by E. F. Mulder
“Oh.” I thought the silly adventure had bonded us in a way beyond just sex.
“I’m kidding. You need to chill. Your bedroom this way?”
I nodded.
Ethan left a trail with his clothes, dropping a pair of white boxer briefs I wanted to inhale outside the door. He made himself at home, right in the middle of the queen-size bed. When he patted the space beside him, as invitation, I paused.
“Get naked.” Taking his rock-hard dick in his hand and slapping it against his rock-hard gut, Ethan gave orders like a judge with an X-rated gavel. “And get over here.”
I stripped down to boxers and a T-shirt and settled in next to him.
“Suck it.”
There was no sort of foreplay or romance about it, just hot, beautiful, hairless, stark naked Ethan waiting for me to take his dick in my mouth. It was a beautiful dick, so I was okay with that, really.
“Nice. You know what you’re doing. I thought you might be a virgin.” Ethan’s chest moved up and down when he reacted to his own joke. His erection bounced. Nothing jiggled, though. I was that proverbial bowl full of jelly when I laughed. I’d have to remember not to. I was pretty insecure on a daily basis. When it came to baring my body in close proximity to the perfection of Ethan’s, I was really a mess.
“You’re still not naked.”
“Oh.” Maybe it was my turn to get some attention. I slipped off my undershorts, but left on the shirt. Ethan never touched me anywhere except my hard-on, anyway. We came at the same time, after which Ethan cleaned himself with the top sheet and then got on his phone.
“Hey! I got the part!”
“Sweet.” I covered myself to my neck. “What kind of part is it?”
“I fly up to Vancouver tomorrow to play a comatose victim on a certain CW superhero show.”
“Comatose?”
“For the whole hour.”
“They came to New York to cast someone to sleep for an hour in Vancouver?” I smiled. “No offense.”
“They’ve been looking awhile. And I’m that good.” Ethan continued to type as he spoke. “You know what I think? I figure it’s not a bit part at all, and I’m going to turn out to be someone’s long-lost relative or something. I’m hitting up everyone I know and hashtagging all my posts with The Fl—with the name of the show.” He showed me the screen, as if typing the show title was less of an infraction than saying it. “Let my fame and adoration begin.”
“They don’t necessarily go together, you know.”
He wasn’t listening. “The show’s already trending. It always does the night it airs.”
“I’ll get to say I knew you when.” I doubted Ethan noticed my smile. He only had eyes for his screen.
“I won’t forget you when I’m a big star,” he promised. Maybe he’d been listening after all. “It starts tonight. Never underestimate the power of social media.” He was still clicking away. “The Twitterverse is a powerful thing.”
I rolled over and went to sleep not long after. Instead of Ethan, I cuddled against Red, who I’d coaxed in later. I cooked for all three of us the next morning, to send Ethan off to start his new celebrity life with a delicious breakfast he barely touched. I kissed him on the cheek, fairly certain that was the end. Chances were pretty good I’d only read about Ethan on the TV Guide website from that day forward, I figured. Maybe we’d at least converse on Twitter. Though within a couple of days, even that seemed unlikely. Ethan never responded personally to anything I wrote.
A TEASER came out concerning his new character the night of the show’s winter finale the next week. Ethan was still hashtagging every social media post he put up with the program’s title. I knew, because I was sort of stalking him. It was trending big-time. I’d watched the whole hour. Even though Ethan wasn’t going to be on until two weeks after the midseason premiere in January, he was in the previews, two weeks before Christmas. He must have been right about some sort of twist. Why else would a voiceover guy say something like “Amazing things happen, even while some sleep,” while they showed a picture of Ethan in bed? It certainly sounded ominous.
Did you see me? Finally, communication resumed, complete with the name of the show a few hundred thousand others had already hashtagged.
I did. Can’t wait until January!
I got over four thousand new followers in an hour! In a flash. Wink wink.
Nice!
That brings me to almost half a mil.
Yay.
Oh. You know what? Ethan wrote.
“You miss me? You’re sorry you haven’t called?” I said to the screen. Too bad I was too chicken to type it.
I never sent the vid and pics I took our day in the city, Ethan tweeted. I’ll post ’em, so you can see.
Me and the rest of the world, I wrote. Why private message me? It’s not like I’m special, or anything. What I actually sent, after repeatedly middle-fingering the backspace key, was a simple, passive-aggressive Cool.
KIT Noel. Merry early birthday.
“Keep in touch? There’s a kiss-off if ever I heard one, huh, Red?”
I’d have sworn my dog nodded.
I scrolled down the rest of my feed. Hung had posted another picture of his dog, lying with his head on a beautiful red silk pillow. I decided to hit him up.
He’s adorable.
I waited a while for an answer. The post was only seconds old. Still, none came. “Come here, Red. Let’s just turn in early.” The dog hopped up and we both settled in. I had no plans for the next day. A good fifteen hours of shut-eye seemed just the thing to feed into my depression concerning the way things had turned out yet again. At least I’d had sex this time, though I wasn’t really sure if that made it better or worse. “Maybe we’ll sleep the whole day away.”
Someone hadn’t gotten word of that plan. Only halfway through my fifteen hours, at 6:00 a.m., the phone started ringing.
“What, Ned?”
It was my brother, one of five. “Dude, you’re on TV!”
“No. Ethan was, but—”
“It’s definitely you… on Fox News.”
“Why in God’s name are you watching Fox News?” I asked.
Ned was the oldest, then me, a sister, Bree, another brother, Nathan, one named Noah, and then Nick. There’d been a long break after that, but then Mom and Dad had taken a trip to the Bahamas two Valentine’s Days in a row and brought forth Nyle and Betsy nine months after each.
“I’m watching Fox because you’re on it, twerp. Mom called me, after Grandma called her. Apparently, they have a lot of conservative friends who wake up dying to hear what’s on every Republican’s mind first thing in the morning. And you know what’s on their minds today? You. Elisabeth Hasselbeck called you a—”
“Elisabeth Hasselbeck isn’t on Fox anymore.”
“Oh. Well… some blonde who looks just like her called you ‘un-American.’ Un-American! Because of how much you hate Christmas.”
“How does she know I hate Christmas?”
“Umm… according to Blondie, you’re all over the Internet saying so—over and over and over again, going all ‘Fuck you’ to one of America’s national symbols of the holiday, and telling anyone who says Merry Christmas to kiss your ass? Dude!”
“Oh.” I collapsed back onto the bed. “Shit.” Reaching for my phone and the remote, I took a deep breath before hitting the app with the blue square and the white bird. “There’s a hashtag.”
“What is it?” Ned asked.
“#ChristmasHatesYouToo.”
“Hates who?” Ned asked.
“Me.”
“Morons.”
“Yeah. No.” I had to think about it. “I mean, if all they know of me is how I acted that day… the sign…. This other hashtag seems pretty appropriate.”
“#ChristmasHatesYouTooJerk,” Ned read, on Twitter now himself, apparently. “Well, that’s just not nice. As your only older brother, name-calling stops with me.”
“@BettyJoTheCatLady’s seems to sum up most people�
��s feelings. She went with #ChristmasHatesYouTooPieceofShitMotherfuckingLoserAsshole, which, I guess, also means the length of a hashtag is apparently only limited to the one-hundred-forty-character rule. She says I should be shot.”
“Damn, Noel. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. There’s always that fringe… those people. They’re the assholes. Some dude who gets pissed when another dude doesn’t like Beyoncé’s new song or some social media extremist throwing out death threats because of a comment on Fashion Police. Let it go.”
“It’s happening so fast, Ned. Faster than Ethan’s fame.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. I just…. Eighty-three notifications and counting… negative, hateful stuff I was tagged in, some retweeted hundreds of times with a thousand favorites or more already. Nice way to start the day—a thousand people telling me how awful I am. Someone posted the picture of me with the kiss mine sign and added a bull’s-eye and crosshairs. I’ve heard about this stuff with other people. I gotta tell you, it’s scary as hell when some Twitterverse commando sets his sights on you.”
“Someone has to get it was a joke. Someone’s gotta be on your side.”
“Here’s a guy on my side—and that’s even scarier. ‘You tell ’em,’ @JosephForGood writes. ‘Christmas is about God and right, not coffee cups and faggots.’ I don’t really get the connection there, and the next tweet down directs Joseph to the half-naked picture of Zac Efron I liked. After that, Joe calls me a pair of two-word, three-syllable phrases that rhyme, both activities I’ve partaken in and enjoy, even though I’m pretty sure he meant them as a slur.” I tried to stay slightly lighthearted, to put on a front for my brother.
“Cocksucker and…. What? Fucker…? Something fucker?”
“Skip it, Ned. I think I should just close down the account. Temporarily… or not.”
“Stay away from your Facebook page. They didn’t miss that either.”
“Then I’ll delete that too. Start a new one, maybe.”
“I always thought going viral would be kind of cool.” Ned said. “I guess there’s good reason the phrase conjures images of a communicable disease.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“On the bright side, where’s Chewbacca Mom today, or that boy who was going home from the dentist with a laughing-gas buzz… or the gorilla-cage mom?”
“I guess. Still, how do we go from me acting like a jerk ordering coffee to Noel Beebe is a disgrace to the country, who spits on our armed services and supports terrorism?”
“It does not say that.”
“Go back to Twitter. You’ll find it. I mean, even if you and Bree hadn’t served in Iraq…. Not that I get credit for what you two did.”
“You’ve done other things. You helped Drew and Natalie take care of Emily and Rose when Drew was over there and little baby Victoria was sick.”
Drew had been my best friend since our days in kindergarten. He was now a minister at our local nondenominational church. I called him Preacher Man, and caring for his wife and daughters while he was deployed was an honor.
“And what about that girl Betsy told us about last year, the one being harassed at her own high school, while the administration looked the other way?” Ned asked. “I still can’t believe almost half of her graduating class signed a petition to not allow her to wear her…. What’s it called?”
“A hijab.”
“Her hijab to graduation.”
“There’s mention of that… how I supported a Muslim but I don’t support Christ’s birthday.”
“It’s a perfect example, really, that proves some of these Internet trolls are ignorant and want to stay that way. I bet if we search hard enough, we’ll find that post from that guy who put up a tribute to Muhammad Ali, calling him the greatest ever, hoping he would rest in peace, because he was a true American hero, and then in his next one, went off on this girl from Betsy’s class. You remember what I’m talking about? I showed you.”
I did remember.
“It was a lovely sentiment, really, a nice thing, what he said about Ali, until he followed it the very same day with an ugly, ugly meme suggesting an innocent teenage girl go back where she came from, because people who thought like her had no business in his country. If only someone could teach the bonehead what irony means, but I’m sure he would be too thick-headed to grasp it.”
“Take it easy, Ned.”
“No. It’s that kind of ignorance I don’t get. And these are the people you’re dealing with, I’m sure.”
“Well, Betsy and her class stood up for Baseema, even though their schools were hundreds of miles apart. I couldn’t be prouder.”
“And who took her to the protests and joined in? Who started the local petitions? Who suggested Baseema and the kids on her side come take part in West Lake’s graduation?”
“Well, it didn’t come to that. Though damn right I wrote a petition, and I definitely circulated it on Twitter—and everywhere else I could.” I needed to pump myself up a bit after reading all the loathing others felt toward me.
“And people are using that against you now,” Ned reminded me.
“Well, I’d still do it again, despite @RodneyRohr telling me, You need to put the Christ back in Christmas, Noel. I’ll pray for you. That’s one of the nicer ones, actually. There are quite a few tweets in that vein—and really, it has nothing to do with religion.”
“Unlike the hubbub last year over cups.”
“Cups and Christianity…. I bet a lot of these people would rip down our church for not being churchy enough, because Drew preaches love, not rules and punishment and fear.” I looked at myself online, snarling at some teenager making minimum wage to serve beverages to the general, sometimes rude, public. “I get the irony. I do look like an angry radical Christmas hater, here. I fully admit I acted childish, but damn.”
“I wish I had been there to act stupid with you, to take some of the backlash. We all would have—will—stand right next to you, all the Beebes in a row.”
“I’m glad you weren’t there. I don’t want these Twitter vipers saying mean things about any of you. There.” I hit the Deactivate Account button on Twitter. “All gone. Facebook’s next. Am I still on TV?”
“’Fraid so.”
I flipped to channel 26.
“You know what, ignorant slob, you’re repulsive, an overindulged, arrogant, self-centered disgrace to God and the flag.” It was as if the irate old man was waving his bony finger right at me, as I looked at him and a shot of me in the corner of the screen, my two middle fingers digitally blurred. “Pure evil.”
“Turn it off, Noel.”
“This just might be the most despicable thing I have ever seen,” the TV reporter who’d recently spent months reporting on the presidential race said.
“Screw them, bro.”
“The videos were obtained from social media and tracked back to the account owned by Ethan Weston,” the Fox correspondent reported. “Weston claims to have just been cast on a popular primetime television series. The subject of the tirade has been identified as Noel Beebe.”
“Subject? They make me sound like a felon.”
“Even after last year, when America overwhelmingly decided it was wrong to take Christmas out of Christmas, Beebe allegedly stopped at several coffee shops over the course of the day on November twenty-ninth demanding nondecorated cups for his drinks. The battle lines have been drawn.” The reporter held up her morning joe, its vessel festooned in the colors of the season.
“Cups. Cups! Two years in a row. We walked right into it,” I shouted, causing Red to flinch beside me. “Sorry, bud.”
“This is Beebe at one shop,” the newswoman said, “and here is what he had to say.”
“I hate Christmas. Christmas sucks.” I cringed at the sound of my voice onscreen. Red lifted his head and tilted it side to side. “Do I really sound like that?”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Ned asked.
“I have to go,”
I told him, shutting off the TV.
“Go where?”
“Go hide.” I wanted to, literally. “Until this ridiculous nonsense all blows over.”
“I’m sure it will eventually,” Ned said. “Let’s hope it’s quick.”
3
A LITTLE over a week later, only four days before Christmas, as I reread Ethan’s posts about working up in Canada, I considered fleeing the country myself. Things hadn’t died down yet. In fact, they seemed to be getting worse. “You were a Hot Topic on The View this morning.”
Chatting with my mother made that obvious. “Oh geez!”
“What’s-her-name… Joy Barnhart… she said it’s okay to hate Christmas, but the new blonde one and that girl from She’s So Raving said you were a terrible human being.” My mom was as bad with show and movie titles as she was with the actors’ names. “Maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, not my Noelly. You’re a good boy.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry I’ve besmirched the family name. It started off as a joke,” I explained for the hundredth time. “Because of my birthday. There’s video out there somewhere of me saying that to three or four baristas. Why doesn’t someone show that?”
“Why don’t you?”
“I don’t have them.”
Ethan did. He’d removed the offending captures from Twitter, maybe for my sake, maybe for his own. I didn’t know if he’d taken them off Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Kik, or anywhere else the hip kids might be posting things these days. Steadfastly sticking to my edict, I hadn’t been in touch with him for a while. I’d be damned if I would beg for attention. On the other hand, getting the rest of the videos might help with damage control.
“I’ll talk to you later, Mom. I’m going to call Ethan and see if he’ll help.”
“Wait. Not so fast. Who’s Ethan?” she asked, a wink in her tone. “Someone you can bring home for Christmas?”
“We’re still having that?”
“Of course we are.”
“I’m still invited? You better hire security.”
“Very funny. You’ll come. You’ll bring Eli.”
“Ethan, but I wo—”
