The Great American Whatever (7 page)

You know how older gay guys always say their “moms knew,” when they finally came out to them. “I knew, I knew from the beginning,” these Hollywood-sensitive moms always seem to be saying. That's not how it'll go with my mom. Sorry. She is as old-fashioned as you can get. She was “shocked” when she found out I was a friggin'
vegetarian
. She's been dropping hints about me marrying Tiffany Devlin, the six-toed girl across the street, since the day they moved in. I was
ten
.

I get off my bed. I am suddenly hungry for lunch meat. (I am not a vegetarian anymore.) But there's no lunch meat in my mini-fridge. Of course there isn't. All I've got is a six-pack of Sprite, saved for special occasions.

I look at Amir's handwriting again. It is so boyish and messy that I want to eat it.

In ten seconds I've torn everything off the corkboard above my desk, and when every last elementary school ribbon is fully cleared, I tack a pushpin through the “o” of Mario Lemieux.

But all I'm really looking at is Amir's phone number.

And then I celebrate. For once, I celebrate. I drink two Sprites, back to back, until I get the biggest and greatest stomachache ever and forever amen, and I don't even burp. I just hold it all in, and somehow my seams don't burst.

S
ee, this is what I mean. Where's your dad when you need him to fill your bike's tires?

I'm in the garage after the most sleepless night in forever, starring sweat and boners. My old bike, covered in a veritable carpet of cobwebs, is straight out of an early-career Tim Burton movie. I hose it off and find our air pump, and after taking six minutes to figure out even
how
to fill up the tires, I mount the seat and bust out laughing. Man, this thing is set for a different Quinn. A younger one. A shorter one. The one who was a brother.

I adjust the seat and then I duck my head inside the house and go, “I'll see you later, Mom. I'm off to solve the case of who broke into my room last night and made my clothes clean,” and I'm saying it in my uptight-detective voice that always makes her giggle, and so when the door shuts behind me and I hear Mom's laughter fill the sunroom, that feels really great.

Five minutes down Morrow Road, a car from behind gives me this quick
honk-honk
, and I'm not sure if it's a “sorry about your sister” honk or a “nice haircut, homo” honk or a “hey, you're riding in the middle of the road and you're going really slow” honk—but all three of those things are entirely possible, and so I pull over where the road forks and take a breath.

Is today the day to make a right, and coast by the school, and see the mural of my big sister looking like a big pug?

I lift my tires from the grass and face them left. Another day. And just before I take off again to find Geoff at Loco Mocha and get an iced something—because, oh my God, an iced anything will be delicious today, the first nutrition I've actually earned in, oh, half a year—I spot a firefly on a daisy.

“Hello, little firefly,” I say. “You're not supposed to be outside in the daytime.”

Basically it is unbelievable how sweet I can be when nobody is watching.

EXT. HILL OUTSIDE QUINN'S NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

Quinn wipes the sweat from his neck and kneels down to press his finger to a daisy. The firefly looks at him and smiles.

FIREFLY

Are you my friend?

Quinn is startled to hear the firefly speak -- especially since he generally hates animated films.

QUINN

Sure, if you're willing to have a male friend named “Quinn.”

The firefly laughs. Her butt lights up.

FIREFLY

You're funny.

QUINN

I am?

FIREFLY

You are.

QUINN

That's nice. It's been a while since anyone's said that.

The firefly steps onto Quinn's finger. It's been a long time since anything has trusted him like this.

I wipe the sweat from my neck and kneel over. For two seconds I allow myself the possibility that the firefly might actually speak to me.

But when I press my finger to the flower, she just flies away.

• • •

“Hey, do you carry helmets?”

“Aisle six.”

I'm working on a new theory. The new theory is that every person gets corrupted at some point. That there is
a moment
that changes you forever, from this to that. Innocent to wary.

Example: Tiffany Devlin, across the street, was born with six toes on her left foot, and one day in the fourth grade she arrived as “the new girl” in school, and we all just instantly nicknamed her Toe-fanny, like it was
Lord of the Flies
. Now, it was not particularly original, as slurs go—this is coming from “Queen” Roberts—but you get the drift. You don't want to be called Toe-fanny if you're a kid with six toes.

That day was Tiffany's corruption. Welcome to the neighborhood.

I bend over in this sports equipment place and hunt for the cheapest helmet. There are so many options here that I feel like I'm shopping for air conditioners again.

Anyway, the minute you get corrupted is the moment you understand what it feels like to lose something. Not when you lose a Little League game. Not when you lose a grandparent, even. That's not a scandal—that's nature. What's everybody doing crying over their eighty-five-year-old Nana dropping dead in her nursing home in the middle of crafts day? What did you
think
was going to happen? That Nana was going to be the first person
literally ever
who bucked the trend known as the Life Cycle? Not a scandal. Roll the credits.

I walk this seventeen-dollar jet-black helmet to the cash register up front. See, I'm buying it because after the firefly flew away, I got back on my bike and this car whipped around the fork blasting country music (always trouble), and it nearly killed me flat. Like: I felt the hair on my face (I don't really have to shave yet; it's like a step up from peach fuzz) get literally
grazed
.

Now that I know what it's like to lose something real—December twentieth was my corruption—everything is different. You start doing stuff like buying yourself helmets, even if you're only sixteen. You start thinking:
Maybe I ought to remember to buckle up right away from now on.
It's not that I particularly know what I'm living for anymore. I'm an extremely limited filmmaker without the vision and silent encouragement of my sister—the only person I ever read my first drafts out loud to. I just can't stand the thought of Mom losing both her kids in a single year.

I mean, really. I love a good
Terms of Endearment
as much as the next guy, but not as my fucking life.

• • •

Geoff is working the coffee counter. I get in line and start to get really giggly that he hasn't noticed me yet. He's going to flip. He's got the branded Loco Mocha hat on and everything. He looks cute, for Geoff. Something's off, though.

“Quinn!” He spots me, finally, and flashes the goony grin. “How did you get here?”

“Your dad gave me a free Corolla.”

“Wait, what?”

“I'm kidding.”

Geoff comes out from behind the counter and gives me one of those straight-boy half hugs. I realize what's off now. His mustache. Literally. Thank God.

“Jesus, you could have warned me,” he says, pulling away.

“Sorry.” My body is now where sweat goes to party.

“Can I get your order started?” he asks. He is so psyched, and runs back around behind the glass case.

“Yes, which size iced coffee is big enough for me to bathe in?”

This girl behind the counter kind of glares at Geoff. He nervous-laughs.

“Do you want a Caffeine Level Four?” he says. (There are four sizes at Loco Mocha. Even the Level One has enough jolt to fuel an overnight study binge.)

“Make it a Two.”

“Will the following guest
please
step
down
?” the girl says, and she scoots Geoff out of her way with her hip. He gives me the sorry grin.

“When's your next break?” I ask him.

The girl rolls her eyes and doesn't even look at Geoff. “You can take a five now, but you have to come back early from lunch.”

“Cool.” He whips off his hat like it's a costume, and we walk to two large leather chairs across the store and plop down. The chair cushions hiss and wheeze and kind of burp, which makes us laugh, because we're secretly still thirteen years old.

“You still have my AC,” I go.

“Yes,” he says, “I know. I literally got to the end of your street last night and pulled over and texted you a hundred times, but, you know—if you never turn your phone on, you can't receive messages.”

I'm not turning the phone on again. “I'm anti-cell these days.” Nobody but the police and my therapist know why. Thank God it didn't get out to the local press. I can barely live with myself as it is, with
out
people knowing the full story.

“You are literally worse with technology than my Nana. My
Nana
sends me GIFs, Quinn. My Nana.”

I thought his Nana dropped dead during crafts day last year. I've gotta stop rewriting other people's lives.

“You should stick around for my lunch break,” he says. “We'll pop over to the Verizon store. It's time to get a new phone.”

I wave him away. “You could have just walked right back through our front door last night. That never stopped you before. I
needed
that air conditioner.”

Geoff is using his finger to doodle something invisible into the arm of his chair. His autograph, I think. He wants to be famous; he just doesn't know what for, yet. I love him for this.

“I didn't want to freak out your mom,” Geoff says. “The porch light was off.”

Boring scene. Change the stakes: “So, something
happened
last night,” I say to him. My heart plays hopscotch, and it isn't just the caffeine.

This moment is the reason for the entire bike excursion, but here's another theory: When you've got big news, don't even
think
about how you'll write it or you'll choke. Same goes for standardized tests, by the way.

“Geoff,”
the girl calls over, cocking an eyebrow from behind the counter. A line is forming.

“Okay, what?” he says to me. “Be quick.”

Perfect. That's all I want this to be. But I feel my face close in on itself, like Mom's does when she doesn't get my humor. I'm not confused, though, just unsure about how to deliver this. Is this a comic scene? Where does this occur in the screenplay of my life, and is Geoff's character going to be weirded out?

I'm in my head. Dammit. Don't write, Quinn, just talk.

“Dude,” he says, but in a sweet way.

I look around to make sure we're not being overheard. Some terrible jazz music plays overhead, and when the horns get loud, I get quiet.

“You know when we were little,” I say, “and I used to put your sister's ballet tutus on my head, before we knew it was kind of strange for boys to do that?”

Geoff puts his palm up to my face and stands. “Quinn, is this about you being gay? I literally don't care at all.”

Um, what? “Um.” He knows? Wait, Geoff knows. Wait, did somebody tell him? Wait, I've never told
anyone
.

“I have to get back to work,” he says. “Can we not make a big deal out of this? Unless, I mean, you want to.”

“Geoff
, for
real
,” the girl goes. But I realize she's not a girl. She's a manager. She's still training Geoff.

“One sec, Venessa. This is important.”

“I mean,” I go, hoping the song will get even louder. Bring on the cymbals. “I'm not sure if I'm gay or what. I might be bi.”

Geoff snort-laughs and punches my shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, “and I might be European.”

I don't totally know what this means, other than: Geoff is not European.

He puts his hat back on. “Quinn, I've known for, like, ever. Unless you're confessing that you're in love with me—” He stops. His face goes a little white. “Oh God, I mean—if you are, I'd be flattered, but—”

“Ew, Geoff. Please. You name your farts. Seriously.”

We laugh. We laugh hard. He heads back to the counter, just as his manager gets a call on her cell. When she crouches behind the seasonal drink display in order to take it, she thinks that nobody's watching her, but I am. I see everything. It's haunting. It is not a gift to see everything, believe me.

“Okay, I guess I'm . . . heading home, then,” I say. Turns out this is a very minor scene. Might even end up on the cutting-room floor. I like that.

“No,” Geoff goes, after he rings up another customer, “you're getting a
phone
at the Verizon store and then you're texting me which foreign film we're seeing tonight.”

I hate foreign films. “Who said I want to see a foreign film tonight?” I don't want to have to
read
at a movie.

“My bad,” Geoff says, resting his elbows on the counter. “I thought all gay dudes were, like, obsessed with foreign films.” He is teasing.

“Geoff, keep your voice down.” I look around again.
“Relax.”

“
You
relax, you big queen,” he says. I gasp again. He is totally poking fun at me. He is totally the best.

I turn to the parking lot, shaky, but then: “Hey,” I say, back to Geoff, “what happened to your mustache?”

Okay, imagine the theme music to
Jaws
, because his manager is BACK. She takes a rag and wipes down the counter, and when she sees that Geoff isn't busy, she literally puts his hand on the rag to take over, and
then
she looks at me like I'm in her living room ruining Christmas morning.