Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath

by Steven Goldman

  “I didn’t call her. Carrie already yelled at me about it.”

  “Why didn’t you call her?”

  “I didn’t want to take her.”

  “So you’re not going?”

  “No.”

  “So you set me up to take M.C. so we can double-date for the prom, and now you aren’t going?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of, my ass. Thanks, Mitchell. M.C. has never even sat in the front seat of my car, and I’m going to spend a buttload of money to take her to a dance I don’t even want to go to …”

  “Why’d you ask her?”

  “Because I thought you wanted me to.”

  I could point out that I never told him to, that all I did was relay Carrie’s plan, but he’s already decided that it is all my fault.

  “I’ll take her.”

  “I already asked her. You can’t just trade dates.”

  I hate it when David has a point. Besides, he said that he liked her and wanted to take her to the prom. I watch David set up a few more storyboards.

  “You know, I don’t know why you think you’re gay.”

  “It’s pretty simple, Mitchell. I’m gay because I like guys.”

  “Then why aren’t you taking some guy to the prom?”

  “Because I’m not dating any guys.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason you aren’t.”

  “I’m not because I’m not gay.”

  “Not the same reason you aren’t dating guys, dumb-ass, the same reason you aren’t dating anyone.”

  I think about that one for a second. “Because you’re a pathetic loser with a nearly diagnosable personality disorder who is completely unappealing to the opposite, or in your case, the same sex?” I suggest.

  “No, I take it back. For a different reason.”

  “Explain.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s mathematics.”

  “Now I’m really not believing you.”

  “Hold on. It’s not calculus; it’s more like set theory. Remember Venn diagrams—the little overlapping circles? Circle 1 is straight males, circle 2 is males I know who are gay and willing to admit they are, and circle 3 is males I like.” David draws the three overlapping circles on the chalkboard. He does not label them.

  “At this moment the one little area of overlap that counts, this intersection here,” he says, pointing, “males who will admit that they are gay, and whom I also like, that little piece of the diagram is empty. Not a name. Therefore, no dates.”

  I stare at the chalkboard and think about what David is saying. It seems like a very specific, very small niche.

  CHAPTER 17

  Letters

  USPS

  There are two envelopes waiting for me when I get home. I pick them both up and take them to my room. I place them on my desk. I stare at them. I start to get up so I can go do something else, homework or watching television. I sit back down. I open the first one. I look at it, refold it, and place it back in its envelope. I leave the second one unopened on my desk and rummage around in my backpack for my calculus book. I sit back down at my desk. I open the second envelope.

  SAT

  Knock on the door. I start to get up, but before I get out of my chair the door opens and my sister is standing by my desk.

  “So, what did you get? I saw the envelope when I got home, so don’t pretend it didn’t come.”

  “I don’t have to tell you, Carrie.”

  “Sure you do. Everyone tells their scores.” Carrie’s height advantage is intimidating enough when we are standing; with me sitting, she totally towers over me. I fight the urge to adjust my desk chair to a taller position.

  “I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “That bad.”

  “Not that bad.”

  “So sort of middle of the road. Not Princeton, but not community college material.” Carrie picks up my battery-powered pencil sharpener and turns it over, watching the shavings collect in the plastic top. A CPA snow globe. She’s waiting for my answer.

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “So it can’t be good.” Tired of standing, Carrie finds butt room on the corner of my desk. She turns the sharpener back over and begins to sharpen my already sharp pencils.

  “It could be good, but I’m not telling you.”

  “How good can it be if you aren’t telling me?” She looks up from the pencil sharpener and raises both eyebrows.

  “It could be very good even if I’m not telling you.” So there.

  “But it isn’t very good, is it? It’s only somewhat good? Am I right?”

  She’s right. The score is perfectly respectable, but not amazing.

  “Why didn’t you check it online? You did, didn’t you? But you didn’t tell Mom and Dad! Ooh—you have changed. When did you get so sneaky? Sneaky—or just embarrassed?”

  Embarrassed. I know what Mom and Dad would say. They would be proud of me. They would tell me they were proud of me even if I had bombed the thing. I look down at the desk to avoid confirming her suspicions. David’s letter.

  “I don’t think I want to continue this conversation,” I tell her as nonchalantly as I can. I look her directly in the eyes and try to slip David’s letter underneath my calculus book.

  “Who wrote you a letter?” Carrie makes a grab at it, but I pull it away.

  “Would you go away!”

  Carrie makes her pucker face, a mix of bewildered and pissed-off. “Love letter? No, no female would write you a love letter in pencil.”

  “Go away.”

  “Suddenly full of secrets. I’m your sister, you can tell me.”

  “Please go away.”

  My voice sounds more desperate than angry. I think Carrie realizes that she has somehow pushed this too far and she backs off, but not apologetically.

  “Geez, I was only asking.”

  www.atomfilms.com

  David and I sit on the couch in the living room watching a DVD of Pib and Pog episodes that Wallman lent us about three months ago. Eventually, we’ll have to give it back. We are drinking Diet Coke and eating cold pizza left over from the aftermath of one of my mother’s cooking disasters. We aren’t talking much, but we never talk during the show. We might miss something we didn’t catch before in the twenty times we’ve already watched Pib slice off Pog’s face with a large chef’s knife.

  He must know I got the letter, but I haven’t told him I got it. He must have guessed that I read it. We both pretend that nothing is different.

  Is something different?

  S

  There are two Davids: the one who will letter in baseball and the one who hangs out with me. Sometimes I get them confused.

  Baseball David has lots of friends. Not that he spends time with any of them, but when they pass each other in the hall they do this weird touch-knuckles-and-bump-into-each-other routine that I assume is sports-related. Baseball David is the one who takes me along to parties and finds me a beer to drink so I don’t look like a total loser.

  The other David is the one who reassures me about my pending expulsion by listing famous people who never finished high school. This David is sort of an anti-Superman. Superman dives into phone booths, rips off the drab suit, and emerges with the S emblazoned on his chest. Drab is not David’s disguise.

  Which one wrote me the letter? Is there a third David?

  David calls me later to ask about some assignment, but it feels like more of an excuse than a question. We talk about some asinine thing Thad said in the hallway. The conversation is over but neither of us have said good-bye. I know I’m supposed to say something about the letter, but since I wasn’t supposed to have read it, I’m not sure what to say. Telephone silence. I have let it go on too long to pretend it doesn’t mean something.

  Q and A

  “Did you get the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you read it?”

>   “Yes.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  ASAP

  Life would be a lot easier if we could schedule our crises. I can give you from 3:30 to 5:45 tomorrow to discuss our lives, but then I need to pick my sister up from a friend’s house, have dinner, and study for my calculus test. If I finish early, we could talk on the phone between 10:48 and 11:10, but no later or I’ll fall asleep during history—and Kalikowski has started to notice that I often fall asleep during her class. If you give me a ride to school tomorrow, we can talk as we walk from the parking lot, but I can’t afford to be late to first period again. If that isn’t enough, I can try to schedule a good chunk of time for emotional outpourings early next week after my history paper is due and after I find out whether I’ve been expelled.

  OK

  More silence.

  David breaks first. “I think I would like to talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Should I come over there?”

  “Okay.”

  “Would you rather meet somewhere else?”

  “No, here is okay.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, I guess. No. Can we wait?”

  More silence. This one sounds impatient.

  “I’d like some time,” I say. “How about this weekend? Friday? We could go grab some pizza and talk.”

  There’s a code here. Friday is two days away, which is admittedly blowing him off, but we have set aside time, and it is a weekend evening. This means we are still friends. I said we will talk. It is a promise that I will deal with it.

  “Sure, that makes sense. Yeah,” David answers. Three affirmatives in a row but not one of them sounds convincing.

  RE:

  I look at the letter. I know it is in English, but I still don’t know how to read it.

  David says we already have a relationship, we just don’t admit it. I looked up the word “relationship” in the dictionary. It can mean a lot of things.

  David says he feels like we are more than friends. He does not attach a list describing the ways in which what we do goes beyond friendship. He does not say he considers me his boyfriend, just his best friend. He says he knows I’m not gay. Is he hoping that I’ll change? If he did fall in love with someone else, would we still be friends? How would I be different from the guy he is in love with? It can’t be all about sex.

  There’s a lot here about needing to describe what he’s feeling. He uses the word “feeling” a lot. Nothing in this letter actually tells me what he’s feeling, just that he needs to tell me. I think there are some words missing.

  RSVP

  The pizza place is a little too public, so we swing through the drive-through and pick up cheeseburgers and drive over to the cul-de-sac where we drank beers the other night. The weather, which had been so nice lately, has turned and it is too cold to eat outside, so we eat in David’s car. I don’t take off my seat belt and neither of us turns to face the other, so the entire conversation takes place as if we are performing for an audience watching through the windshield.

  I start.

  “I read your letter. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. I know you’re gay. I’ve known for a long time. I told you already that I’m fine with it.”

  “This isn’t about me being gay.”

  “It’s about me not being gay.”

  David takes a long breath like he’s about to say something that he’s hidden somewhere deep inside himself and he needs extra air to speak it now.

  “Has it ever occurred to you that this may not be about you? I’m not gay to annoy you. I’m not gay because of you. At some point has it ever flickered across your consciousness that it might be more difficult to be a gay seventeen-year-old than to have a gay friend?”

  “You always seem okay.” I don’t mean to sound defensive, but if he has been having such a hard time, he hasn’t shown it much.

  “I am okay. But you aren’t helping much.”

  I stare out the windshield. “I thought, from your note, that this was about me.”

  “It was about us. Who we are.”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “Just friends?”

  The phrase has the crisp snap of rejection. I swallow hard. Are we “just friends”? I want to tell him not to demean the word. Not make it sound so flimsy and insubstantial.

  “Still friends?”

  It starts to rain. Ugly, loud, angry drops of rain. It moves over the car in waves, drowning out anything we might have said. If we were talking. I have an irrelevant moment of revelation in which I realize that the phrase “heavy silence” is an excellent description of how much presence silence has when you sit with someone and don’t talk. It is the most present absence I have ever felt.

  “Yes,” he says after way too long.

  David starts the car and drives to my house. He pulls the car into the driveway, but neither of us speaks.

  I want to do something. I want to change the topic. I want to talk about our calculus homework or whether Wallman ever bathes or whether he thinks I have a shot at getting into Princeton. I want to laugh. Why can’t we laugh?

  Or cry. I can’t imagine David crying. I’ve never seen him cry—except that one time in fourth grade when we got into a fight and I punched him and he cried and I cried even though he hadn’t punched me back. I still can’t remember why I punched him. Is it a fight if only one of you is fighting? Fighting doesn’t seem like something you can do by yourself. A little like love.

  I want to scream. I want to be angry and scream. I want David to say something.

  I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the rain, trying hard to find some counterpart in my experience for this moment, something that will let me know how I am supposed to respond. There must be a right answer, some magic words that will open up this car door and let me out and let me go on with my life. I know so many stories, so many scripts—but this moment isn’t in any of them. I don’t know what we are doing here. I don’t know what I should say. I know we will eventually leave this car and on Monday we will go to school and eat lunch together, and David will give me half of his roast beef sandwich (the smaller half). I will go watch him sit on the bench at his next home game. He will give me rides home from school. We will go see movies. We will eat pizza.

  When we start talking again, it is in quiet voices of resignation and lies. David says he wrote the letter because he felt he needed to tell me how he feels, but he didn’t expect anything to change. I tell him that I now know how he feels, but it doesn’t change anything. What we mean is that both of us will pretend that nothing is different, and wait for something to change.

  CHAPTER 18

  Two More Theories About Curtis and a Car Ride with Louis

  Theory 2: I got Curtis fired (Mitchell version)

  Finally, over a week after I turned in my offensive DVD, Sorrelson’s administrative assistant comes to get me in the middle of calculus. Although I haven’t said anything about my last meeting, everyone already seems to know I’m in trouble and why. Curtis has officially taken a leave of absence and we are on our fourth sub. This one is an older woman who seems very angry almost all the time. Her primary objection seems to be the school smoking policy, which forces her to walk off the campus grounds in order to smoke. Class starts punctually six minutes late and ends six minutes early, as it takes twelve minutes to walk to the edge of the campus, smoke her cigarette, and walk back. We mostly wait quietly in our seats, being the passive good doobie sheep we are. At least she has read the book.

  Mr. Sorrelson’s lower lip is sticking out again when I arrive. At first he ignores me and continues reading some memo, the single sheet of paper on his vast desk. The memo looks to me like it’s only about ten lines long, but he leaves me standing there for several minutes while he studies it. Either the whole thing is for dramatic effect or he should never have been allowed out of third grade.

  “Please sit down, Mitchell,” he co
mmands with his gruff formality, as if he has just that moment realized I’ve been standing there.

  I sit down. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It occurs to me that Louis has misquoted the movie and that it doesn’t fit this situation at all, but repeating it to myself over and over again is strangely comforting.

  Sorrelson sighs deeply and begins again in his painfully slow gurgling voice. “I have watched your cartoon.” He pauses for a reaction. I can’t think of a good one, so I just sit there and wait. “And I am disappointed in you. This is not what we expected from a young man of your accomplishments. I am sure that you meant it as a harmless prank, a kind of joke, but you are old enough to take other people’s feelings into account before you act. Now I feel as if, perhaps, we may have been mistaken about your character. We will now have to bear that in mind when we write your college recommendation letters.”

  Ouch.

  “I also spoke to your parents.” He pauses again for a reaction. “I believe that I was able to make them see the gravity of this situation.” He obviously hasn’t spoken to my mother. I wait out his next pause.

  “I feel that, given the seriousness of this offense, I have no choice but to refer the issue to our Judicial Board.”

  Cue the scary music. The Judicial Board is a group of five students and two faculty members who review breaches of the school’s honor code. They don’t get to wear black robes, and all they can really do is recommend disciplinary actions to the headmaster/CEO, who ignores them a good half of the time, but it is never a good thing to be sent to the J-Board. The student positions are all elected, and I think people do it mostly because it looks good for colleges. I can’t even remember who we elected this year. I have an uneasy feeling that it might have been Louis.

  Sorrelson is looking at his calendar. “The Judicial Board usually meets on Tuesdays during activity period, and obviously we’ve already missed today. Let’s see, because of the holiday, next Tuesday is a Monday schedule, but we could try to get them together on Wednesday … but no, wait, Wednesday is a flex day because of an assembly, but we do have a Tuesday on Tuesday that next week, I think. Yes. Right. Two weeks from today. 11:20. They meet in my office.”