“So we’ve determined that you’re not ready to tell people yet,” the Kid says matter-of-factly. “And we don’t know when you’re going to be ready, right?”
I nod.
“And we know that Otter promised you that he would do this on your terms (however unfair that is), and that he would respect your decision not to tell anyone about you two, right?”
I nod again, ignoring the commentary.
“So you think Otter is mad at you because you had the opportunity to say something, and you didn’t. And you’re mad at Otter because you feel like he’s pushing you toward that something even though he promised you not to. But at the same time, you’re respectful of the position you’ve put him in because he hasn’t had to hide who he is and who he’s with in years, and you can see it’s straining him.”
I nod, loving the Kid more than I could ever tell him.
“So now you need to find a way to make Otter happy again, and at the same time, make you happy and also make sure it’s a happiness that will last until you are ready to admit the truth to people who probably will only be mad because you’ve kept it from them for so long. And with this, you also want to find out what it would take for you to be ready to tell people about you, but you need to grasp why you are so freaked out about it in the first place, because eventually, you do want people to know about you and Otter, but only for the simple reason that you want Otter and yourself to be able to go about your lives without having to worry about what secrets you keep and who knows them.” He stops and takes a deep breath. “Does that about cover it?”
I nod weakly.
The Kid sighs. “Bear, it’s pretty obvious.”
I startle. “It is?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe that you’ve been stewing over this for the past two days and haven’t come to the conclusion yet. I’ve listened to you for the last twenty minutes and even I know what you need to do.”
“What!” I almost shout. “Tell me what I need to do!”
“You want Otter to be with you, right?”
I grimace, but agree.
“And you want him to be happy?
“Right.”
“And you want to be able to do something for him that will let him know how you feel about him?”
“Yes!” I say, practically panting.
“And if I tell you what it is you need to do, you’re not going to question it but do what I say because deep down you’ll know I am right!”
“I swear to God, Ty!”
The Kid looks me squarely in the eye. “You need to tell him that you love him. You’ve never told him that before. You need to have him stand in front of you, and you need to tell him how much you love him and that you don’t know what you’d do without him.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I say, hedging.
“Bear!” the wannabe ecoterrorist shouts at me. “You just swore. To God. You can’t tell a little kid that you swear to God over something and then not do it. You may effectively ruin my childhood.” He looks off into nothing, a wistful expression on his face. “Gosh, think of the therapy bills. Not to mention how I’ll probably never be able to have a normal relationship when I’m an adult. I’ll live with you forever and become a cat lady.”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “You hate cats.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah, now I do. But I won’t have a choice. It’ll be inevitable. And I’ll probably have to throw birthday parties for my feline companions where I bake them cakes out of Fancy Feast. All because you went back on your God swear.”
My hands feel sweaty as I rub them together. “Ty,” I say, “I can’t just have him come over and say ‘Hey, Thanks for coming. Can I take your coat? Oh, by the way, I love you, so please don’t be mad at me anymore’.” I shake my head. “That sounds retarded.”
“Well, duh,” the Kid says, sounding like a kid. “You’ve got to do something special for him. My Lord, Bear, don’t you know anything about romance? You’ve had a girlfriend and a boyfriend; you think you would have learned something.”
“I know romance,” I retort. “I can be… like that if I wanted to.”
The Kid sits back in his chair, his MEAT ISN’T NEAT shirt riding up on his side. “Okay, then,” he says as he makes a face, “if you’re such a passionate person, then why don’t you tell me what you think you should do?” He folds his hands on his stomach and smirks at me.
“Fine,” I say vehemently. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to…. Okay, wait a minute. Okay, no, that’s lame. I could—wait, no, I think that’s illegal in this state. I could… make… him something?” I finish, looking up at the Kid, who waves his hand, motioning for me to go on. “I could… make him dinner? And… there could be… candles?” He nods, waving his hand again. “And, we could… do… something else? Jesus, Ty, I’m not some kind of machine! I can’t think of something right on the spot.”
He shakes his head. “Bear, you’re so lucky you have me,” he says seriously.
“I know,” I reassure him.
He leans back in his chair, and I am amused at his lordly mien as he presides over the future of my so-called love life. He doesn’t speak right away, and it gives me a moment to mull over the position I’m finding myself in now. If someone had told me a few years ago that I would sitting on the floor of this apartment waiting for the Kid to figure out the greatest way for me to tell my best friend’s brother that I love him, I would have thought that person had a hardcore crack addiction. There’s a nervous jitter running through me, an anticipatory buzz at what the Kid and I are planning. Am I really going to tell Otter that I love him? I think. Is that even going to fix anything? I notice with trace amusement that I never question the fact of whether if I do love him or not. Well, at least that’s settled, I think wryly.
Ty’s eyes light up, and he sits up straight in the chair and claps his hands together. “I know what to do!” he exclaims. “Bear, you are going to owe me so bad after this!”
“What!” I say, excited and terrified all at the same time.
“Okay, so you said that you wanted to make Otter dinner, right?”
“Right.”
“And we both know you’re surprisingly not bad in the kitchen, right?”
“Uh, thanks. But right.”
He ignores this and moves on. “So here’s what you’re going to do….”
TY’S idea was brilliant. It was the stuff of cheesy romantic over-the-top Hollywood movies. I swear to God the Kid is going to conquer the world when he grows up. Okay, scratch that; he’ll probably take over in the next five years. Like I said, though, the idea was amazing, but the execution… well, the execution isn’t going so well.
Goddammit.
Okay, so before I let you see me make the biggest fool of myself, let me fill you in on the setup.
Ty suggested that we go for broke on this one. It was his philosophy that if you’re going to do something like tell your boyfriend that you love him for the first time that you should go big or go home. I told him about how Otter had said it to me for the first time, and it wasn’t anything elaborate. He had me tell the story of a few days ago when I had practically begged Otter to say it. When I finished, the Kid said it sounded big to him, and then he snickered to himself. I told the Kid he doesn’t make any sense. Ty told me to shut up and listen to him because I didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him to act his age. He told me to act mine. I decided to shut up and listen to him. Now I think he was just being dirty.
Ty’s idea was still to have me make dinner for Otter, but he said that while making dinner in and of itself is nice, it’s not good enough. Ty said that we needed to do this on the beach, in front of the ocean, and under the stars. He wanted to get a table and set it up in the sand and cover it with a white tablecloth and have us dress up in our nicest clothes (he kind of looked at me in disdain when he said this part and then proceeded to ask if I even owned any nice clothes) and have candles and music, and
while he was talking, I tried to picture all of this in my head and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything like that, and what the hell were we thinking, and I was just going to pick up the phone and tell Otter right now. I told the Kid as much and had gotten as far as to pick up my phone and was about to press in Otter’s number when Ty grabbed the phone out of my hand and threatened to tell Otter that I liked to be spanked during sex.
This proceeded to lead us on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. He said he might have heard it mentioned while watching MSNBC. I told him he was grounded from watching the news channels for a week. That’s where this whole sidebar should have ended, but then I was forced to explain S & M and bondage to my little brother, who was persistent on the topic, and who then kept staring at me with mounting horror when I finally did explain, and I realized I had maybe gone too far, and we had to spend the next five minutes with me swearing to God that I had never nor would I ever attempt to do anything like that. He might now be the only nine-year-old who has heard the terms “cock ring” and “fisting.” My parenting skills are unparalleled.
When finally he would look me in the eyes again, I knew the only way I could earn his trust back (no matter what he says, I know the Kid thinks I like getting whipped now) was to go through with his plan. I wondered out loud how we should get Otter to dress up in nice clothes and come to the beach without giving him some kind of idea as to what was going on. The Kid said he would call Otter and tell him when and where to be. I tried to weasel out of it halfheartedly again by saying what if someone saw us and wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of keeping this on the down-low? The Kid countered with the fact that we both knew of a small stretch of beach that nobody ever went to. What about the Kid? Where would he go while I was doing all of this? It seems that was the perfect time for him to ask me if he could go on that damn camping trip with Alex and his family on Wednesday, after school got out. I saw how neatly the Kid had played this game, and I would have been pissed off if it hadn’t been so smooth.
Wednesday. Has a day ever sounded so ominous? Wed-nes-day. I told the Kid I thought Wednesday was Latin for Satan, and that we probably shouldn’t do it then because it might be bad luck. The Kid then proceeded to tell me what the word Wednesday actually means and where it came from (apparently it’s Middle English for Wednes dei, the day of the English God Woden—how the hell he knows these things, I’ll never know). He then said to stop being such a girl. This struck him as funny, and he laughed as he asked me if I was the girl in my relationship with Otter. I scowled and threw a pillow at his head.
So the Kid called Otter and told him where to be and what to wear. I tried to listen in on the conversation, but Ty shot me annoyed glares and eventually locked himself in the bathroom and turned on the sink and the shower and kept repeatedly flushing the toilet to drown out his whispering. I banged on the door and yelled that Al Gore would kick his ass for wasting all that water. He came out five minutes later and told me that first, Al Gore stopped being relevant four years ago, and that second, he hadn’t given anything away to Otter. But he did tell me that there was a new stipulation and that we both couldn’t wear shoes. I arched an eyebrow at this, and he said that it wasn’t meant to be more romantic this way but more practical. He said that Otter had tried to find out what he was up to, but the Kid made him promise not to ask any further questions to either him or me. Otter promised.
We reviewed everything that I had in my closet, and Ty was getting more and more discouraged as we went further and further into the racks of clothes. He had finally pulled out the last thing in the closet, and our room was completely trashed, and he sat on the ground, shaking his head, asking why did I not even own some kind of suit? I told him I wasn’t pretentious enough. He said I didn’t know what that word even meant. I told him what it meant. He grumbled for a few minutes, and then his eyes grew wide, and he jumped up from the crater of clothing he had created and ran down the hall, and I heard him go into Mom’s old room. This surprised me, because he never goes in there for anything. I got up and followed him, and he had opened the closet door in her old bedroom. I wondered what he reached for because our mom had taken the majority of her clothing with her, and even if she hadn’t, I wasn’t going to wear anything of hers. I opened my mouth to tell the Kid that yes, I might be about to tell a guy that I love him, but that didn’t mean I needed to do it in a bad thrift-store dress and heels. Before I could speak, he let out a crow of triumph and stopped back out of the closet, holding a tuxedo that was fashionable twenty years ago. I’d forgotten it was in there. It belonged to Ty’s dad and had been left here along with some other things when he and our mom had stopped doing whatever it was they’d been doing. My mom had said she didn’t have the heart to throw it away and thought that maybe Ty could wear it on his wedding day. I remember looking at my mom with a strange sort of respect. Of course, that was immediately killed when she continued by saying she wanted Ty to wear it on his wedding day as a reminder to never be a fucking bastard bitch whore like his father was.
Ty unzipped the bag the tux was in, and it smelled slightly stale, but Ty said that Febreeze would kill any odor. I told him I wasn’t wearing that. He told me to shut up and try it on. I did, and when I stepped in front of the mirror, the suit fitting surprisingly perfect (is there any other way for this fairy tale to go?). I was shocked to see how good my reflection looked staring back at me. We had forgone the bow tie because it was plaid (at least Ty had forgone the bow tie because it was plaid; I thought it looked very retro) and the matching cummerbund was left off, as well. What we had was a black tux with a white shirt that Ty made me tuck in. I started doing bad James Bond impressions in the mirror, and Ty said that if I did that on the beach with Otter that I was going to be alone forever. I stopped. When I looked to the Kid to see if he approved, he smiled and said I was almost presentable.
We Febreezed the hell out of it.
The next few days were spent in alternate states of panic and preparation. Otter called me a bajillion times and asked me what the Kid and I were planning and then made me swear not to tell Ty that he had broken his promise. I told Otter I didn’t know what he was talking about. He called me a liar. I called him a jerk. He asked to come over, but I told him no, I was busy. I really was busy getting ready for all of this, but I also didn’t want to see him until this whole thing was going to happen. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, knowing really that I just didn’t want to throw up on him when he showed up at my apartment. Otter called an hour later, sounding suspicious, and demanded again to know why Ty told him to wear a tux but no shoes and go to the beach at eight o’clock the following evening. I told him once again I had no idea what he meant. He growled into the phone, and it was low and breathy and that ended up being the first time I’ve ever had phone sex. Messy, messy business, that.
Ty approved the menu (everything cold, making it easier to make and bring to the beach) and the haircut (I tried to get out of that one, but he told Sam, the same guy who had been cutting my hair since I was a baby, to cut it as short as possible but still have hair; when he was done, I was shorn and horrified, and the Kid was smirking and satisfied). He approved the table (a large black card table from the furniture store), the tablecloth (white), and the candles (long and tapered; I wanted scented ones but he said those are for when people eat meat and have to poop—I didn’t bother to explain that I do both). He approved the music (some easy-listening Muzak crap that wouldn’t impede on any conversation), the flowers (I said no flowers; he said that gay or straight, people like flowers, and we agreed on two roses), and my etiquette (apparently, according to the eighteenth-century British lord who appears to be trapped in the body of my younger brother, my table manners leave something to be desired, and however unbelievable it may sound, elbows do not belong on a table, ever). I was essentially his chauffer as we went from place to place, preparing everything that he already had laid
out in his head. The only thing that he let me be in charge of was what I would actually say to Otter (but he did say to keep it short and sweet. Oh, and to say it after we eat. And to look him in the eyes. And to not put my elbows on the table when I do it. And that maybe it should rhyme because they were learning about poetry in school).
So while I drove my little brother and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am actually quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I’ll never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example:
I love you
You love me
Thank God for that
I’m so happy
And Ty’s personal favorite (which he helped on):
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don’t lead cows to slaughter!
I love you, and I know
I should’ve told you soon-a
But you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
Ty asked me if I got the hidden message in his poem. I told him it was loud and clear.
So I panicked and planned the most elaborate and wonderfully terrifying night of my life. I thought I would have enough time to do everything that needed to get done. But then it was Wednesday, and I dropped Ty off at school for his last day. Then it was Wednesday afternoon, and I picked Ty up from school and took him to the Herrera household and dropped him off there. All the time between when I sent him to school and when I picked him up is a haze. Before he got out, he made me go through the checklist, and once he was satisfied that I had remembered everything (and after telling him no three times that I was certainly not going to use his poem) he gave me a hug and whispered that he loved me in my ear and told me he would see me on Sunday when they got back. To give you an idea of how much of a wreck I was, I only twice made him promise to call me so I knew he was okay. Okay, twice on the car ride there. Actually, I told him four times, and it was while we were parked in front of his friend’s house, but come on, I can be a mess and still be a good big brother.