Nate is on the left, a half foot taller than Nick or me. At eleven, he’s already pretty thick around the middle, his T-shirt clinging to his bloated torso like a sausage skin and barely reaching the waistband of his cotton sweatpants, which are also too small. His hair is cropped short, so he won’t pull it out or catch it on fire. Other than that, he looks somewhat content, if not a little cross-eyed.
On the far right is Nick, same age as me but older looking, his good-natured grin unable to belie the considerable defiance in his eyes. The effect is sort of a glower, like he’s daring the world to do something or say something. Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell Nick to just hold his horses, that the world has plenty of shit in store for him. But I think he already knew that from experience.
That’s me, little Mike Muñoz, standing in the middle. A sad-eyed ferret of a kid, skinny and bewildered, slight olive complexion, dark rings under my eyes. Greasy bangs plastered to my forehead, faded Toughskins jeans riding halfway up my shins. On my back, a dirty brown coat with a fake-fur collar. Not exactly the kid from the Sears catalog but a kid all the same. Eight years old and looking for a little security, a little self-confidence—any confidence, really. Just a third grader, bottom lip chafed from obsessive licking, little fingernails bitten to the quick, aching for a good time.
I don’t know why I keep this old photo around, but it serves as a constant reminder of where I came from. Not that I really need one. I could just as easily look out the window. But sometimes, as with Nick, I wish I could go back and tell little Mike Muñoz a few things, tell him to relax and leave the worrying to the adults. Tell him he’ll find love and security one day, if he can ever figure out where to look for it. And maybe I’d tell little Mike to start by looking outside himself instead of within the murky, undefined recesses of his heart. In my experience, a kid doesn’t gain much through introspection. A kid gets more by throwing a ball or wrestling with a dog or burning anthills with a magnifying glass. Sometimes I wish I could just go back and tell little Mike Muñoz to quit biting his fingernails and have some laughs.
That’s what kids should do, they should laugh. If there’s a better, righter sound in the whole world than the laughter of children, I don’t know what it is.
The Flying Saltshaker
What I like most about Remy is that she seems comfortable in her own skin, like she’s not trying superhard to impress anyone. She’s not apologetic about being a waitress at Mitzel’s, and why should she be? I hate that everybody is so self-conscious about how much money they make, and how much freedom their big important job allows them, and all the cool places they go, and how good looking their kids are, and all the sexy pictures of jumbo shrimp and giant margaritas they post on their Instagrams. Remy’s not like that. When she tells you to have a good day, you feel like she really means it.
Of course, Nick doesn’t find Remy attractive, but what does Nick know? He’s got something negative to say about almost every girl I’ve ever tried to get with, even though he’s the one always pushing me. According to Nick, Shannon (the ticket taker from the AMC 7 in Poulsbo) looked like a pteranodon. And yeah, she kind of did, but that didn’t bother me. I’ve got nothing against a slight cranial crest. It’s not like she had wings. I was more bothered by the fact that I had nothing in common with her. According to Nick, Amy (the checker from Rite Aid) looked like Matt Damon. Personally, I thought she looked more like Hilary Swank, but that’s beside the point. The real disconnect with Amy, once again, was that I had nothing in common with her. Nick called Monica from the bookstore “Skillet,” because she looked like someone hit her in the face with a skillet, which was not entirely true. But the thing with Monica was, she didn’t really read books, even though she worked at a damn bookstore. She may as well have been selling bathroom tile. I guess I don’t see the point of dating somebody just because. Sex doesn’t seem like enough.
The lone exception that Nick was ever willing to grant me was Shelly, the barista at the Coyote Coffee drive-thru on 305, to whom Nick assigned “semihot” status, from the neck down, anyway. He said I should “hit that shit,” even if her face was “butter.” And maybe I could have, if my heart had been in it. But the truth is, things always felt forced with Shelly, what with me ordering three coffees a day at the drive-thru window and trying to start conversations based solely on customer familiarity. With Remy, I don’t feel quite as much pressure. The familiarity was there the first time I sat in her section, and it seems to grow with every visit.
Since Mom was working, I had no choice but to bring Nate with me when I went to Mitzel’s the following night. This was bad news, of course, on a number of levels, not the least of which was a financial one. In case you didn’t know, mowing lawns doesn’t exactly make a guy rich. You’d think Nate would be grateful for a free, fancy meal. But let me tell you, coaxing him inside was no easy task, though the drive to the restaurant went relatively well. It wasn’t until we parked my truck that things started to go south in a hurry.
“This isn’t fucking McDonald’s!” he shouted.
“Shhh,” I said. “You can have anything you want.”
“You said McDonald’s!”
“Shhh. Look, they’ve got all kinds of cheeseburgers here. They’re huge—way bigger than Mickey D’s.”
“You said Big Macs!”
“Shhh.”
Clutching two menus, the hostess arrived just in time to run interference.
“Two of you tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Remy’s section?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess that’ll work.”
I swear, the hostess rolled her eyes as she shuttled us briskly to a booth in the middle of the dining room.
“How’s this?” she said.
“Not McDonald’s,” grumbled Nate.
“Great,” I said.
Begrudgingly, Nate turned his attention to the sticky picture menu.
“Anything you want under twelve bucks,” I told him.
“This one,” he said, pointing to the prime rib dip.
“That’s fourteen. Try the bacon cheeseburger. It’s only eleven.”
“This one!”
“Shhh. Calm down.”
“You said anything!”
“Fine,” I said, heaving a sigh. “But no dessert and no soda.”
He stiffened in an instant, thunderheads gathering behind his eyes.
“Okay, soda. But no dessert.”
On this occasion, it was Remy’s arrival that saved me.
“Oh, hey,” she said, fishing her pen from behind an ear.
It’s not her fault if her uniform is a little frumpy, with its padded shoulders and baggy sleeves and shapeless black slacks, any more than it’s her fault that she always smells like pancake batter. That stuff is all superficial, anyway.
“Uh, this is my brother, Nate.”
“Hi, Nate,” she said.
“This one!” he demanded, pointing to the prime rib dip.
“Ah, okay,” she said, scribbling down the order as she shot me a sly little wink. So sympathetic, so understanding. She could tell right away that Nate had special needs. What was stopping me from asking this woman out?
“How about you?” she said.
“I’ll just have a side salad.”
“You’re sure?”
“And, uh, fries, I guess.”
“Anything to drink?”
“Soda!” said Nate.
“Just water for me.”
Nothing to set the world on fire, sure, but a successful exchange—or at least not a disastrous one. We were still getting to know each other. What was the big hurry?
When Remy delivered the food, I redoubled my efforts to develop intimacy.
“Wow. That’s a big salad,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s pretty big.”
“Really big,” I ventured.
“Yeah, I guess so. Can I bring you guys anything else?”
“I think we’re good.
Thanks.”
I thought I saw a little spring in her step as she waltzed back down the aisle to the wait station.
About two minutes later, Nick came down the aisle, with his trimmed little goatee, which made him look like a NASCAR driver, and his twelfth-man jersey. Muscling into the booth, he immediately started plucking fries off my plate.
“Man Hands working?”
“Quit calling her that,” I said.
“Did you get her digits yet? Get it, digits? Like because of her big fingers.”
“Just shut up about it.”
Nick speared another fry off my plate and was eyeing Nate’s.
“Make a move already, Michael. It’s getting a little creepy, you eating here twice a week. No wonder you’re broke all the time.”
“Just get off my back for once, would you?”
“Jesus, why are you so sensitive? Speaking of fags: look at that homo by the window.”
“And lay off the fag stuff,” I said. “You don’t even know the guy.”
“Oh, are you a fag, too?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I’m not. It’s just that what difference does it make about somebody’s lifestyle or whatever. Fags are just people.”
“Yeah, people who stick shit up their butts.”
“You like The Rock, don’t you?” I said.
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
“Everybody knows he’s gay.”
“Fuck off! That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. The fucking Rock, gay. Pfff.”
Somewhere under all the bravado and the habitual bigotry and the general stupidity, Nick’s got a good heart, I swear. And he’s had my back many times, and Nate’s, too. I guess I’m a loyalist at the end of the day. Just about everybody lets you down sooner or later, so if you know anybody who hasn’t totally betrayed you, I figure you’re pretty smart to stick by them, warts and all.
But there’s one thing I’d never tell Nick in a million years, not that it really matters: in fourth grade, at a church youth-group meeting, out in the bushes behind the parsonage, I touched Doug Goble’s dick, and he touched mine. In fact, there were even some mouths involved. It’s not something I’d even think about all these years later, except that Goble is the hottest real-estate agent in Kitsap County. His face is all over town—signs, billboards, Christ, even on shopping carts. Do you know what I think three times a day when I see his picture? I wonder, all these years later, why he just kicked our friendship to the curb like that. Was it shame?
“How about you, Nathan?” Nick said. “How you holding up?”
Nate grunted through a mouthful of prime rib dip.
“Always the conversationalist,” said Nick, before turning his attention back to me.
“Dude, it’s just Man Hands. She’s not even hot. She’s like a five and a half. How much money are you gonna waste in this place? Ask her out right now.”
“Not with you here.”
“What, I’m gonna cramp your style? What about him?” he said, indicating Nate, his face slick with grease, his shirt front damp with au jus.
“Just leave me alone, okay?”
“Fine, whatever,” Nick said, snatching one last fry. “Anyway, I saw your truck in the lot and just dropped in to say hi. You wanna go down to Tequila’s later? I think the chick with the octopus tattoo is working.”
“It’s a giant squid, Nick, not an octopus. It’s called a kraken, it’s a legendary sea monster.”
“So who the fuck cares?”
“I care.”
“That figures.”
“Just go,” I said. “Please.”
Nick stood up. “Fine. Michael, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you’ve got a real stick up your ass.”
Thank God, he finally relented, leaving Nate and me in relative peace, a peace that lasted for a while, anyway, until Nate set his sights on dessert.
“I said no. We can’t afford it.”
“You said anything!”
I should have given in. It would’ve lengthened our stay, if nothing else. But as it was, I knew I’d be hitting up the Money Tree by the twenty-third and taking a 30 percent hit on my paycheck.
“Forget it. No dessert.”
That’s when Nate snatched up the saltshaker.
“Relax,” I said. “You can have some Oreos when we get home.”
Before I could persuade him further, he hurled the saltshaker across the dining room, and I mean winged it like King Felix. It whistled past some old geezer’s head so fast that he didn’t even look up from his soup before it crashed against the far wall, not three feet from Remy at the wait station, shattering a glass picture frame.
Nate went pale when he saw what he’d done. The dining room set to buzzing. Remy and the hostess immediately started tending to the broken glass while some guy with cropped hair and an earring, who carried himself like the manager, started striding purposefully toward our table. I was standing before he got halfway there.
“What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?”
The guy’s voice threw me. Turns out he was a she, at least I think, just kind of butch.
“My brother’s developmentally disabled,” I explained, for about the nine-thousandth time in my life. “He’s got impulse-control issues. One time he hugged the neighbor’s cat too hard.”
“Is he okay?”
“He broke its spine.”
“I mean your brother.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Are you okay, sir?” she asked Nate, slyly confiscating the pepper mill.
Without even thinking, I fled, leaving Nate with the manager, and the next thing I knew, I was kneeling on all fours, grazing elbows with Remy, close enough to smell her pancake-batter scent, as she plucked glass off the carpet.
“Ugh, this is so embarrassing,” I said. “Here, let me get it.”
“I’ve got it,” she said.
“He does that sometimes. It’s hard to see it coming, you know? It’s not like a daily occurrence or anything. Look,” I said, and I could see in her eyes she knew what was coming. “I know this is weird timing, but sometime—”
She stopped me short. “Maybe you should go check on your brother.”
I felt like an asshole. Why the hell was I flirting at a time like this?
“Oh yeah, right, my brother.”
Remy stood up and walked away with her tray of broken glass.
As it turned out, order had already been restored to the dining room by the time I was halfway to the table. In fact, Nate was apparently getting chummy with the manager, who was still poised at the end of the booth.
I could feel myself blushing from anger and embarrassment.
“Your brother and I were just chatting,” the manager said.
“Is that right?”
I was giving Nate the stink eye big-time. I know it wasn’t fair to blame him for my falling flat on my face with Remy, but I couldn’t help it. If he hadn’t thrown the saltshaker, it never would have happened. If I wasn’t stuck looking after him my whole life, who knows how many girlfriends I might have had.
Remy avoided us after that. We finished our meal in silence, and the manager cleared our plates. It was the manager who brought us our check, and the manager who cashed us out.
I Am Not a Virgin
Don’t get the idea I’m batting zero. I’ve just been in a bit of a slump since I lost my virginity six years ago. Not that I was lighting the world on fire back then. Gina Costerello just happened to fall into my lap junior year. Actually, Nick sort of pushed her there.
Gina Costerello was a senior, and not unattractive in a horsey way. She was at least three inches taller than me, which was enough to put her out of my league. At least in my memory, Gina always wore dark sweaters with big boobs inside. Not to say that big boobs were important to me. They seemed like an awkwardly designed utility more than anything. Gina’s were hard to ignore, though.
It was Nick who was standing
beside me that cool spring night in the woods at Rob Vosper’s birthday kegger—Rob Vosper of the underaged tattoos and the older brother named William who was in a band that gigged semiregularly in Seattle, the same older brother who dated Gina Costerello for three weeks the previous year.
“Dude,” said Nick. “They look like baby seals.”
“No they don’t. They don’t look anything like baby seals.”
“I’ll bet she’s got those smooth silver-dollar nipples.”
“Stop,” I said. “She’s gonna hear you.”
“No way. She’s shit-housed, dude. Hey, Gina,” he called. “Gina Costerello!” And then he promptly darted off toward the keg.
Gina turned in my direction sluggishly, her big brown eyes swimming for focus in the whites.
“Do I know you?” she said.
“I’m Mike. I sit next to you in home economics. We were partners for the pizza thing yesterday. You actually burned me,” I said, volunteering my wrist.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”
“That’s cool. It was an accident.”
She scanned me up and down with her unsteady gaze, from my fake Adidas Superstars (one too many stripes), up past my off-brand, faded jeans, to my ragged gray sweatshirt, and finally to my face: slightly greasy, with the faintest beginning of a molester mustache. I think she must have seen something pitiable in my brown eyes.
“You’re actually kind of cute,” she said.
“Uh, thanks.”
“C’mon,” she said, without taking my hand.
And that was pretty much the extent of our courtship. It was more like a transaction. Gina led me businesslike up the gravel road past a half-dozen parked cars. I did my best to be charming as we crunched along.
“Wow, it’s dark,” I said.
“Yep,” she said.
“Really dark.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
My thoughts were racing. My frustrated sexuality was on the cusp of relief. I could feel something big about to happen, though Gina seemed pretty matter of fact about it.