Chapter 22
This one was the last straw. I do not even go up to my apartment after my aborted evening with Riesling. No last name. Just Riesling. These blind dates are getting out of control. It’s one thing to force me to play laser tag in Jersey City with an orthodontist from Poughkeepsie but another to endure what happened tonight. At least the orthodontist gave me a free toothbrush. I walk right into Plant Daddy and straight to the counter, which is unusually busy for this time of night.
I move closer and realize my mom is holding court. ‘Now, Morgan,’ she says raising her voice to be heard over the steaming wand. ‘You have to embrace body positivity. You’re a beautiful person inside and out and that’s what matters. I want you to write a love letter to your own body. Telling it everything you love.’
‘That’s a wonderful idea. Thank you, Gloria,’ Morgan says with a shy smile and the crowd around my mother thins.
‘Mother, may I speak with you,’ I say stiffly.
‘Uh oh, Maggie. He only calls me mother when I’m in trouble. Mind if I go spray the tropicals and chat with my beautiful son?’
‘No problem,’ Maggie says, stretching her arms above her head. My mother grabs a vintage brass atomizer and I meet her by the shelf with the orchids and bromeliads.
‘How did it go with Riesling? I thought you were going to dinner tonight.’
‘That is what I’m here to talk to you about,’ I say sharply but she’s oblivious.
‘Riesling seems so interesting. And he has both passion and pizazz. He helped me find the most perfect shade of apricot lipstick at Sephora. What an eye for color. I thought you two might hit it off. He’s a very gifted cosmetologist.’ She spritzes a tall yellow and violet orchid before carefully examining the leaves.
‘So you said. He told me he had to finish up with a client and asked if I wouldn’t mind meeting him at work before dinner. I thought I’d be going to some photo studio or behind the scenes of a runway show, so imagine my surprise when my Uber drops me off at Peaceful Meadows.’ I try to remain calm and follow her as she shuffles to the next plant.
‘I hear that’s a lovely place,’ my mother says without the slightest bit of remorse.
‘If you’re dead. It’s a funeral home. Riesling is a mortuary cosmetologist. He works on dead people. You seemed to have left that part out.’
‘Did I?’ She puts her finger to her mouth and then shrugs. ‘So what? It’s a job.’
‘Sure, I get that, but he made me wait for him in the lobby while he put blush on a corpse. I had to sit shiva with a family from Canarsie. Then he wanted to drive to the restaurant using the company car – a refrigerated hearse.’
‘It’s not like there were bodies in it,’ she says spraying a plant. Then she stops, holds the mister in both hands and tilts her head toward me. ‘Were there?’
‘We’ll never know, Mom, because I made up a very polite excuse to get out of there and avoid being stuck in the Midtown Tunnel a few inches away from a dead body in need of fresh eye liner. And don’t get me started about the pageant coach. Mom, seriously, how are you screening these people?’
‘Nathaniel? Yeah. He’s a bit desperate but you have to admit he has amazing skin. Riesling was a strong candidate. And they’re both very passionate about what they do. You know that is such an important rule. I thought there might be a little spark. That’s what you need. Someone to ignite that in you.’
‘I do not need to be ignited. Thank you.’ Is that what she thinks I need? How can she know so little about me? I need the exact opposite. I need someone stable. Someone who keeps me calm and makes my life easier, not harder. I have her for that. Then I hear a weird sound from her phone sitting on the table between us. It’s a cross between a growl and a moan. Then it happens again and again. ‘Mom, can’t you hear those notifications?’
‘Are they going off again? I can’t really hear them. Too high or too low, I think.’ She grabs her phone and turns it over to look at the screen. ‘Fabulous. Look at all these possibilities!’ She shows me the screen and I see a cascading stream of notifications from SecretSlam, a hookup app.
‘What are you doing on SecretSlam?’
‘I’m not on SecretSalm. You are.’ She takes back her phone and swipes a few times until she finds a picture of me from at least five years ago at some formal event I don’t even remember. I look like I should be selling insurance. I swipe through and she has a picture of me from a production of Godspell in college. I’m wearing glitter on my face and overalls that are a few sizes too big. But what’s more awful is the name she has selected.
‘JoyBoy793!’
‘Isn’t that adorable? I came up with that myself. I think it says that you bring happiness and vigor and that number is just our street address. You know, to make it more memorable.’ She swipes to show me my profile. There are a bunch of check boxes for types and sex stuff and she has checked all of them. All of them. Fetishes and sexual things I have never heard of. Some of them I’m not sure I can even pronounce.
‘Mom, delete this profile immediately,’ I demand but I stop myself from shouting since we are so close to the tropicals. Kai would have a fit if I spoke any louder so close to his precious orchids.
‘Don’t worry. I tell everyone I chat with that I’m your mother.’
‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better.’ I worry the intensity of my sarcasm will make the blossoms wilt.
‘No one thinks they’re talking to you. That would be goldfishing and unethical.’ I do not correct her. She puts the atomizer on the shelf and takes a seat at the closest table. She pulls out a seat for me and pats it sharply. ‘Now that you’re here, we can go over some of these profiles together. I’ve met some very nice people, and I even helped one with his chronic rosacea. I know a dermatologist on the Upper West Side who can work wonders, and this guy has already seen an improvement.’ She wipes her hands on her apron and pushes her curly hair back behind her ears before swiping through more profiles. ‘Are you still eating meat?’
‘Yes. Why?’
She frowns. ‘That’s too bad. So many of these guys are vegan. They all have these eggplants in their profiles or peaches.’
‘That’s not what those mean.’ I put my elbows on the table so I can hold my head in my hands. She ignores me so I let her go on thinking that most of gay New York is just looking for a healthy dose of fruits and vegetables. My mother is a minefield of knowledge. She knows a ton about some things and is completely oblivious to others.
‘What do you think about this guy?’ she asks, holding her phone toward me.
‘No,’ I say without looking at the picture.
She swipes again. ‘This one? He’s in Bahrain at the moment but flies to Atlanta next week and then New York.’
‘No,’ I say. What kind of filter is she using to meet guys in Bahrain? We repeat this a half dozen more times.
She eventually throws up her hands and says, ‘I have a delivery scheduled out back. Look through all of these messages and choose at least one guy who seems interesting. I’ve hand-selected each boy on that list. Some of them are super sweet and all of them have passion.’ She starts walking away but she stops and turns back. ‘But OscarTime44 does some weird thing with Q-tips. I think it’s sexual but I’m not totally sure. I’m not saying cross him off the list; I just want you to be aware, and if that’s what you’re into, I say go for it.’
She walks away to deal with the delivery, squirming out of responding to my complaint about Riesling. Just for kicks, I scroll through the list she has created. It’s a parade of shiny torsos and other pleasantly filtered R-rated body parts. At least she isn’t asking for dick pics.
My mom comes back, wipes her hands on her apron and cranes her neck to look at the profiles with me. ‘Oooh, what about that one? He’s been very polite in the messages. I think he works in graphic design.’ She points to a guy wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat and huge sunglasses.
‘You can’t even see what his face looks like.’
‘So what? He said he likes the beach.’
‘Mom, I hate the beach. You know that.’ All that sand in places it shouldn’t be.
‘Of course I do. That’s why I figured someone who loves the beach would be a good match. You’d get to see it through their eyes. Opposites attract. That’s a rule everyone knows. It’s not mine. It’s science.’
Kai comes over with a very sad-looking pot of dirt with something that used to be green on the top of it. ‘Poor thing. They were once a blooming camelia, all full of life. Now look at them.’
‘Oh, Kai, I’m so sorry,’ my mother says. ‘Camelia can sometimes need re-rooting.’
‘Good idea. I’ll be out back in the potting shed if you need me.’ He rolls away but turns back. ‘Gloria, did the shipment that we were waiting for come in?’
‘Just now. I’ll get it set up later.’
‘What’s going on back there?’ I ask Kai. For all I know, my mom is building me a husband out of discounted parts she finds online.
‘Don’t you worry about it, Mr Nosey.’ Kai leaves and I think I almost catch him wink at my mom but it’s more likely Kai has dirt in his eye.
‘So, none of those guys float your boat?’ my mom asks, resting her elbows on the counter.
‘Not a one.’ I hope that will be the end of it. ‘I do not want to be on SecretSlam. Can you please delete my profile?’ I ask even though it’s a demand.
‘Not a problem.’ I know enough to trust that when my mother says something isn’t a problem, it means a big problem is coming. ‘I checked your calendar and I see you are free this coming Sunday.’
‘Oh, Lord. Another blind date? I don’t think I have the strength. Who is it? Your butcher’s friend’s neighbor’s plumber?’
‘A plumber!’ She puts her hands together and kisses them before raising them up to the sky. ‘From your lips to God’s ears. What I wouldn’t give to have a plumber for a son-in-law. But no, it’s not a blind date. Those have a very low ROI. That’s return on investment.’
‘I know.’
‘I need to start casting a wider net.’ I pray she is using a metaphor and doesn’t plan to stand on Ninth Avenue with some kind of webbed sack. ‘Your cousin’s wedding is less than two months away. I want you to walk into The Plaza Hotel with the man of your dreams on your arm. And I’ve found out about something even better than blind dates. Better than the apps. It’s called Speed Dating. You spend a few minutes with dozens and dozens of men. It’s making a huge comeback according to an article I read in The New York Times. Your generation is tired of hiding behind screens. They want to go out and meet people face to face.’
‘Is that what I want? I’m so glad you have a digital subscription to The New York Times so you can play Wordle and find out what I want.’
She pats her apron pockets, and then pushes her hands into the gauzy green bohemian-style skirt Omar made for her before pulling out a piece of paper and showing it to me. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me so I printed out the article and I underlined all the important passages.’ She folds the piece of paper for safekeeping and puts it back in her pocket. ‘That’s not me Gloria Carmichael. That’s The New York Times speaking. Surely you’ll trust them if you don’t trust your own mother.’
She has me cornered. ‘If I go to the speed dating thing then we put a pause on the blind dates?’
‘That’s fair. And look, I’m not a monster. I’m going to let you wear whatever you want to wear as long as it isn’t too baggy and not so much black. You’re going to speed dating, not cleaning the garage. And nothing yellow. Makes you look jaundiced. And no hats. But whatever you want, really.’
‘You must really think I’m a loser,’ I say to her seriously and sink into the chair. The whole experience is draining me.
‘What?’ she exclaims and raises her hands to her cheeks in shock. She fake spits on the ground. Twice. ‘Don’t even say such a thing. Don’t even think it. What in the world would make you say that, Sam? I love you. I think you are the most wonderful, handsome, and best son a mother could ever have. I say that all the time.’
‘I know you say it. You say it a lot but that’s different than expressing it through actions. Look at all this crazy stuff you’re doing…’
‘What? I’m just helping. That’s what mothers do. And, Sam, don’t use crazy that way. A lot of people could be offended.’
I look at her in her lavender T-shirt with bold white lettering that says ‘Moms for Equality’ and a small yellow and blue flag in the corner. I love her dedication to the cause but I am not one of her social issues.
‘Maybe you think you’re just helping but it’s more than that. You think I can’t find someone on my own.’ I don’t tell her that I already have found someone, that his name is Paul and she already hates him. ‘You think I am so poorly presented that I need your help to get a date.’
‘That’s not true at all. Not at all,’ she says, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. Serious conversations are not our strength. I want to sit her down and ask why she is obsessed with helping me. I don’t get it. I want her to understand who I am as a person, not just who I am as her son, but we don’t really operate on that wavelength. I guess I don’t really understand her as a person either. Our connection is strong but not always deep, and there’s a difference. Despite the torture I’ve had to endure since this plan started, the fact is we are slowly learning more about one another even if there are some dead-ends and head-on collisions.
Her phone makes that growl/moan sound and she takes it out and pulls down her reading glasses from over her head, despite the fact that she has a pair hanging from her neck. ‘I’m going to have to tell Desperate2Love that you aren’t interested. That’s going to be rough for him. He just got over a bad breakup and was looking forward to meeting you… but maybe I can set him up with InsatiableBtm444.’ She looks away for a moment deep in thought. ‘You know that just might work. I’m getting so good at this.’ A customer appears at the counter register with a snake plant and a small bag of dirt. ‘I wrote all the information down here.’ She hands me a piece of paper. ‘And I emailed it to you in case you lose the paper. You know we never did find that glove.’
‘What glove?’ I ask.
‘The ones I bought you for your tenth birthday. You barely had them a week when you lost the left one. So be careful with this. I know you can misplace things. You don’t mean to but you do. I love you. I think you are wonderful. Forehead,’ she says and I bend toward her over the counter. She kisses me above my eyebrows and says, ‘I love you times a million billion.’
‘I love you a billion more,’ I say and she heads to the other end of the counter to take an order. She tosses a fresh dish towel over her shoulder and greets the customer with an easy smile. I can tell she’s enjoying working here as much as she’s enjoying interfering in my life. But it’s hard to be too upset with her meddling since she genuinely wants what’s best for me, or at least what she thinks is best. Everything she’s doing is done from a place of love and it makes me feel guilty because I’m just going through the motions. It reminds me of the time I agreed to take one of Maggie’s yoga classes. I thought I would humor her and casually move through the poses but I could barely walk for a week.