The Queer as Folk Grocery Store Challenge

Thanksgiving
by Myrna / Myrna1_2_3

I know I should have picked up on it a little sooner that something was going on with the dear boy, but excuse fucking me if my attention was somewhat diverted. Tumbling from the absolute pinnacle of wealth and success to the depths of poverty and unemployment tends to occupy a person’s thoughts, all right?

So, I’m destitute for going on three weeks when a former client calls, pissed as hell about the lame ass pitch they just got from their new agency, and would I consider stepping in as a consultant on the issue.

We bartered oh-so-briefly about my fee for such a visit, and I showed up and effortlessly added an extra six percent to their market share and graciously accepted their prolific appreciation.

Word gets out about this kind of thing so in between interviews with untalented personnel managers who’ve resented my advertising prowess the last ten years anyway, I was consulting for this client and that.

I picked up Justin one night at the comic store and was grousing to him and Michael about the pathetic interview I’d just had when my little genius gave me a look of utter disbelief and said, “You cleared fucking twenty thousand dollars this month, and you’re trolling around trying to get on some loser ad agency payroll why?”

That’s when Michael started the most obscene, horrifying lecture I’ve ever heard in my life about security and responsibility and God damned fucking health benefits. It was awful.

I put Michael in a headlock and covered his mouth with my hand, then held up the other hand to Justin. “Two things. Number one, shoot me now,” I said, acknowledging the fact that Michael offering me life lessons was irrefutable proof that said life was no longer worth living. “And two, fuck me first.”

A man’s gotta have priorities.

So, six weeks later, I wouldn’t even walk through a door for under 15 grand; two months after that, it’s thirty-two five. Can you fucking believe that? Thirty-two thousand dollars for the honor of my sitting at a table and listening to what you think you want to do to sell your opinion or your politician or your fucking bowl of cereal. You don’t even want to know what you have to fork over for me to tell you your ideas are for shit and here’s something that will actually work.

Christ it was fucking phenomenal is what it was, and you’ll just have to pardon my fucking ass for wallowing in it.

I suppose everyone else was living their little lives during this time, doing whatever the hell it is they all do.

Justin was still undecided about school, and he was working two jobs by then—three if you counted the occasional work he did for me. And you should fucking count it, God damn it, because it was good. Justin’s ability to work precisely to spec is fucking amazing, especially because the natural inclination of an artist is to embellish to whim.

Michael and Ben were busy playing house with their foundling, Ted was cautiously emerging from seclusion, Emmett was throwing parties, the lezzies were nesting. Happy, happy, joy, joy everywhere you looked.

Even Justin’s mommy was getting a little action. She had started seeing some guy who turns out to be L. T. Sanders of Sanders, Morrison, Borling and Feiss. They got engaged after only a few months, and Justin may not have been over the moon about it, but I generously attributed any lack of enthusiasm to the fact that he was spoiled rotten.

One fine day we were having what for us was a typical Saturday. Fucking in the morning, the diner for breakfast, then the gym for me, and whatever-the-hell for Justin. For the next few hours, I went into the new office space I’d acquired just outside the soon-to-be-trendy brewery district then stopped by the comic store to pick up Justin who was still working with Mikey on Rage. Shit, I guess that makes four jobs the industrious little fellow has.

While I was there, Ben came in, and from what I could gather, he’d been away the last day and a half at some teachers’ retreat. To watch them carrying on, you’d’ve thought he’d been seven years in Tibet.

And maybe during the ride home, I threw out a caustic comment or two about their tearfully touching reunion, but in my defense, both Justin and I spend quite a bit of time ridiculing them, so it’s not like my sudden cattiness was a shock to Justin’s delicate sensibilities.

Back home, I was still on a roll, and I said something like, “The next time I come home after a full eight hours without you, I want to hear one of those girlish squeals out of you, okay? A man needs to see a little emoting after spending a long hard day at the office.”

Justin very carefully set down the stylus and if I’d been paying any attention at all, I would have realized that it was the first time in fucking forever that he’d sat down to draw something, but, you know, fuck off.

He turned toward me, but spoke with his head down. “I know, okay? I know we’re not like them; I know we’re never going to be like them. I know you don’t love me and won’t love me like that. I know you don’t want to hear some dykey rehash of my day when you come home. I know we’re together because we want to fuck each other and when we don’t want to fuck each other anymore we won’t be together.”

Well, that was a little harsh.

“What’s your point, Princess?” I asked sweetly, because I’m nothing if not sweet.

“If I swear to you, like, fucking swear to you on my life, or my fucking drawing hand, or every single piece of designer shit in your closet, if I swear to you that I won’t ever forget any of that, do you think you could quit reminding me of it every fucking day of my life? Do you think you could do that?”

Oh, Jesus Christ. I swear to God, he keeps a calendar and, if it’s been more than 15 days since his last screaming fairy dust-up we have to go at it about something. “Fuck you,” I said.

He huffed like the prissy shit he is and said, “I’ve gotta go.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Could you be a little less boring?” I asked. “Just for a minute or two? Maybe three?”

“I have to go to the grocery store,” he said so petulantly he might as well have stuck out his tongue to punctuate it.

“The fridge is full,” I said, which he well knew because he’d emptied the delivery just yesterday.

“Your fridge is full,” he said. “Mine is empty.”

Fuck him and his yours and mine talk. He’s such a prissy little shit.

Shortly after Justin was expelled from PIFA, Daphne left to study abroad for a year, first in England, then later Switzerland or Sweden. Fuck, or Norway or Finland. Whatever. Her ritzy two-bedroom apartment was too rich for Justin’s blood and because he is as flush with good sense is he is cash, he choose to rent a small efficiency in a building three to four years away from condemnation or, more likely, collapse.

The boy flounced out, but I didn’t think much of it, because, let’s face it, he leaves that way a lot. But after he was gone I got antsy and started roaming around looking for something more interesting than deleting the spam in my inbox.

The morning paper was strewn all over the couch so I started to pick it up and on the back of the metro section was a small blurb that read, “L.T. Sanders the Fourth, Presumed Congressional Candidate, to Marry Today.” I stood there and stared at the fucking line for about five minutes trying to remember what was so fucking wrong with this whole scenario.

I looked at my watch, which read 4:10 pm and fucking stood there a little bit longer doing absolutely nothing.

Why the hell wasn’t Justin at his mother’s wedding?

And then I started to recall off-hand remarks like Michael’s, “What’s with your mopey little puppy, anyway,” and Ben’s ultra sensitive, “Hey, Jus, you call if you want to talk or anything,” and even Deb’s, “Where the hell is that Sunshine smile that starts my day, huh?”

I knew it all had something to do with me because, well, everything has something to do with me, as least as far as Justin is concerned, and that meant I had to track down my little fucker and find out what the hell was going on. Christ, the things I find myself doing these days. Fuck it all if I didn’t climb in the ‘vette and trek on over to Siberia to check on the little dear who no doubt was pouting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a video.

So I was standing at his door and maybe I was pounding a little harder than absolutely necessary, but Christ I hate these fucking scenes of his, always designed to get me to jump through one of his fucking hoops.

A minute or two later I’m thinking, “Shit, maybe he really did go to the grocery.”

And then, just like in one of those teen slasher flicks, the door across the hall creaked open to reveal a disfigured ax murderer. Well, okay, it was an eighty year old woman, but she presented a terrifying picture, let me tell you. She’d probably been six feet tall at one point, but now she was about four ten. She was wearing bright pink sweatpants and a University of Las Vegas sweatshirt, and while I’m not an expert on these things, I’m pretty sure her wig was on sideways. “He’s not here,” she barked in a voice that had me mentally vowing to curtail my smoking and drinking.

She nodded towards Justin’s door. “He’s at the market.”

“He checks in with you as he comes and goes?” I politely ventured a guess.

Her eyes narrowed, detecting, I suppose, a hint of sarcasm in my tone. “He collects a list from me when he shops. He’s a good boy.”

“Oh, he sure is,” I said earnestly.

“Dumb as shit,” the old lady continued, “but a good boy.”

I coughed on a laugh and lifted an eyebrow at her. “I’m sorry?” I said.

She gave a resigned shrugged. “Only a dumbass would put the produce at the bottom of the bag. I’ve seen four year olds who know better. Eh, but they don’t shop for me, so I live with it. Be nice to eat a banana that doesn’t look like it’s been thrown around the monkey cages at the zoo, but what ya gonna do, huh?”

“Uh, maybe I can catch him. I used to bag groceries in high school. I’ll give him a little demo.”

She eyed me from head to toe. “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. She headed back in but a thought struck and she turned back to me. “I’m not tippin’ the both of you. You split the dollar between you.”

I gave her a ‘yes ma’am,’ and high tailed it over to the market.

One good thing about the boy’s temporary sojourn into the land of the financially challenged was how easily I could pick him out of a crowd. Apparently he was the only one who showered on a regular basis. He was certainly the only fucker in a 25 mile radius whose groceries didn’t come courtesy of the public dole.

I found him rounding the corner of the pet food aisle. He spared me an irritated glare, but kept on walking. I walked alongside him, looked into the cart and snickered. The old lady’s tomatoes and bananas sat at the bottom of the cart, underneath a gallon of milk and three boxes of cereal. Dumb as shit, but a good boy.

The rest of the groceries consisted of a huge ass frozen turkey, two bags of potatoes, ten to fifteen cans of green beans with matching cans of cream of mushroom soup, four cans of pumpkin pie mix, what appeared to be about ten pounds of butter, two sacks each of flour and sugar, and, inexplicably, six packs of toilet paper. Jesus, I thought, mentally calculating all the therapy sessions Justin never attended.

“Why aren’t you at your mother’s wedding?” I asked, moving to the end of the cart and trying not to laugh at Justin’s increasing struggle to free it from my hold.

He shrugged and shook his head in vintage I-don’t-care fashion. But he did care, because when he started to talk, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “You know how when you’re having a party you make one list of who you’re going to invite and another list of who’s not invited? Guess which list I was on.”

“Had you planned to re-enact your King of Babylon performance or something? No offense, but I’d uninvite you from my party, too. In the name of good taste and all.”

Justin grimaced at me and headed down another aisle. I knew how the whole conversation would go—he’d explain that Jenn hadn’t wanted big, bad Brian at the wedding, Justin had taken offense and, naturally, a hysterically unretractable position that if I wasn’t coming, neither was he. I’d ridicule the very idea that I’d even show up to such an odious event, then scold him for missing out on his mother’s oh so important and most beautiful wedding day.

Justin was silent as he pulled down box after box of Stove Top stuffing. Horrified, I took each box out of the cart as soon as it hit and shoved it back on the shelf. I finally had to push him out of the aisle to keep him from adding the boxes back. There was a caterer downtown who made the finest basil couscous stuffing on the planet, and I could pick some up on Monday.

“Les’ dad is the retired attorney general for Illinois, and, like, some big fund raiser for the Republican party so a lot of the guests were gonna be conservative big wigs,” Justin said. He walked down the feminine hygiene aisle, inspecting the rows and rows of products as if they were masterpieces on an art museum wall. “Dear old Mom thought maybe I’d be a little uncomfortable around all that…conservatism and maybe we’d all be that much happier if I didn’t worry about showing up.”

I stopped short and the cart slammed into my heels which should have fucking hurt, but it barely registered. I knew Justin was embellishing, but even so, whatever half-truth was in there surprised me a bit.

“And while we were on the subject of, I don’t know, me showing up places,” Justin bitterly continued, “She thought maybe … maybe I should lay low for a little while, until things settle down. ‘Cause, you know, everything’s really, really unsettled right now.”

He ran into me again with the cart, so I gently separated him from the handle and stood there staring at him with what had to be a stunned stupid look on my face.

He turned away from me, absent-mindedly playing with the metal shelf that held all the cake and cookie mixes. He shook his head at some inner dialogue before his tearful eyes met mine. “I don’t get it,” he whispered brokenly. “She protested Stockwell with us. Came to that press conference and stood up in front of all those people and said my name. She stood up for us. For me. She did that. So I don’t… I don’t get it.”

And the shit of it all was I didn’t get it either. Standing there, looking at him, really seeing him for the first time in weeks, I swear I was as fucking bewildered as he was. How could she devastate him like that? How could anyone? Jesus Fuck, he was just this sweet, baffled kid, trying as hard as he could to just fucking exist and every time he turns around someone who’s supposed to unconditionally be there for him bails in the most spectacular manner possible. What the God damned fuck?

God damn it just let that fucking bitch once, just one fucking time, try to give me some God damned evil eye because I’m not taking care of her precious baby boy the way she thinks I should, and I will give her the God damned hugest fucking piece of my mind she’s ever had. That fucking cunt. God damn her. God fucking damn her.

“She just kept saying it was their chance…they had another chance, she and Molly, and they wouldn’t have to struggle and they could be a…a family and it was their chance and certainly I understood, how could I not understand. It was just for a little while. She kept saying that over and over again. It’s just temporary, just for a little while, just until things are settled.”

I took a step toward him, but he jerked and shied away, and I knew that feeling, like a live wire was buzzing inside you and if anyone touched you you’d fucking explode into a million pieces.

So I just stood there and glared at people trying to reach for a box of Golden Delicious cake mix. Christ, grab a cookbook and live a little for God’s sake, you fuckers.

“I can almost, like, respect the way your mom does it,” Justin said, finally letting go of the shelf and heading over to one of the refrigerated sections. “She believes what she says. Really believes it. We’re going to hell because the Bible says we’re going to hell. It’s like…it’s like it’s less personal with her.” He picked up several cans of bread and threw them in the cart. “It’s not that she hates who we are so much as God hates us. And if Jesus came down tomorrow and said, ‘Hey all you queers , it’s a-okay with me!’ she’d be all, like, ‘you boys come on over for tea now why don’t you.’”

“This is one of those psychotic breaks they’re always talking about isn’t it?” I put the canned—Jesus Christ, canned!—bread back in the refrigerator case and made a mental note to pick up a couple of loaves from the gourmet bakery over on Anthem.

Justin sighed and shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about what I’m going to do on Thanksgiving. How fucked up is that? My mom, like, politely removes me from her life and all I do is fucking obsess over what I’m doing for Thanksgiving.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but found myself at a loss for words, which didn’t matter, because Justin was doing fine without me.

“And I know Deb will have some huge thing and there’s Mrs. Yeskowitch and stuff, but then I just get to thinking what if Deb marries Carl and they go to Arizona or New Mexico or wherever his family is and then Michael and Ben and Hunter go to Ben’s family and Lindsay and Melanie go to Florida and Emmett and Ted would have something to do, like they’d invite me anyway, and probably by then Mrs. Yeskowitch will be dead and Daphne, like, will have decided to stay in Europe so of course her parents are gonna go there instead of flying her back here, and for, like, three months all anyone wants to know is what are doing for the holiday, what are you doing for the holiday, and then…”

“I think you should spend a little more time worrying about what they’ll be serving at the Shady Pines Convalescent Holiday Dinner. ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Thanksgiving as an out-patient is looking pretty iffy right now.”

“Fuck you.”

“So that’s what this little shopping expedition is all about?” I asked. “You’re preparing for the first annual Justin Taylor’s Orphan Thanksgiving Extravaganza?”

“Why do you have to name everything?” he asked, irritated. “The Tenth Annual Blow Brian Kinney Before Dawn Day; The Bi-Annual Take Your Partner’s Dick to Work Day; Pittsburgh’s first ever….”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, throwing four bags of marshmallows in the cart. Ol’ Mrs. Yeskowitch sure wouldn’t have me to blame for her crushed produce.

“What are those for?” Justin asked.

I looked at him like he was crazy because he was. “Sweet potatoes,” I said, thunking him on the back of the head.

“How parochial can you get? I’m not putting marshmallows on my sweet potatoes.” He reached in and tried to take the bags back, but I grabbed both wrists in my hand and shoved him away.

“Yes you are.”

“Brian! This is my Orphan Thanksgiving! I get to say what I’m having!”

My partner is a 12 year old.

“Look, there’s no discussion here: sweet potatoes, marshmallows. There’s no good or bad or right or wrong. There just is.”

“Oh my God, you’re fucking zen about sweet potatoes? Fine, then I’m getting the Stove Top.” He turned on his heels and headed toward the overly processed quasi-food aisle. I had to grab the hood of his sweatshirt and pull him back to where I stood.

“Stuffing from a box? What the hell is wrong with you!”

“I like it!”

“We’re not eating that shit so forget it!”

“Go away!” Now he was swinging his arms trying to make me let go of his hood.

“Why do you cause a scene every fucking time we come here?” I asked.

“Why do you have to have an opinion about every fucking thing I put in my mouth? Lemme go!”

That was too easy, even for me, so I shook him and let him go and said, “Look, your little Melt Down in Aisle Four thing is all well and good, all right? Duly noted. I give it a six for originality, an eight for content and a whopping nine point five for delivery. But I’m done now. So get your little drama princess ass over to the check out and let’s go.” I pushed him and the cart in that direction, figuring if I could only get him in motion, he’d at least stay in motion.

“Wait!” he said forcefully, and I stopped in my tracks, waiting for another bout of hysterical stream-of-consciousness. “As I Stood Shopping,” I thought sourly.

But Justin just shrugged at me. “I always get a bakery cookie.”

Did I say 12 year old? I meant eight year old. Christ, good thing there were only two parents to disown him because one more boot would regress him back to a three year old and I’d be diapering his ass before dropping him off at daycare in the morning.

I watched him head back to the bakery and thought for maybe the nine millionth time how easy life would be if I just killed him. Lucky for him I’m too fucking beautiful to rot in jail.

“I’m not riding home with you,” he said around a mouthful of cookie, and jerked the cart out of my hands as he marched to the check-out.

“Oh my God, don’t say that! How will I live?” I called, following after him.

We managed to get everything unloaded and put away, even though we had to empty his freezer to do it. That meant dinner was four corn dogs, two hundred pounds of tater tots and three ice cream sandwiches apiece for dessert.

“If you’re some fucking orphan, why the hell did you buy a twenty pound turkey?” I huffed, grunting as I finally freed the stuck bird from the mouth of the fucking freezer. I paused to wonder just how sick we’d get if I thawed the god damned piece of shit until it was pliable enough to fit in there.

“Leftovers,” Justin said, sounding surprised he’d forgotten I was brain-damaged.

“You know what kills me?” I asked, finally resorting to a broom handle to force the fucker that last inch into the tiny space. “Everyone thinks you’re the normal one. You have any idea how it grates to walk around knowing they all think I’m the one who’s all fucked up?”

His shrug was part who-cares, part what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it. Then he looked at the clock on the microwave. “It’s done. She’s Mrs. Sanders now. They’re probably dancing already.”

“Getting food poisoning from the Mahi Mahi,” I wished.

He snickered and shrugged and looked away and fuck me if those big blue eyes of his didn’t fill with tears and I’m only fucking human for Christ sake.

I kicked at his ratty tennis shoes then moved in extra close so he had to tilt his head back to look into my eyes. “Well we just won’t invite them to our wedding either, will we?” I said. “The fucking Pittsburgh society event of the Millennium and Mr. And Mrs. L. T. Sanders the Fourth will be SOL.”

Justin chuckled as he looked up at me. “No Wedding Reception Butthole Bingo for them, huh?”

“Fuck no.”

He was quiet for a few minutes, and I was almost melancholy for the stupid little kid who would have been beside himself at a throwaway comment about a wedding.

Justin’s hands moved up to rest at my waist and he rubbed the crown of his head against my chest.

“Can I ride in on a circus elephant, dressed in silks?” he finally asked.

Smiling, I kissed his bowed head. “Who exactly is dressed in silk--you or the elephant?”

“Decisions decisions.”

“Of course your PETA/Gestapo friends will have a conniption. That one little prissy fag had an aneurysm over my leather pants.”

“Mmm, there is that. Maybe I could find a faux-elephant somewhere.”

“Oh and chimps. I want lots of chimps.”

“And goats,” Justin added. “I know how horny you get, so we can’t forget the goats.”

“Jenn and Lester will rue the day, I can see it now. Dropping hints right and left, asking if we’ve booked the hall, engaged the caterer…”

“Selected the firm to shovel all the animal shit. We’ll be the envy of everyone.”

I pushed him away and we were both grinning stupidly at how something so utterly obvious didn’t even need to be said. I said it anyway. “Like we fucking aren’t already?”

It was much later that night, after sucking and fucking had taken us as far outside of ourselves as we could go that he said to me, “I wish I was different.”

“Aw, come on,” I said. Sometimes I can coax him out of a maudlin scene, so I said, “What’s so bad about being the same?”

He gave me a smile and a shake of his head that said he was sorry it wouldn’t work this time.

“Everybody else just seems to…cope, but I keep getting fucked up by all this shit that happens. And I swear to God I try, like, all the time. I swear to God I don’t want to feel stuff or want stuff or hope for stuff. I don’t want to, but I do and it’s for total shit, but I won’t fucking learn! I mean, Jesus Christ, why am I so fucking stupid?”

I was lying on top of him and I tightened my arms around him. “Stop,” I said.

“I keep trying to tell myself at least there’s no one else to let me go now but that’s such a fucking lie and I know we don’t talk about shit, I know that, but I can’t help it and I keep thinking quit it, quit it, but I’m too fucking stupid to stop!”

“Shut up,” I said as gently as I’ll ever say anything. I kissed him—easy, easy kisses on his mouth and whispered into him, “Shut the fuck up, okay? Shut up.”

And when I was sure he’d be quiet, I turned him to his belly and moved over on top of him again, folding his arm under him so I completely covered him. I don’t know that I can convey how imperative it was at that moment that not an inch of him be exposed. I wanted everything—water and light and air all filtered through me first. I didn’t want him touched or laid bare to any more slights, to a cross word or an angry look.

And we both knew as he lay there, sheltered beneath me, that I’d make him pay for that soon. Probably not the next day nor the day after that, but soon enough, he’d be punished--laid bare to me, the object of my cross words and angry looks, all for making those thoroughly unwelcome ideas wander around my brain.

I moved again, boring even more of my weight onto him. He couldn’t have been comfortable, but his sleepy, succulent “Mmm,” didn’t indicate undue pain.

I nuzzled away the hair that fell over his ear and just laid there breathing for a moment. And in between one breath and the next, words came of their own volition. “Want things,” I whispered.

I rocked gently on top of him, in him, urging the words to rest inside him.

“Feel things,” I whispered.

Justin shuddered, his “Mmm,” now sounding helpless, a promise made against his will and certainly against his better judgment.

Before we fell asleep, I offered one final breath; one final word. A benediction.

“Hope.”

THE END