by Tim Anderson
“Wait, I’ll do it,” Jimmy said, coming into the living room from the kitchen and sitting down on the couch. I handed the case to him. He pulled out all the tools excruciatingly slowly, and I offered him my left index finger, my most reliable blood-giving digit. He only winced a little bit as he placed the lancing device up to the finger and pressed the button. I didn’t feel a thing, mainly because the pricker didn’t even make contact. He squeezed my finger to milk it for blood, but, of course, none came.
“Jimmy, you need to really press it against the finger,” I instructed. “I don’t think the lancet is actually hitting the skin.”
He once again pressed the device against my finger but was again being too cautious. With my other hand I pressed it more tightly so we wouldn’t be here all night. Click. This time he managed to squeeze out the tiniest of blood droplets, but it was enough to feed the test strip. He looked at me for confirmation that he’d done good.
“That’ll do, pig,” I said, smiling. “That’ll do.”
Jimmy nodded and gazed at the glucometer screen, waiting for the results. A minute later the meter told me my blood sugar was 123, an admirable level. I then took out my Humalog pen, dialed the doser to four units, and slammed the needle into my stomach. It was my birthday, dammit. Gimme cake.
Jimmy brought out the cake—a Mississippi mud monstrosity that I’d asked Mom to make. It was the first dessert I remember eating as a child, and once every few years I put in a request to her to please re-create that childhood magic for me. She’d baked it in a Pyrex dish and included all the trimmings: coconut, chocolate drizzle, marshmallow cream, and nuts. Jimmy placed it on the coffee table, and I grabbed our fancy plastic knife to start cutting.
Suddenly the Prince album finished, and the room was bereft of the funk. Under the din of naked human voices chattering I heard a new sound, a strange sound, an adorable new, strange sound. It was squeaky and heart-meltingly tiny. I looked over at the linen closet, the direction from whence the sound came, and there stood Finley outside the cracked closet door, looking tired as ever, but somehow different. The squeaking continued behind her. There was something in the closet. And I had a hunch it would be cute.
I rushed over to the door and swung it open. On the floor inside, resting on a now bloodied sleeping bag, was a tiny little critter, a baby Finley, mewing blindly. Finley meowed at me with irritation, so I pushed the door until it was once again only cracked, and Finley went back inside. A few minutes later she came out again and sauntered to the opposite corner to take a break. I reopened the door, and, sure enough, there was another little newborn. In a little bit Finley went in one more time for a third delivery, and then she was done.
“I’m going for a cigarette,” she said upon exiting for the final time, walking over to the corner to give herself a bath. She then slunk into the living room, where she and Stella proceeded to get into a fierce staring contest. (“Bitch, you better look away.” “No, bitch, you better look away.”)
Excited by the newborns, I asked Jimmy to put on another CD and returned to the cake. In a few minutes we were all enjoying the taste of dark, wet, gooey Mississippi mud to the strains of Prince’s “Pussy Control.”
“So how does it feel to be a granddaddy at such a young age?” Dani asked as she, Mandy, Jimmy, and I all sat on the sofa and licked our plastic plates of any remaining chocolate goo.
“Mmmm,” I said. “It’s delicious.”
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with our hero, so let’s just pop in and say hi and see how things are going because it’s sure to be hilarious. Wow, has it really been ten years? Good God, time flies when you’re a type 1 diabetic.
The two young men are still together, which is just unheard of. Gay years, of course, are counted differently, so ten years for the gays equals to about 117.8 years for breeders. So well done, boys!
They have moved up to New York City, where all homosexuals end up eventually. And right now they’re on a Metro-North train that will take them to Connecticut, where they’re visiting friends for the weekend. They picked up a cute bottle of Mexican rum as a gift for their hosts. It’s shaped like a Mexican man, and the bottle cap is a huge sombrero. Classy, and not at all racist.
Anyway, we wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t about to go horribly wrong, so let’s get this party started. Thing is, our hero looks completely fine. He’s not twitching, he’s not sweating, he’s not running to hide in the corner of the train compartment and refusing all offers of ice cream. He does look worried, though.
Looks like he’s getting out his glucometer to test his blood sugar. He’s got health insurance again, so he no longer has to put aside loose change to save up to buy test strips. And, let’s see, what is his blood sugar? Oh dear, it appears to be creeping downward: forty-nine. Yikes. Well, he’s still good and conscious, so all he has to do is dip into his bag for a quick fix, and he’ll have his level back to normal in no time.
“Hey, Jimmy,” he whispers, tossing his case back into his Adidas bag. “Do you have any candy?”
James looks at him through narrow, irritated eyelids.
“Noooo, did you not get anything on the way? What’s your blood sugar?”
Before answering, our hero experiences a twinge of guilt: He knows he was supposed to put some Little Debbie snack cakes in his bag before they left for the station, but as they rushed out the door he forgot, so he told himself he’d just buy a few candy bars at Grand Central but then they had to rush to get on their train and now he’s ended up bug-eyed and candyless. It is a few hours to their stop, and there’s no snack bar on the train.
“Sixty-nine,” he lies.
“Do you not have anything?”
He doesn’t want to answer because it will incur the wrath of James. James’s wrath is a quiet, somber wrath that weighs on a person’s shoulders like a Kevlar vest.
“I’m going to just check and see…,” he says as he stands up. He walks the length of the train to see if there is a snack machine or a secret passageway that leads to Candyland. (There is not.) Meanwhile James embarks on a fruitless search for something, anything in his bag that will do the trick. Bike lube? No. Colored pencils? They’re sugar free. Then he looks down at the gift bag containing the Mexican rum.
Mr. “Sixty-nine” returns to his seat and slumps down, looking out the window. Poor thing, he’s actually facing his biggest nightmare: being stuck somewhere with a plummeting blood sugar and no Cocoa Puffs to save the day. He gazes out the window at the blur of foliage flying by and wonders how long he has until his brain becomes a big bowl of gravy.
“Could just open this,” James says, proffering the rum bottle. “It’s got sugar, doesn’t it?”
The boy looks at the bottle. It’s just terrible that he would have to take such drastic measures, but he knows he’s rapidly entering the Land of Make-Believe and needs something now. So, with a good amount of guilt and shame—who shows up with a gift of rum that’s already been opened and drunk from?—he takes the bottle, pops off the sombrero, and downs a mouthful. Yuck. Not something you want to taste first thing in the morning. He takes another swig, then gives the bottle back. There’s got to be another way. He’s going to be wasted by the time they reach Connecticut.
Soon the train glides into Southeast Station, in Brewster, where they have to transfer to another train going to Wassaic. Maybe there’ll be a vending machine. Or a Waffle House. (There are not.) It is simply a platform where people stand and wait for the train to arrive.
The young men board the train when it comes and sit down. They claim seats in a nearly empty compartment, and James goes back to his National Geographic.
Nearby, three train employees are sitting in the front of the cabin eating their packed lunches. Sandwiches, chips, bananas, Cokes. Any one of these items could make a real difference in a young man’s life. Particularly the young man with a dead pancreas a few rows behind them.
“Jimmy,” he says, “sorry, I lied, my blood sugar�
�s lower than sixty-nine, it’s forty-nine, probably lower now, so I’m going to have to go ask those guys for some of their food.”
James puts his magazine down. He shakes his head. He sighs.
“Do what you gotta do.”
Our hero stands up and clambers over to the working stiffs enjoying their midday meal.
“Excuse me,” he says, “I’m really sorry to ask this and sorry to interrupt your lunch, but I’m diabetic, and my blood sugar is really low right now. It’s kind of an emergency. Would you be able to let me have any of your food?”
The men look at each other to see which of them will be having to deal with this hobo standing before them.
It feels like several years of waiting for the young man, but one of the men actually gives him his banana admirably quickly, though grudgingly.
“Thank you so much,” he says, bowing to the men like they’re Japanese royalty. “And I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry. Thank you. And I’m sorry. And thank you. So sorry.”
He goes back to his seat and slides in next to James. He peels the banana and sheepishly puts chunks of it in his mouth. Thrown a life raft, he relaxes a little and allows himself to enjoy the banana, even though it wasn’t dunked in chocolate. He puts his headphones on and eases back into Kraftwerk’s Autobahn.
James rolls his eyes, shakes his head again, and gazes at his companion with the Look of Judgment. He then holds out toward him a National Geographic spread featuring an array of giant droopy African boobs, and they both smile as the train glides along the tracks toward the Wassaic wilderness.
I must first of all thank Amazon superhero Terry Goodman for his enthusiastic support for this book. If you see a man flying around Seattle in a red cape with a big G on his chest, you should say hi, ’cause that’s Terry. Many thanks also to David Downing for his outstanding editing work on the manuscript and for being a kick to work with. As far as I know, David isn’t partial to capes.
Many dankas to my early readers for their feedback on and help with the manuscript—and for letting me write about them: my sister, Laurie, who introduced me to the magic of mixtapes; and Dani, Mandy, and Jennifer, all of whom for years endured my ungainly tape collection at stupid high volumes.
Much love to my aunt Sue and Nana, who treated me like a prince when I was a child and taught me in their elegant way not only the simple bliss of a chocolate malt but also the dangers of sticking your hands outside of a moving car while you’re on the interstate and the importance of regular bowel movements.
Many mercis to Mom, for her love and support and Mississippi mud cake.
Muchos arigatos to my husband, Jimmy—for helping keep me alive over the past seventeen years, yes, but also for being hilarious, usually when he’s not even trying. And, most importantly, for his macaroni-and-cheese casserole.
A profound to Harvey Fierstein, creator of Torch Song Trilogy. Harvey once said, in a documentary about closeted Hollywood, that he believed in “visibility at all costs.” Thanks, Harvey, for being unapologetically, spectacularly visible.
And, of course, a special спасибо to The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sinéad O’Connor, Love and Rockets, The Primitives, Depeche Mode, Lush, Wire, Ride, Dead Can Dance, New Order, Joy Division, Close Lobsters, and The Cocteau Twins, among tons of other hilariously named weirdos, for giving me incredible music to listen to during all of my youthful cravings.
Tim Anderson is the author of Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries, which Publishers Weekly called “laugh-out-loud funny,” Shelf Awareness called “so much fun,” and Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times completely ignored. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Jimmy; his cat, Stella; and his yoga balance ball, Sheila. Tim also writes young adult historical fiction under the name T. Neill Anderson and blogs at seetimblog.blogspot.com. His favorite Little Debbie snack cake is the Fudge Round.
