I should’ve told you soon-a
But you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
Now everything’s been said.
WE WALK up the stairs to my apartment, the Kid leading me by the hand. He takes his house key from its hiding place in his underwear (“Pajamas don’t have pockets, Bear, so stop laughing!”) and puts it in the lock. The tumblers click and snap, and the key twists. The door opens, and the Kid pulls me inside.
Instantly, there’s a stampede from the living room as our family crowds into the hallway, led by Otter. He sees us standing in the doorway and hesitates. Anna, Creed, and Mrs. Paquinn peer over his shoulder. We all stand for a moment, staring at each other. It should be awkward, but it’s not. I drink my fill of them, of him. His chest rises rapidly and falls as he breathes. The hard planes of his pectorals stretch the fabric of his shirt alarmingly. His arms are bunched up massively as he crosses them over his front. His mouth is set. His nose is flaring, his forehead creased, but his eyes, his eyes are the same. I think they always will be.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not taking my eyes off of him, somehow knowing that if I do, he’ll disappear, and I’ll realize that this was all just a dream. I try to make my voice steady, but it’s been too long of a night for that to ever happen. It wavers slightly, and something inside Otter snaps, and he rushes forward, the determination never leaving his eyes, and I know somehow that he is going to wrap me in his arms and what needs to be said won’t be. I raise my hand to block him and step back. I hope to God I won’t ever have to see that look in his eyes again, the one he is giving me now as he stops. “Not… not yet, Otter. I need to talk to all of you first. Then… then we can see.”
He nods tightly and spins around, pushing everyone into the living room. The Kid drags me by the arm, and surprise, surprise, it just so happens that the only available seat left is right next to Otter. The Kid looks at me expectantly and jerks his chin toward the empty seat. He lets me go and goes to sit on Creed’s lap.
I move carefully, calculating the number of steps it takes me to reach Otter. Seven. It takes me three seconds to turn and sit down. I pop my knuckles four times. I count to ten in my head. It takes me twelve seconds to think about what to say, five more to realize again I won’t have any control over it, seventeen seconds to argue with myself, ten to shut off the voices in my head, and by then a full minute has gone by in utter silence. If someone was watching this without knowing what was going on, they would probably think we were mimes that didn’t do mime stuff. Just sad, sad mimes—
Mrs. Paquinn finally acts like Mrs. Paquinn and interrupts my intelligent internal monologue by saying, “Bear, I think having sand in your butt crack must be really uncomfortable. Maybe you should go change your clothes. You don’t want to catch sand crabs. What’s the point of getting crabs when you weren’t having any fun doing it?”
“Sand crabs?” I spit out.
“Sand crabs,” she repeats. “I can just imagine that the rest of the day won’t go well for you when you have to go to the doctor and explain how you got a sexually transmitted disease without actually being sexually active.”
“Is it considered an STD if they’re sand crabs?” Creed muses out loud.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Paquinn replies. “I should think that’s a real thing, but I can’t say for sure because I would be lying. But it seems to me that it certainly sounds like a real thing, doesn’t it?”
“You can get crabs from a toilet seat,” the Kid adds. “MSNBC did this black-light thing in hotel rooms, and it showed crabs in the bathroom and ejaculate on the ceiling.”
Is this really happening?
“My goodness,” Mrs. Paquinn breathes. “How did it get all the way up there?”
“The crabs?” Anna jumps in. “Well, I’m pretty sure they can jump off of you—”
“No, dear,” Mrs. Paquinn interrupts. “The ejaculate on the ceiling. That just doesn’t seem humanly possible. I’ve never known a man to be able to do that. Not that I’ve had too much experience in the matter. My Joseph, God love him, wasn’t capable of quite the superhuman feat himself.”
“I don’t know,” the Kid says with a shrug, his forehead scrunched in deep concentration. “They never said how it got there. What’s ejaculate, anyways? They didn’t explain, but I want to know why it glowed in the black light.”
Mrs. Paquinn shifts her weight to turn toward the Kid. “Well, Tyson, when a man and a woman—or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, but I don’t think that works quite the same way—love each other very much and decide to have relations, ejaculate is what comes out and makes babies. Well, it makes babies if you are a man and a woman. If it’s just two men, I would assume all it makes is a mess.” She peers at Otter and me for clarification. We give none.
“Oh,” the Kid says. “So does spanking and fisting make babies too? I mean, if it’s a man and a woman?”
I choke on my tongue.
Mrs. Paquinn looks stern. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. My Joseph, God love him, was never into that kind of thing. He was very vanilla, as I believe they say these days.”
“Vanilla?” the Kid asks. “I tried vanilla soy ice cream once, and it was gross. Even for soy ice cream.”
Creed laughs. “I think it’s not the vanilla part of it, Kid. All soy ice cream is gross.”
The Kid shoots him an evil look. “You say that, but I bet it’s just your veal-induced guilt talking.”
“Veal is cow, Kid,” Creed argues. “What good are cows if we can’t eat them?”
“Veal is baby cows! Why would you eat baby anything?”
“Veal is baby cow?” Creed asks, looking slightly green and horrified. “How in God’s name did I not know that?”
Anna pats his arm. I watch them closely as she says, “I think there’s a lot about a lot of things you don’t know.”