dirty and he likes to drive fast; if Tom is his truck then he is comfortable and he holds you high enough that you can get a good view of the world around you, at the other cars passing by, the ambulance blaring out somebody’s sad emergency, the broken-down van that’s parked on the grass with the hood open.
I am just a passenger. I am along from the ride. I crack some non-aspartame gum that I’m using to get the taste of German food out of my mouth. The gum is stale already. Gum without aspartame gets stale in two seconds. I put another piece in. Tom blows a bubble and pops it. I scooch up against the back of the seat and position myself so I’m sitting Indian style.
We’ve picked up a hitchhiker, sort of. Crash said he couldn’t stand it in Herr Reitz’s car anymore and he’d have to commit suicide by bratwurst if he was forced to drive back in Herr Reitz’s geekmobile. Tom took pity. So, we’re crunched three in the long front seat of the cab, and Crash lives up to his name, two times. First, he crashes his way into Tom’s truck. Second, he crashes in the truck, just plummets off some high cliff of consciousness into the deep oblivion of la-la land. His head rests against the window. Snores tumble out of his open mouth.
“Jesus,” Tom mutters and keeps driving.
“He sounds like elephants,” I whisper.
“More like someone farting out their mouth,” Tom shakes his head. “I am never driving anyone home again. Serves me right for being nice.”
I close my eyes, lean my head back. “How about me?”
“What about you?”
Crash lets out a mighty honk.
“Are you ever going to drive me home again?” I ask. My palms tingle. Too soon. Too soon to feel this way, I know. Too soon.
Tom grabs my hand in his. His fingers wrap around it and a shiver starts in my belly, works its way through me. He keeps my hand under his and puts both on the steering wheel. We’re driving together, sort of. His hand holds mine between his warm fingers and the cold steering wheel.
“You,” he says. “You, pinko, commie girl, I’d take anywhere.”
The night darkens all the familiar territory around us. There aren’t a lot of streetlamps, even on Route 1A, so we navigate by the yellow line in the middle of the road and our guts, trusting that they will tell us the right way.
A big, low plane flashes its red lights just above the tree line. Judging from the size, it’s probably a Navy cargo plane that’s just taken off from Bangor. I wonder if Tom likes planes.
“I don’t know everything about you,” I whisper because even though Crash is snoring, I’m afraid he’ll hear.
Tom squeezes my hand beneath his. “Like what?”
“Like your favorite food.”
“My favorite food.”
“Yeah.”
He lifts up his hand and a finger traces across my skin. “Parsnips and oranges.”
“You’re kidding.”
He shrugs and smiles. “I like parsnips. They’re sort of snappy and fresh.”
“Like you.”
He laughs. “Like me.”
My hand tingles. His finger traces patterns on it. His other hand is firmly planted on the steering wheel. The duct tape man on the dashboard smiles at me. He must know that everything inside me tingles.
“Why oranges?” I ask, my voice turns husky somehow. It betrays me.
“I like the juice when they’re really fresh and you bite into them. They’re sweet.” He takes his hand away and waves it in the air.
“Yeah, but when you bite into them they squirt you in the eye,” I say, and pull my hand off the steering wheel. It rests on my lap, useless.
“That’s the chance you’ve got to take,” he says.
A memory surfaces. “You used to share your oranges with me, back in first grade or something. Do you remember?”
Tom nods. The plane disappears, obscured by the roof of the truck. I remember out loud, “And your mom cut them into quarters or something. And you would always give me a piece at recess. We’d stand by the swings and we’d chomp on those oranges.”
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Tom laughs. “I know and you’d always get so mad and the juice would dribble on your chin and you’d wipe at it with your sleeve, squinting.”
“Attractive.”
“It was.”
I harrumph. “Then you’d push Mimi and me on the swings but only a couple times because you’d always take off and play soccer on the far field.”
He doesn’t say anything. Crash crashes out a particularly loud snore.
“Do you remember that?” I ask, my voice down to a whisper again. I want so badly for him to remember.
“I never forgot,” he says.
We drive a little more and pass County Ambulance zooming to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital. Its red lights flash out emergency messages.
“I should get you an orange,” Tom says. He grabs my hand and holds it in his and it feels like home, and first-grade swings and the juice of oranges that explode sweet against your tongue.
We drop Crash off at his big mansion house on the Union River and shake him awake.
He nods at us in a real, lazy way and then like someone’s flicked a switch he turns back on his hyper self. “Dude, thanks for the ride.”
He hops out of the car, leaving Tom and I laughing as he does a front handspring up his driveway.
“I can’t believe he called you ‘Dude,’” I say.
Tom laughs and shifts it into gear as I start to slide across the seat. He reaches across to me with his hand and says, “Where you going, Commie?”
“Dude, I was going to give your dude-like self some more dude room,” I say.
He pulls me back, slow, steady and leans down. His lips are dangerously close to my lips and he says, “I don’t need any room.”
We decide it’s early and that we should go to the Y and work out, which seems like some sort of commitment, working out together, but I don’t think about it as I slam up the stairs, past my mom, and into my room to grab some clothes and my sneakers.
She stalls me in the hall, blocking my way, hands on her hips, but a smile on her face. “Where you going?”
“The Y,” I say.
She nods, kisses my forehead. “Emily bringing you?”
“Tom.”
Her mouth twitches like she’s trying not to smile. My mouth twitches the same exact way. “Tom? Tom Tanner?”
I nod and move by her. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, have fun and don’t be home late,” she laughs and I turn around and she’s got this full-blown monster smile plastered on her face like she thinks I am a very funny person, very amusing indeed.
“Mom?” I throw at her to let her know she’s amusing too. “You know that ‘Piña Colada’ song you’re always singing?”
“Yeah,” Muffin twines herself between my mother’s legs.
“The line is not, ‘I am humping chimp’s pain.’ It’s ‘I am into champagne.’”
She smiles, flushes, and points at me. “That’s good to know.”
I shake my head and barrel down the stairs and out the door.
The Eastbrook Y is not one of those fancy Ys like in big cities. There’s a gym but no indoor track. There’s a pool but it’s about the size of a pool in a nice hotel. The roof leaks. The paint on the walls peels and the floor is always dirty. But the people who work there—Janine, Shane, and Mike—are all great. They love kids. They’ve taught every Eastbrook kid the right way to drain a jumper or kick a soccer ball.
It’s Janine manning the front desk when Tom and I walk in. She’s the one who explained to my crying four-year-old self that it doesn’t hurt your toes if you remember to kick the soccer ball with the side of your foot instead of the front. She’s a sweetie, everybody in town was ready to lynch her husband when he ran off with Janine’s sixteen-year-old niece a couple years back. He motored up to the drive-thru at McDonald’s where the niece worked, ordered a Big Mac and a side of scumbag. They drove off together and never looked back. You can’t tell that by looking at Janine though. She’s all smiles and raised eyebrows as Tom and I give her our ID cards, which is pointless, because everybody knows everybody anyway.
“Well, well, well,” she says, handing our cards back. “Tom Tanner and Belle Philbrick, it’s about time you two showed up here together.”
I blush red but Tom just says, “Tell me about it.”
Janine says, “Do you two remember back when you were in Mighty Mites soccer and Dylan side-tackled Belle because he wanted the ball even though they were on the same team?”
I shake my head, totally confused, but Tom nods.
Janine starts laughing. “You don’t remember this, Belle?”
She doesn’t wait for my answer. I shift the weight of my gym bag onto my shoulder and Tom reaches out and takes it while Janine keeps talking. “Tom runs over like a little paramedic, wipes the dirt off your calf, yells at me to get you an icepack, and then side-tackles Dylan as soon as play started again.”
She nods at Tom. “How old were you then?”
He lifts his shoulders up, and the gym bags move with him. “Six? Seven?”
“I had you two pegged for a couple way back then,” she sighs and shakes her head at us like we’re dimwits. “I can’t believe it took you so long.”
Tom grabs my hand and squeezes it.
Janine gives me cougar eyes and I’m locked there by the front desk of the Y. Basketball sounds emanate from behind the closed doors of the gym. It’s Wednesday night men’s league. I think Tom’s dad plays in that. I want to look away toward the doors but I can’t. I’m a deer caught in the headlights of Janine’s knowing eyes. That’s the problem with Eastbrook, everybody has knowing eyes.
“You never should have given up soccer,” she says to me and I know what she means. I never should have given up a lot of things. I think about Gabriel at home, waiting for me to play her. I think about Tom, standing right next to me, holding my hand. I think about Dylan’s friendship.
I can have all those things. I can.
“Thanks, Janine,” I say to her and her eyes register some sort of knowledge that has passed between us.
“Anytime, Belle dear, anytime.”
When I come out of the locker room, sounds of angry male voices thunder at me from the fitness room down the hall. I’m not the sort of person who likes fights, especially between weight-lifting steroid heads, so I pivot back toward the locker room and almost go back in. That’s when I hear it. My name.
“Crap,” I mutter and run into the fitness room, yanking open the door. Janine, who has pumps on and a skirt, is right behind me.
We both stop, stunned, when we get inside.
Tom and Dylan square off over by the squat machine. Tom’s hands spread apart like he’s trying to talk down a mad dog. Dylan’s sputters and his fists wait in the air.
I stagger backwards and Janine catches me, leans me against the wall, and strides toward them, stomping over one of those white towels people use to wipe down the equipment. Tom and Dylan don’t even notice her.
“I swear I’ll freaking kill you,” Dylan growls. He’s hunched and circling Tom like he’s ready to lash out.
“Jesus, Dylan. Calm down.” Tom glares at him, with hate in his eyes.
“Me calm down? Why don’t you fucking calm down?”
“Shut the hell up, Dylan.”
“You shut up.”
If there wasn’t the threat of violence involved I would laugh because their dialogue is that stupid. I have no idea what they’re angry about. I have never seen either of them in a fight. Oh, that’s not true. Tom slugged Brandon Bartlett in fourth grade because Brandon pulled my hair. That was sort of gallant of him.
But I don’t want them to fight, not Tom and Dylan, not here, not now, not ever.
“Guys!” I
Dylan stands up straight and his lips are lines that do not hold in his anger. “You moved right in, didn’t you? What? We were broken up a day?”
“Shut up,” Tom takes a step toward him.
“Yeah, the only way you could ever get her was if she was rebounding. Big stud Tom Tanner. You were just waiting, weren’t you?”
For a moment neither of them move. For a moment neither of them say anything. Somebody behind me clangs a weight on the floor.
“You and Bob were making out in the parking lot Sunday so don’t give me crap about moving too fast.” Tom nods over toward the free weights and there’s Bob hanging by the wall looking stunned and angry. A ten-pound weight dangles from his hand. He had absolutely no muscle tone. Not that that’s important. No, what’s important is that the two guys in my life are snarling at each other like wild dogs and I swear I don’t recognize either of them.
Janine walks closer.
“Boys,” her voice is a warning they don’t hear.
“What about the pact?” Dylan asks, standing up straighter. “You promised.”
“Fuck that.” Tom shakes his head, straightens up too, his hands come down. “Fuck the pact. You screwed it up first.”
Dylan rushes him, throwing a right hook. Tom tries to dodge but the ab machine’s in his way and Dylan’s fist smashes into the side of Tom’s face. I jerk back like I’m the one who has been hit and try to rush forward but other people are gathering around them, rushing off the cardio machines, now that it’s a real full-blown fight. There’s the guy from the radiology department at the lab who just moved to town moving in front of me. There’s my fifth-grade science teacher, Mr. Key, holding his hands out in some sort of pleading peace gesture. They’re all telling Dylan and Tom to settle down. But it just seems to make them both angrier.