Destination Unknown, page 16
“Well, you can certainly count out having your little friend stay here for Christmas.”
“What? You can’t do that!”
“The hell I can’t. I never want you to see him again, because he’s breaking you.”
“HE’S FIXING ME!” I yelled, not worrying about waking up my dad. Someone else had taken over my mind and my body and I loved it so much and I hated it so much. I wanted to go back to before, and I never wanted to go back there ever again.
“You weren’t broken,” she said, lowering her voice. I could tell she was really upset by the dispassionate way she was speaking.
“You wouldn’t know. You don’t have an f-ing clue, Mom, if I was broken or not. You just think you know exactly who I am, but you didn’t know the biggest thing, so maybe you didn’t know me at all.”
“Well, if this is you fixed, give me broken.”
I slammed the door in her face.
* * *
The next morning was a Sunday, and I stayed in bed until ten. My head hurt from the combination of alcohol and screaming and broken heart. I didn’t want to deal with my mom or my dad. I didn’t want to think too much about CJ walking off with that Sammy guy. I didn’t want to feel anything that I was feeling.
I would have called Deena, at least, but my phone was gone, of course.
I put on the second Missing Persons album, the one called Rhyme & Reason. I hadn’t listened to it yet, but CJ had told me it was more somber and mature, and the black-and-white cover—Dale draped over a piano holding a microphone—made that pretty clear. I placed the needle at the start and got back into bed, snuggled up under my navy blanket. From the very first note, I could tell the songs featured more heavy drums and guitars than the first one, and the magical, colorful tone of the first album had been replaced by something more adult, more pensive and introspective. Lying there listening to the songs, I felt for the first time in my life acutely like an adult. My shoulders felt strong and manly. My legs felt powerful.
Even though being grounded wasn’t a very adult thing, being in love with someone who thinks they’re too screwed up to love you back felt like it entered older territory, and I wondered if all my adulthood would feel like this, if I’d have this fire in the pit of my stomach always, or if this was just a transitional phase.
The first song I really liked was “Surrender Your Heart.” Ethereal keyboards drifted through my room from the speakers sitting on either side of my stereo. The tempo was slower than anything they’d done off the first album, but it was mellow, a little melancholy, which was perfect for today. Not to mention the lyrics:
Surrender your heart.
I don’t know why but you never give in to me.
I wanted to call CJ and talk to him about it. I wondered if he loved this album as much as the first. I couldn’t imagine that I ever would, but I admired the artistry just the same. But if he said he did, maybe I would learn to love it that much, too.
I’m damaged goods.
He’d said that. What did it mean?
What had happened to CJ? And would he ever tell me about it?
When I was a kid, I saw this episode of Gilligan’s Island after school one day. Or I saw the first part of it. It seemed like they were finally going to get off the island, and I was riveted. And then my mom made me go do my homework. I pleaded with her, to no avail. And I never saw the rest of the episode, and though I know they never got off the island—at least I think they never did—I wanted to know what had happened to keep them there.
This was like that, times a thousand. My mom was canceling a show that I needed to see the end of, as if my life depended on it. And there was no way she was going to understand that.
* * *
When I finally ventured out of my room, my mom and dad were sitting on the living room couch, waiting for me. I trudged in and sat opposite them on the chair where Rick had sat the night he’d stayed over.
“Well, first things first,” my mother said, her forehead creased more than I’d ever seen it. “You’re going to call the Lortel right now, and you’re going to quit.”
“Mom! No!”
“Micah. Yes,” she said, dead serious. “You clearly can’t be trusted, and I don’t think they’ve been a very good influence on you. We spoke to your boss, Felicia, yesterday, and I think what she’s been doing with you is … unfathomable. It’s proselytizing youth.”
“Mom!” I looked to my dad, who was slouched on the couch and not speaking. Proselytizing? That was what churches did. That was homophobic, and I knew it, and I thought he knew it, too. Rick was gay and his best friend. He had to know that Felicia was being my support. Right?
If my mom could only have seen the number of times Felicia had counseled me to use condoms, how she’d steered the college kid away from me. If anything, she should have been praising Felicia for her role in my life.
But I couldn’t imagine how I could get that point across. My mother had planted another flag, and it was as good as done.
So in front of my parents, I called Felicia at the theater.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s Micah.”
“Hey there. Are you coming in today or are you grounded until the next millennium?”
“I’m not coming in ever again, apparently. I’m sitting here with my parents and they’re making me quit.”
“Oh, Micah! No. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Not really, not at the moment.”
“You call me. Anytime. Hear? And you’re okay just the way you are—don’t let them tell you otherwise. Right?”
“Right.”
“You sound really sad.”
“I dunno. Gotta go.”
“Call me, Micah.”
“Okay.”
When I got off, my mom explained that until winter break, my life was going to consist of going to school and coming home. There would be no telephone. There would be no going to Deena’s. And if I even thought of breaking the rules and going to see CJ again, I would begin to understand just what being grounded for an entire school semester felt like.
“Do you hear me?”
Do you care? I thought, finishing the line the way Dale Bozzio did.
“Yes,” I said, pushing down on the scratchy couch fabric with my thumb. I wished I could tear the whole thing apart.
* * *
The rest of the day was spent in my room, where my feelings darkened and spread. I felt in my throat this twinge of remorse, for stepping too far over the line, and humiliation seized up in my chin from the grounding, and down lower, in my legs, I felt like kicking something, because even if I couldn’t explain what it was, something good had been happening there. Yes, maybe I’d gone too far, staying out so late, but also there was something necessary in me standing up for once, in trying new things. And my mom was thwarting something essential, and there was no way to make her understand that this was in a way killing a part of me that couldn’t be killed. And behind my eyes, so much panic, fear of what CJ would feel when he tried to reach me and I didn’t pick up. The idea that he’d think I was leaving him, which I’d promised not to do.
It was much too much to deal with.
* * *
Somehow all the feelings got lost in translation when I told Deena at school the next day.
“They took away your phone?” she said. “Seriously? But you just got it!”
We were hurrying toward homeroom. Hurriedly, I told her, “I literally can’t do anything. Home and school, home and school, that’s all.”
“Well, I guess there’s a downside to befriending some hustler. Two downsides, actually, because befriending a hustler in and of itself is one.”
I didn’t bother to defend him to her.
There wasn’t any point.
* * *
I planned on calling him from a pay phone on my walk home from school.
But when I walked outside after the final bell rang, I found my mother waiting for me.
She didn’t trust me at all.
The whole walk home, we didn’t say a word. If I was going to be forced into silence with CJ, then she’d get my silence as well.
* * *
As the week went on, I was forced to break that silence, and the conversations at home got a bit repetitive.
“You have to let me call CJ. He’s gonna think I’m mad at him,” I said on Tuesday.
“Absolutely not,” my mother responded.
On Wednesday: “He probably thinks I hate him.”
“Perhaps he will take this hardship, this lack of knowing, as an opportunity for growth.”
On Thursday: “What if he thinks I’m dead?”
“It seems as though CJ may be jumping to conclusions, if that’s what he thinks.”
On Friday: “Please? Pleeaasse?”
“No. Noooo.”
On Saturday morning: “Just one call. You can be in the room. I really just want him to know I’m okay.”
She sighed. “Fine. One call.”
I jumped off the couch, where I’d been sitting, and ran into their bedroom to get the phone. Dad was on the rowing machine, getting his daily fifteen minutes in.
“You wore her down,” he observed as I grabbed the phone.
“I did.”
He kept rowing. “You gotta be smarter, Micah. Going out late isn’t a crime. But after she was already so upset?”
I put up a finger as if to say, one minute. But really I just meant that I needed to make a call, and anyway he didn’t really have that kind of authority over me. Mom ruled the roost.
I pulled the phone into the living room, where Mom was sitting.
“Connell/Gorman residence, kindly start speaking,” Jack said, his voice softer than usual.
“Is CJ there? It’s Micah.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Well, wake him up. Please.”
“This should be fun,” Jack said. A few seconds later, I heard mumblings of a conversation and then the phone being picked up again.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I said.
“I’m sorry, who is this? I’m not familiar with this voice.”
My heart sank. “Ha ha,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s totally fine. I mean, I thought you were the one person I could count on to stick around, and I guess I was wrong. Oh well. I’m wrong a lot. Not a big deal.”
I suddenly hated my mother with a passion.
“I was grounded. I’m still grounded. My mom is right here with me, but I finally am allowed one phone call. Believe me. I wanted to call you.”
He snorted. “Ever heard of a pay phone?”
“You have no idea the level of parental surveillance that’s involved at this house. I was walked home from school.”
He chuckled lightly. “You poor thing.”
“CJ,” I said. “Come on. Are you okay?”
“Oh, Micah. I’m always fine. You think not calling me for a week is gonna upset me? Please. Nothing upsets me at this point. I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all totally okay. It really makes no difference to my life whether you’re in it or not.”
I was stunned silent.
He exhaled. “That was unkind of me. Sorry, Micah. This has been a really shitty week, and I have something I kind of need to tell you, and I can’t tell you over the phone, and you’re grounded, I guess, so I guess I’ll have to hold on to this for a little longer, which sucks, but what’s new? Lots of things suck.”
I was still not ready to talk, but I worried if I didn’t say anything our friendship might end.
“It’s okay,” I said, lying. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
“I never mean anything, apparently,” he said.
Before I could reply to that, my mother said sternly, “Time’s up. He knows you’re alive.”
“I heard that,” CJ said. “Give her my love. I’ll see you on the other side.”
He hung up before my mom could force me to do it.
“Feel better now?” my mother asked.
I didn’t give her the pleasure of admitting that no, I did not.
December 1987
The next day, my mom thought long and hard about whether she and my father would be going up to an annual Chanukah party at Old Oaks. In the end an accord was reached. They would go, and Rick would come into the city and watch over me like I was a child.
“Are you going to do this the rest of my life? Just not make plans, or hire a babysitter?”
“Just till Christmas break,” my mother said. “Just another couple of weeks.”
Rick showed up around eleven in all his Rick-ness, looking like the straightest gay guy in the history of the world. He wore a white Lacoste shirt with the arms of a pink sweater tied in front of it, his hair parted in the middle. My face got tight seeing him, as if it were seeing an uncomfortable vision of where my life was heading if I didn’t break out, and soon. And at the same time, I was so grateful, because I had a plan, and Rick was going to be much easier to persuade than my mom or dad.
“I heard you came out,” he said as he made himself comfortable on the chair opposite the couch.
My shoulders tensed. I prayed he hadn’t gotten the whole story.
“One day, when you have a lover, he’s gonna love the story of you coming out on the john.”
I turned bright red.
He laughed. “C’mon, it’s funny. But the bottom line—no pun intended—is it sounds like it went well?”
I shrugged. It was hard to think of anything as okay right now.
We talked about nothing for a bit, and I waited about fifteen minutes until after my parents were gone to bring up the subject.
“I need your help,” I said.
Rick automatically shook his head. “Oh no. I promised your parents—”
“This is a very minor thing, but it’s a huge deal to me. It’s my friend CJ.”
He frowned. “This the boy who’s been causing all the strife around here?”
“It’s not his fault. In fact … never mind. The point is, something isn’t right with him. Rick, if I tell you something, do you promise not to tell them?”
He laughed. “No.”
“Okay, I get it. But let’s just say CJ is in a bad situation. And he’s my best friend. Yesterday when my mom finally let me call him, he got all mysterious and said he needed to tell me something. It was really weird, like he didn’t sound okay at all. I’m afraid he’s in trouble.” I pursed my lips and my eyes searched the room. It was a bit of an acting job, to be sure. I just needed to see him.
He shook his head. “What are you asking me to do? Because I’m not allowing you out of my sight.”
“You don’t have to. I just need to call him, and what if I tell him to meet me in Riverside Park? You could watch me from the window. I’m serious. This isn’t me running. I’m just trying to make sure my friend is okay. He’s not that okay to begin with. He’s seen some things. I worry about him.”
Rick furrowed his unibrow. “What are you doin’ to me, Micah? I don’t want to piss off your mother.”
“You’ll see me the whole time.”
He took a deep breath and walked into the other room, returning with the telephone. “Worse than that,” he said. “I’ll be there. I’ll give you privacy, but you’re not leaving the apartment without me.”
That was good enough for me. I grabbed the phone, called CJ, and within a minute, a plan was hatched.
* * *
I don’t think I had really taken a full breath since I’d last seen CJ, because when I saw him ambling down Riverside Drive from Seventy-Ninth, my whole body felt reenergized. Even with the thing he’d said on the phone the day before, it took everything I could not to dash off and hug him and run off with him. But I wasn’t going to do that to Rick.
CJ wore a smirk and a new platinum-blond crew cut. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said.
“No kidding,” I told him, and we hugged slightly awkwardly.
“Is that him?” CJ pointed toward Rick, who was sitting about fifty feet away on a park bench, reading the Sunday Times.
“Yep.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to sleep with every old guy.”
I laughed. “Progress.”
“Yeah. So. I just wanna apologize again. For yesterday. I know this is going to be a shock to you, but I’m not one hundred percent great at emotions. I tend to lash out when I feel, whatever. And yeah, you not calling during a really hard week—I know it wasn’t really your fault—but it really hurt me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted to call you the minute I got home, but I no longer have a phone and they’ve been basically babysitting me.”
“Imagine that. Parents with boundaries,” he said.
I knew what that meant, but also I didn’t really get it. I mean, who asks for more boundaries from their parents?
“I guess,” I said.
“So, a story. This week, this kid started at the Gaiety. Says he’s eighteen, but there’s not a chance in the world. Sixteen tops, and a young sixteen. I’m watching him and it’s like, I’m completely horrified, because he’s so young and he thinks he’s so in charge, and he just isn’t. Twice I gave him condoms and he gave me this blank look, like he didn’t know why. It hurt my heart. Because he clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, or if he does, he doesn’t care. And he told me the story of his first time, and he tells it like it’s sexy, but …”
CJ swallowed and looked away.
“It wasn’t sexy. He was thirteen, and the guy was thirty, and anyway. The point is that I asked him if he’d ever been tested for HIV, and he said no. It broke my heart, because he’s so young, and no one cares. It made me almost want to stop dancing, because he’s getting used. I’m eighteen and I can take care of myself. This kid may think he can, but he can’t.”
He paused.
“Wow,” I said, a little relieved. I had been scared he was gonna tell me something bad had happened to him.
