Then I had to wear make up. I may be gay, but I have never before in my life agreed to wearing makeup. Well, there was one time, but I was 7 so it doesn’t count. Anyway, I did not at all want to go on TV. Especially not since I had to go out there and sit next to Mitch Schmidt.
Whose crazy idea was it to take the gigantic football player and put him in front of live studio audience with the scrawny writer that had royally pissed him off? So there I was with my face covered in make up, wanting to bite my fingernails off as the stage manager or whatever the guy was called told me it was my cue and roughly grabbed my arm, shoving me out in front of the cameras. I froze as a crowd of people clapped and cheered. I gave a weak grin and went to shake Teri Hearth’s hand, some up-and-coming TV star. She grinned and gestured for me to sit on a stool next to Mitch Schmidt. I swallowed and sat.
“So you’re the writer of the most controversial story of the year. How does that make you feel, Tad?” She smiled her perky smile and I fought back nausea.
“Um, I’m not sure,” I laughed, “I’ve just always written whatever I thought and apparently people find my opinions pretty amusing in this case.”
Schmidt snorted next to me. He glared at me and I rolled my eyes. The audience caught the interaction and laughed.
“The two of you don’t seem to be getting along very well, I see.” Would it be too cliché to say ‘thank you Ms. Obvious’?
He growled next to me, “Oh no, he goes off insulting me all he wants and everything is all puppies and dandelions.”
“Let it go!” I exclaimed, “You act like you’re not getting any reimbursements from this whole mess!”
“It’s not about any kind of benefit! I am a man of pride and when someone goes off saying all kinds of crap in a magazine, I’m going to get royally pissed off and stay that way!”
“We’re on live TV…” Teri said weakly.
I gaped, “You’d think your pride got enough feeding already with your petty revenge or whatever you want to call it!”
“It wasn’t petty! You’re an asshole!”
“I’m an asshole? You shoved my head in a toilet! Not only is that completely repulsive, but it was my office toilet in front of all of my co-workers! I have to see those people every day, you know? It’s a little unpleasant with everyone snickering about how an NFL quarterback yanked me out of my desk and flushed my hair down the pot!”
“Ok, maybe I’m kind of an asshole, but you deserved it!”
“I called you narcissistic!” I shouted, “Newsflash, Tinkerbelle, YOU ARE!”
“Where do you get off calling me Tinkerbelle?” He raged, “I may not like women, but at least I’m not some flaming queer like you!”
I grabbed Teri’s coffee off of the table and splashed it in his face before I stormed off of the set.
The audience, Teri Hearth, and Mitch Schmidt all gaped at my retreating back.
I called in sick to work the next day. I didn’t answer any of my phone calls and spent the day eating Chinese take out and Ben & Jerry’s. I attempted to work on my novel, a suspense/thriller/mystery work about a cop searching for his brother’s murders. Everything I typed came out as pointless rage-filled nonsense or pathetic droning angst. I deleted all of it and watched whatever atrocious movie happened to play repeatedly in a loop on TNT.
This guy was getting me into a terrible rut and he wasn’t worth this. But it had hurt, having those words thrown in my face in front of the entire world. And it made me stop and wonder, what if that was all I was? A flaming queer? What if that was what everyone saw me as, not an accomplished writer or a brother or a high school valedictorian, just a flaming queer? What if that was all I would ever be?
A knock came pounding on the door of my small apartment. I sighed and got up out of my recliner and went to the door, wearing nothing but some plaid flannel pajama pants, a gray A-line shirt, and my big navy terry cloth bathrobe. My slippers had been eaten by my neighbors’ dog when I took care of him while they went on vacation. I hadn’t found any I liked to replace them.
The knocking persisted as I slowly moved to the door. I didn’t even bother looking through the peep hole. I just swung the door open.
“You look like shit.”
I smiled, “Jeff!” and pulled him into a hug. Jeff was my best friend from college. He’d been my first male kiss and we’d dated for two weeks before he realized he wanted someone willing to move faster than me. Apparently nothing beyond hand-holding and closed-mouth kisses for the first year is just too much for some people to take. I had grown up a little since then… sort of.
“Are you ok?” he asked, pulling away from the hug. He had that smooth ‘I’m too hot for you but I love you anyway’ smile that he gave everyone floating on his lips while I pulled him inside and closed the door.
“Yeah,” I said with that smile that never reaches your eyes. He gave that ‘you’re lying’ look and I crumbled, “No,” I mumbled and he folded me into his arms. The dam broke and I was soaking his shirt, his arms comforting the forces of my sobs.
This was a familiar position. Jeff had always been the one to hold me while I cried. Whether it was freshman year when my goldfish had died, sophomore year when I’d gotten drunk at a frat party and lost my virginity to some guy who never told me his name, junior year when I received a writing award and my parents hadn’t bothered to come to the award ceremony, or senior year when I’d finally been dumped by my first real boyfriend. He’d been there through the years and he said he would be there for years to come.
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” I choked out through my sobs. He rubbed my back and cooed soft things, things that were soothing and calming.
“You’ll be fine,” he murmured, in a few days all of this will be forgotten.
I swallowed and pulled away, rubbing at my eyes, “How bad is the damage?”
He frowned, “Yeah, you should probably just stay in here for a week while you wait for it to blow over…”
I winced, “So I’m the talk of the town?”
“Try nation,” he mumbled and I dropped to the floor and curled into a ball.
“My dad is going to be so mad at me…” I sighed. Jeff rolled his eyes. He had on no account any respect for my dad whatsoever and spent a lot of his time trying to convince me that I shouldn’t either. But he was my dad…. Maybe he wasn’t prefect, but he’d never hurt me physically and he’d always looked out for me. I guess sometimes that’s just not enough.
Jeff sat down on the floor next to me and played with my hair, “Well, you’ve gotten your fifteen minutes, that’s for sure.”
I frowned, “Do you think I could trade it in and get a different fifteen minutes? These suck.”
He placed a playful kiss on the crown of my head and gagged, “Go take a shower, you hobo. Get over it. At least the newspapers and TV are calling you Tad and not Thaddeus.”
I glared/pouted, “You’re not helping.”
“You love me anyway,” he chuckled and stood up. He started cleaning my apartment, throwing out Chinese food cartons and old newspapers and putting the dishes in my sink into the dishwasher while I just sat on the floor.
“Do you think I could sue him for emotional and psychological damage?” I croaked loudly.
“Not a good idea if he wants to sue you for libel.”
“That article was not libel!” I exclaimed, standing up, “It was an honest expression of opinion.”
“If he had good enough lawyers, they could get you for libel. And you could probably get him for emotional distress if you sold you organs on EBay.”
I frowned and walked around to my couch and laid down, “What if I lose my job?”
“You’ll get another one somewhere better,” he said, “You’re pretty sought-after at the moment, my dear. You could get a job at just about any magazine you wanted I would say.”
“Am I a loser?’ I whined. He was still doing my dishes. What a doll…
“You stood up to a guy three times your size in front of the entire nation,” he laughed, “No, you’re not a loser, you’re a lunatic.”
I groaned, “I just want all of this to go away…” I changed the channel to some sports network where they were running the clip of my throwing the coffee in his face. The newscasters all started laughing and joking about it and I changed the channel to an infomercial on the Magic Bullet. Man, I wanted one of those…
“Change the channel now and put down the phone,” Jeff yelled and I quickly complied.
Jeff cleaned for a while before he sat with me on the couch and we watched a movie I had TiVoed and ordered pizza. It was late when he left and I felt like something had been restored inside of me. I slept in my bed and wondered what tomorrow would be like when I went to work…
XxXxX
I hated the looks and stares I received as I entered the building. Even the receptionist gaped at me, probably shocked that I crawled out from under my rock so soon after the incident. I sighed and went to the elevator where people stared at me more, but tried to hide it more than the people in the entryway. I just kept my eyes closed and pretended I was somewhere else. Like the Bahamas. That’s much better than here.
I got off on my floor, picked up my mail from Sheryl and hurried to my desk. I plopped down and stared down at my desk, glad that the cubicle walls kept my co-workers from gaping at me too much. I opened my mail and didn’t read it, just through it in a pile and turned to my computer. I dreaded checking my e-mail.
“Feeling better?” Mr. Harris stood behind me with and unreadable look on his face. I couldn’t tell if he pitied me or just thought I was pitiful.
“Not really,” I replied with the sparkliest smile I could manage. He rolled his eyes at me.
“Get over it. We’re having a meeting at 4:30 in the board room about strategies for the next year. I doubt you got the memo.”
He stomped away and I pouted, wanting to melt into a puddle and be absorbed by the hideous carpet below my desk. I idly organized the profusion of papers and such that had accumulated on my desk since I last been there before I checked my e-mail, half of which were from my mother, berating me and saying she had raised me to settle things rationally with words. I didn’t remember any of that…
I skipped lunch, spending it talking my boss out of forcing me to write an article on fashionable jock straps. He gave it to someone else and I had to write and article on the possible changes the NFL would be making for the next year once this season was completed.
After the clock passed four, I grudgingly heading to the board room and plopped down in a chair with a window facing outside. It was much easier imagining you were a bird flying away when you could see the sky you were flying in. That’s why there are so many landscape calendars.
The boss talked about new directions, new columns, and story ideas. I played Hangman with myself. I lost…
After an hour and a half I trudged back to my desk, feeling as though nothing was accomplished by that meeting. It was another day of spending hours getting nothing done.
Mitch Schmidt was waiting for me at my desk.
“Hey,” he said nervously, holding a small bouquet of flowers, “I um, got these for you.” He handed me the flowers. I frowned down at them before frowning at him.
“Thanks,” I said and tossed them into the trashcan by my desk. He winced.
“Look, um…” He sighed, “I think we got off on the wrong foot and I’d like a second try.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and nervously licked his lips.
I just stared at him, a ‘do you think I am a moron?’ mixed with a ‘what kind of moron are you?’ expression written across my face.
“Can I take you out to dinner or something?” he asked pleadingly. He looked like some little kid that had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was trying to get out of standing in the corner. I glanced at my watch. It was six o’clock and I was starving after skipping lunch and not eating anything of substance since 7:30 the night before.
“Are you paying?” I asked, throwing my doodle-covered manila folder on top of a growing stack of papers on my desk. He nodded and I pulled off my tie, tossing it in a desk drawer, and told him to lead the way while I loosened my collar.
He took me to Bacilli’s, an expensive gourmet restaurant where a steak costs more than my Italian leather shoes. I got the lobster just to make him mad. He seemed unaffected and ordered a horrendously costly steak for himself. He ordered some bottle of wine, probably costing a couple of hundred a bottle, and I decided to drink tons of it just to rank up the bill, see how badly I could piss him off.
We ate fancily arranged salad, some bisque soup thing that I couldn’t pronounce the name of, and finally our entrées with risotto and steamed vegetables as our sides. I got tipsy on the wine and giggled at everything he said, even when he was apologizing for the talk show debacle. I just giggled. Man that was good wine.
The end of the meal rolled around with him feeding me tiramisu because I was too buzzed to lift a fork to my mouth. He put everything on his platinum card and took me out to a cab. He asked where I lived and I just giggled so he took me back to his. By that time, he was pretty tipsy too, since he’d been throwing back the wine as much as I had but wasn’t quite the lightweight I was.
And we ended up at his for the night.