15
What’s in A Name?
TJ
Gotta give him credit—Jude hasn’t erupted into peals of laughter yet.
We swing into a nearby pub, order two beers, and grab a booth.
Jude lifts his glass, tips it to mine. “Here’s to you for saying that. I could tell it wasn’t easy.”
“Nope,” I say, then drink some of the brew.
When I set it down, he does the same, then waits patiently.
Might as well serve up the whole enchilada. “It’s officially Terry Jerome. For my mom’s dad and my dad’s dad. But they called me Terry when I was younger.”
“Terry’s a decent name for a bloke.”
“I suppose, but it’s not my favorite. It’s kind of like Larry or Bob.”
Jude arches a brow. “You mean, plain?”
“Yes, but when you put it together with Jerome, it’s a living hell for a ten-year-old.” The memory flashes bright and awful in my mind. “A couple of boys in fourth grade figured out that Jerome can be shortened to Jerry. And once that cat was out of the bag, it wasn’t going back in.”
He smiles sympathetically. “It was Terry Jerry all the way?”
“On the playground. In the halls. Every-fucking-where. All thanks to this punk—Robby Linden. And I think it goes back to the time our teacher praised me for writing a really creative poem, that, well, rhymed, since that was the assignment, and his did not.He liked to cough whisper Terry Jerry under his breath whenever I walked into class.” I pause to drink some more beer for fuel, then say, “At the end of fourth grade, I asked my parents to change my name to TJ, since I said I liked my initials better. And they were super chill about it and told the school I was TJ. My brother asked me why I changed it, and I just said I preferred it.”
“He didn’t know what was going on?”
“No. He was an athlete by then, and I didn’t want to be known as the artsy twin who needed his sporty brother to defend him. But I hoped things would change for good in sixth grade when we moved to a different section of Seattle. That I’d start over in middle school with a new name. My brother had already done that long ago with his given name – Chauncey for our mom’s stepdad. But Chauncey was hard to say, so I started calling him Chance when I was two or three, apparently. And it stuck.”
“So, he had the cool namesooner,” Jude says, sketching air quotes.
“Exactly. But it was finally my turn. Except, guess who shows up at my school?”
“Robby the Wanker?”
“The one and only. And he decides to tell some of the other boys in sixth grade that my initials stood for Terry Jerry and that it would be fun to call me that, so he enlisted his dipshit friends in mocking my name.” Another drink, then I soldier on. “But I ignored them. That was my new strategy, and that’s why I never told my brother what was going on.”
The way I saw it, I was protecting Chance from trouble. He’d have been pissed off—probably have confronted them. Maybe that made it easier to keep other things from him later on, like the nitty-gritty details of our parents’ divorce. “Some things you have to handle on your own,” I add, explaining my choice to Jude.
“I get that completely. My brother is nine years older, so we’ve always had to figure things out on our own,” Jude supplies, and his reassurance that we’re on the same wavelength feels good. “But what was Robby’s deal?”
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a complete douche, but he didn’t like me because I was in the gifted track for after-school enrichment stuff, and he and his buddies weren’t. And he liked to say, Look, I can rhyme now too.”
“What lovely lines did the wanker devise?”
“All sorts of catchy phrases like It’s Terry Jerry the Cherry. Which was just dumb, so I didn’t care. Then it was It’s Terry Jerry Who’s So Hairy, which felt more personal because I was starting to get a baby beard,” I say, touching my chin. “I had to shave when I was twelve.”
Jude’s eyes pop. “That’s young.”
“It was. I don’t mind the beardability now, though.”
Jude gestures to my stubble and lets out an appreciative sigh. “I bet you’d grow a fantastic beard.”
“I bet I would too.” It’s a little cocky, but I don’t care—I earned this bit of cockiness the hard way. “But the name that bugged me the most was when they said Terry Jerry the Fairy.”
Jude frowns. “Fucking pricks. Did they know?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t out, and I don’t think they knew, especially since I didn’t even really know I was gay till I was fourteen. But I was figuring it out in my head, and that’s why it stung—not least because Robby’s best friend was this really cute guy named Liam,” I say, then slump back in the booth.
“That’s such a classic cute-guy name,” Jude says.
“Right? Anyway, even though I knew on an intellectual level that they weren’t using a slur personally, I hated it.”
Jude takes a long pull of his beer, then sets it down. “So what happened? How did it stop?”
“Research,” I say, a small note of pride in my voice. “I knew the biggest advantage I had over Robby was my brain. So, I researched online how to deal with bullies. Most of the solutions—bring in an adult, tell the bully to stop, weren’t my style. But act bored—I was really good at that. When Robby would start up, I’d just roll my eyes, open a book, do something else.”
“Don’t feed a fire,” Jude says, delighted. “And it worked?”
“Over time. But the biggest thing that worked was me realizing eventually they didn’t have any real power over me since I’d already renamed myself. Their stupid rhymes weren’t going to last forever, but I had a name I finally liked. I had something that mattered to me.”
“You did. You really did.” Jude’s eyes hold mine, and there’s a new look in his—gratitude, maybe? A touch more vulnerability? It’s hard to say, but whatever the emotion is, it brings that tingly feeling back to my chest for all new reasons.
Reasons that have nothing to do with my dick and everything to do with the organ in my rib cage—with what I’m feeling for the man across from me.
I might be more than slightly infatuated.
“Thank you for telling me, TJ,” Jude says. “I couldn’t figure out why you’d hate a name so much. I thought maybe it was that you simply wanted a cool name. But I get it now. I get you.”
“I don’t think I’ve told that story to a lot of people,” I say, but that’s not true. I know I haven’t told anyone besides my brother. I didn’t even tell him till middle school ended and I’d escaped the line of fire.
Jude gives a soft smile like he’s glad he earned the tale. “Were you out in high school, then? Or did the name thing make it hard for you?”
“I came out to my brother when I was fifteen, then to our parents a little while later. They’d just gotten a divorce.” Even though I poured out way more of myself to Jude than I thought I would, he’s not getting the story of my parents’ divorce. No one is. That goes to the grave. “I waited till the dust settled from that. And then I was pretty much out from my junior year of high school and onward. And no one gave a shit what my initials stood for. Everything else was more interesting, you know?”
“It ran its course,” he says. “But it stayed with you. It shaped you in unexpected ways.”
That’s one way of looking at it. “It did.”
Jude lifts his beer, clinks it to mine. “Cheers.”
“For what?” I ask, confused.
“For saying something hard. I know you didn’t want to tell me that.”
Funny how a week ago I wanted him to work my name out of me in the bedroom. I should keep that secret too, but fuck it. He’s easy to talk to. “Honestly, I’d been hoping you’d get my name out of me with your tongue. But now that I’ve given you the whole sorry story, I think I’m glad I didn’t say it in bed,” I tell him with a smile.
Jude pouts, all over the top. “Dammit. I would have liked to use my tongue for that noble purpose.”
“And that’s why you’re a member of The Oscar Wilde Society of Often and Well. Because you understand noble purposes for tongues.”
“I absolutely do,” he says, then drops the volume, sliding into a low, sexy tone. “I bet it’d have taken five minutes, tops.”
I smile wickedly. Shake my head. “Nah.”
“You doubt my tongue?”
“That’s not it,” I say.
“Then what are you saying, TJ?” He says my initials in his most seductive voice.
I lean a little closer. “I’m saying that with you, it would have only taken about one.”
Jude murmurs appreciatively and stares hotly at me. Then, he seems to shake it off. “Incidentally, I’ve got a Robby in my past—although he went by Robert. He was, however, also a total wanker.”
“Tell me about your Robby.”
“My ex from uni. I was crazy about the twat. He dumped me when uni ended. Nothing but I just don’t feel the same.”
“Ouch. He’s a real top bloke.”
Jude smiles at my attempt at an English accent. “A super dipshit,” he says, emphasis on super, using one of my favorite adjectives. “But here we are, you and me, a couple of great dicks.”
“We are.” I smile and drink to that.
Jude pats his flat stomach. “I’m starving. Shopping makes me ravenous.”
We order and eat, shifting to other topics, like his brother, who works in the London art world, and who loves books and theater too. Then, we make plans to run lines tomorrow, and Jude suggests we do it in Hyde Park. Works for me, since I want to see as much of London as I can. When we’re done, I don’t give Jude a chance to put down his credit card. “I got this.”
“We can split it,” he says.
“No, I want to.”
He relents easily, tucking his card away.
And maybe, just maybe, that makes the whole damn day seem like we’re both standing on safe ground and wobbling on terribly rocky terrain.
Date terrain.