Christmas Cole

by B. G. Thomas

  He’s gay, thought Javier. He’s hot for my picture.

  It was a photograph from his night as Naughty Santa. The photographer had been so hot for Javier he’d wanted to shoot him before the event began. He’d taken quite a few pictures, in fact, all making Javier look sexy as hell in his leather.

  The doctor looked up at Javier and then down at the photograph. He did it again. This time his eyes grew wide. “I… uh… well, when was this taken?”

  Javier reached out, flipped the photograph over, and pointed. There was a stamp that had the photographer’s name and information. It also had a date: December 20. Two nights before.

  The doctor’s eyes grew even wider. “My God.” He looked up again, and there it was. Pity.

  After that there was a great flurry of activity then. Suddenly things were a little more serious. He wasn’t just some delusional fag.

  They decided it might be a good idea to admit him into the hospital. He blanched at the idea, felt his stomach drop, but when he turned to Mark, his lover was bobbing his head rapidly.

  “Yes! That’s a good idea.” Mark turned to Javier. “Don’t you think so, darling?”

  “I don’t want to. I’m afraid,” Javier admitted and watched Mark stiffen.

  “They’ll take care of you here. Fix things. Make sure you’re normal again.”

  Normal?

  Looking back Javier couldn’t remember the order of events after that. It was all very confusing. He supposed he was in shock.

  Wait. What had he weighed? “One ninety-five.”

  (Nurse: “Did you see his picture?”)

  “Well, Mr. Torres….”

  (“Those muscles!”)

  “You weigh two-ninety now….”

  Javier’s mind reeled, and he staggered.

  (“…so sad…”)

  And didn’t those bitching nurses know he could hear them? He wasn’t even ten feet away.

  Allergies?

  “Just penicillin.”

  Have you come into contact with….

  “No! How could I have?”

  Blood draws.

  He felt like he’d had 127 of them.

  Words. Lots of words.

  Thyroid?

  Hypothyroid?

  Then discussions of Cushings and renal failure. Whole-body cellulitis. Ascites. Kidney failure.

  Skin looks fine, though. Doesn’t look swollen or stretched.

  Was he sure this happened overnight? Delusional? But the photograph! Was that date even right? Some people just don’t know when to push their plate away.

  Javier wanted to scream.

  He wanted to cry.

  He did cry.

  He would pull the sheets away and see that belly rising up like a hairy hill and he’d cry. It had taken him years to turn that stomach flat and tight. He’d get up to use the bathroom and see feet that weren’t his, but were. Toes plump, his toenails looked like they had shrunk.

  Fatso!

  Panzón!

  At some point Mark had left with promises to call and then rushed out.

  Javier was alone.

  At least he had his own room. No nosy roommate.

  But alone.

  Who could he call?

  No one!

  What would his friends say?

  He didn’t want anyone to see.

  Couldn’t let them see.

  On the phone that night: “Mark, I don’t want to be here.” Javier’s voice caught in a sob. “I want to come home.”

  “No. No, darling. You need to stay as long as they tell you. They’ll fix you up. Make you normal.”

  There was that word again.

  Normal.

  “But Christmas is Thursday,” he cried.

  “T-that’s days away, darling.”

  Javier heard a clinking come over the phone. Mark was drinking. Javier could even hear the damned ice.

  “But our trip!” Christmas in Rome. New Year’s in Greece. Starting a new year on the beaches of the ancient world.

  “We’ll talk about that in a day or so. They’ll fix you, darling.” Mark’s tone was indecipherable. Was it hysteria? Detachment? Alcohol? “They’ll use something to get rid of all that water. Get it out somehow. Yes.”

  “Mark, it’s not fluid. I poked myself.”

  “Don’t do that!” Mark shrieked.

  “It bounces back. I’m fat!”

  “Squeeze it out. They’ll just find a way to squeeze it out.”

  “Mark, it’s fat!”

  “Then lypo.” Now Mark’s voice was shrill, and Javier could hear the clinking of glass again. Mark was pouring more whisky. “I’ll call Dr. Jim, and he’ll just suck it all out.”

  Liposuction? The word jolted Javier. Could they suck it away?

  “But we have to do it before anyone sees…,” Mark said, the last word dissolving into a quiet snakelike hiss.

  Before anyone sssseessssssss….

  Can’t let anyone see.

  Mark didn’t answer his phone the next morning. He didn’t leave a message on Javier’s cell phone while he went through the day’s first round of tests. There was no answer from Mark during lunch, no messages from him during more tests, and no answer after that.

  Javier finally got him right before dinner.

  “Darling!” Mark’s voice was as cheerful as a Disney heroine. “How are you? Dr. Grant says he’s feeling confident so far that we don’t have to worry about”—Mark’s voice dropped to a whisper—“the Big-C.”

  Relief washed over Javier. Thank God! But then….

  “Wait… you spoke to Dr. Grant?” What about patient confidentiality? HIPAA? “You know Dr. Grant?” He’s gay, after all. Is there a well-off gay man that Mark doesn’t know?

  “Christ, no,” Mark said.

  But money talks, Javier thought. Of course it did. And would Mark want anyone he knew seeing Javier in this “condition”? Absolutely not!

  “I don’t think I’ll make it by this evening, Javy.”

  Javier felt his heart drop. Not make it? “But Mark….”

  “All the preparations, you know?”

  “Preparations?”

  “For my trip, you know,” Mark answered.

  Your trip? “Mark? Your trip?”

  “Uh—yes, darling. I spoke with Dr. Jim, and he says he can’t possibly do the work on you before the trip.”

  “Dr. Jim? Your plastic surgeon?”

  “Shhh,” Mark hushed him. “Darling, please, you don’t know who might overhear.”

  Javier felt the weird confusion begin again. Like being a little drunk or something. “I don’t understand, Mark.”

  “Dr. Jim says he can’t see you until the new year. Plus he said he can’t even consider liposuction before your doctors make sure there’s nothing going on with you.”

  The more Mark spoke, the drunker Javier felt. It was like the world was just fading away around him. Going on with me?

  “When all that’s been cleared, then he’ll take care of you.”

  Take care of me.

  There was a long pause where neither of them spoke. “And about the trip….”

  About the trip…. Javier caught his breath, and for some damned reason tears sprang to his eyes. “Yes, Mark?” he whispered.

  “Well, I’m sorry, darling, but you know it’s just not going to work out. You won’t be out of there for at least a couple of days. And the plane tickets are for tomorrow.”

  “No,” Javier moaned.

  “I know, darling.”

  Javier had dreamed of Rome since he was a child, and of Greece since he was nineteen and found out that in ancient times the country—that influenced the world forever after—had honored and respected men who loved men. “You’re canceling?” Javier all but wept.

  There was another pause, and Javier wondered if they’d been cut off.

  “Well, no, Javy. The trip is all paid for.”

  More confusion. Javier felt as though he’d fallen into a vat of cotton. “B
ut….”

  “Javy, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to stay there in the hospital a while.”

  “You’re… you’re going without me?”

  “Javy, you don’t want me to waste the tickets, do you? The reservations, the tours, it’s all been paid for.”

  “But this trip was for me,” Javier said. “You’ve been to Rome. You’ve been to Greece. This was all planned for me.”

  “And I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Next year when….”

  Mark’s voice faded away then, like everything else. Javier was aware that Mark was speaking, but the words were lost in a sudden and vivid memory.

  Two years before, Mark had gotten into a small accident in his Audi R8. A small dent in the rear quarter panel. Mark had been terribly upset, and every time he’d caught a glimpse of it the more distressed he’d become.

  To Javier’s shock, Mark had suddenly jumped into it, driven off with no explanation, and come home a few hours later with a new car. Repairs would have taken less than a week, but that didn’t matter. Mark hadn’t been able to stand “the ugliness” a moment longer. Rather than wait another hour, he’d just replaced the car. It wasn’t the first time Mark had done such a thing.

  That’s what he does, Javier thought.

  He replaces things.

  The world came back into focus, and Javier cut Mark off. “Are you taking him?” he asked.

  Mark skipped a beat. “Who, Javy?”

  Calmly, quietly, Javier said, “The whore.”

  Mark laughed. It was the fake laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” The one that reminded Javier of the mechanical sound of an electronic voice box.

  “Of course not,” Mark said. “Please.”

  But Javier knew that Mark was lying. Oh, maybe he wasn’t taking the boy he’d been fucking the other night, but it would be someone.

  Javier had been replaced.

  Was it permanent?

  Finding a new lover is worse than finding a new house or car.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  “You’re going alone?” Javier asked, amazed at how calm his voice was.

  “Well, of course not, Javy. I called around and found my friend Jamison was free. He and Taylor have split up, and he wants to get out of town.” Javier was amazed at how calm Mark’s voice was.

  Then again, no, he wasn’t. “I see.”

  “Don’t worry, darling, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Yes,” Javier said. “I know you will.” And if Mark was true to his word, if Javier wasn’t already replaced, if there was some miracle and all his fat went away, Mark would make it up to him. If.

  “Javy, you don’t want to go, really. I knew your heart was set on this, but Greece, the nude beaches. The men. The gorgeous naked men. You don’t want to go the way you are now, do you?”

  And of course Mark was right.

  The idea horrified Javier.

  His fantasy of striding confidently down the beach, with the near-perfect ability to choose the men—any man—he wanted would not become a reality. Not now.

  Not in this hideous body.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t feel all but broken.

  “I’ll try to call before I leave tomorrow morning,” Mark was saying.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to sign off now, darling.”

  “Yes,” Javier said. Then, just to see what Mark would say, he said something neither of them had said in a long, long time. “I love you, Mark.”

  There was a strange sound on the other end of the phone. Javier couldn’t be sure what.

  “Thank you,” was Mark’s only reply, though.

  There was a silence then, and just as Javier was about to click off—he was sure Mark already had—Mark suddenly asked, “What happened, Javier?”

  What happened? Javier asked himself. Why, how many different things could Mark mean by that? “What happened?” Javier said aloud.

  “How… how did you…?”

  Oh, Javier thought. “Get fat?”

  Mark paused again. “How did you get this way? Do you know?”

  “I have no idea, Mark. I wish I did. God, I wish I did.”

  They signed off, and later, just as Javier was drifting off, without warning, the answer came swimming up out of the depths with an abruptness that made Javier sit up in bed, gasping.

  Who are you, Javier?

  Have you forgotten who you were?

  Have you forgotten your dreams?

  I think it is time you remembered.

  Her stormy eyes….

  Bruja!

  A force to be reckoned with.

  Javier didn’t know if Mark called before leaving for Rome. He checked himself out of the hospital early the next morning—despite pleas and protests.

  There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing medical. Javier knew that.

  He knew that he knew that he knew.

  Javier took a taxi home, keyed in the code at the gate, and had the driver take him to the door. He gave the man a fifty-dollar tip from Mark’s “cookie jar.”

  The house was empty, of course. Javier knew that it would be. Mark was on a plane, probably already half drunk on martinis, his favorite flying drink. Gin, ice cold, vermouth only waved over the glass, three olives.

  “He needs to get his vegetables, after all,” Javier said aloud (it was one of Mark’s favorite jokes), and he was startled by the echo. It seemed to fill the whole world.

  It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been alone in the house. How many times had Mark been off on some business trip, some buying spree, in the last ten years? Hundreds?

  For a long time Javier just stood in the black-and-white marble-tiled foyer. Then he began a slow walk through the house. Memories of the first days he’d seen the rooms swept over him, and how he’d marveled over it all.

  He stopped and looked at cut-glass decanters, carpets and rugs from all over the world, the authentic Greek statue of a beautiful young man (Greece… from Greece, dammit…), and the Sean Scully over one of the fireplaces. He’d thought the painting stupid when he’d first seen it. Little rectangles of thick oils in unattractive colors. Then, to be considered refined like Mark and his friends, he’d decided he liked it! Now he saw it for what it was: ugly. He’d been one of the king’s subjects, telling his liege that his clothes were gorgeous when in fact he was naked.

  He was living in a museum. Despite huge windows designed to bring in light, despite rooms painted in golds and oranges, or beautiful rooms of dark mahogany and roaring fireplaces, he was living in a joyless mausoleum.

  Finally unable to stand it any longer, the enormity of the soulessness of it all, Javier got into his car and drove away. He had to escape. He wound up driving to the mall. He needed clothes after all. He couldn’t live every day in a single set of gray sweats.

  It was Christmas Eve, of course, and that meant the chaos of last-minute shoppers, but what choice did he really have?

  It was better than the alternative that was hiding just under the surface of his thoughts.

  He went to a “big men’s” store, and he didn’t bother to look at even one rack of clothing. He went straight to the man at the counter and gave him a quick look over. Yes, perfect. The man was big (fat), but his clothing worked. The colors, the lines, the cut, something….

  “I need your help,” Javier said.

  “Of course, sir.” The man eyed Javier’s sweatsuit. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need clothes. Lots of them. Nice clothes.” He paused, thought up a lie. “I don’t know shit about what to wear. People make fun of me. A friend tells me with the right colors and cut, I can look better.”

  “Well, of course, sir. But there’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”

  Javier’s eyebrows shot up. The man lied too, but not as well as Javier.

  “Let’s not bullshit.” Javier pulled out first his wallet, then his (Mark’s) platinum card. “I’m not worried about price, and I need a lot of
clothes. Dress up to dress down. Suits to jeans. Shoes, if you have them.”

  The man’s entire demeanor changed. Had he just heard a “ka-ching”? He must work on commission, and this was Christmas Eve. Had he been pissed that he had to work today? Not now, I’ll bet.

  “Of course, sir!” The man came from behind the counter and quickly but smoothly moved Javier through the store. Soon, with a little help, Javier had enough clothes for weeks. Suits, sweaters, slacks, dress shirts, casual shirts, socks of every hue and color (including white), and even jeans and T-shirts. The man found him two pairs of dress shoes and gave him advice to pick up sneakers at JCPenney.

  In the dressing room, Javier tried on the clothes with his back to the mirror, not looking until shirts were buttoned and tucked in, pants zipped up. When he finally turned for the first time, it was to a flood of mixed emotions.

  He wanted to cry.

  From the proof before him that he was still big?

  That nothing had changed?

  From the fact that clothes did make the man? Somewhat? Did somehow make him look better than that nightmare of his naked body in Mark’s mirror?

  Javier refused to think about it another minute. He just tried on the clothes. The man had known his size perfectly (big!), and Javier wound up buying almost everything. When he signed the bill, he didn’t even look at the total. The man did get Javier help in taking his purchases to the car (a young man who had been stunned by the Z4). Javier tipped him a twenty.

  Then he went back into the mall and got himself two pairs of the most expensive tennis shoes he could find. He didn’t shop for them at JCPenney. While he walked the mall, he tried to avoid even looking at stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, with their giant pictures of practically anorexic models. Why make things worse?

  (And how funny that now he considered the models anorexic.)

  Then, exhausted from walking, he decided to have lunch. His knees were killing him (because I’m fat). He couldn’t believe how much they hurt. How winded he was.

  Javier bought a salad at the big food court and was startled to find that it was hard to sit at one of the tables. The chairs were attached, and his new (old) belly pressed uncomfortably against the table’s edge. He glanced around to see if anyone noticed, saw a young lady look away, shaking her head. But then he noticed others who were easily as big as he was, some bigger.