by Tim Anderson
“This is great!” Matt enthused, grinning widely and awkwardly sucking down his soda through the tiniest of cocktail straws. I looked at him with an expression that Drex would probably describe as the kind you have “when your cat shits in your mouth.”
As the queens cycled through their sets, I sat there stewing, soaking in the exquisite performances that got at the essence of the bitter and frothing hurt, rage, and irritation that I myself was feeling deep down to my very core. I didn’t have the makeup budget or taffeta connections to try my hand at acting out onstage myself, so I was living through the queens. Crystal DeCanter, performing a tragic and glorious “I Fall to Pieces,” knew my pain. Juan Nightstand was basically lip-syncing “Breakin’ in a Brand New Broken Heart” directly to me. And Miss Diagnosed’s “What About Love?” ended the way that song should always end—with a single hand clasping a purple wig and holding it triumphantly in the air.
The performances gave me a second wind of sorts. I’d cycled through the stages of rejection—denial, anger, homicidal mania, hating Matt’s stupid face, and acceptance. Of course, I wasn’t even that into Matt. He was way too nice. But still, it’s terrible not to be wanted, especially by someone who, his cheesy grinning notwithstanding, looked like he could do porn. But somehow, the therapy of the drag show had given me the strength to just say fuck it, let’s try to have some fun tonight, OK, Tim?
“Hey, you wanna go to Boxers?” I said after the show was over. “It’s still early.”
“Sure, what’s that?” He was still excited. “Is it gay?”
Yes, Boxers was gay. It was a small pub above a muscle gym back toward Chapel Hill, and it was alleged to have some pretty sexy bartenders. This made Matt more excited.
“YEAH, LET’S GO THERE!”
So twenty minutes later we were sitting at a mellow bar, sipping on sodas, and watching the tight-shirted bucks behind the counter do their thing.
“I like him!” Matt whispered excitedly, staring at the one with the tattoo of Divine on his shoulder. “How about you?”
“Hmmm.” I considered. “You know, that drag queen that did ‘I Touch Myself’ had amazing arms. Those biceps were bigger than a baby’s head.”
“Huh,” he said. “Are you attracted to drag queens?”
“Not sexually.”
It was a slow night, and there were only about five or so lonely sad sacks there, but it took only a few minutes for the aging sexual predators among them to gravitate toward my new gay friend Matt and start asking him penetrating questions such as “What you drinking?” or “Are you a model?” or “You here alone?”
None of these dudes really stood a chance, not even with me (probably). While Matt was fending off the advances of someone’s crazy uncle, I went to the men’s room to either throw up or cry, I’d make that decision when I got there. As soon as I’d gotten to Boxers I’d lost all the mojo I’d built up during the drag show and just kind of wanted to go home and watch a movie. Didn’t we still have Hannah and Her Sisters out from VisArt?
I returned to my stool next to Matt and saw that he was talking to a good-looking gentleman who must have just walked in and walked directly up to Matt, because he wasn’t there before. I sat there for a few minutes trying to get some scraps from their conversation. I heard the words “fun,” “exciting,” “single,” “drag,” “just,” “friend,” and “fun” again.
Ahem.
“Oh, Tim, this is Richard! He lives in Chapel Hill, too!”
I arranged my face into the approximation of a smile and shook Richard’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Richard.” He nodded. I sat back on my stool, and they continued talking while I watched the bartender make drinks. A few minutes later they both stood up. Matt looked at me with a sheepish grin and said, “Hey, Tim, Richard and I are gonna go, OK?”
“OK, sure,” I said, sucking down my Diet Coke.
“I’m so glad we did this!” he said, shaking my hand. I believed him. He looked pretty glad. That we did this. Whatever it was.
I raised my empty glass and said, “I am, too; we’ll have to do it again sometime.” We must never do this again. “It was nice to meet you, Richard.” Richard, go eat a turd.
They left and, after seeing them drive off, I made my own exit, saying good-bye to all of my fans at the bar.
On the drive home I felt the familiar tingle in my fingertips indicating a plummeting blood sugar. Oh, right, I remembered. I haven’t eaten all night. This brought the first real smile to my face for the first time in hours.
I ended the night on the couch. But I was surrounded by friends. It was me, Hannah, her sisters, Mary Jane, and my dear friend Little Debbie.
Sometime during spring semester I started to, discreetly, puke my guts up at least once a day. Anxiety and self-loathing levels having reached a crisis point, I found myself in a perpetual state of low-level panic—stomach churning, armpits soaked, heart racing. Vomiting became my body’s way of exorcising the demons and calming itself down, however temporarily. The first time it happened it was not discreet, though. I was in my British Drama class and we were discussing The Duchess of Malfi. I started feeling a nervous nausea and my gut started wrenching in the middle of our discussion of the theme of unequal marriage, and by the time we got around to examining the play’s depiction of the relationship between female sexuality and tragic violence, I had to politely excuse myself, my hand gripped tightly over my mouth as vomit seeped through my fingers, calmly depart the room, quietly pad down the hallway to the men’s room, and then noisily hurl my guts into the closest porcelain receptacle, which in this case was a sink so shallow that puke ricocheted back onto my face. I then splashed myself with water, toweled dry, and thankfully rejoined my class in time for the discussion about incest.
But as this upchuck event developed into something that happened at least once a day, I became more deft at hiding from whoever was around me that I was retching—at a party, in class, on the quad, in the library, at Pepper’s Pizza—by putting my hand in front of my mouth and pretending I was yawning or clearing my throat. (Because, kids, it’s better to make someone think that they’re boring you than that you are about to vomit on their face.) Then I would politely excuse myself and visit the nearest restroom to spew in private like a civilized person.
So all spring and summer there was a pretty steady stream of upchuck spurting out my nose and mouth at inopportune moments, but mostly I took it in stride. Mainly because I spent an increasing amount of time at home smoking weed, taking extra insulin so I could eat more Twinkies/Russell Stovers/Rolos, and watching Woody Allen movies that I’d checked out from the Undergraduate Library after cutting out of class early. That way, if I was compelled to purge while Woody and Diane Keaton discussed pantheism or tried to assassinate Napoleon, the bathroom was right there, and I could retch to my heart’s content.
The backdrop for this constant tossing of cookies was a revelation I’d had since coming out: that just because you finally step out of those closet doors doesn’t mean the world owes you a boyfriend, a fuck buddy, a pity lay, or even a gay pen pal. It just doesn’t. Worse, it doesn’t even mean you are going to finally feel like you fit in after all these years. I felt as if I was a minority of a minority. Because, let’s face it, I was really a terribly unsophisticated gay guy. I hated shopping, hated house music, had no design sense, and lacked the necessary ability that pros like RuPaul, Gore Vidal, and Oscar Wilde had to deliver an effortless insult while simply exhaling. I did, however, throw the best self-pity parties in town. So that’s what I did, constantly. Only occasionally did I venture out to the gay bar with my dismissive, terribly judgmental face, where I would stand on my own, leave on my own, go home, cry, and want to die, just as it was foretold in the book of The Smiths, chapter How Soon Is Now, verse 6.
On July fourth, I went to a keg party and couldn’t even bring myself to get excited about bountiful free beer. I left before the fireworks even started, went home, put on Love and Death again, and smoked m
yself into oblivion. Then I went to the bathroom, threw up saliva, and went to bed. Then I got back up, threw back up, and went back to bed. Then I punched the wall, got up, fought off the advances of a terrifyingly large cave cricket in my bed, then went and threw up air and stomach acid, then went back into my room, punched the wall again, and decided I couldn’t get back into that bed until that cave cricket was dead. I rolled up an Alternative Press magazine and slammed it down on the bed, but the cricket had quick reflexes. Also, whenever it jumped to get out of the way, it jumped straight at me, sending me into paroxysms of sissy terror. One time I almost had it, but then it slipped into the crevice between the bed and the wall.
I looked at the clock; it was four thirty. I went back to the bathroom and was shocked to realize I didn’t need to throw up again. Hey, things are looking up. Since I was supposed to go see my parents in Raleigh the next day, I decided I’d just go ahead and get on the road, arrive while they were still asleep, and slip into my old bedroom to get some cave-cricket-free shut-eye.
Because I’d thrown up so much in the past few hours, I had nothing left in my stomach, so I ate some breakfast—a bagel with a side of ramen noodles. But it would only be about a half hour before this meal once again saw the light of day.
Flying down I-40, I saw a dead deer on the shoulder, and as I passed it, the head of a vulture popped up out of the trough of the deer’s entrails and looked around.
Yeah, I thought. That seems about right.
Soon I felt the familiar churning of my guts and pulled off to the side of the road. I got out of the car and hurried over to the other side, then assumed my regular position and started hurling. As I relieved myself of the burden of my breakfast, my eyes watering and my limbs sprouting tight little goose bumps, a police car pulled up behind my car with its lights going round and round.
Yeah, I thought. That seems about right.
I stood up from my vomit stance and turned to face the officer walking toward me.
“G’mornin’,” he said. He had an excellent ’70s moustache. As I wiped spew from my mouth with my arm, I realized that I was now in the least sexy porno ever.
“Hi,” I said.
“Having problems?”
“Uh, yeah, just some stomach issues.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Oh, no, officer. Not at all. I’m just not feeling well. I’m actually on my way to my parents’ house.” I looked at him with the most sincere face I could muster. It was probably also laced with dismissiveness and judgment, because it was me, but it seemed to do the trick.
“OK, well, I had to stop and see—July fourth and all. There’s lots of folks out on the road who shouldn’t be.”
“I understand.”
“All right, well, you have a good day.” He nodded and returned to his car.
I got back on the road and a few miles later got a flat tire.
Yeah, I thought. That seems about right.
A few hours later I woke up in my bedroom at my parents’ house feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut. My abdominals were sore from all the hurling I’d done in the past twelve hours, and, though I was starving, I was afraid to eat. A knock came at the door.
“Hey, it’s me,” my sister, Laurie, said. She came in and looked me over. “You look pretty terrible.”
“Yeah, I feel pretty terrible.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Sort of.”
“How’s the diabetes?”
“OK.”
“Are you keeping track of your blood sugars?”
“Not really.”
“Any boys in the picture?”
This question upset me.
“Of course not.” I scowled.
Laurie furrowed her brow. “Anything I can do?”
“Of course not.” I scowled again, then started crying like a little girl.
“Tim,” she said, coming to give me a hug, “you’ve got to take care of yourself. You seem to be flailing.” She then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Have you thought about maybe telling Mom and Dad?”
“No. I mean…I don’t know.”
“It might be time.”
“When does it end?” I asked her.
“When does what end?”
“I don’t know. The bullshit.”
“The bullshit doesn’t end, Tim.”
“Gah!” I screamed.
“It doesn’t. You have to figure out a way to live through the bullshit. Kick it aside.”
“I can’t. I’m just…weak. And sick of it.”
“So you’re just going to give up?” She was raising her voice. “Just lie back and take it? Nothing comes of just sitting and whining.”
“I’m not…I just…No…”
“You just what?”
“I just want to be thrown a bone once in a while!” Ha, thrown a bone. (I was serious about that.)
“Well, maybe you will be,” she yelled, “but until then you’ve got to pull yourself together and not go off the deep end.” I dropped my head into my hands. Laurie stood up and went to the door. “I’m here whenever you need me. You know that.” I nodded, and she left the room.
Was it really time to tell Mom and Dad? Ugh, really? What on earth would that sound like?
Mom, Dad, I’m totally gay, but don’t worry, I’m really unpopular with the boys.
or
Mom, Dad, I’m dying to suck a dick, I just haven’t found the right one yet.
I had no idea how to accomplish this task. I’d always thought I wouldn’t tell them until there was a really good reason to, like if I was running away to Amsterdam to marry a Dutch cowboy or if I’d been arrested for buying poppers from an unlicensed adult bookshop. And it wasn’t as if I felt I’d catch them totally unawares. Mom had hinted a few times over the past few years that she was on to me.
“Are you checking out all the girls?” she had asked me as we took a walk down the beach the previous August. She was fishing.
“Uh, sure,” I’d said, as passionless as a Victorian bureaucrat. I was such a coward.
I eventually ventured out of the bedroom and went downstairs. Mom was in the kitchen, and Dad was out in the backyard mowing the grass. I sank into the sofa and watched television for a little while, until Mom chimed in with her obligatory “Are you just gonna watch the tube all day? You should go outside.” I turned off the TV with a huff and stomped past Mom and out to the back deck with a book. I was bound and determined to let everyone see how miserable I was. Dad still hadn’t, but he’d be done with the lawn pretty soon.
“Hey, buddy,” Dad said a little later as he walked up the deck stairs, having finished mowing. I was sitting in one of the lawn chairs dry-heaving behind my copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, which seemed about right. I had heaved so much that my eyes were watering, and that naturally gave way to a headache, and then some mucus.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, swallowing the mucus and wiping my eyes.
“How you doing?”
“Oh, you know…fine.” Eyes bulging, stomach acid coating the inside of my mouth.
“Have a good Fourth?”
“Yeah.”
Dad sat down in a lawn chair, took his baseball cap off, and wiped sweat from his brow with his wrist. Mom came out on the deck looking at me with a penetrating, worried expression that told me unequivocally, “I’ve just talked to Laurie, and there appears to be something going on with you.”
“Tim, are you OK?”
I nodded. Then shook my head.
“What’s going on?” She sat down next to Dad without taking her eyes off me.
The tear ducts widened, and I started doing that thing where when you inhale you sound like you’re having an asthma attack. So this was it. I was going to have to say it. I really don’t want to say it. But I have to. I’d been dragged kicking and screaming, despite my Hamlet-caliber wishy-washiness, to this moment.
Tell them, Tim, Jesus, just freaking tell them. What are
you waiting for? Open your mouth and do it. You’ll feel better. You need catharsis. And maybe your mom will make one of her famous Mississippi mud cakes for you by way of consolation! Oh yeah, you’re diabetic, sorry, scratch that. Maybe she’ll give you a scoop of sugar-free Cool Whip? (I got nothing.)
“I’m gay.”
Without missing a beat, Dad reached over, touched me on the knee, and said, “It’s OK, buddy. We love you.”
“Tim,” Mom said, already starting to cry, “you’re our son, and it just doesn’t matter.”
At that moment I became a puddle of tears and mucus, just like so many gay men had before me, like Plato, Herodotus, and Paul Lynde.
There was much hugging and making-sure-I-was-OK over the next few minutes, and when the dust settled, Mom and Dad stood and went back inside. I told them I wanted to just stay outside and be alone for a while. Such a gay thing to say.
A few hours later I was back in Chapel Hill a little less twitchy. As I walked down the steps to my basement apartment I could hear stupid Liz Phair singing about how sad her love life is and how great she is at blow jobs.
Ugh, that bitch again, I thought.
Inside, Jennifer was flipping through a magazine on the couch.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
Her greeting sounded weird. Cloudy and clinky.
“I told Mom and Dad.”
“Really? That’th awethome.” At least that’s what I thought she said. Because it sounded like she was talking with a mouth full of nails. “Conglatulationth.”
