Cupcake (21 page)

"You've kind of found a place here, huh?" I asked him, squeezing his hand, so proud and awed how he has the ability to make himself part of a community--whether it's a community of artists, surfers, caffeine addicts, or Buddhist--wherever he goes.

"Sort of," Shrimp said. "I mean, I know the Buddhist path is one I want to go down. And I like this temple. But I like many different Buddhist temples I've visited. What I need next is a teacher."

"I'll teach you," I teased. What a laugh. During the hour of meditation silence Shrimp and I had just experienced together, I'd personally experienced sheer torture trying not to: (1) die of hysterics watching the happy monks think about nothing; (2) visualize my baby sister Frances Alberta as a Buddha baby who miraculously could sing every lyric of "Come Fly with Me" before she was even

247

old enough to crawl; and (3) think about me, me, me and Shrimp, Shrimp, Shrimp when I was supposed to be emptying my mind for the altruistic intent of praying for an end to everyone else's problems.

Whereas. Shrimp had sat still for the hour, eyes closed, his face etched in total concentration, his hair spiked up, my lust for him through the roof. My dharma punk, my dirty hippie, my Philip-Shrimp.

My loverman who knows his girl's limitations. "You might not be the best candidate for meditation," Shrimp acknowledged. "But I love you for trying."

This room we stood in, this togetherness we shared--I knew we were standing in a happy bubble. But make no mistake. Bubbles burst.

248

***

FORTY

Impermanence vs. Indecision.

I'll take indecision, please.

My life as a barista-waitress is over, for now. LUNCHEONETTE is shuttering its windows for good. Johnny the First is going into hospice upstate, and Johnny Mold is headed there to share the last days of his granddad's life with the old man who raised him. Once his grandpa passes, the building and the business will be put up for sale, but Johnny Mold doesn't have the energy right now to deal with operating or selling this joint that's only just now breaking even.

So, this much has been decided for me: Hello, full-time cupcake business, good-bye to my calling as a barista. That is, assuming I stay in Manhattan.

Since our apartment building's rooftop would be too cold for a February gathering, Johnny Mold invited us to use LUNCHEONETTE

249

to throw a party--and to give the place a proper send-off. With champagne, cupcakes, music, and Danny and Aaron's friends gathered, the occasion was as much an excuse to celebrate Aaron's birthday as it was an opportunity to celebrate the rebirth of Danny and Aaron's true love.

It's funny how at parties it's the odd men out who find one another. Being the only "out" heterosexual males in attendance, Shrimp and Frank-dad bonded as party buddies even faster than I'd once initially bonded with Shrimp's mom the first time I got to know her. But at that long-ago party on the rooftop of Shrimp's brother's house back in Ocean Beach, Shrimp's mom had offered up a spliff by way of breaking the ice between us. Here, Frank offered up his patented wise counsel.

I was too amused watching Shrimp get a lecture on spirituality from Frank of all people that I had no compassionate thought to rescue him. I stood at La Marzocco (bye, baby, I love you--you'll always be a Cadillac rather than a Camry to me, no matter what Dante says), pulling shots for our party guests, at a comfortable enough distance to hear Shrimp and Frank's conversation, but not so uncomfortably close as to join in.

Frank: "One of my longtime clients--we handled the advertising work for his bagel stores--was a Jewish man, a leading member of his synagogue,

250

very active in fundraising for Jewish causes. We retired around the same time, and I recently had lunch with him and found out he's become a Buddhist. At age seventy! His daughter married a Buddhist, and the man became intrigued by the
sangha
where the ceremony was held, and he began visiting the temple regularly. He said he had a recognition feeling at this temple, that basically the teachings he sat in on there explained what he always believed but didn't know he believed--until he found this place."

Shrimp: "That's exactly it. It's like I don't know a lot about it, but I feel like something is there that's right, and that's enough for me. I get this sense of belonging when I visit a Buddhist temple. Like it's basic instinct to be there."

Frank: "That's what my friend said. Maybe the generation gap on religion isn't so wide."

Shrimp: "But, dude, that's the amazing part, Buddhism's not really about religion. It's a religion that's not really a religion at all, but like a cooler way of

251

thinking about existence--you know, to stop the struggle to prove your existence to the world, and focus on just like being a compassionate person who will use existence for the benefit of other beings." Shrimp pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pants pocket and read aloud the words he'd written on it.
"Number 183--To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind-- this is the teaching of the Buddhas."

Frank: "Impressive study, young man. My advice is to continue to ask questions. Ask many questions." Profound!

Shrimp shot me a sly smile, but I couldn't giggle, not with the look of profound sadness on Johnny's face. He sat at the counter in front of me, sipping a latte, but with no Game Boy or paperback novel he bought for a quarter on the street clutched in his hand.

"You know I will be here to help when you get back from upstate, right?" I asked him. I reached across the counter and patted his Mikado/Penzance hand.
"Auf Wiedersehen, Fickakopf,
for now." My assurance to my friend dabbled in not-truth. I haven't decided whether I really will still be here in NYC when Johnny gets back, but for the sake of repeating back to him Johnny's favorite

252

parting words in German to customers he didn't like--"Good-bye, fuckhead"--I hoped I could be forgiven.

"I know you will," Johnny said, sounding comforted. (I suck.) His eyes drooped. Eight at night and he could barely stay awake, or bother to foreign-word-curse me out in return. "I'm so tired and I've hardly done anything."

"Grief is very tiring," advised lisBETH, sitting next to him. "After my mother died, I could barely make it out of bed for the next month, much less to the grocery store or to work."

My grief is that I want to see it, but I don't--how Shrimp and I are going to make us work this time around. Shrimp has decided. He wants to go back to San Francisco. He could stay with his brother or his parents, save up the money to travel, find a teacher.

When I asked Shrimp if he wanted me to move back home along with him, his reply? "If that's
what you
want to do."

I
am just not sure either way.

In the hypothetical land of an actual decision, I don't stick around to help Johnny deal with death and the business and all that important stuff your friends are supposed to be around for. In hypothetical land, I decide to return to the SF-land where the people whose permanence worries me reside. My choice wouldn't only be about Shrimp. I'd go because I worry about Sid-dad's life span given his retirement age and tubby belly and the fact that he doesn't pay attention to the doctor who tells him to cut his

253

cholesterol and get some exercise. I'd go to tick out the remaining time with Sugar Pie, who was the reason I even met Shrimp in the first place (thanks again, juvenile court). She's legitimately old, even though her seventysomething self doesn't look a day over sixty-something, and she's in legitimately dangerous health; she goes to dialysis three times a week because she only has one working kidney, and that one isn't working so good. I worry most for her because last year Sugar Pie became a bride for the first time when she married her true love Fernando and just on the basis of all the late-in-life happiness, I suspect some evil irony god will decide it's legitimately time for the reality of Sugar Pie's age and health to trump the bliss of her true love.

I worry that even though it feels like I am supposed to be in Manhattan, feels like I made the right choice, I love San Francisco, too. And first and foremost, shouldn't I want to be where my true love wants to live? Shrimp and I have already broken up twice. If we repeat the last breakup and part because we want to live in separate places even though we still love each other--well, isn't the rule: Three strikes and you're out?

True love is for real but that's not to say it's decided to stay.

Fear of impermanence sucks almost as much as the fact of it.

Poor Frank, sucked into a gay-son drama to go along with his love-child trauma. The sound of the champagne glass from Danny and Aaron's friends, demanding a soul kiss between the reunited

254

pair, directed Frank to shift his standing position next to Shrimp, a subtle move that put Frank's back to Danny and Aaron, and effectively blocked any subtle escape Shrimp might have taken from conversation with Frank. The move trapped Shrimp--and kept Frank from witnessing Danny and Aaron's kiss.

Not-So-Subtle in Your Subtlety would make a great band name.

Which reminded me. "Johnny," I said, "once you get back from upstate and when you're ready, you should talk to Aaron about joining his band. His buddies have been jamming together for years, but they broke up a while ago. They're talking about reforming and going back to their old name--My Dead Gay Son." The band's old incarnation was named in honor of Danny and Aaron's favorite movie from when they were in high school; in the movie there are two homophobic football players who get accidentally offed in a compromising position, and their dads feign support at their funeral, crying about how they love their dead gay sons. Watching Frank with his back turned to Danny and Aaron, I finally understood with my own eyes why Danny and Aaron relate to this line. Frank genuinely wants to be supportive, but he's uncomfortable with them even after all this time--particularly when they tip his support to the brink of bearing witness to their physical relationship, which his personal generation gap can't quite grasp.

I do give Frank credit. He tries. He's here.

255

Johnny said, "I might be into trying a new band now that Mold has gone the way of Milli Vanilli. Any idea who would be My Dead Gay Son, Part Deux's musical influences?"

"Aaron's old band was like a laid-back band of whatever. They covered the Sex Pistols, Billie Holiday, Led Zeppelin, the Carpenters, The Clash, Backstreet Boys. The usual suspects."

My cell phone chimed in with its
South Park
ringtone, flashing a Humboldt County area code. "Yo, Phil," I called out. Shrimp looked in my direction, and I tossed the phone to him.

Did Shrimp appreciate my rescuing him from Frank as much as I will appreciate being rescued from his parents if we move back home? Because at this moment I was appreciating the twenty-five hundred miles separating us from them. I don't trust Iris and Billy. Now that they're settled into their friends' guest house up in Humboldt County (translation: They're gatekeepers for the friends' marijuana harvest in exchange for a place to live), Iris and Billy are trying to lure Shrimp back to them with talk of the awesome surfing along the rugged northern California coastline, and dangling bait about a nearby Buddhist monastery where Shrimp could become a volunteer cook in exchange for housing and spiritual guidance.

I object. They want to reel him back in because it serves their best interest to have his amazingness near to them rather than serving Shrimp's best interest to do his own thing free of

256

them; they'd surely throw him back to picking up his life again after they moved on to whatever it is they'll move on to next. The probability that they'll leave him stranded again is less than hypothetical--it's a certainty. They've been doing it to him for the duration of his existence--and his brother's, and the half sister from Iris's first marriage, whom she abandoned to take up with Billy.

Shrimp went outside to take the call, leaving Frank with nowhere to turn, in this crowd of young people made up mostly of gay boys, but to his daughters. He sat down at the counter next to lisBETH. Since I had them both trapped, I gave up the objectionable question I'd been meaning to spring their way for a while. "Frank and lisBETH, how come I haven't met your significant others?"

LisBETH answered like lisBETH--brutally honestly. "You haven't met mine because he's not turning out to be a keeper. He's a good man, but you know what? He's boring. Also, he doesn't want to be a father, and I'm ready to have a baby. I always thought I should wait for a good man to come along before having a child, and now that one's come along, I think I've decided I'd just as soon do it on my own rather than be in a relationship with someone I like a little but will never love. I haven't cut the cord with him yet, but it's coming--and I don't care for the melodrama of introducing him to my family when I have no intention of him becoming part

257

of it. However, you ask a good question, so Daddy, I turn it over to you. Why
haven't
we met your lady friend?"

Frank stammered, "Well ... uh ... she's very Catholic, you know..."

I was primed to lay into him, but lisBETH beat me to it. "For God's sake, Daddy, you had a child outside your marriage. She's standing here right now, she's part of our lives. Be honest about your past for once in your life--at least if you want a future with this woman."

Damn, didn't expect that one! Sister, I will never BETH you again.

A few karaoke songs and the birthday song later (sung as a Gregorian chant by Danny and friends--highly entertaining), I realized as I cut Aaron's birthday cake that I hadn't seen Shrimp at the party since he went outside LUNCHEONETTE to take the call from his parents.

And all of a sudden I had a very bad feeling about impermanence, along with a recurrent need to abandon yet another of Danny's birthday parties. I also had a very bad feeling about Shrimp's mom's love for buying cheap last-minute flights on the Internet. On a whim.