Remembering Christmas (20 page)

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Authors: Drew Ferguson

BOOK: Remembering Christmas
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I'm sure this is exactly what Kirk is thinking because I've felt the exact same way too.
Unable to resist any longer, I reach out and wrap my arms around him, rubbing his broad back. Softly I whisper into his ear, “It doesn't matter if you are or you aren't. . . . I'll always be here for you.”
And with that, we share our second kiss.
Years from now, after Kirk and I have been together for fifteen, twenty years, living in New York City somewhere, still pursuing our dreams, I hope we'll reflect on this night as a defining moment in our past. There's a part of me that knows full well I should let him go. That I shouldn't ruin his life by fighting for whatever this is we've got going on. That I should encourage him to go back to Raquel, ask her to marry him, and allow him to live “happily ever after.” Yet, what kind of person would I be if I did that? If I let him go on living a lie.
Come on!
Haven't we all seen enough made-for-TV movies to know this never works?
As my high school World Literature teacher, Miss Horchik, once told my best friend, Brad (quoting the late, great William Shakespeare) . . .
“To thine own self be true.”
Apparently, this is also Joey Palladino's motto. I don't know if he witnessed my make out session or what.... But when two o'clock comes, my date—and my ride back to Hazeltucky—has gone AWOL. Guess he got pissed and went home. Or maybe he's off somewhere having a
ménage
right now. Thankfully I figure this out
before
Kirk and Bobbie hit the road, and Kirk offers to drive me to my parents'.
“It's not like it's out of my way,” he says, opening my door like a true gentleman.
On our way up Woodward, we say nothing of what went down between us at the bar. In fact, we barely speak a word at all. Which is the true sign of a real relationship: the ability to just be present in each other's presence.
“What are your plans for tomorrow?” I ask, correcting myself, “I mean
today
.”
“Not sure,” Kirk answers. “I might stop by the store and help my dad with some work in the morning.... What are you doing?”
“Nothing until the evening.”
Unfortunately, I'll be slaving away at The Jack from 5:00 to 11:00 p.m. December 23rd is no doubt the biggest day of the year in the grocery biz. All those last minute shoppers scouring the aisles in search of Durkee's fried onions to top off their green bean casseroles and wondering why the hell we're all out of Hormel ham. (“Gee, I don't know. . . . Because tomorrow is Christmas Eve, maybe!”)
Pulling up in front of my folks' house, Kirk asks, “Wanna have lunch?”
“You mean like go on a
date?
” I say, unable to resist using the word.
Anticipating some smart-ass reply, I'm quite taken aback to hear Mr. Bailey answer, “Yes. . . . Like go on a date.” Of course then he gives me exactly what I expected: “But I ain't paying!”
Followed by another kiss.
The Promise of a New Day
One step closer
To make love complete ...
—Paula Abdul
 
 
 
 
 
M
y first Christmas memory isn't one that I remember, per se. It surfaces from a series of shots snapped round about the Year of our Lord 1972. At the time, the Paterno family consisted of me and my parents, Jack and Dianne. (Yes, like the John Cougar song. Only Mom spells her name with two
N
's.) Living in a tiny, two-bedroom house on McDowell in Ferndale, this was in fact a step up from our first humble abode on Hampden in Madison Heights, where I'm told I shared a double bed with my folks, despite having yet to outgrow my own crib. Eventually, we made the move to nearby Hazel Park, and my sister, my brother, and I would all one day obtain our own sleeping spaces. There I resided until September 1988, when I left for college at Michigan State.
In the first photo, taken on the last Christmas of the first Nixon administration, a two-year-old me sits atop a white Humpty Dumpty toy box beside my seventeen-year-old mother. On my head rests a red fireman's hat, a plastic toy engine parked at my stocking feet. Mom dons a pink nightgown and matching fuzzy slippers, her hair flipped up à la
That Girl
, her spectacles, hornedrimmed. Grinning ear-to-ear for my father behind the Instamatic, we both bear a resemblance to Disney's famous Cheshire.
The second shot, snapped on the same snowy morning, reveals my same-age cousin, Rhonda, sandwiched between our grandpa and grandma, George, aka “Guff,” and Helen Freeman, who inhabited the corner house across the street. Granny, as we called her, wears her hair in a graying football helmet coif. Grandpa Guff's bald head reflects the camera's flash like a cue ball. Thumb in mouth, Cousin Rhonda stares blankly, a deer-inthe-headlights expression frozen on her cherub face, as if no one had informed her of the impending Kodak moment.
The final image, shot four years later in the Hazeltucky house, shows me as a six-year-old sporting my Spiderman “footie” pajamas, mugging for the camera, holding high that particular Christmas's most prized possession: a pair of twelve-inch plastic
dolls.
But these were no ordinary run of the mill Barbies. Or even the uber-butch “okay for boys to play with” G.I. Joe. This duo was none other than the ultimate brother-sister act of the mid-1970s: Donny & Marie, who came complete with cardboard TV studio set and plastic 45 rpm record you could play on your portable Fisher-Price record player while you danced Mr. and Miss Osmond about the soundstage in their purple and pink designer costumes. While I can't recall the exact expression on Santa's Helper's face when I dropped my Donny & Marie dolls request on him earlier that holiday season, I'm sure it fell somewhere along the line of: “We've got a gay one on our lap here.”
In the background of the aforementioned photo, Uncle Roy can be seen reclining in the corner comfy chair assembling the tiny plastic TV camera that came with Donny & Marie's television studio. After sticking all the stickers on all the pieces, right where they belonged, Uncle Roy and I put that plastic 45 rpm record on my portable Fisher-Price record player, and we put on our very own
Donny & Marie Show
. Of course I manned control over Marie, manipulating her “little bit country” body across our green shag carpeting. Not because I wanted to
be
Marie Osmond. I didn't. I mean, if I were Marie Osmond, I couldn't possibly have a crush on my own brother, now could I?
These are the thoughts preoccupying me as I zone out on our couch, the colored lights a-twinkling and a-blinking on the artificial Christmas tree my mother's set up in the usual spot in front of our living room picture window. This year, however, Mom went out and treated us to a new model that she bought up at Arbor's (“Only $9.99!”). Affectionately, she's christened it “Scrawny Pine.” Seriously, I thought the tissue paper wreaths Brad and I made when we were in ninth grade and trying to save money for Spring Break were pathetic. This thing makes the so-called spruce from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
look like the one in New York City's Rockefeller Center. It's not even so much that it's small as it is short. So much so, my mom's got it propped up on a box that she's draped with some Christmas-y cloth she found God only knows where. Still the angel atop doesn't come anywhere close to touching the ceiling.
Honk!
A car pulls up in our driveway. Doing my best to peek out the window without toppling the tree, I hold up a finger, giving the “be right out” signal to the person behind the wheel. As I grab my coat off the rack behind the front door and slip it on, I take note of the stockings Mom's tacked up the way she does every holiday season. As per usual, there's one for each member of our family: MOM, DAD, JACK, JODI, and BILLY. Though this December, it seems we've gained the addition of my seventeen-year-old sister's boyfriend, DAN. Guess Mom figured they've been going together since ninth grade and will probably end up married someday, why not stick a red felt sock up with the guy's name on it? Talk about unfair . . . How I've longed to see
my
significant other's name in glitter someday! (Maybe next year?)
“I'm leaving!”
Mom doesn't hear me over Johnny Mathis singing about those sleigh bells jingling and ring-ting-tingling. She's too busy in the kitchen slicing up some “homemade” Pillsbury sugar cookies. For some reason, Johnny Mathis always reminds me of my grandma, God rest her soul. Not that I knew Helen very well; she died when I was seven. But according to Mom, he was always one of her favorites. Him and Liberace. Granny also liked Bing Crosby and Engelbert Humperdinck, so she wasn't exclusively partial to the homosexuals. Though there was also Tab Hunter, aka Mr. Stuart the “Reproduction” teacher from
Grease 2.
Down the front stairs I fly, floating on Cloud Nine. Partly because the steps need shoveling and I almost slipped, partly because of the person I'm about to see the second I open the passenger door of the idling Chevy Cavalier.
“Hey, Kirk . . . What's up?”
Not even five seconds after I've hopped into his car and we're on our way, Kirk pops a cassette into the tape deck. A piano starts playing, followed by a young man's baritone singing a beautiful ballad about how love changes everything.
“What is this?” I wonder.
“It's the new Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Kirk answers.
“Aspects of Love
.”
According to the program I discover sandwiched between the bucket seats, the show, based on a novel by someone named David Garnett, focuses on the romances between an actress, Rose, her adoring fan, Alex, his cousin, Jenny, his uncle, George, and George's mistress, Giulietta. The production originated in London in 1989 starring Ann Crumb and Michael Ball, and opened on Broadway a year later. Unfortunately, it closed last March after receiving not-so-rave reviews, according to Kirk.
Perhaps this is why I've never heard of it. Though I'm not a big Musical Theatre fan, so who I am to talk? Other than the classics I've seen on cable (
The Music Man, The Sound of Music, Hello, Dolly!
), I never really got into the whole singing and dancing thing. But when I first started hanging out with Kirk at the beginning of the semester, he introduced me to
Les Misérables
, and I just fell in love with it. Maybe it's because I've studied
le français,
so I was already familiar with the source material. The whole Jean Valjean imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, then he becomes mayor of the town and adopts poor dead Fantine's daughter, Cosette, who grows up and falls in love with Marius, the student, who risks his life fighting on the barricade . . . And that Éponine! “On My Own” has got to be one of the most heartbreaking songs ever written. Believe me, up until recently I totally understood how that girl feels, pretending he's beside her.
“Raquel and I saw it in Toronto on Saturday night,” confesses Kirk, referring to
Aspects of Love
. Judging from the sound of his voice, the memory isn't a pleasant one. And not because he thought the show sucked.
Not sure if I should continue along this line of conversation, I sit quietly in my seat, staring out the window, listening to the melody. Apparently love changes
everything:
hands, faces, earth, sky. The way you live and die. It makes the summer fly. Or the night seem like a lifetime. It'll turn your world around and bring you both glory and shame. But above all, love will never let you be the same.
Don't I know it!
Sitting here in Kirk's car, listening to this sappy song and smelling his special scent, I think I'm going to lose it.
“You okay over there?” he asks, hearing me try my best to stifle my sniffles. “You got awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
“I'm fine,” I reply.
What could be more perfect than going on a lunch date with the man I love? Especially when he takes hold of my hand and doesn't let go until we've arrived safe and sound at our destination.
Over at ye olde parking structure, Kirk takes a ticket and we begin the search for a spot. Much like my last visit to Royal Oak, the lot is full up, so we find ourselves all the way on the tippytop.
“Let's take the stairs,” Kirk suggests.
Thinking back to how I almost killed myself on the slippery steps, I start to say, “Be careful . . .”
Too late!
Kirk's foot slides across an icy patch, and he falls—smack dab into my open arms. He allows himself to be held, our faces mere inches apart. Then we lock lips for the third time in less than twelve hours.
And on our way we go!
A hop, skip, and a jump, and we're over on Fourth Street outside the Metro Music Café.
“Is this cool?” Kirk asks, as we enter the Hard Rock knockoff.
Last Christmas
by Wham! plays quietly in the background. (Only
two
more days of this holiday music!)
“Sure,” I say. “I love this place.”
Truthfully, I've only been here once before. The summer after I finished my freshman year at State, a few of my just-graduated friends met up for dinner one evening. We were supposed to be seeing Rick Astley at Pine Knob. But the show had been cancelled, and we got together anyway. The part I'll always remember about that night was when the waitress asked me what I wanted to drink with my burger. At the time, I had just turned nineteen, so I told her I'd happily have a Coke. All my friends had ordered Coronas, and the waitress took it upon herself to decide that I needed something stronger. To my surprise, she brought me my own beer without bothering to ask for ID. This I bring up as being odd since I barely appear to be
sixteen.
“Oh, look . . .”
Kirk points out the piece of musical memorabilia hanging on the wall next to where we've seated ourselves: a guitar signed by Joey Ramone.
“Cool,” I say, before confessing, “I actually don't know much about them.”
“You're kidding?” he says in shock. “You've never seen
Rock ‘n' Roll High School?
”
Vaguely, I recall a wasted night almost a decade ago in my parents' basement with me, Max, and Brad staying up until all hours, watching a bunch of bad movies on “Skinemax.” My personal fave had to be
H.O.T.S.
Not because I was into the half naked co-eds running around in their wet T-shirts. I just thought the title totally ridiculous. (“Help Out The Seals,” indeed!) Then I remember: “Didn't The Ramones sing the theme song to
Pet Sematary
?” The only book by Stephen King I've attempted to read, after seeing the film three times. Surprisingly, I didn't find it to be that well written for someone so successful a scribe.
Kirk says, “As a matter of fact, they did.”
A lull falls over the table. I don't know about Kirk, but I keep thinking about our being alone in that stairwell together just a few moments ago. Holding him in my arms; feeling his body pressing heavily against mine; taking all of his weight. Less than a week ago, when we shared our first kiss, I thought that was it, a once in a lifetime opportunity, come and gone, never to occur again. Now here we are, beginning what I hope becomes a lifelong partnership. If only we could seal the deal!
Last night when Kirk dropped me off, it took every bit of restraint I have in my body to hold myself back. Had we been up at State, I would've totally dragged him inside and totally had my way with him. Another downside of our both spending the holidays at our parents' houses. I don't know if we can wait until we get back to East Lansing to stay the night together. If only we had someplace we could go. . . .
“Are you ready?”
Our waitress comes over to take our order. We both choose the chicken sandwich. I ask for a Molson Ice. Kirk opts for a Labatt's Blue. Nothing like getting your buzz on in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Of course I can't get too crazy. I do have to be at work soon. Just wait until I tell Val the news: “Kirsty” and “Ralph” are no more.

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