Chapter 7
I was in eighth grade and had a crush on Matthew Davidson, the gay kid who lived a town away and was two years older. Matthew was cool, aloof and had black spiky hair that looked like he was an anime character. He went to a private school and altered his uniform by cutting out holes in the clip-on tie and stapling anarchy patches on the sleeves. I thought it was the most creative thing I had ever seen. Matthew hated anything conventional so that meant I hated it too. I’d search for information about emo bands on Netscape and wait as our painfully slow router downloaded images of Death Cab for Cutie or Jimmy Eat World. I’d post them to MySpace, hoping Matthew would see them. Secretly I still loved old Hollywood movies and watched Hallmark Christmas specials like they were instruction manuals, but I wanted him to like me.
I had been out less than a year. I know many people struggle to tell their parents they’re gay but I didn’t have any hesitation. My mother was thrilled. She gave me one of her vise-like hugs and said, ‘You’re my son. I love you no matter what. Now if you don’t clean up your room no Will and Grace for the rest of month.’ Just like that I was out.
In an effort to be the world’s best ally, my mother immediately became the activities chair of the Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gay Youth (PFLAG) at our regional LGBTQ center. She has always been more into being gay than I’ve been. I’m gay. I like it. Totally on brand for me. But I don’t really think about it.
The center was having an alternative prom for kids from all over the area. My mother was in charge of decorations and the entire house was covered in colorful tissue paper flowers she had been making for weeks. The theme was ‘Rainbow in Paradise’ which sounded more like a religious cult than a decorative motif. Matthew thought the whole thing was dumb but said we should show up dressed all goth as a kind of protest. I wasn’t sure what we were protesting. Color, I guess? People were planning to wear prom attire to match the Rainbow Pride theme, but Matthew told me to dress entirely in black to stir things up, so when my best friend and personal LGBTQ ally, Patty Perkins, came over, we went to my room and closed the door to get ready away from my mother’s prying eyes. Mom hated my goth phase and never missed an opportunity to tell me I looked like I was going to a funeral instead of nineth-grade algebra.
Patty was wearing the gorgeous pink taffeta vintage cocktail dress we had spent weeks searching for at local thrift stores. I had found a totally ironic powder-blue tuxedo that I had been planning to wear. My mother kept saying, ‘You’ll look very handsome in it,’ which only made me want to wear it less. I kept it hung up in my room so she would think I was changing into it, but when the door closed, I showed Patty my revised ensemble.
‘Oh, Sam, I don’t know. Your mother will flip out,’ she said as she straightened her crinoline.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘that’s why I also have this.’ I took out a long trench coat I found on sale at the mall. I figured I would wear it over my goth ensemble on the way to the dance so my mother wouldn’t see what I was wearing until we arrived. By then it would be too late to go home and change.
Mom hovered by the door as we changed, and before we exited my room, I tightly pulled the belt on the trench despite the fact that it was the warmest day in May since records were kept, according to the news. I tried to run through the living room and straight to the car but my mother would not have it.
‘Sam, I want to get some pictures before we go, slow down.’ Mom was wearing a kaftan made of a fabric with so many colors that it was hard to look at.
‘Look at the time,’ I said and pointed to the gold clock that hung above an arrangement of silk flowers on the buffet. ‘We’re so late. Let’s just do it there.’
My mother pulled a chair from the table. ‘We have plenty of time,’ she said as she climbed the chair to stand in front of the clock. ‘I moved the clock ahead fifteen minutes this morning because I knew you wouldn’t be on time.’ She stretched her arm and moved the big hand back to the correct time. The woman is a mastermind.
I looked at Patty. Her parents were totally normal, so whenever she came over to my house, she stared at my mom and me like we were exhibits in a museum for the socially bizarre. Patty shrugged her shoulders, not sure how to help me. I had no other choice. I undid the belt of my trench and let the coat drop to the floor like Lady Godiva about to defiantly ride through town. My black jeans were so shredded they had a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the dance without disintegrating completely and my faded black T-shirt with an anarchy symbol in blood red had safety pins holding together the slashes I made across the front the night before.
‘Sam!’ my mother shrieked. ‘What in the world are you wearing? You look like you’re going to a Halloween party on the bad side of town.’
‘Mother, this is the bad side of town,’ I said formally. It was true. Patty came from the rich end and we were broke but that wasn’t the point.
‘What happened to that gorgeous baby-blue tuxedo? You look so handsome in it.’
‘I changed my mind. I want to wear this,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Sam, this is a party. Kids from all over the area are coming. You might meet someone special.’ She sang the last sentence. ‘You are such a handsome young man I just don’t understand why you hide it with all that black dreck lately.’ She wrinkled her nose and frowned.
I hated when my mom would call me a ‘handsome young man’. I never felt that way. Her saying it made me feel even less handsome. I was a little chunkier back then and my skin wasn’t exactly ready for the after in an Accutane commercial. I liked the baggy clothes and dark colors. They helped me feel more hidden and the fact that Matthew thought they were cool didn’t hurt.
‘I like what I’m wearing. Why can’t I wear what I want to wear?’ I was more whining than yelling. I thought about calling Aunt Shug to referee but she was sometimes too impartial and I wanted to win this fight. I had to.
‘Don’t you want to meet someone at the dance? It could be a special night.’
‘Mom I’m fifteen,’ I said and I knew exactly what she was going to say.
‘I met your father when I was sixteen. It’s a magical age. The love of your life could be at this and he won’t ask you to dance because he’ll think you’re in mourning.’
Little did she know I was dressed this way because I wanted the guy I liked to ask me to dance and there was no way that was going to happen in that silly tuxedo.
‘I want to wear what I want to wear.’ I crossed my arms.
‘Sam, no.’
We went back and forth for a while and then I made my big mistake. ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend by the time I’m thirty-five I’ll follow all your rules until I get one but for now just let me wear what I want.’ I don’t know why I said it. I just picked an age that seemed so far in the future it was impossible to imagine.
I could see her mind jumping ahead. She squinted her eyes, shifted her weight, and put her arms on her hip. ‘Can I have that in writing?’ she asked.
‘Can I wear what I want to the dance?’ I parried. She nodded.
I submitted to her ludicrous request, assuming it was simply a symptom of my mother’s burgeoning insanity. Mom led me to the desk in the kitchen and retrieved a pen and a piece of Snoopy writing paper. She insisted that I write down my promise, and that I sign and date it. Suddenly, I was nervous. It was an odd request even from my mother who forbade me from swimming within one hour of eating pickles of any kind. Patty, who had been silently observing the exchange, meekly piped up, ‘Sam, just do it or we’ll be late.’ I begrudgingly took the paper and pen from my mother and scrawled out:
I, Sam Carmichael, being of sound mind and body, hereby promise to follow all my mother’s rules for dating to get a boyfriend if I do not have one by the time I am thirty-five.
I signed my name, dated it, and handed it to my mother.
‘Fine.’ She handed a colored pencil to Patty. ‘You sign as a witness.’
Patty looked at me. I shrugged. I’m sure she had no idea what to do. My mother handed her the paper and she scrawled her name across the bottom. But that wasn’t enough for my mother.
‘Don’t forget the date, Patty. I saw an episode of Law and Order and the date was very important.’ Patty just nodded and added the numbers. My mother smiled, folded the paper carefully, tucked it into a drawer and opened the back door. ‘Let’s go,’ she said and we were off to the dance.
By the time we arrived, Matthew was already dancing with a tall soccer player from a school on the other side of the county, and his apparent disdain for all things conventional was lost somewhere in the soccer player’s mouth, since I found him searching for it with his tongue later that evening. The fact that the object of Matthew’s affection was wearing a vintage powder-blue tuxedo was difficult to overlook, but I remember distinctly trying to block out every detail of the night, including the silly ultimatum from my mother.
Twenty years later, that same exact piece of Snoopy stationery is staring me in the face like some Faustian souvenir. Snoopy looks more yellow than white and the edges of the envelope are mildly frayed. I hand the box and its contents back to my mother and stand up from the couch. ‘Mom, you have got to be kidding. Is this some kind of joke? Ha. Ha. Just give me the underwear you found on clearance at Target and we can be done with the presents.’
‘I’m not kidding. This is no joke. And I do have underwear for you from Target that was on clearance but this, this is your real gift.’ My mother looks at me quite seriously. ‘Sam, this is my present to you.’
‘Mom, I wrote it almost two decades ago.’
‘So what? The bra I’m wearing is older than that.’
She is not about to back down. ‘Mom, I was only joking when I did it.’
‘You want me to call Patty Perkins? She teaches sociology at Penn State. She knows you weren’t joking.’
I can’t believe she has tracked down Patty Perkins. I’m sure Patty considers her encounters with my family her first research into abnormalities. ‘Look, when I wrote that I was a minor,’ I say since she wants to go the legal route.
‘I don’t care if you were a sergeant major. A promise is a promise. And look how lucky this turned out for you! How many people have a full-time dating coach… for free? And the timing couldn’t be better.’
‘It couldn’t be worse,’ I mumble under my breath. She has no idea that the last few days have almost broken me.
‘What are you talking about? The Wedding isn’t until December. That’s plenty of time to find you a date.’
I am about to remind her that she is not allowed to mention The Wedding until after my birthday but I suppose this is close enough. My cousin on my father’s side is getting married to the ‘girl of his dreams’ in December just before the holidays. That side of the family is a conservative nightmare, and we generally try to avoid their judgmental stares, but my cousin is the one exception. He’s gentle and sweet and about as sharp as a jellybean left out in the rain. I’ve been dreading every aspect of the event since we got a Save the Date card that I tore into little pieces.
‘You’ve done such a good job not talking about The Wedding. Can’t we just keep that up?’
‘I don’t want to go any more than you do. Who wants to be in the same room as your Uncle Donald even if it is at The Plaza in the Grand Ballroom and they reserved an entire table for us? Ziggy is your only cousin and he’s a good person. We are going to support him. It’s not his fault who his parents are.’
Tell me about it. ‘I don’t need to show up to the wedding with a date to support him.’ With that side of the family, it’s one thing to have an ‘alternative lifestyle’ but quite another to be single and in your mid-thirties.
‘This isn’t about the wedding. Showing up with a date for the event is just a bonus. I’m going to dedicate myself to helping you find a boyfriend. I will not rest until you find what you are looking for.’ She says this like Ingrid Bergman dedicating herself to the resistance in Casablanca . ‘Or a girlfriend or a nice couple in case you are discovering you’re bi or poly. It doesn’t matter to me.’
‘I’m still just gay, Mom.’
‘Oh well, okay then. Hold on.’ She grabs her purse and takes out a notebook. She turns a few pages and then takes a pencil that I am sure she took from a miniature golf course somewhere and starts scribbling.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m just crossing out the couples. That’s a shame. I met the nicest one the other day on the street. Tim and Tom. Isn’t that sweet?’ She sighs loudly. It’s more performative than functional. ‘That’s too bad because you’re just the right height for them.’ Another sigh.
‘How is someone the right height for a throuple?’ I ask.
‘One of them is shorter than you and one of them is taller?’
‘You measured them?’
‘Yes, but just with that thing on my phone.’ I imagine my mother on a New York street corner trying to figure out how to turn off the flashlight on her iPhone so she can measure some random couple in case they’d be interested in her son joining their relationship. ‘You would fit right in the middle, which is nice. Like steps. Boom, boom, boom.’ She sings the words and waves her hand like a leaf falling off a tree.
‘Mom, that is not how throuples work. Height is not important.’
‘Of course it is. If two of the people are tall and one is short it can be awkward in photos to get the right composition.’
‘People are not in throuples to look good in pictures.’
‘I know that,’ she says and rolls her eyes at me. ‘What makes you an expert on throuples? You aren’t even in one. Let’s face it, Sam. You aren’t throuple material.’ She sits down and puts the notebook in her lap. ‘I’m just going to tear out the page with women.’ She takes a short ruler out of her purse and tears the page against it so the edge is neat. I stand over and look down at the notebook. Oh, no. This is bad. Very bad. She has color-coded tabs. When my mother is using color-coded tabs, she means business.
‘Mom, I do not need your help finding a boyfriend.’ She doesn’t say anything. ‘And who says I even want a boyfriend?’ I wanted Paul as recently as earlier this morning. But that’s just Paul. I want closure, I think. Not a relationship. I don’t know.
‘I’m your mother. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to meet someone.’ She takes off her enormous glasses and opens her eyes as wide as she can. She stands up and stares at me like she’s trying to dive into my soul, a place I have always tried to keep her out of. ‘Go ahead, tell me. Say it.’
In my head I’m telling myself just to say the words. It will get her off my back and end this ridiculousness. I don’t want a boyfriend . The words are simple enough to say. I try to conjure them in my throat. I look at my mom staring at me and the words slink back down my throat and disappear.
She sits back down. ‘Now that that’s settled let me tell you what I am thinking in terms of your dating profiles and—’
‘Mom, no. I am not doing this. Why would I? Why would I ever agree to this?’
‘Because you promised. And a promise is a promise. Also, I know what I’m doing. Remember when I put soy sauce on your vanilla ice cream because I misread the label. It turned out to be delicious. I know how to put things together.’
‘It was not. It was disgusting,’ I say.
‘You ate the whole bowl.’ She’s right. But I did that because I love ice cream. ‘I just want to see you find someone.’
‘You just want to ruin my life.’ I sit down on the couch and throw my head back in a sign of non-violent protest.
She pats my thigh. ‘Oh, my sweet boy. You are just on top of your feels.’
‘I’m in my feels. In. Not on top , Mom.’
‘Pumpkin Pie. I know you aren’t a top,’ She stands up, looks me up and down and smiles to herself. ‘Anyone can tell you’re a bossy bottom. Now enjoy the rest of your day. Happy birthday.’ She kisses me on the forehead and leaves.