The Family We Make

by Dan Wingreen

  “It’s fine.” Spencer smiled quickly and pulled his hand back. The last thing he wanted was to be pitied for shit that happened more than a decade ago. “So that’s what I thought journalism was, you know? Exposing corruption and scumbags and making them face public ridicule and all that. Except, as it turns out, along with a whole bunch of really boring research and actually writing articles—which is a whole other nightmare—no one’s really interested in exposing anything that doesn’t back up the worldview they’ve already decided on.” He ate another piece of his chicken. “I did this project once where we had to take a controversial issue and write an article supporting or opposing one side of it, and I apparently picked the side the professor didn’t agree with because he went off on me in front of the whole class. Said I was an idiot and the only place I’d ever be able to get a job as a journalist was on a ‘crazy conspiracy blog.’ Totally turned me off the whole thing. The idea of having to write what someone told me even if I disagreed with it was just…no. I think I’d rather shoot myself.”

  He shot Tim another smile to show he was joking, mostly because his mom always took him way too seriously when he said things like that.

  “So, you went from journalism to teaching?”

  “Sort of.” Spencer smirked. “This whole thing happened a month or so into the semester, and I couldn’t just switch or drop classes without wasting all my parents’ money, so I stayed around and did every single project and report we had on subjects I knew would piss him off.”

  Tim snorted and shook his head. Spencer grinned.

  “And it worked too! The guy had no fucking chill at all. He never caught on that I was just messing with him either. Not even when I handed in a practice article on how George W. Bush would have been completely justified in retroactively awarding himself the Medal of Honor for his military service in the National Guard after he got elected president.”

  Tim coughed. “Jesus…”

  “I know! To this day I still have no idea what the worst part of that was for him: that he had to read it or that the old hippy had to actually defend the military when he was tearing it apart in front of the class.”

  Tim chuckled. “Did they think you were being serious?”

  “The other students?” Tim nodded. Spencer shrugged. “Probably not. Either way they obviously never said anything to him. Personally, I like to think I wasn’t the only one appalled by the way he taught his class. The only other option is that everyone there was as stupid as he was, and that would just be depressing.”

  Spencer took a drink, marveling about how easy it was to talk to Tim. He usually hated being the center of attention unless he was teaching, and he doubly hated talking about himself, but with Tim the words wouldn’t stop. Spencer didn’t really want them to. He wanted to share himself with Tim—or, at least stories about his life, he corrected with a small flush. Sharing himself was not a first-date activity, no matter how much certain parts of his body were loudly campaigning for a rule change.

  “Anyway, after he took great delight in informing me that I failed his class, and I took even greater delight in giving him an apoplexy by telling him it didn’t matter because I was switching majors anyway, I ended up deciding to give teaching a try. Because if he could be a tenured professor, then teaching couldn’t be that hard. Plus, I really liked the idea of being a more successful teacher than he was.”

  “So…you decided to become a teacher out of spite?”

  Spencer laughed. “Yes. Well, no. Well, maybe. Partially. And mostly I picked literature because I liked to read and thought it would be easy.” He scoffed. “Shows what I knew.”

  “I’d always wondered about that, actually,” Tim said. “Everyone always likes to bring out the ‘those who can’t do, teach’ quote, but teaching always seemed really hard to me.”

  “Eh.” Spencer waggled his hand. “The teaching itself isn’t really hard once you’ve got your lesson plans all sorted out. The first year where you’re settling in and figuring out what you need to do is the worst. But, like, taking the classes and getting the degree? That shit is hard. And, dear God, the Shakespeare. You know what the worst part of being a literature teacher is? You can never escape Shakespeare.” He took a bite, and around a mouthful of food added, “I’ll take Hemingway’s simplicity over Shakespeare’s flowery poetics any day.” He swallowed. “It’s so much easier to analyze someone’s writing when they don’t actually say anything.”

  Tim laughed, not even a little put off by Spencer’s awful table manners—something that definitely wouldn’t have been true in reverse. “You know, for a literature teacher you really seem to hate classic lit.”

  “Not at all. I love classic lit; gimme some Lovecraft or Robert Howard and I’m set. I just hate the crap they make us teach. Especially Shakespeare. And Steinbeck, but mostly Shakespeare. Especially Romeo and Juliet. I have no patience for stupid characters. Hamlet is okay though. I usually have them read it at the end of the year so we can watch Lion King when we’re done. Kind of an apology for putting up with me for ten months.”

  “The Lion King?”

  “Hell, yeah. That shit’s basically Hamlet anyway. Usually the principal gets pissy about showing movies, but as long as I make them do a write-up about the thematic similarities between the film and the play, he lets me do it. It’s pretty much the only thing they let me teach that I actually enjoy.”

  Tim cocked his head, studying Spencer with a kind of passive intensity, if such a thing could exist. Spencer would have almost said it seemed like Tim was hanging on his every word, if he thought he was being even remotely interesting. “You don’t get to choose what you teach?”

  Spencer grimaced. “I can to a point, but not really. It’s all state standards and teaching to pass tests instead of teaching kids how to think. I take every inch of wiggle room I have, but at the end of the day there are still too many hard guidelines I have to follow. It’s like a microcosm of college. All ‘that’s too controversial,’ or ‘that doesn’t teach the right values,’ or, my personal favorite, ‘isn’t that author problematic?’ Like a little bit of Orwell or Bradbury or, God forbid, Rand is going to melt kids’ brains or turn them into raging anarchists or something. You should have seen the looks I got when I wanted to put Animal Farm back on the summer reading list. Like I’d just walked in with shit smeared on my face and asked for a kiss. Part of me wished I’d waited until I got tenure and brought in a copy of Mein Kampf, just to see if anyone actually took a swing at me.”

  “You have a copy of Mein Kampf?” Tim asked, frowning and thankfully not commenting on Spencer talking about covering himself with shit while they were eating dinner. It’s amazing I don’t have more people begging to date me, truly.

  “Of course not. But even if I did, so what? What’s so bad about reading something from a different viewpoint? Especially something I don’t agree with?” Spencer made a token effort to cut his rant off there for the sake of first-date harmony, but Tim had hit on a subject he felt very strongly about, and he would have had a better chance of putting the moon in a dress and marrying it in Vegas. “How the hell are people supposed to confront abhorrent ideas if they don’t learn about what those ideas actually are? Sticking your head in the sand and pretending they don’t exist is stupid, and trying to make it a punishable offense to mention them just makes them mysterious and appealing and turns them into forbidden fruit. Every idea should be placed under a harsh light, so there are no shadows and no hidden corners, and then let people decide for themselves what to believe.”

  “But what about dangerous ideas?” Tim asked.

  “No such thing. Ideas aren’t dangerous; it’s what we do with ideas that are dangerous. And if I’ve learned anything from being a parent, it’s that you can’t just tell someone ‘this is bad’ and have them listen. You have to tell them why it’s bad and, sometimes, let them do it anyway and figure it out for themselves.”

  “I don’t know…I don’t really think kids are mature en
ough to…I don’t even know what the word is. Not ‘think critically.’”

  “Please, most adults can’t think critically.”

  Tim snorted. “Still, it’s not the word I want to use.”

  “Fine. Parse, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look,” Spencer said, gesturing with a particularly salty french fry, “I’m not saying we should make fourteen-year-olds read, like, The Anarchist’s Cookbook or something, but a little intellectual diversity can go a long way to teaching them how to think. And maybe high school isn’t even the right place for what I want. But college? God, I almost wish we were living in the sixties or seventies just to see a college atmosphere where debate and thought was encouraged by students instead of stifled. It was bad enough back when I was in college, but the shit I read about now is just depressing. It breaks my heart to think of how horribly unprepared most of these kids are to encounter the real world.” The only reason he had enough self-control to stop there was because he could hear his voice rising with every sentence. Social philosophy on the first date. Way to keep things light and fun, you idiot. He shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go into a whole thing.”

  “No, don’t apologize.” Tim hesitated. “It’s…nice to see you so passionate. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I disagree. It’s not something I ever thought about. All the problems I had with my teachers weren’t really about what they taught…” He cleared his throat. “I’m curious though…you never really said why you became a teacher, and it seems like you hate it just as much as journalism. Actually, it seems like you have a lot of problems with the whole concept of teaching.”

  Spencer snorted. “Have you ever seen something that was so obviously broken, and it drives you crazy every time you see it, and you try to tell people, but nobody who can do anything about it believes you until all you wanna do is either smash the shit out of it so you never have to look at it or fix it yourself?”

  Tim glanced away. “Yes.”

  “There you go.” Spencer spread his hands. “Turns out it’s a lot easier to be a teacher who teaches right than it is to destroy the entire American public education system.”

  Tim huffed out a laugh. “I’ll take your word on it.”

  They shared a small grin.

  Silence fell between them after that as Tim went back to eating, but it was a surprisingly comfortable silence considering the heaviness of what they’d been talking about. Spencer watched Tim as he ate, swooning slightly over his table manners and the way he used his napkin instead of just letting food get everywhere until he finished eating. Few things grossed Spencer out more than a messy eater, and seeing Tim wiping his face and chewing with his mouth closed very nearly turned him on.

  “So,” Spencer said a few minutes later, “can I ask you something now?”

  Tim smiled, though there was a nervous edge to it Spencer wasn’t used to seeing. “Sure.”

  Spencer chewed the inside of his mouth as he tried to work up the courage to ask about something that had been weighing on his mind for a while. “Does it bother you that I’m old?” he blurted out.

  This time, Tim choked on his food.

  “Shit,” Spencer said, wringing his hands together, “sorry! Sorry!”

  “S’okay,” Tim coughed out.

  “Take a drink,” Spencer said even though Tim was already gulping down half his soda. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Should I smack your back?”

  Tim cleared his throat after downing half his glass and raised an eyebrow. Spencer’s cheeks started to burn.

  “Sorry,” Spencer said again, wincing. “Dad mode.”

  Tim shook his head, smiling, if still a bit red from the coughing. “Don’t worry, it’s cute.”

  Spencer stuck out his tongue.

  “I thought you liked when I called you cute,” Tim teased.

  “That was thirty minutes ago. Things change fast around here.”

  “I could have made a joke about calling you ‘Daddy’ instead.”

  “Ha! I’m like half your size. If anyone’s calling anyone ‘Daddy,’ it should be me.” Tim’s eyes widened at the exact same moment Spencer’s brain caught up with his mouth. “Oh my God. Jesus fuck, just…please ignore me.”

  Miracle of miracles, Tim did exactly that. “So…you, uh, asked about our age difference?”

  Spencer grimaced. “You don’t need to answer. Actually—”

  “No, I want to.” Tim shifted in his chair. That can’t be good body language. “It…does bother me, but not in the way you think,” he added quickly, no doubt correctly interpreting the expression of panic on Spencer’s face.

  “Okay,” Spencer said, mostly to himself. Tonight had been going so good, so of course there had to be something to bring him down. But that was okay. He could deal. Tim had put up with so much from him already and hadn’t so much as flinched. Spencer could handle Tim having a problem with his age.

  Tim sighed and then reached across the table and took Spencer’s hand. “I knew you’d take that the wrong way.”

  “There’s a right way to take it?”

  “Spencer…”

  Spencer shook his head and gave Tim’s hand a squeeze. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” Tim said, lacing their fingers together. It was a bit awkward holding hands across a table, but even this small bit of contact soothed something inside Spencer.

  “Okay,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Hit me.”

  Tim’s smile was as fond as it was brief. “It has nothing to do with your age,” he said, giving Spencer’s fingers a reassuring squeeze. “You’re only six years older than me; that’s not old.”

  Spencer disagreed—he was, after all, way closer to thirty than Tim—but he didn’t protest out loud. Something about the way Tim spoke, the slight hesitations and the inconsistent eye contact, told him, for whatever reason, this wasn’t easy for Tim to talk about. It was even more obvious because Tim had been nothing but smooth and sure of himself all night so far, and the last thing Spencer wanted to do was make this about his own insecurities when it seemed like Tim might be having some of his own.

  “It’s…” Tim grimaced. “This is going to make me sound like such a child, but I’m kind of jealous of how put together your life is. You’re only six years older than me, but you’re raising a son, and you have a stable career you’re really good at. You’re pretty much exactly where I wanted to be when I got out of college.”

  “You wanted to have a teenage son when you got out of college?”

  Tim let out an exasperated sigh. “You know what I mean.”

  Spencer bit back any other comments he could have made. Now wasn’t the time for sarcasm. “Okay, but…you know my life isn’t perfect, right? You’ve been there for a few of the less than nice bits. There’s no reason to be jealous.”

  The very thought of someone like Tim being jealous of a human mess like Spencer was even more confusing than algebra.

  “And,” he added when Tim didn’t say anything, “at the risk of sounding even older than I am, you’re, what, twenty-two? You probably just got out of college. Almost no one gets a career right out of college. Fuck, it took me over a year to get hired once I got my degree, and even longer to get tenure.” He gave Tim another squeeze. “There’s nothing wrong with not having your life together at twenty-two.”

  Tim frowned. Several times he opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but each time he closed it again without saying anything. Spencer’s insides twisted, exactly like they did when Connor was distressed, and every inch of Spencer’s being yearned to fix everything.

  “And maybe what you wanted to do in college isn’t what you want to do anymore, and that’s okay too,” he said, warming up to this whole comforting thing. Of course, he was basically just parroting the speech his mom gave him when he started talking about switching majors from journalism, but it had worked on him so maybe it would help now too. “What did you go to college for any
way? I don’t think I ever asked.”

  “I want to be a child psychologist.”

  “That sounds fucking perfect for you. Uh. Unless you really don’t wanna do it anymore, then I’m sure there’s something even more perfect—”

  Tim cut him off with a short laugh. “No, I definitely still want to do it…” He glanced down and gave the table an awed little smile. “I…still want to do it. And you’re right. It is perfect for me…”

  “Awesome.” Spencer grinned. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “You know,” Tim said softly, “I have absolutely no idea.”

  *

  The rest of their dinner passed in a daze for Tim, which was ironic, because for the first time in months he felt like he was finally thinking clearly. All because of an offhanded comment from the amazing, beautiful man sitting across from him. So what if Professor Carmichael was a scumbag? Who cared if Rudy didn’t want to be with him unless he was making money? What did it matter if Carmichael had slandered him to every professor he knew who ran a doctorate program? There were other schools, other professors who had never even heard of Edward Carmichael. Tim had his bachelor’s. He’d earned his degree, through years of hard work and sleepless nights and endless hours of second guesses and fears of not being good enough. Nothing was stopping him from going to another school and trying again. He might not even have to go too far away from Chicago. Which…well.

  He smiled down at Spencer walking next to him on the sidewalk.

  There were very good reasons to want to stay in Chicago.

  The restaurant Spencer had taken them to was close enough to his house to walk back, and that’s exactly what they decided to do. Tim was grateful. Not only because it gave him time to process, to get used to having motivation and drive again, but because he was nowhere near ready to say good night. He wanted to wring out every possible moment with this wonderful man who’d given him back a part of himself he’d thought was gone forever with nothing more than an awkward, utterly endearing attempt to be supportive. He wanted to hold Spencer’s hand and take in the sights and sounds of a city that felt more like home than New York ever had without his senses dulled by apathy and self-pity.