Are You Sitting Down?

  “What’s her name?” Nine year old Sebastian asked when I held the pink bundle down so he could see her chubby face. Frank and I both had thought of the same perfect name when filling out the papers at the orphanage.

  Clare.

  Justin

  I often marveled at the idea that had Travis and I been legally married and if two guys were as normal as any other couple in society, would more of his family have come to my funeral? Only his mother and youngest sister, Clare, came to the graveside. To the rest, although they had known me for ten years, I was just a close friend to Travis. I wasn’t offended for my own sake, but I was for his. Had Martin or Ellen’s spouse or God forbid one of their kids died, there would be no question about it. Travis would be there for them through it all. That’s what families do. If I’d been a woman, would they have mourned me?

  I never told Travis, but I never felt like part of his family. They all had time to accept their brother as he was. He came out in high school. There were boyfriends before me. Maybe they told him to his face that they were okay with it, and that was fine as long as they didn’t have to see him with someone. I had never been introduced as the boyfriend. We were both approaching thirty, and Travis had always brought a “friend” for the holidays.

  Lorraine tried her best to make me feel at home, but a woman who purses her lips when she walks in on her son holding another man’s hand while watching TV still has issues over his sexuality. When she got him alone, she told Travis she’d prefer no public displays of affection, just in case it made anyone uncomfortable. He sheepishly agreed, not knowing it was his own mother who was the most uncomfortable.

  When I would come with him for an overnight stay, Lorraine put us in his old room despite there still being twin beds, and there being one other vacant room in the house with a double. Unbeknownst to her, we locked the door and both slept in one of the tiny single beds anyway, crumpled into each other like overgrown kids. I always looked forward to the silent love making. We unmade the empty bed in the morning to make it look slept in just in case his mother walked by the room.

  Such inconveniences on our relationship were the only exceptions to who we were. I never said anything because I knew how important Travis’s family was to him, so I stomached it and pretended to be excited to take a trip home with him. That and I never had a family of my own to be happy or upset about it. To at least get to sleep in the same room with Travis at his old house was a luxury.

  At my parent’s place, Travis would have been confined to the sofa with me upstairs in my single bed. Mom would have stayed awake just to listen for the sound of feet going up or down the stairs in the middle of the night. Knowing how much Travis would have been uncomfortable there, we would have been better off in a hotel. But, since his Mom lived less than two miles away we always stayed there.

  I envied seeing him and his brothers and sisters together. Despite their flaws in life—and they all had them—at least he had a family to fall back on. I had an overbearing mother and father who still pinched my cheeks and said “good boy” when I got straight A’s in college. No matter how much I hated it, I was the glue that held their loveless marriage together. I didn’t know how they would get along without me, and while I was alive, I didn’t care.

  I blamed them for my small town misery where I was the piano playing fag in school. I was the only boy who took piano lessons, and I only took them because my parents made me. Just like everything else, I excelled at the piano. I was the top pupil my music teacher had. She always had me go last at our recitals because I played the best. She said after all the wrong chords and slow keys they’d sat through, the parents deserved to hear something as good as Mozart or Beethoven. At eight years old, I ate up her praise like candy.

  I wrote a paper in school about how I wanted to be the next Liberace. Kids laughed and called me a faggot right there in front of the teacher. I had never seen Liberace. I didn’t know how he looked or dressed. I had only heard his name and his music when Mom played his records. He was magnificent at the piano, so I ranked him right up there with all the other great musicians I knew: Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Liberace’s name sounded like it belonged right beside them. After the mockery over my paper, the next time Mom put on one of his records, I ran to the player and ripped the record right off the turn table and threw it across the room.

  I was a smart student and a genius musician, at the mercy of my parents, stuck in a Mayberry town that sucked the life right out of its inhabitants. I dreamt of some Las Vegas scout sitting in at one of my recitals and coming up to my parents afterwards to offer them a great big check and my chance to become famous. He’d sweep me off to Hollywood to help sharpen my skills. I’d have an agent, a manager, a wardrobe specialist, and a ton of other important people standing by to cater to my needs. I’d never see my parents again, and the next time they saw me I’d be playing piano as a guest on Johnny Carson. Who knew dreaming could be so worthless?

  Music is supposed to make people happy, but it didn’t work that way for me. It usually made me miserable because it was something my parents encouraged, and anything that provided them with selfish delight was something I grew to hate. And so, I rarely played the piano ever again once I left Dogwood. I sat down from time to time at a piano in any room and searched for the feeling that brought joy to any other musician’s face, but the feeling would not come. It was overshadowed in my head by the faces of my parents. The magic of the music had somehow missed me.

  Travis came out to his family during his senior year. I doubt I would have ever come out to my parents at all had I never met Travis, but then again, who knows if I would have ever moved out. It wasn’t easier living at home with them; it was convenient. I made enough money to support myself, but needed someone—or something—to push me out of the nest. I had never intended to stay with them as long as I did, but just like the small town we lived in, it seemed impossible to break out.

  I don’t like to think I used Travis as a means to escape. He would never see it that way either. His love life before me was almost nonexistent. He had only dated a handful of guys, nothing serious, but that’s still more than I could owe up to. I never knew anyone else in Ruby Dregs who was gay. If there was anyone, I guess they were closeted like me. We were all the “dregs of society,” as rival schools liked to joke about the town name. Despite everyone in school knowing what I was—calling it out behind my back in the hallway everyday—I had never admitted it out loud to anyone until the day I met Travis.

  I was a year behind him in high school. He didn’t know who I was, but I knew him well. I think I had a crush on him when I was a junior and he was a senior because I drew a heart around his class photo in my yearbook that year. That was the year I signed up for track. I’d never played any sport before, but how hard could running be? I was tired of being the choir and orchestra nerd.

  I was a pretty fast runner, always coming in first, second, or third in our meets. I quickly gained respect from my team members, the same kids who had called me names in the hallway the whole first two years of high school. Guys who ran track weren’t like other jocks though. We were smarter and did better in class. Travis was the same way, except he played tennis. We both wished we’d known each other in high school. Travis later told me he was never made fun of back then, but I knew he was. Massive torment from our peers would have ensued had we both been seen walking side by side between classes or sitting together at lunch. The teen angst and depression would have torn a fragile friendship apart for no real reason at all. Kids are so mean to each other, especially teens.

  So, I liked to think it was meant for us to never meet back then. High school was soon over, and the name calling had stopped. And like everyone else, we were shocked at a world full of nothing after high school. The possibilities were endless, and yet all those stupid jocks that taunted us now drove their trucks around town looking like zombies. The best part of their life was over. Now, they had to get jobs in factories or at burger joints
and support their pregnant girlfriends, dreaming about the glory days growing farther and farther out of reach.

  Five years after high school we were much more mature, Travis and I. We’d both been through college, Travis in Memphis and me with two years at the community college in Ruby Dregs. I still couldn’t escape a dead end retail job after that, pushing my way up the corporate ladder of being a salaried manager still working nights and weekends, still living at home with my parents. My days of dreaming about musician scouts were long over. I felt a lot like this God forsaken town on a road map—easy to skip over, easy to forget. That all changed the night I met Travis.

  Hello Dolly was playing that summer, a production being put on by the Stage Door Players. I’d played the piano for some of their musicals in the past, but not that year. It was the first time I’d seen Travis since he graduated. When our eyes met, we instantly knew the one thing about each other—the only thing—that mattered. I wanted so badly for him to come and speak to me during the intermission, but I’m glad he didn’t. I was a nervous wreck, smoking half a pack of cigarettes during that fifteen minute break. It was a bad habit I’d later give up just for him.

  Somehow, I worked up enough nerve to wait for him in the back of the theater after the show. Not knowing what to say, I pretended to know him from high school and asked what year he graduated. Only I wasn’t pretending. I did know him, and somehow I just knew to reach out to him that night. It was my one chance to finally connect with someone like me. Travis was glad I spoke up. We went for coffee after the show, nervously sitting across from one another like we were on a blind date. We spent almost every weekend together for the next few months. I took off from work early on Fridays if I had the weekend off and drove down to Memphis to stay with him. Six months later I was living with him.

  I don’t think I would have cared if neither of us ever went back to Ruby Dregs, but Travis’s family was what kept drawing us back. My family was what kept me away. It’s funny how that was the one thing that was opposite between us—besides out last names—growing up in the same town and having so much in common, but hating and loving home for completely different reasons.

  So, I went with him and faked my excitement about the trip back to hell. I slept in his twin bed upstairs in his mother’s house, but I still felt like a guest. I racked my brain over the thoughts in Lorraine’s head and wished I could read her mind. I watched his siblings be just as distant to him as the preps were back in school. And Travis was blind to it all.

  I couldn’t make up stories and tell him my parents were going to be out of town because it was almost impossible to get to Lorraine’s house without driving by my old house. So, Travis made me go see them when we were in town. I didn’t always make him go with me, because I knew the thought of him being my boyfriend made my Mom uncomfortable. It was easier to cut the visit short when it was just me, but sometimes I let Travis go if he offered. I wanted Mom to see how happy I was now that I had someone, but even that happiness was hard to muster up in the misery of their presence.

  My mom was usually always in a night gown, which she had probably been wearing for days. Stray rollers were in her matted hair and she wore no make-up. The spacey look in her eyes was a sign her mind was absent. She spoke in a scratchy cigarette voice, another reason I quit smoking. When she was angry, she blamed a God who never listened to her anyway.

  My dad was a bumbling whale whose eyebrows were constantly raised in question causing his eyes to bug out. Scotch tape and super glue held his foggy glasses together because he was too cheap to buy new ones. His clothes were as pale and faded as his skin. He spoke in an effeminate voice like a female impersonator would. I swore I inherited my homosexuality from him, if such a thing could happen.

  “You’re too hard on your parents,” Travis would say.

  “You never lived with them,” I bit back.

  “How hard could it have been? Did they ever hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Did they mistreat you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I just don’t understand.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand because you grew up in a very different household. You had two loving parents and four brothers and sisters,” I said.

  “You’re parents seem very nice,” Travis said.

  “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  “But you just said they weren’t bad.”

  This was the one thing we usually disagreed upon, and one of the few things we ever argued about. I wasn’t shutting myself off to him, but the only way for me to end the argument was to just be quiet and stop talking about them. My parents weren’t bad people. They were just easy to blame for my miserable lonely existence from which Travis had saved me. I just couldn’t bring myself to say that out loud to him without sounding like a sap.

  The ten years we spent together were like playing catch up with life. I experienced more joy and happiness during that time then I ever did growing up. I was like a kid all over again, out shopping with Travis in the malls or going to bars and restaurants. Every day there was something new in the city which our hometown could not offer.

  And living with the first love of your life, waking up to him every day, being the center of his attention and he being the center of mine was better than any big time Las Vegas dream of stardom. It just didn’t last long enough. The cancer got in the way. It slapped us both in the face and made us slow down. It made us number our days and cherish all the memories we created together, because we both knew there wouldn’t be any more.

  All the trips to the hospital, the hours spent crouched over the toilet in the middle of the night during the chemo, the Frankenstein monster in the mirror, and the soiled bed sheets were not the days Travis would choose to remember.

  They didn’t exist.

  I might as well have been a ten year old because all the days I spent in Ruby Dregs before meeting Travis and all the days I spent at the end of life battling cancer didn’t exist. We both erased them from our heads, and so all that was left was the time we had together.

  It was all that mattered.

  Travis

  I was sitting across from Martin at the dinner table when there was a knock at the door. With a mouthful of food, he swallowed hard with a painful expression as if the guest at the door was someone he knew, someone unwanted. Mom was accustomed to guests stopping by during the holiday months. They were usually members of her church or a friendly neighbor. The stack of store bought fruit cakes in her pantry was a testimony to the number of guests she had already had this season.

  Mom hated fruit cake. I don’t think I had ever tasted it. As a traditional joke, she would unwrap one and slice it, then set it out on a decorative plate amongst the rest of the food just to see if anyone ate it. I think Robbie or Daniel ate a slice last year, having mistaken it for brownies or banana bread. They spit it into a napkin and never touched it again after that.

  Fruit cakes were not the only neighborly gift that Mom ended up with duplicates of. For years, Mom had collected those doll-like angel tree toppers with satin or velvet gowns draped over a plastic or cardboard cone. One of us kids usually gave her one each year for Christmas, and she enjoyed displaying them throughout the house year after year on the hall table and the mantel. As the collection grew, she decided to leave them out all year and just move them into her sewing room until Christmas came around again.

  After hosting a luncheon at the house for some church ladies one summer, Mom’s fondness for the angel dolls quickly spread. The fruit cake count went down, and the doll collection mounted. Although Mom never frowned at any gift given to her, she was not always proud of the angels other acquaintances gave to her. Mom preferred the pricier angels with curly hair and real porcelain hands and face. What she got most of the time from the people who didn’t know her quite well was a cheap knock-off you could find on the bargain aisle of any dollar store. These gifts quickly became known as the ugly angel collection.
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  Mom accepted these unsightly angels with a pleased look in her eyes and a smile on her face, but knew the angel would end up on display in her sewing room during the holidays. Only the more extravagant angels were brought out of the sewing room to be put on display through the main part of the house from after Thanksgiving to New Years. After the holidays, the ugly angel collection was packed away in the attic and the sewing room became the hibernation place for the ones she preferred to look at. But, year after year Mom dragged all the ugly angels back out again.

  “What if someone who gave me one of them in the past stops by?” she’d say if you asked her why she put the unattractive ones back out at all.

  Leave it to Mom to not take the chance of hurting anyone’s feelings. She knew exactly who gave her each one. With a black marker, she would write the person’s name and the year on the inside of the cone underneath the angel’s garment on both the ugly and the pretty ones. Throughout the year, the door to her sewing room was usually kept open. During the holidays when the “good” angels had been moved out and the ugly angels moved in, that door stayed closed unless company came calling.

  Mom had just sat down to eat when the knock at the door came. I stood up and offered to get the door for her. She stood too but I put my hands on her shoulders, gently pushing her back down into her seat. She sat back down to appease me.

  “I’ll get it, Mom, don’t worry,” I said.

  “Will you open the door to the sewing room, dear?” she asked.

  The knock came again. I unlatched the lock and opened the door to find a stout bulky man in crisp blue overalls with a kelly green shirt underneath. His ears were bright pink from the cold weather, along with his fat round cheeks. His crew cut hair was as white as the snow. He nodded and a dentured smile grew across his face when I appeared from behind the door.