Note to my dad – Don’t read this one…

It was the summer of 2007. Also known as The Slutty Summer. I was 18 and in the midst of a slutty phase that I assume the majority of newly-out gay men go through. His name was Bryan. He was also 18, and lived in a magical land called Cranford, New Jersey. Cranford is the sort of mythical 1950’s Pleasantville type town, where the men say words like “Golly”, and the women wear various shades of salmon. Sort of like Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, only with more sweater vests and minus the puppets. My mom was from Cranford and my grandma lived there when I was growing up, so I had spent many a weekend there as a child. For a city kid like me, Cranford was like an alternate universe. One where people say “God bless you” as they pass you on the street. In her old age, my grandma had moved in with my parents, and I had long been wanting an excuse to go back to Cranford. Now, the opportunity was presenting itself.

2007 feels like an eternity ago, (the century that for many gay men, who aren’t me, is commonly known as BG… Before Grindr), especially when it comes to online dating – something that was still stigmatized as being exclusively for sad sacks and middle aged divorcées. A friend had recently introduced me to a nifty new invention called OkCupid. That was where I met Bryan. He was cute in that suburban John Hughes movie sorta way. He did things that were totally foreign to me. He was on the wrestling team, and went to homecoming. I had only come out that same year, and the days before discovering that casual sex is not for me seem so quaint by comparison. “Let’s hang out in Cranford”, I said, thinking that this would be my own little suburban American Pie-style sexventure that I had always secretly wanted to have.

In addition to being the summer of the man-whore, 2007 was also the year I made an equally compelling discovery… short shorts. Discovering that guys are free to wear as little clothing as girls do was quite the revelation for me, and now, free from the pressures of trying to conceal my sexuality, I could wear whatever the hell I wanted…. which led me to the discovery that I do infact have a bangin’ pair of legs! (If I do say so myself!) And so, I put on a pair of green short shorts, and hopped on Mr Rogers metaphorical trolley at Port Authority and went to Cranford… Blissfully unaware of the odyssey that would await me.

Things started out well enough. We met up by the town square and headed to the “hip and cool” coffee shop. Hip and cool for Cranford standards, but looking like a 1980’s relic to my New York sensibilities. It didn’t take me long to discover that Bryan was extraordinarily unextraordinary. He wasn’t particularly smart, or funny, or interesting. One of those people who take mediocrity to an art form, which for somebody like myself – who can get invested too easily – is the perfect kind of person to have unattached sex with. He’s boring, the last person you would actually want to date, and someone whose name you probably won’t remember come next Tuesday! Perfect.

Eventually growing tired of the peeling neon zebra-print wallpaper, and Led Zepplin LP’s lining the walls, I suggested we go to the park. So we ventured onward to the Cranford High park, and sat on the bleachers. HOW freakin country am I, I thought. He showed me how he was wearing his wrestling uniform underneath his outfit, so I did what was surely the only thing to do in that scenario…. I started making out with him.

“Wanna go back to my place?”, he said.

“Ya-huh!!”

It hadn’t occurred to me that “my place” in Cranford lingo would be a quite different place than “my place” back in New York. In New York, “my place” means you have an apartment that you pay too much money for. In Cranford, it means you live with your parents, and siblings, in a house that will surely have a portrait of your entire family at Sears hanging over the proverbial fire place. On the way there, I realized I didn’t have much to talk about with him… But did I really need to?

We arrived at his house, and as we walked up the lawn, a big realization kicked him square in the nuts.

“OH MY GOD! My mom and sister are home”, he said as he noticed their cars parked in the driveway. “Okay stay right here! I’ll go in the basement and unlock the window. Stay RIGHT here!”

The truth is, I came out of the uterus a bitter and jaded old man. Even at 18, I felt like I was too old for this shit. I felt like I was 14 again – the kid from the “wrong side” of the tracks. But this was supposed to be my suburban adventure, and that comes with the territory, I suppose. So I hid in one of their immaculately trimmed bushes (tehe) and awaited further instruction.

A few minutes later, the rectangular basement window opened. “Climb in”, he said. So… I did – getting stuck halfway, naturally. I climbed into his basement and looked around. The walls were forrest green. Because of course they were. And then, there it was… the Sears portrait of their perfect little family. The military man father, the perfect little housewife – who wears various shades of salmon and never answers back – and their two kids. A boy and a girl… because of course. I felt like I had fallen into Alice’s White Middle Class Suburban Wonderland.

On the wall across from their J Crew catalogue of a family portrait was something else. Something that should have signaled me to get the fuck out of there. It was a shrine to his father. The sort of thing you might have if he were dead, but I assumed he was still alive. The walls were covered with his military photos, hunting mementos, and then… an entire wall filled with guns and rifles, proudly displayed in a glass case. I should have been more alarmed than I was, but I was determined to get on with my sexventure.

I went to kiss Bryan, but… he stopped me. “Your shorts are too short”, he said. Was that some sort of Cranford sexy-talk? Did he mean I looked so hot in them that he couldn’t handle being in my presence? That’s what I decided to tell myself, as I took a metaphorical dip in that great Egyptian river.

“Oh, well, they’re no wrestling uniform”, I said with a coy smile.

“No! I’m serious! People can’t see you in that. Here, put on jeans”, he said as he handed me a pair of his baggy size 34 Old Navy jeans. Now, maybe I’m a snob, maybe I’m just a consummate New Yorker, but two words that just do not exist in my vocabulary…. Old and Navy.

Did he not know who I was? I’m not a salmon kerchief wearing Cranford housewife! I’m the type of person where if you tell me not to say something, I’m going to say it louder. If you tell me not to wear short shorts… I’m going to wear them freakin shorter! This was one of the first instances of me realizing how reductive many people’s perceptions of gay men are. While in my previous life as a “straight” person, I was lauded for being “unique” and having “original style”, from here onward, all of that would now be chalked up to one word. “Gay”. And that really pissed me off.

“No, I’m… I’m good. Thanks.”

And then he said something rather…. unexpected.

“Hey, you wanna watch Sponge Bob?” Did… I want to watch Sponge Bob? No I didn’t want to watch Sponge Bob! The city mouse/country mouse cultural divide never felt wider. But not being able to get it through my skull that I wasn’t on West 72nd St. anymore, I smiled an apprehensive smile and just said “Sure”.

We sat down on the couch, amongst the Colonel Alban shrine, in front of the big screen TV that surely was reserved for football games. And so…. he put on Sponge Bob. I sat there in horror. For every joke in the children’s cartoon, Bryan would burst out laughing, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. I sat there studying him. Was he on the spectrum? Did he have some sort of syndrome? Was this not as painfully awkward for him as it was for me? When all of a sudden….His mother came into the basement. Wearing, you guessed it – A salmon-colored kerchief tied around her neck. The level of panic on Bryan’s face went from one to eleven, as he threw a Cranford High blanket on my lap, to conceal the devil legs.

“Who are you?”, she snapped.

“Mom! This… this is Michael.”

“Mikey”, I corrected.

“Michael!”, he insisted. (I guess the letter Y is a homosexual letter.) “He’s Sarah’s brother. He’s here to help me with my summer physics homework!”

In that moment, my thought bubble said something along the lines of “No he di’int!” Was this guy kidding?

“Then why aren’t you studying? Where’s your physics homework?”, she asked, looking down at my backpack on the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I’m best at. I pulled something out of my ass.

“Hi… Mrs. Alban. Yeah, oh, that, um… Yeah, it’s still in my backpack. I’m sorry, I was just so engrossed in… Sponge Bob that uh… I forgot.” I almost stood up, but didn’t – self conscious of revealing Satan’s goalposts.

She rolled her eyes. “This needs to be done immediately. Your sister and I are going to grandma’s in a little bit. This little party needs to be over before your father gets home. You don’t want that to happen”, she said, an implicit threat in her voice.

“Oh also, we brought you back some Taco Bell. Do you boys want some?” I shook my head no.

“YES! Oh boy! Thanks mom!”, he said giddily. (Okay, I lied, he didn’t say “Oh boy”…. but he might as well have.)

His mom went upstairs to fetch Bryan’s fast food, single-handedly setting the women’s movement back two to three decades.

“Who’s Sarah?” I asked. I figured I should know a few quick Snapple Cap facts about my new sister.

He grabbed the remote, and nonchalantly said… “My girlfriend.”

Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw! His girlfriend.

His mom returned with three large paper bags of Taco Bell. “People actually eat this?”, I wondered. She then turned her attention to me.

“Michael, how is Sarah doing with cheerleading tryouts? It must not be easy for her”, she asked.

“Oh. It’s… she’s… it’s… good.”

She stared at me, her icy blue eyes penetrating my soul. I almost turned to stone. Clearly, that answer wasn’t satisfactory. Time to improvise.

“Yeah, she’s been practicing for so long. It went well though. So we’re keeping our fingers crossed. They said her backflip needed a little work.”

Bryan’s mother looked at me skeptically.

“Backflip? How exactly is she doing backflips on that broken leg…?”

Bryan looked at me – panic setting in.

“Ah yes, well… maybe that’s why it needed work”, I said.

She looked at me, unsatisfied but thankfully moving on. But before she left, she had one final warning.

“You boys need to start on your school work, and Michael, you need to be gone in half an hour. The Colonel will be back at 6. And he’s still mad about what happened freshman year.” No she didn’t just call her husband The Colonel…

She flashed us a cautious smile and went upstairs. He continued watching Sponge Bob as though nothing had happened

“So… thirty minutes. Lots of things could happen in thirty minutes…”, I said flirtatiously as I touched his leg; giving my 18 year old self 29 minutes of too much credit.

“I know, right?”, he said. I started to throw off the Cranford High blanket that by now was practically a part of my outfit, excited by the possibilities of what laid ahead (ah, see what I did there?) But then he continued… “This next episode is my favorite.”

I slunk back on the couch. Was I not attractive enough? Was my newfound affinity for short shorts too “gay” for him? Or was I simply too much of a New York extraterrestrial for him to handle? At that moment, I heard the upstairs door close. They were gone. Okay, I came all the way here, I was in Cranford… This was not a time for subtlety.

I threw off the blanket, jumped on top of him, and began making out with him. Here I was, with the head of the wrestling team, wondering if his cheerleader girlfriend would make the squad with her broken leg. I’m from Manhattan! This was more of an alternate universe to me than The motherfucking Flintstones.

Now, when we were at the park, on the bleachers, maybe it was the excitement of being in the fresh country air and on an adventure, maybe I was in my head and distracted, but either way, I had neglected to realize until this moment…. He is a fucking AWFUL kisser! Not just bad in the “not doing it for me” sense, but bad in the out-of-body experience sense. His tongue, fully extended, went up and down my cheek. Then up and down my lips. When he finally got his tongue in my mouth, it started pushing on the inside of my cheek. At one point, I had to wipe my mouth… His slobber was dripping off of my chin. Charming, right?

“Wait”, he said. Something I was perfectly fine with. “I just really want (was he about to say “you”, I thought….) …..this Taco Bell”.

Now I was annoyed. This trip was starting to feel more and more pointless. I sat back on the couch as he went to town on his many chalupas and…. whatever else they sell at Taco Bell. I sat there stunned. Don’t most 18 year old sexually repressed guys from New Jersey want to get laid?

After he finally finished, he started kissing me again. Between the slobber, and the overwhelming Taco Bell taste, it was too much for me to handle. But I was there. So I let him kiss me. Chalupa breath and all. Okay, moving on, I thought… (Dad, stop reading now!!!!!!!) I grabbed his old Old Navy jeans, unbuttoned them, and de-pants’d him. And then he said something so horrific… Something that NO man should ever – EVER – say….

“Sorry it’s so small.”

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!

WHY would someone say that?!?! Seriously, if my dick were the size of a cashew nut, I would be all “I know, isn’t it HUGE?! A foot long, really! Biggest you’ve ever had, right?!” Why would someone say that?! I pretended I didn’t hear that and continued onward. But then–

“Wait!” He said. What?! Was was it now?! Did he want a Big Gulp to wash down the four chalupas?

“I can’t – do stuff – unless I’m high. You mind if I call my drug dealer?”

“Your what?!”, I said, astonished. “Well yknow… thirty minutes and stuff, so uh… maybe not?” I said, and continued. Could this freakin day get any worse?!

We went on “doing stuff” for about 30 seconds, and then he pulled me close to him, and said the thing that most people dream of hearing…. two hours after meeting someone…

“I think I’m falling in love with you”, he said, as he grabbed me for a tight hug. I was wrong. Turns out, this day could infact get worse.

I stood there, trapped in a hug, my head next to his. My face could’ve been a cautionary tale postcard.

“That’s… that’s greaaaat“, I said, my saccharine bulletproof smile sealed on with shellack. I could still smell the Taco Bell on him, as I plotted the quickest way to get back to New York.

Suddenly, the deafening sound of the upstairs basement door opening appeared, and a loud male’s voice screamed “WHERE IS HE?!?!”

“Oh my God!!!!!!”, Bryan said, the panic level on his face going from eleven to eleven hundred. It seemed The Colonel heard about our study session and decided to come home early.

I look back at the wall and see his father’s framed NRA membership card, along with the entire case of guns and rifles, and framed photos of his father with the many innocent little animals he had slaughtered. Was I about to become one of them? Strands of blonde hair mounted to the wall in place of antlers? What was supposed to be my fun little suburban sex odyssey was quickly turning into what I could only assume would be my obituary. And then he said the fateful words… six words I never thought I would hear.

“Quick! Hide in the Bomb Shelter!”

The what now?! Bryan grabbed my arm and quickly led me into a tiny room that had apparently once been used as a bomb shelter, but now just had a laundry machine and some cardboard boxes.

“Stay in here”, he said. “DO NOT come out!!!!”

There I stood. Hiding in a bomb shelter. A bomb shelter which felt like a windowless cell. If there had been windows, I probably would’ve climbed out of it and been on the next bus back to New York. But I stayed there, trapped. I pressed my ear to the door, as I heard his father – yes, The Colonel – stomp down the stairs.

“WHO WAS HERE?!?!”, he screamed. “Your mother said you were studying with Sarah’s brother and he’s a homosexual! Sarah ain’t got no brother! Who was here?! Were you using marajuana?! Why are you hanging with a faggot?! Where is he?!”

“No, no… nobody! It’s Sarah Schwartz’s brother. You’ve never met her. He went home!”

A terrifying and deafening silence overcame the basement. And then I heard him say something that kinda made me pee a little…

“Why is this door shut?!”, he said – his footsteps getting closer. FUCK. He was talking about the bomb shelter! I could feel his imposing presence on the other side of the door. And then – a distraction.

“Whose backpack is that?! That’s not yours”, he snapped, as he walked over to it.

Bryan started fumbling for words. “He, he, he forgot it here.”

“Oh really? Well let’s see this physics homework”, he said as I heard him unzip my bag.

Please do not open the side pocket.

Please do not open the side pocket.

Please do not open the side pocket.

“Sweatshirt… iPod… I don’t see any fucking physics! DO YOU?! What happened to the physics, Bryan?!” Bryan stuttered. And then, a deafening sound. The sound of a zipper. FUCK!!!!! The side pocket!!!

“IS THIS A CONDOM?!?!?! AND LIP GLOSS!!!!!!!!!!!! LIP GLOSS?!?!?!?!?! Why is a young man wearing lip gloss?!?!?!?!” Oddly enough, that seemed to bother him more than the condom…

“I don’t know. He’s weird. I won’t hang out with him again”, Bryan attempted to say, before the sound of him being slapped across the face echoed throughout the entire basement. Bryan clearly wasn’t my type of person, but I felt awful for him. I was starting to see why he needed to be high to have sex.

The Colonel then focused his attention to the closed bomb shelter door.

“I’ve never seen that door shut before! Is he in there?!”

And then I heard Bryan say… “No, of course not! Dad!!!……..

You don’t need your gun!!!!”

OH MY FUCKING GOD HIS GUN?!?!?! WHAT the FUCK am I gonna do?!?! I went right to the big cardboard box, thinking I’d climb in it and mail myself back to New York. I jumped on top of it…. and the thin cardboard on the side ripped from top to bottom. FUCK! Okay, laundry machine! I tried to climb behind it, but there was only about an inch of space. I considered getting in, but I’d never fit. So I crouched down and squeezed myself in the little space in between the washer and dryer. I had to crouch on my side in order to fit there, knowing full well if he took more than three steps forward into the room, he would see me. I suddenly had a newfound appreciation for Anne Frank.

The door came swinging open. I watched The Colonel out of the corner of my eye. Beads of sweat dripped down my face, off my chin, and hit the floor with what sounded in the moment to be a loud THUD. There must be a Jesus though! Because his father, seeing nothing, walked back out to reprimand Bryan.

“I’m taking all his shit! No condoms, no lip gloss, no sweater! He can come get it back from me and we can have a little talk. And I’m calling this kid’s parents! I want their number on my desk by the time I get home tonight. And give me your phone, your car keys, everything! If this ever happens again, you’re out of here!”

And with that, The Colonel went back upstairs. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to call my dad and tell him how much I love him, and how truly lucky I am to have him as my father.

Once the coast was clear, a demoralized Bryan came and let me out of the bomb shelter. “Go, go, go!”, he said, pointing to the basement window. “I’ll meet you around the corner in ten minutes!” I looked down at my now empty backpack, which looked like the victim of a murder scene. I grabbed it and got the fuck out of there.

I climbed onto the couch and out the window. I walked around the corner, lighting up the most needed cigarette of my life, as I texted everyone in my phone book HELP! I could only imagine the amount of therapy Bryan Alban was going to need later in life.

Bryan came by a little while later and wondered where we should go. I looked straight ahead… There was the entrance to the woods. “Let’s go there!”, I said – my 18 year old self still trying to get some, even after nearly being shot by The Colonel. We walked deep into the woods, and then he started frantically making out with me – slash my face – again. I pushed him on the ground and climbed on top of him. We de-clothes’d.

Now, for anyone contemplating sex in the woods, it’s attractive on paper, but let me save you some time and pain, and just say… DON’T! You get bug bites everywhere. And I do mean…. EVERYWHERE.

We continued “doing stuff” as Bryan would say, for about thirty seconds, and then, sure enough….

“Wait! I want to have a good time with you so I really need to get weed, otherwise I’ll be too nervous, so do you mind if I just call my dealer? Can I use your phone?”

“Yeah…. Sure….” I obliged, trying to be understanding of the fact that this kid has grown up with a cross between Captain Von Trapp (before he found a guitar), and Freddy Krueger. So of course he had issues.

“You want some?”, he asked. Yknow… it’s amazing what passes for sweet these days.

“No, I don’t really smoke weed,” I said. He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Aside from a few times trying weed, I’ve never done any drugs. Me sober is like most people on many many drugs anyway, so I figured it’s probably better that way for the world. Yes, I’m a humanitarian really.

We walked out of the woods, and there was an ominous black car waiting down the block. Bryan looked back at me, his eyes running up and down, from my blonde hair to my short shorts.

“You can’t be here!!! He can’t see you! You need to hide!” Yup. Internalized homophobia is a helluva thing, ain’t it?

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me! Hadn’t I done enough hiding for one day?! But nonetheless, I walked around the corner, waiting for what felt like an eternity for him to come back and meet me. The truth is I just wanted to go home. The ounce of sexual attraction I had for this guy was now long gone, and I just wanted to get out of these crazy suburbs, and back to my kind of crazy, my New York.

Bryan came back and immediately gave me an industrial sized bag of weed, like the kid in school who doesn’t want to get caught passing notes. “Can you hold onto this?”, he said as he put it in my backpack – in the infamous side pocket. At that moment, my Italian friend Gemma called me. I so badly needed to talk to a friendly familiar voice that social decency be damned, I picked up the damn phone and just started telling her everything…. in Italian. Which is the one use of speaking a foreign language: being able to talk shit about someone right in front of their face, with them being none the wiser. Usually.

“Are you talking about me???? Why are you talking about me??? Don’t talk about me! Are you talking about me?!?!”

I just played it off like she doesn’t speak English. Meanwhile I looked up the schedule for the next bus home. By now it was dark out, and I had quite had my fill of crazy for the day.

“You’re going? Don’t go!”, he said.

“Ahh, I’d love to… I gotta walk my dog”, I said, never minding the fact that I didn’t even have a dog at the time!

We sat on a lawn for a little bit while I killed time before the bus came.

“So uh… you want a blowjob or something?”, he asked.

“I’m uh… I’m good. Thanks though”. Despite my balls being bluer than Papa Smurf’s asshole, getting a slobbery Taco Bell flavored BJ from him – and thus spending more time with him and in Cranford – was not high on my list of priorities.

He walked me to the bus stop, as the bus was pulling in. He suddenly had desperation written all over his face. The kind of desperation one gets at the end of a date when they want to ensure they’ll see that person again, yet know they won’t. And so, he blurted out…

“I love you.”

I just gave a return performance of my bulletproof saccharine smile, and said, “Thaaaaaanks. Right, uh… Right back atchya.”

He pulled me in for another really close, really tight, Taco Bell accented hug, and I said goodbye – relieved to be leaving Cranford.

I got on the bus, walking past the rows of people, to get a seat in the back, where I was looking very forward to going into a 45-minute coma. And then suddenly…

“STOP THE BUS!!!! STOP THE BUS STOP THE BUS STOP THE BUS!!!!!!”

I looked out the window to see Bryan standing a few feet in front of the front of the bus. It SCREECHED to a stop. Oh. My. God. What is he doing?! I jumped up and made my way across the bus, walking to the front door. As I walked there I thought, is he going to tell me he loves me again? Is he going to try and ask me on a second date? Will he try and come to New York with me? I would just have to tell him, you’re a nice guy but we’re just different people with different lives.

I popped out of the front door. He hopped on and said “The… thing. I forgot my… book, in your bag!”

The fucking weed! I had forgotten. He shuffled through every pocket of my backpack as the bus driver sat there waiting and shooting eye daggers at me.

“K, got it! Bye!”, he said as he ran off into the Cranford night.

I stood there, exasperated, as I looked at the eyes of the many pissed off passengers gawking at me. I turned to the bus driver and optimistically asked…

“Can you smoke in here?”

The chorus of angry passengers all simultaneously yelled, “NO!!!!!”

I sheepishly made my way back to my seat. Head – and short shorts – held high. I turned to a woman sitting next to me. She was wearing a Chanel power-suit and stilettos… clearly from my neck of the woods. She took one look at me, and smiled a familiar, knowing smile, as though we’d been through the same war, together. She turned to me and said,

“Don’t worry. Forty-five minutes until New York…”

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