Binge

by Tyler Oakley

  “I’m glad we met up,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  As we walked in silence, still holding hands, I thought about how different our lives were. For the average person, you’re in one place, you get to know someone, you go on some dates, and it either turns into something or doesn’t. Here I was, traveling constantly, with one night to share with each guy I met. My spirits sank, thinking about how this great guy was here with me, but I’d be saying good-bye and flying home the next day. Out of instinct, I squeezed his hand three times, and then I was flustered when I realized what I had done. During the early days of my relationship with my college boyfriend, he would hold my hand and squeeze three times, as if to say, I like you. I’d return his squeezes with four, replying I like you too. I guess I liked this guy.

  After a few more minutes of walking on the sand, he stopped, looked over at me, and for the first time held steady eye contact. His eyes were huge and brown, and I was sure he was mustering up the courage to kiss me. He smiled, my heart raced, and just then, in an act of homophobic divine intervention, a flashlight swept our direction. God is so rude sometimes.

  We turned and squinted in the direction of whoever was holding the flashlight, and we realized it wasn’t pointed at us, but instead about thirty feet in front of us. Something dark was in the sand. As we slowly moved toward it, my Hawaiian took my hand again, and I could tell he was nervous. Step by step, I held his hand tighter, unsure of what this motionless thing was, and even more unsure as to why we were approaching it.

  “Oh my God,” my date whispered, as we both realized simultaneously what it was.

  Nothing ruins the mood of a Grindr date quite like finding a human corpse. As we approached, we realized the people with flashlights were police. As we were escorted away from the scene, we heard hushed whispers about a shark attack. Spooked by the thought of having my beautiful feet eaten, I stepped far away from the tide and insisted we go back up to the sidewalk.

  Friends and family, if you’re reading this on a beach towel with the smell of sunscreen in the air and sand between your toes, wondering why I said “No thank you” to your invitation to accompany you on this beautiful afternoon in the sun, now you know. The reason I’ll never be caught dead on a beach is because I literally don’t want to be caught dead on a beach.

  Back to my date. Our romantic moment had been snuffed out, so I brushed off the sand and stepped back into my flip-flops.

  “We should have taken a selfie with the body,” he joked. I was relieved at his effort to lighten the mood after such a jarring experience. It was the kind of gallows humor I would hope for in a kindred spirit.

  “But how could we pick a filter that would work for all three of us?” I asked.

  He laughed, took my hand, and we made our way back to my hotel. In front of the lobby, he stopped, turned toward me, and took hold of both of my hands.

  “Thanks for tonight. Sorry about the corpse,” he said.

  I said nothing, but I did squeeze his hands three times.

  Side note: a year and a half later, my Hawaiian happened to be in Seattle the same night I was in town for my Slumber Party Tour. He came to the show, was bewildered by the experience, we went out to the gay bars afterward, and he came over to spend the night. Nothing crazy happened, but he did puke in my bed from being too drunk. Thanks for tonight. Sorry about the puke.

  the apple doesn’t fall far

  MY PARENTS HAVE BEEN DIVORCED AND remarried to other people for as long as I can remember. Technically, I come from what the media might call “a broken home,” but I just always assumed everyone’s family was as bizarre and dysfunctional as mine. Between my parents and stepparents, my family tree is a tangled mess—but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  A quick note to my parents: While I’ve been writing this book, nobody in my life has expressed more anxiety about the stories I’ll tell than the four of you. It’s as if you thought your son would never have the opportunity to write a book and expose you, so you just lived and did whatever you pleased. Well, hi! I wrote a book! Please enjoy this chapter!

  I don’t have any memories of my mom and dad enjoying each other’s company, but I do have distinct memories of their hating each other. From an early age, I had severe anxiety anytime my parents had to be within one hundred feet of each other. Parent-teacher conferences meant armpit sweat down to my rib cage. Soccer games meant binge-eating doughnut holes and chugging Capri Suns to distract myself from seeing them near each other on the sidelines. Knowing my dad was in my mom’s driveway to pick me up for visitation every Tuesday and every other weekend made me feel like I could puke. Even fifteen years later, at the Michigan stop of my Slumber Party Tour, seeing them in the same audience made me feel like I might have diarrhea onstage in my onesie. It’s strange to me that they might once have been in love, but allegedly they were.

  My parents were high school sweethearts. My mom attended Catholic school, while my dad went to public school. They got knocked up while they were still in high school, and they gave the baby up for adoption.1 They got married after high school and started their life together by having two more kids: my sister Codi and me. Soon after, they got divorced, which to this day is still a sticky, messy situation riddled with he-said, she-said, he-did, she-did. All I know is that no happy marriage ends in divorce, and I’m grateful that they were able to move on to the next chapters in their lives.

  What made the biggest impact on me was having two separate homes with two separate sets of parents. Between the strange parenting habits of all four of them, it’s a wonder that I’m able to interact with other humans, let alone go out in public. It’s not that they didn’t raise me well: let’s just say that they had a lot of . . . quirks.

  My mom is my favorite human on earth, despite that she farts nonstop. Not until recently did I finally convince her to stop farting in the house and to start farting out of the sliding door to the back porch.

  She’s caring, compassionate, warm, and funny, and she always puts her kids and grandkids first. She makes the best manicotti and creates her own greeting cards in her craft room downstairs. I’m her favorite, so that makes me like her more too. When I was growing up, she and my stepdad owned a craft store called Papa Woody’s Woodshop.2 My stepdad would make benches and hutches and chairs and tables, and my mom would make seasonal scrunchies. My mom had a scrunchie store, which eventually burned to the ground, apparently due to an accident involving a soldering iron and a bundle of hay.

  In my mom’s eyes, I can do no wrong. Once I was so mad at her for some reason that I gave her the middle finger during a family dinner, and all my brothers laughed at me and my mom rolled her eyes. I was so embarrassed. She’s been to jail for a reason she refuses to tell me, and she has a floral tramp-stamp tattoo that she got on spring break a few years ago. She’s called the Queen for a reason.

  My favorite thing I got from my mom is an ability to be authentically myself, no matter the circumstances. She doesn’t change for anyone, and I don’t either—for better or for worse. My least favorite thing I got from her is the tendency to take everything personally—and I can’t wait to hear what she took personally in this book.

  My stepdad is a free spirit. By that, I mean I usually had to call home to make sure he wasn’t naked before I invited friends over. He’s patient and analytical and has always encouraged me to be myself. Growing up, he taught me most of my life lessons, like how if you put a towel up against the front door, the air-conditioning won’t escape during the summer—or that milk is usually fine to drink a few days past its expiration date. Most of his clothes have holes in them, and he’s got stacks of coupons and receipts sticking out of his pockets. He sets every clock fast, but can’t keep track which clocks are ahead by which amounts. When he texts, he always signs off with an acronym he made up and assumes everyone uses, LYB NBC—which means “love ya, babe; nuts, back & critters”—the first half being pretty self-explanatory. Less obviously, “nuts, back, and cri
tters” means watch out for crazy people, watch your back because you can’t trust anyone, and don’t run over any animals. It’s a wonder this lingo hasn’t caught on among tweens on Twitter.

  My stepdad never quite understood my interests, but he always supported them. When I was obsessed with Pokémon, he made me a wooden caddy for my deck, and he let me skip school the day the movie came out, so I could see it in a theater. It was the cinematic event of my lifetime, and he was next to me snoring.

  Seeing a movie with my stepdad is an experience. He’s incredibly frugal and will smuggle in an entire meal. Once, while rifling through his pocket looking for his ticket stub, a cheeseburger fell out of his shirt and onto the theater floor. He will loudly open bags of chips, crinkle hamburger foil, and open soda cans with no regard for the rest of the audience. He has poor hearing and will lean over to ask what’s happening—not once, but throughout the entire movie. One time he didn’t like a movie, so after watching the entire two hours, he went to the reception desk to politely ask for his money back—and got it.

  You’ll always know if my stepdad is approaching because he walks around with his phone in his shirt pocket, blasting Native American flute music at all times of the day. He loves Dolly Parton and insists she’s one of the greatest humans to ever live. He’s a hard worker and a great father. I once accidentally hit him in the face with a racquet at the YMCA, and he never once blamed me as blood was gushing from his eye. The older I get, the more I like him.

  My favorite thing I got from him is the phrase “Friends come and friends go, but family is forever”—which I understand more deeply each and every year. My least favorite thing I got from him is a cavalier disregard for expiration dates on perishable foods.

  My stepmom has always been a bit kooky. My dad met her while we were apartment searching, and he tells me that I pointed out one complex as we were driving by. He turned into the parking lot and met her at the reception desk. They fell in love and got married. After two decades of marriage, they ended up getting divorced this past year, but I still love her to pieces.

  I’m obsessed with how my stepmom is so strange, but yet she is 100 percent aware and embraces every bit of it. She is hilarious, energetic, passionate, and bizarre, and she’s in on her own joke. She sneaks into closets to chug energy drinks and giggles if anyone catches her. She calls the toilet “the twirlet.” She’s instilled in me a fear of miscellaneous food mishaps, telling me at a young age that a worm could likely be sucked up through the straw of my juice box, and that ants often colonized cereal boxes. To this day, I can’t raid the pantry without thinking of her.

  She is religious, but she will never pick a fight with anyone over it. Her current favorite product is a service that automatically filters out anything inappropriate from movies. I recently checked their website, and they have thousands of titles to choose from, all free of cuss words and any premarital hand-holding.

  My favorite thing I got from her is a carefree spirit. My least favorite thing I got from her is using substitutes for censored words—such as “Sugar fudge!” if I stub my toe. Somehow, that sounds dirtier than what I might have said in the first place?

  My dad is a simple guy who got better as the years went on. When I was younger, I hated him and made his life a living hell by being a little shit. For example, I once told my mom shortly after their divorce that I saw my dad drinking and driving, failing to mention it was a Diet Coke. I was a difficult child, and he responded by unhinging my bedroom door and removing it as punishment. For decades, we were two bulls that locked horns. Add in the homophobia and it all got ugly.

  As a kid, I was always arguing with my older sister, Codi. My dad’s chosen punishment was timed hugs with both of us inside one oversize T-shirt. We’d hold each other in our arms, angrily, and my dad would cackle at the sight of both of our heads poking out of an XXXL T. He’d make up over-the-top compliments that we’d have to repeat to each other, face-to-face. We’d start furious at each other, but we always ended up in fits of laughter.

  Throughout our childhood, my dad made the entire family do a series of family photos where we were stacked one on top of the other, something all of us dreaded.

  He tried his best and put up with a lot of my bullshit. Unfortunately, when all the coming-out stuff happened, our relationship went sour. For a few years in my early twenties, we didn’t speak at all. We’ve moved past that now. He’s apologized and acknowledged that he was an idiot, and I’ve accepted his apology. I love getting together with him, and I think of him as more of a buddy than my dad. We get together for a few beers (he only drinks Michelob Ultra), he talks through his women troubles, I talk through my guy troubles, and we get drunk and giggly. After years of butting heads, we’ve found something that works for us, and I’m pretty happy with that.

  A weird thing happens when you grow up and suddenly you’re an adult—and the dynamic between parent and child shifts. My dad and I recently went through that, and I think it was what saved our relationship. He always told me that he regretted not having a relationship with his own dad, who passed away before they were able to mend their problems. I’m glad we’ve gotten to a good place. Hopefully we’ve got plenty more years to go before one of us kicks it.

  My favorite thing I got from him is his laugh. We have identical laughs. My least favorite thing I got from him is how red our faces get in response to literally anything, ever. I hope his reading this chapter didn’t evoke his tomato face too much.

  dream job

  “HI, YOU PROBABLY DON’T REMEMBER ME, but five years ago I ruined your life.”

  This was the conversational opener of a man who approached me at the YouTube Creator Summit in April 2015. It was YouTube’s tenth birthday, and they invited top creators from around the world to celebrate in New York City with parties, presentations, and intimate chats with Google executives. I looked at the guy in front of me, puzzled, trying to figure out what he did to me. Thinking back, the only thing I could recall to be devastating in 2010 was The Oprah Winfrey Show going into its final season. Was this his doing?!

  He did look a bit familiar, and I tried to remember what went wrong at the start of my final year of college, and then suddenly it hit me. In 2010, I was twenty-one, about to graduate from Michigan State University, and couldn’t secure a nine-to-five job for the life of me. I was applying for every opening and attending every job fair, but nothing seemed to stick.

  The furthest I got with any of my applications was with Google. Having just been declared one of the best companies to work for, it was every graduate’s dream job, and the competition was tough. Getting hired at Google is daunting. First, I applied with a set of referrals from other employees. Next, I had multiple phone screenings, in which I was asked just about every typical interview question. Google was famous for inserting a few creative “Googley questions” into interviews, and one that stuck out was how would I find a needle in a haystack? I knew the expected answers, like using a magnet or throwing the pile into a pool and watching the needle sink, or burning the haystack and finding the needle in the ashes, but my answer had to be a little more me. I declared that I’d throw a party and invite everyone I knew. At the end of the night, I’d have each attendee take one straw as they departed. In the morning, while nursing my hangover, I’d find my needle sitting there, exposed and untouched. My answer got me through to the next round of interviews.

  I was then brought in for a mixer with dozens of other candidates. All the confidence I had built up from my phone screening came crumbling down when I saw just how talented my peers were. But in the same way a drag queen wins in RuPaul’s Drag Race, I used my charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent to outshine the other prospective employees, and I advanced to the next stage.

  I was more than three months into the hiring process when I came in for the final round of intense, full-day interviews at Google headquarters. I performed as best as I could, gave honest, thoughtful answers, and demonstrated my unparalleled enthusiasm
for the position. Nothing was going to stand between me and my dream job—and my ability to finally pay my bills week to week without paralyzing fear. After the interviews, I went home to stay with my parents over Christmas break. Knowing that a decision was coming within the week, I refreshed my e-mail compulsively and checked my phone every second.

  When I finally got the call, my crystal-clear vision of a perfect future at Google vanished into thin air. It was a simple no, with no reason attached. The caller thanked me for my time and wished me the best in my future endeavors. I sat, confused, feeling crushed and lost. I was buried deep in debt, so close to graduation, and so clueless about my career path, that I started to panic. I spent the next few months scrambling to find a job, but I had no luck.

  Graduating college with zero prospects is simultaneously terrifying and freeing—on the one hand, I was embarrassed and poor and dreading my impending student-loan payments, and on the other hand, the possibilities of what I could do were endless. So, after donning my cap and gown to collect my diploma, I flew to San Francisco with my best friend, Korey, for a weekend getaway. On Saturday, we explored the city recklessly. We fell in love with the idea of leaving Michigan for a brand-new adventure. That afternoon, we saw an apartment for rent that was open to the public for viewing. We giggled as we stepped into the building near 16th and Castro, as if we were actually prospective renters, but we were soon quiet. We fell in convincing love with the listing and realized that the cost was doable. While browsing the empty rooms, we exchanged glances that communicated a shared madness. As thrilling as an elopement, without telling anyone, we signed the lease the next day. After our return flight to Michigan, we broke the news to our friends and family, and we packed our bags. I trusted that even though I had no job lined up, I had already exhausted the possibilities in Michigan. Why not try California?