It's All Relative (3 page)

“Wade, please be quiet.”

I screamed.

“Wade,” she cried, rubbing her head and her face, “if you don't be quiet this very second, I will levitate your bed.”

I didn't know what “levitate” meant.

My mother stood up and waved her hands over my bed. She shut her eyes and lifted her arms toward the heavens. She began to hum.

“I will lift your bed off the ground and into the air, and rattle it until you stop,” she told me in a trancelike state. “And if you don't, you will sleep suspended in midair, and you won't be able to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night because you will simply fall to the ground.”

And then, with her eyes half shut, looking possessed, my mom started to chant the following:

Well, this was about the scariest thing a six-year-old boy, who loved both his mother and Mother Earth more than anything, could imagine.

I shut my mouth, my teeth chattering, and then I shut my eyes, and I could swear my bed was lifting off the floor, and then spinning like a merry-go-round.

I popped open an eye and saw my mother, as green and wickedly magical as the wicked witch, her arms outstretched, humming and chanting. She was, I now knew, levitating my bed.

So I did the only thing I could: I grabbed my Polaroid and snapped a photo.

Of my mother, the witch, her twinkling pendant releasing an evil spell.

I knew I would need proof to show the authorities what had occurred this night.

I knew I would need evidence to show my dad and brother that their wife and mother was really from Salem.

I shook my Polaroid, defiantly, in front on my mother.

“I have proof!” I screamed.

Now, I certainly didn't want to be a cow, so I clamped my eyes shut again, and they remained that way until the next morning, when I awoke to find my mom sitting on the edge of my bed, shaking me, hugging me, apologizing, asking if I was okay, if I had slept.

“Is my bed back on the floor, Mommy?” I asked.

She hugged me and said she had to go take some aspirin.

As soon as she left, I retrieved the Polaroid picture that I had stashed under my pillow. Here was my evidence to the world.

The Polaroid was black.

So I shook it.

It was as if a picture had never been taken.

I shook it again. Harder.

Nothing.

Her powers had destroyed it!

That New Year's morning, my dad made Belgian waffles for breakfast and my brother and I blew my parents' leftover noisemakers all day long while my mother moaned through clenched teeth, shutting all the curtains in the house to keep out the bright light, just like any witch would, I knew.

I
woke with a start last New Year's Eve after my head had fallen into the giant red enamelware popcorn bowl I was holding in my lap.

Homemade caramel corn was stuck to my chin.

I jerked upright and looked over at my partner, Gary, whose head was painfully tilted sideways—like a broken jack-in-the-box. He was drooling the remnants of his ice-cream sundae.

“Get up!” I shouted, staring at the clock in our basement. “Just look at ourselves! We're pathetic.”

“It's New Year's Eve,” Gary said sleepily. “It's what we do on New Year's Eve. It's called relaxing.”

“It's eight
P.M
.!” I said. “We're not relaxing. We're comatose.”

It seemed shocking to me that we had managed to become our parents some time between dinner and
Wheel of Fortune
.

Of course, we'd attended our share of New Year's Eve parties over the years; we'd even tossed a few of our own.

But the hoopla, the pressure, the resolutions seemed meaningless when compared to one simple fact: Gary quit drinking on New Year's Eve.

In 1995 Gary walked out, very drunk, on a nightmarish relationship.
He was sporting a new Armani jacket that his wealthy, older boyfriend had bought for him to wear to dinner at a very tony restaurant, but after being told repeatedly to “shut up and look pretty,” Gary bolted from the restaurant bawling, before dramatically hailing a cab, crab-walking his way up the stairs and into his tiny apartment, and promptly puking on his new Armani.

The next day he managed to crawl his very hungover body to his first-ever AA meeting. He has been sober fifteen years, and for an emotional man who cries when he sees Suzanne Somers on QVC, I consider this an accomplishment more extraordinary than men walking on the moon.

But it is not always easy.

Since I have been in a relationship with Gary, we have not been able to celebrate New Year's Eve with a stupid wild night like most of our friends, who tend to wake up naked the following morning next to someone with recessed gums and more body hair than a Yeti.

“But he was wearing a ball cap,” they always say the next day. “He looked cute at the time.”

Technically
, I
could
drink on New Year's, considering I am not an alcoholic, but that would make me the bad guy, like those husbands who continue to bring their eight-hundred-pound wives honey buns and two-liter jugs of Mountain Dew before the authorities are called and their spouses are airlifted out of the trailer park.

Our New Year's Eves are, therefore, purposely boring. Gary and I spend them eating and then promptly lapsing into a coma.

We no longer, out of respect for Gary's sobriety, even make resolutions.

In fact, the older we've grown, Gary and I have become more life-lessons guys than new-year's-resolution people. We truly believe that important decisions shouldn't be saved and announced one night every year, but that they should evolve naturally, no matter the day or month. Otherwise, we believe, life becomes stalled with
inertia, and when resolutions are made they seem forced, false, and, as a result, doomed to be ignored or to fail.

“Life should be conquered every day,” Gary believes, “not one night a year. Life is too short.”

It's a great theory, I always believed, but honestly I had never really been tested. In fact, my last New Year's resolution—to watch bowl games all day without moving from the couch, changing out of my pajamas, or eating anything that didn't contain Velveeta—had exceeded my wildest expectations.

And then our phone rang.

“Happy New Year!”

It was Elise, one of our best friends from the city, who is all tornadic energy. She loves parties. I mean, she throws parties for every holiday, from Earth Day to Cinco de Mayo.

She
adores
New Year's Eve.

“I just made my New Year's resolutions!” she announced with great pride, shouting over a raucous crowd in the background. “I'm losing twenty pounds by March, doing hot yoga three times a week, and only investing my money in green companies. Oh, and I might move to Costa Rica. Just thought you'd like to know! What are you two up to?”

She caught herself before I could say a word.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she yelled. “Go back to sleep! Ciao!”

She hung up, a dial tone replacing the party raging in the background.

I looked over at Gary.

He
was
asleep again.

In fact, it looked like his head had been rubber-cemented onto his body by a three-year-old.

When did our lives become so boring and calculated?

I wanted to be respectful, but didn't we need to shake things up a bit?

Shouldn't we at least resolve to stay awake until midnight?

“Get up!” I said, shaking Gary. “We're making New Year's resolutions.”

“No! No, that's a mistake,” Gary said, wiping his mouth. “First of all, we don't believe in them. And second, if you utter them, you have to mean them. Otherwise it's bad luck. You might as well just go shatter a mirror in front of me.”

“I just want to have some fun,” I said, a bit testily.

“Fine,” he remarked.

“I'll go first, then,” I said, adjusting my sweats, whose mustard color made me look like I had jaundice. “Here's one: I resolve to look nicer for you when you get home at night. Instead of wearing old, comfy clothes all the time, I'll dress like I'm in
Ocean's Eleven
.”

Gary eyed me suspiciously. “You don't get dressed during the day as it is. You write until noon in a ball cap and pajamas with pine trees on them, and then you change into sweats. You're very Johnny Depp in
Secret Window
.”

“That changes
now
,” I said.

I ran upstairs and threw on a pair of dark Banana Republic jeans, a choker, and a black Lycra top that made me feel as if I'd been encased in plastic wrap.

When I returned, I spun around like a fashion model and said, “Your turn!”

Gary scrunched his face and smoothed his hair down. It looked like he had gotten electroshock therapy. He stared into our Christmas tree, bedecked with hundreds of ornaments and lights, and then inhaled deeply, the whiff of our seven burning sugar-cookie-scented candles making his mouth water. “Okay, I resolve to spend less money on unnecessary items, like holiday ornaments and pretty candles. Your turn.”

I looked at the TV. I had been watching reruns all day of
Project Runway
and
House Hunters International
.

“I vow to watch less reality TV.”

I sounded less than convincing, but continued. “I'm smarter than those shows, right? So, from now on, I'll watch more Discovery and rent important documentaries.”

Gary nodded enthusiastically. “And I'll read more!”

I glanced down at the stack of
Better Homes and Gardens, Coastal
and
Midwest Livings, Peoples
and
InStyles
Gary kept by the couch.

“I'll read more
books
,” he clarified, standing up and heading toward our bookshelves. “Like
Moby-Dick
. I've never read
Moby-Dick
. I mean, what a great title, right?”

He yanked the classic off the shelves, the heft making him go, “
Ooofff!
”

We both sat back down on the couch.

“Happy New Year's!” Gary and I sang to each other.

Then I flipped on the History Channel and began watching a documentary about a pale queen with a lot of hair who desperately needed a tan and a run-in with some thinning shears. Gary put on his glasses—the ones he wore to make him “look smart”—and began to read
Moby-Dick
.

His mouth was moving.

I sat awkwardly, upright, rigid, in my tight clothes, like Kelly Ripa.

“This is fascinating,” I said, nodding at the television.

“So is this,” Gary said, nodding at the book.

After fifteen minutes, we both started fidgeting. I pulled off my choker and spun it round and round like a lasso, wondering what this queen would have looked like if Tyra Banks had gotten hold of her and given her a makeover on
America's Next Top Model
. Gary's eyes were drawn to a picture of Reese Witherspoon in a magazine.

“I can't take it!” I said.

“Ishmael is such a stupid name!” Gary said. “And
Moby-Dick
isn't about a giant wiener at all!”

I ran upstairs and changed back into my sweats, flipped the TV
to
House Hunters
, and began screaming, “Pick the second condo, you idiots! You can always gut the kitchen!”

Gary yanked open our cabinet doors—exposing the uncomfortable fact that he'd obviously invested our Roth IRA in Yankee Candles—and said, “We're getting low on sugar cookie and pumpkin spice.”

I began to laugh, which incited Gary, and when we both could finally breathe again, he looked over at me and asked, very seriously, “Are you compromising your life by being with me?”

It was the last question I expected to be asked.

“Are you?” he implored. “I'm an alcoholic. You're not. I know it can't be easy, but I would never want you to compromise. I would never want that.”

There are unexpected moments—like when I watch my aging mother baste a Thanksgiving turkey, or see my best friend zip up her daughter's coat and then kiss her on top of the head—that spontaneously make me want to cry. And then there are unexpected moments that redefine relationships: not knock-down, drag-out fights over money or an affair, but a quiet question that forces you to turn your life over in your head.

This was both.

I looked at Gary, which was too hard, and then up at
House Hunters
—some couple quarreling over cul-de-sacs and kitchens—and it was then the correlation became apparent: Relationships, like searching for a home together, are full of compromises, a tense tug-of-war at times. You do not always win every battle, but you understand that no home is perfect, that it's more about your gut reaction and attraction to the overall structure than the house's lack of granite countertops or its dated downstairs bathroom.

I looked back at Gary.

I knew that I had never had a serious moment of doubt that this is where I should dwell.

Gary
was
home.

I would sacrifice my life for him; sacrificing one night, truly, was nothing in the larger scheme of things.

So I grabbed my partner, pulling him toward me, and looked him in the eye, making the only resolution that would really ever matter:

“I will love you forever.”

Then we both fell asleep on the couch, entangled in one another—my arm his, his leg mine, our weaknesses and addictions and foibles and strengths and courageousness each other's—finally waking around one
A.M
. on New Year's Day, my head back in the popcorn bowl, Gary's bobbing awkwardly.