“I’m sorry,” he says. “Death is never easy.”
“Yeah, death sucks,” I say. And then, desperate to end on a positive note, I add, “But life can be awesome, right?”
He smiles sadly, like he’s not ready to answer that question yet.
He braves the subway alone and heads back to school. But I don’t. I can’t. I go back home, where my parents are waiting for me.
My dad’s in one of his perfectly tailored business suits. My mom’s in a Jane Fonda aerobics outfit, but not even the sunshine yellow of her leotard and leggings can mask her distress.
“We saw you on the news,” my dad says, his voice laced with barely concealed rage.
My mom says nothing, because she’s really good at letting my dad speak for her.
I say nothing, because I know that I won’t be able to control my anger once I open my mouth.
“Look, we love you, Art,” my dad says, like he’s exasperated. “I wouldn’t have come home from work if I didn’t love you,” he continues. “But this is getting serious. You could have been arrested. You could have jeopardized your future.”
I roll my eyes at him.
“Art,” my mom says, her voice trembling. “You have such a bright future ahead of you. I just want you to have . . . a future.”
There it is. It’s not my criminal record we’re worried about anymore. It’s my death.
Then dad does what he does best. He offers me a deal. “I’ll tell you what, Art. If it’s what it takes, then I’ll write a check to any AIDS charity of your choice. Ten thousand dollars.” My mom looks at him in shock. “If you promise to stay away from these protests,” my dad says. “And from that man.”
“That man” is Stephen, of course. I wonder what he would do in this situation. Would he take the deal? I can almost hear him telling me that the money will make more impact than one passionate teenager ever could.
“Okay, you’re on,” I say. We shake on it. My dad’s handshake is so firm that it almost crushes me.
“This is the right thing, Art,” my mom says, visibly relieved. She takes my hand in hers awkwardly. “Thank you,” she says, with a deep breath and a smile.
The relief that washes over my mom’s face makes me feel sick for a moment, because I have no intention of keeping my end of the bargain. I’ll just wait for the check to ACT UP to clear before doing anything risky again. Then it’ll be too late for them to cancel the payment. I avoid looking at my mother. I tell myself that I’m Madonna, and my parents are Pepsi. I’m the badass bitch here. Did Madonna also feel guilty when she took their money?
But deceiving them was the only choice. I couldn’t say no to that donation, and I’m not done either. I’m only getting started. For the first time in my life, I know what being gay is all about. It’s not about the wet dreams, or the jerking off, or the ability to impersonate your diva of choice. It’s about the feeling you get when you look into another person’s eyes and have an out-of-body experience. It’s about whatever the hell I was feeling when I really saw Reza for the first time. It’s about love. How can I not keep fighting for that?
As I walk away from my parents, another thought, and a feeling of terror, washes over me. Judy. Judy. Judy. I won’t hurt her. I won’t. And yet . . . I resent her right now. Her heterosexuality gives her the ability to declare crushes openly and without fear. She assumed he was straight, because why wouldn’t he be? Because the whole world is pretty much straight. I resent that she has a privilege I’ll never have. And I hate my resentment. I love her more than anything. I have other privileges. She’s my everything. What do I tell Judy?
Judy
I’m in my bedroom, staring at fabrics, desperately trying to drown out the sound of my mother’s book club. I pick up a sunflower-yellow fabric I’ve always wanted to use for something but never have because it was just too bright and beautiful and optimistic to be wasted on my life. Don’t get me wrong, my life has had its moments, but this fabric deserves better.
Maybe tonight is worthy of it, Judy. A first date. Is it a date? It’s so not a date. You invited Reza to Sunday movie night with your uncle and Art. What kind of a pathetic move is it to invite a guy you like to the gayest movie night ever, with your uncle who will most likely be wearing makeup and a kimono, and your inappropriate best friend?
I’m a chicken, and I need a buffer, and the thought of being out alone with Reza, even in the world’s lushest yellow fabric, scares me half to death. I hold the fabric up against my body and second-guess it immediately. Art says I’m a summer, which means I look good in this kind of hot color, but maybe he’s wrong. Maybe I’m a winter. Maybe I’m frigid. I think about what I could do with the fabric. It could be a dress. It could be flowy. It could be asymmetrical. It could be simple and classic, even though I don’t do simple and classic.
But I can’t get inspired when the sound of my mother and her friends invades my room, and our apartment is so small that you hear everything from everywhere. That’s the thing about having parents who insist you go to the best private school in the city. They end up living in the only nearby place they can find, which is tiny and has no heat. They say they moved here just before I started kindergarten so I could be closer to the amazing school I still go to, because education means everything, but I secretly think another bonus for them was the fact that we have to walk up six flights of stairs, which they think would be good for my waistline, and theirs. And yes, I was big back then too.
We rarely have guests, but my mom’s book club rotates hosts each time, so every fourth meeting, the ladies colonize my space. I love books. I love clubs. I just have a problem with this particular book club because they only read self-help books. Not a joke. Their current choice is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Pretty much every book they’ve ever read involves a colon or a semicolon in the title. My mom asks me to join the book club every time they make a new choice, as if whatever crappy book they’re reading next will tempt me into having Sunday brunch with a group of ladies who wear pastel and love to discuss ways of making their lives better, even though their lives have not changed since I was born. And yet . . . and yet . . . every one of those women is married. Every single one somehow attracted a man while wearing pastel and filling her bookshelves with books about how to be the best you. Which makes me wonder if I’m not the best me. I wonder if Reza would prefer a pastel Judy with highly effective habits. I crack my door open to spy on them.
“Okay, let’s discuss habit number four,” my mom says. “I really loved this one, and I can already feel it changing me. Think win-win!”
“I had trouble with this one,” my mom’s friend in pink pastel says. “It says not to make any deal unless both parties feel that they win.”
“But isn’t that such great advice?” my mom’s friend in blue pastel says. “The other night Jim and I argued and argued over what movie to see. He wanted to see The Abyss and I’ve been dying to see Parenthood.”
“Oh, it’s so good,” my mom’s friend in red pastel says. (Yes, there is such a thing as red pastel.) “There’s a scene with Dianne Wiest and a vibrator that . . .”
“Shh!” my mom says. “The walls are thin. Judy can hear everything.”
“Well, at least she doesn’t have headphones on her ears all the time like Jonah,” pink pastel says. “He’s always listening to music, like he’s not present at all. And therein lies my problem with habit number four. I’m all for win-win in adult relationships, but with kids . . .”
“Well, children are the exception to everything,” blue pastel says. “Carl and I had this joke after Reagan made that speech about how we don’t negotiate with terrorists. We decided that in our home, we do not negotiate with teenagers.”
They all laugh, like this is funny, like comparing us to terrorists is somehow apropos. I hate that I use, or even think, words like apropos. That’s my mother’s influence. She says education is the only reason they break their backs to send me
to a school they can barely afford, but the other reason is that she worships rich people, wants to talk like them, and dress like them, and always be happy like she imagines they are. I look at her, smiling. She’s always smiling, even though I know that inside, there’s pain and sadness and yearning. She works as a teller at a bank and pretends it’s the most exciting job in the world. She pretends to be happy with my dad, with his dull accounting job, with the world in general, with everything except me. She wants me to be thinner, to smile more and be more pleasant, and to have girlfriends. In the friends-who-are-girls sense, not in the lesbian sense. Sometimes I want to shake her and be like, Look around, this world isn’t pleasant. Why do you have to act so pleasant? But obviously I don’t, ’cause that would just confirm what she already thinks about me. That I’m weird and aggressive and do things just to be different. That’s what she said to me once. “Judy,” she said, “life is so much easier when you fit in. All you have to do is choose to be interested in things others are interested in.” She also told me once that even though she loves her brother, he chose a difficult path. Those were her exact words. “He chose a difficult path, sweetie, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love him to death.” Then she said, “Sorry, bad choice of words at the end there.” But seriously, she thinks he chose to be gay. That he chose to get sick. That he chose to bury all his friends.
I turn back to the fabric. I’ve pretty much decided the yellow is it. I’ve been saving it too long. My parents were given this crazy expensive bottle of wine once by Art’s parents—it was an anniversary gift or something. They told me they were going to save it for a truly special day. That was six years ago. I can’t be like that. I wonder if all children want to be the opposite of their parents. Art does. I do. I guess if you had a really cool parent, maybe you’d want to be just like them. But the thing is, most parents are uncool.
I think of Reza. What does he like? Who does he want me to be? And as soon as I think that, I hate myself for it. If Uncle Stephen has taught me anything, it’s that you shouldn’t be who anyone else wants you to be. “People can smell inauthenticity,” he said. “Better to just be yourself, and easier. I was a queen when I met José, and he didn’t seem to mind.” I wish I could feel like that, like a queen. And Reza could be my king. Maybe we could go back to Iran and bring monarchy back to his country. Imagine all the amazing fabrics I’d have at my disposal there. I could probably make gowns out of peacock feathers and diamonds.
I have drifted so far away from figuring out what to do with this fabric, and there’s only one thing that helps me when I’m blocked. I head out toward the freezer, toward ice cream. On my way, I pass the ladies. They’ve moved on to habit number five now.
“Personally, number five is my favorite,” red pastel says. “I always try to understand first, and then be understood.”
“I started to get a little bored by this point,” pink pastel says. “Isn’t he just saying something we’ve known a long time? To listen. To have empathy.”
“There was a point at which I started to think that this is just a version of the Bible,” my mom says. Oh God, no. My mom brings the Bible into every book club conversation, like it makes her smart or something. She’s not even religious. She just read it in college. “Oh, hi, Judy!”
They all turn to me with way too much excitement, like Central Park pigeons that just spotted an almond croissant. Judy! Judy! Judy! They’re really friendly.
“Hi, everyone. Hi, Mrs. Wood. Hi, Mrs. Fontaine. Hi, Mrs. Foley.” I smile.
“You know, I’ve asked Judy to join our book club. I think the kind of literature . . .”
Literature. Mom refers to self-help as literature.
“. . . we read would be so useful for teenagers . . . ,” she continues.
Don’t you mean terrorists? I want to say. I have so many issues with her, but I try to be diplomatic. “I’d love to,” I say. “It’s just that Uncle Stephen and I always do our movie nights on Sundays, and you guys always meet for Sunday brunch, so . . .”
“How is Stephen?” pink pastel asks, her face suddenly contorted into something resembling an attempt at concern.
“He’s hanging in there,” my mom says, with a sad glance my way.
“Cancer is just so sad,” blue pastel says. I feel a surge of anger. I want to correct her, but I stop myself.
My mom just shrugs and says nothing. She doesn’t say the word AIDS, and neither do her friends. And she’s not alone. For almost a decade now, families have been lying about why their sons and brothers have been dying. Just go through the obituary section. Lots of pneumonia. Lots of cancer. I guess they’re not totally lies, but the reason these men could die of pneumonia or rare cancers is because of AIDS. I told Uncle Stephen how much I hated that my mom won’t say the word. But he told me to let it go. “Those are your mother’s friends. That’s her community. Let her have her process.”
“Well, Judy, if you’re watching a movie tonight, I highly recommend The Naked Gun. To finish my story about Jim and me fighting over what to see. We made the night a win-win by not going out to the movies, and renting The Naked Gun. We stayed in, ordered Chinese, and laughed and laughed.”
“Oh, thanks for the recommendation,” I say. “The thing is that Uncle Stephen doesn’t really screen movies made after the death of Judy Garland, unless they are somehow relevant to movies made before her death. Like we watched Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ’cause it was a sequel to the original, and Mommie Dearest is a frequent choice ’cause it’s about Joan Crawford.”
My mom grimaces a little. I think I’m being too weird for her. I probably shouldn’t speak around her friends.
“Mommie Dearest!” pink pastel says. “That movie was so scary. I still have nightmares about it.”
“Oh, we think it’s a comedy,” I say.
Shut up, Judy.
“A comedy?” pink pastel says. “It was about child abuse. What’s funny about child abuse?”
“Um . . .” I don’t have the answer. I know Uncle Stephen would be able to explain this. If he did, he would end up telling this woman that everything can be laughed at. Including child abuse. Including AIDS. Including them. And they wouldn’t like that. “I don’t know,” I finally say. “I guess it’s just so over-the-top.”
“Well, I had an alcoholic father,” pink pastel says. “And that kind of rage is over-the-top.” Her tone is sharp. She’s miffed. Not quite angry though. These ladies, like my mom, just get miffed. Anger is too hot for them.
I choose to end this unfortunate exchange by heading to the freezer. Before I can even open the door, my mom calls out to me in her most benign tone, “I made a delicious beet salad and some poached salmon. It’s in the Tupperware in the fridge.”
This, in case anyone in the room missed it, is my mother telling me not to open the freezer because that’s where my comfort resides. I open the fridge. I unlatch the Tupperware. I stare at the beet salad. The beets do look beautiful. That color would make a nice fabric. Then I remember I need to get into a creative zone. And only one thing helps with that. I take the pint of ice cream, pull a spoon out of a drawer, and head back to the room. “Have a great book club, everyone.” My mom gives me a miffed look. Maybe it’s about the ice cream. But just in case, I say, “I’m sorry about what I said, Mrs. Wood. I would never laugh about what you went through. And thank you for sharing that experience with me.”
My mom smiles, impressed.
“Apology very much accepted, sweetie,” pink pastel says. “I’m happy this was a learning experience for you.”
I force a smile and squeeze the ice cream container hard as I head into my room. It’s frozen, but I manage to dent it a little with the force of my grip. They go back to discussing habit number five. Except they made no effort to understand me at all. They just shamed me into apologizing and learning.
The ice cream works. It does every time. I don’t know what I’ll do if ice cream ever stops working. I guess I’ll have to experiment with oth
er desserts to fuel creativity. Eclairs, maybe. Or plain whipped cream. Joey Baker brought an empty can of whipped cream to school once to suck the air out of the can. Sadly, that is indicative of the male population at our school. And believe it or not, I once had a crush on Joey because he was weird and different and really good at science, and because next to homophobes like Darryl Lorde and Saadi Hashemi, he was a prize. But Reza seems so different. It’s almost like this country has just lost it when it comes to raising decent guys. They’re either homophobic or self-involved or they suck on cans.
I spend the afternoon at the sewing machine. I’m inspired, and in some kind of zone. I put the latest Madonna in the CD player. Art’s obsessed with her. I love her too, though sometimes I wish she’d remained kinda pudgy like she was in the beginning. Overall, I think I prefer Debbie Harry, ’cause she’s stayed true to her downtown roots, whereas Madonna seems all about conquering the mainstream. I won’t care about the mainstream when I design. I’ll be happy just designing for the freaks. But no concerns about Madonna’s thinness or mainstream cred is gonna stop me from listening to Like a Prayer ad nauseam, because it’s undeniably brilliant. That song she sings with Prince comes on. It’s called “Love Song.” As I sew, I think that this would be my dream. To someday have a guy like Reza who loves me, and supports me, and dances to love songs with me. And to be a wildly successful fashion designer who makes clothes that people like Prince and Madonna wear.
My mother enters right after I put the outfit on. It’s turned into a bright-yellow dress, which I pair with black-and-white striped leggings and a chunky black necklace Art got me for my birthday last year. “You were hard at work,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was a good day.” I would ask her opinion, except I know that if she’s in an honest mood, she’ll say I look like a circus clown, and if she’s in a conflict-averse mood, she’ll tell me I look great! in a fake voice indicating that she’s lying.
Like a Love Story Page 6
