It Can Wait

            “So where do you want to go before prom?”

            We were walking to lunch; class had just ended. Spring was making its first real appearance, and all was calm. L was excited that I had asked her out to prom. She wasn't even going to go that year, but since I asked, then of course she would go. She, like most of the girls in my class, was head-over-heels in love with me. It was only a few weeks before prom, and I had never heard my fun-sized girlfriend talk so fast. As usual, I had other things on my mind, so I wasn't really hearing what she had to say… which would be why she smacked my arm.

            “Are you even listening to me?”

            I nodded my head, and suggested a nice restaurant that wasn't so nice that our wallets would be ravaged. There were plenty of cheap places in our small country area, but of course the prom itself would be held out of the area. This meant, to me, an annoying amount of planning: finding somewhere to eat, making reservations, finding directions on how to actually get there. She continued talking after that, but I still had other things on my mind.

For as long as I could remember, it had been like that. Overly excited girl, plus a sweet, loving, nicer-than-he-should-be me, equals one of the cutest couples ever. I had been nominated for homecoming king for two years now, and was on the ballot for prom, as well. People liked me well enough. As long as I kept playing their game, their way, I would be fine.

            The major downside to this equation, however, is that I have never actually been interested in that way. I've known for quite some time that I’m not like most guys. I’m simply not that interested in girls. I mean, most of my best friends are girls. I often found myself liking a girl a lot, and being really great best friends with her, and then she would want to start dating. Of course, I would date her.

            There I would be, time and time again, romantically involved with this girl that I only had feelings of friendship toward, rather than feelings of love. Inevitably, the girl would get upset because I didn't want to make-out, or feel her breasts, or have sex with her.

It just wasn't in me.

            It was at an early age that I discovered how hateful people could really be. I didn't grow up in a bad part of town, just a part where people all shared the same opinions. The community would always get along well, as long as no one challenged their ideas. A peaceful, conservative, white Christian community. That’s what I grew up with.

            I remember times when people would cause trouble. A black person might try to join our church, or a scandal might arise where so-and-so slept with the wife of a different so-and-so. The harshness of my community would deal with these people. One time specifically, the father of one of my friends tried to buy out a bunch of land to build some sort of complex. The community caused such an uproar, that it turned out I couldn’t see my friend any longer.

            Times like those made me realize that my community would rather base their judgments on ideas that others have. No individual person ever had an idea unless they asked their neighbors what they thought first. I couldn’t take that. I knew inside that I was different from these people. I knew that I couldn't just stand by and let hate and bigotry control me like it did those people. I hated the way they thought and acted. Because of their actions, I formed very strong opinions on justice and fairness. It also gave me a sense of fear: a fear that I would be shunned for being different. And no one was more different or less tolerated than gays….

            “Move it, faggot!” Someone gave me a shove, in a hurry to get to lunch. I glared at him running ahead of us.

            “You know he wasn't saying anything about you, right?” L asked me, looking up at me. I just shrugged. Yeah, I know. It’s just one of those terms people use without thinking.

Gays, Faggots, Homos, Pansies, and Queers. It left a sour taste on the tongue. Being called any one of those names would be cause for a fight. And why wouldn't it? Everyone in the area knew what those people were like.

            Faggots were monstrosities on Earth. They wore girls’ clothing and talked with lisps. They were rapists and pedophiles, sexual predators stalking any guy they laid their eyes on. The term described people with limp wrists and condemned them to hell. No one ever wanted to be one of them. In my mind, however, none of those things were true. They were simply stereotypes people had invented to shun a group of people they didn’t like or agree with. I knew, however, that people wouldn't think about that. Back home, in the small country area I lived, there were plenty of hillbilly rednecks who knew exactly how to deal with these freaks of nature…

            She hit me again. “There’s something on your mind—I can tell!”

            “What do you mean?”

            “You just agreed to wear a neon-orange tuxedo to prom! I was testing to see if you were paying attention.” She was good. I had to admit. She knew I would never wear something that bright to a dance.

            “It’s nothing. I’m just thinking about an assignment for English I have to finish.” That’s right Walt. Blame it on school work again. One day you will have to tell her the truth, you know. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

            I really did care about L. I cared about her more than she could know. I cared about her so much that I was actually hiding my true self from her for even longer just so she could be happy. At least, that was what I told myself. The truth was that I was afraid—afraid to let people know how I really felt. I would never be treated the same if they knew.

            I couldn’t be gay, after all. I didn’t wear tight fitting clothing, or dress like a girl. I bought all my clothes at Goodwill, so I obviously didn’t dress that fashionably (unless you are ninety years old). I didn’t have the earrings or the lisp. I was still a virgin too! I couldn’t be one of those creepy guys who look around for sex like those homos do. I didn’t go out and rave to dance music at clubs while hyped up on drugs either. I was just a good student—a nice guy who followed the rules.

            “Why don’t you ever do your work on time? I mean, I know EVERYONE turns Mr. T’s work in late, but you never really struck me as the type.” She never would let go. We turned the corner, walking toward the cafeteria. At least there I might be able to drown my thoughts with the voices of all the students talking over everyone else.

            I often tried to drown out those thoughts, to find distractions. That’s part of why I had a girlfriend. She distracted me, made me feel normal. I hated what I felt inside. I hated who I was—every morsel of my being, I felt, was an abomination. I needed the distraction. It only worked on rare occasions, though, and that day was not one of them.  All around me, I saw those I wanted. People I knew I could never have, not if I wanted to keep my identity. Not if I wanted to stay safe....

            “Oh my god!” L cried. French fries, chicken nuggets, and chocolate milk flew as a guy at a table near us accidentally tripped, flipping his tray into the face of the guy across from him. I pulled L aside so she wouldn’t get in the way of the lunch-covered student who was, at that moment, climbing over the table toward the student who had just tossed his food. Teachers, quickly swarmed to the area, but not before the dairy covered teen landed a punch in face of the other.

            “You dirty faggot!” cried Milk-Stain. Blood dripped down from the nose of the other boy, the one on the ground, the one that everyone at my school knew was gay, even if he wasn’t ‘out’. They were both headed for the principal’s office. They would both be punished, regardless of the fact that only one of them did any fighting.

            There were other reasons that I couldn’t say anything, and one of them had just punched that kid in the face. I knew that the gay community was discriminated against. If people knew I wasn’t interested in girls, then they would, of course, think I was gay. I was mortified of being treated like that. I had already experienced some of that before, and didn’t want to go back.

Two years before, I found myself getting hit by and picked on by a group of guys calling me gay. (There’s no way they could’ve known though, because even I wasn’t sure at that point.) Why were they doing this? Turns out, my best friend had come out of the closet, and everyone assumed that I was his boyfriend. The rumor spread like wildfire and caused immediate repercussion. My current girlfriend, one I had actually had since middle school, dumped me because she didn’t want to be a “fag hag.” I had people kick in my locker, steal stuff from my backpack, and vandalize my belongings. I was even being confronted by my parents and church elders! It all eventually cooled off when J had to transfer to a different school.

J and I were extremely close friends. We did everything together. Thinking back on it now, I believe we connected so well because we both knew we were different. We opened up to each other all the time, and never kept things from each other. Being friends with J made me think about things though. I knew even then that I was different. Seeing all that he had to deal with, just to affirm his identity made me proud. I could see that he had finally come to terms with who he was, and even though he faced hate and torment because of it, he was stronger willed now—stronger now that he was sure of who he was.

            “Did you know that J’s parents divorced because he was gay?” I asked L.

            “What? That’s stupid. I hate people sometimes. It was his dad, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “I never did like him. His dad, I mean.”

            It was when she would say things like that I felt that she loved me enough to be okay with me, no matter who I was. My parents, however, I knew would react differently.

            My mother, paragon of acceptance, would be okay with it, given time. I know she loves me for who I am, no matter who that may be. My father, however, was an entirely different story. I loved him like a son should love his father, but I never could get along with him. He had so many expectations of me. I was supposed to be the perfect son for him—I was the one that he tried for, after all—but I could never be that son he always wanted. I couldn’t be the football star with the girlfriend that would make everyone jealous. I was always sure that, as much as he and my mom fought already, if he were to ever find out about me, the fighting would get so bad that they would divorce.

            Growing up I can see how I must’ve disappointed my father time-and-time again. I was never the sport-oriented son he wanted. I played soccer for two seasons, but I ended up giving that up. He pushed me to be a hard worker then—to be a man. He had me perform tasks well outside my comfort area, such as chopping wood for fire, or working construction with him. I was never the outdoors type, and I often turned out to be pretty lazy as well.

            Perhaps it was because of my father’s desires that I developed a sense of manhood that was almost completely contrary to his own beliefs. For my father, Man was supposed to be big, strong, and powerful. Man chooses a wife and has children. Man provides for his family by having a job, and it is the family’s job to support Man’s home. Man’s son would learn directly from Man in order to become Man himself. Man was above all and therefore could treat all as such.

            My version of Man, however, was based on different morals. I believed that Man is defined by how one treats those around him. Man strives to be the best he can, but would never treat anyone as if they were any less than he. Man can be Man, without needing a wife. All he needs is caring.

            When I told my dad about my version of Man, he called me a pussy. I was a pansy little child, and it was his responsibility to wear that idea out of me. I made many trips to the woods to grab a switch, and would of course have to go back again because I never got one good enough. I fully understood that I was a disappointment to him.

            I did however, excel in one area: academics. I was the smart child, and for that I was praised, but I could always tell that my father wished I had been more of a man than I was turning out to be…

            She was giving me that look again. “You know I love you, no matter what, right?” She could see straight through me. She knew I had something serious on my mind, and that it was about me and her.

            “As I love you with all my heart, darling.” Every time I uttered those words, I felt the guilt build up in me. I couldn’t live with it all. I mean, I did love her, but I wasn’t in love with her. I couldn’t keep living like this. I had to tell her the truth.

            “L, I have to tell you something really important.”

            “Yes?” She looked up at me, cutest smile on her face. She was holding a Prom Girl catalog in her hand, several pages marked with post-it notes. I looked from her, over to the guy sitting across the table, perfect smile and all, chatting away to his friend beside him. This was it. I was about to do it. I was about to tell her everything.

 Looking back at her, I felt a knot tie in my stomach.

 I can’t. I can’t do it.

            “I love you. Just wanted you to know.” She smiled and turned back to her book, giggling because I had made her happy. I guess that was something I was good at: making others happy. Maybe I could live with that. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living a lie. I knew, however, that I couldn’t live being fake. I had to prove to myself who I was. I had to discover myself. I would tell her, but not now. Let her be happy for now.

 It could wait until later.

***

“Do you think I’m preeeetty?” S asked. Our director was throwing a party to celebrate the closing of RENT, so there I sat in his basement-bar: the un-entertained designated driver. I was caught up in my own thoughts when S collapsed onto the couch beside me. She held in her hand the tenth Solo cup that I had seen her with that night. Her breath, as she slurred out her question to me, stank of san gria.

            With the naïve hope she would leave, I told her what she wanted to hear. Instead of leaving, however, she put her arm around me. “You’re a cutie, you know that?” I could barely keep myself from laughing as she sat there and hit on me. I tuned her out when she started telling me her life story.

            Hampden-Sydney had been an entirely new experience for me. College. I had met new people. I had experienced life being out and open. And the year was drawing to a close, too. Soon I would have to go back home and deal with my family again.

They all knew who I was then. They all knew I was gay. They had heard it through the grapevine, and I confirmed it. They claimed they weren’t mad. They claimed that everything was the same. But I knew that things were different now. I noticed when the phone calls became less frequent. I noticed the way that, when we did talk, they were careful with their words. My ever-faithful siblings relayed to me about our parents’ fights. They used to fight about money, alcohol, and my older sister’s shenanigans.

Now they fought about me.

“I bet all the boys fight over you!” S was practically in my lap at this point. She had spilled a bit of her fruity drink down my leg, and the wetness had brought me back from my thoughts. I grabbed a randomly discarded shirt and used it to mop up my leg. I then coaxed the drink from S’s hand and placed it on the table. She began to whine for her ‘juice’, but I laid her head down and began to stroke her hair, alleviating her complaints. “You’re so sexy from this angle!” she told me.

I had always had a hard time believing that I was physically attractive. I still do. But when I came to college, I drew the attention of every man-loving guy who went to the school, as well as some from the neighboring towns. Suddenly, I was given any guy I wanted, and I took advantage of that. My first months were spent trying to find and keep a guy. I kept trying to form a relationship, but it turned out that they weren’t interested that way.

A good three months into the year, I realized that I didn’t really care anymore. There were still guys who wanted me, but I wasn’t interested.  At first, I thought that I just wasn’t interested in the guys around the school anymore. I tried contacting guys from back home again, but after speaking with them, I found that they were all the same: sex-starved horn-dogs who could care less about forming an actual relationship. And since I didn’t have the same desires as them, they lost interest.

So now, I was stuck. I didn’t seem to have any interest in guys, and I still had no interest in girls. All I had was this label.

            “Why aren’t you drinking, silly? It’s yummy!” S’s hangover was going to be terrible, I could tell. She was switching topics every five seconds at this point. “How come I never see you at any parties, huh?” If she wasn’t intoxicated, I probably would’ve tried to answer her questions. It’s not like I didn’t answer them almost daily, anyway. But my explanation would be lost on her.

Back home, my coming-out didn’t even have an effect on the relationship I had with my community, because I was still fairly unknown. I wasn’t the type of person to go out and meet new people. I stuck to my home, and left only for work.

            Now that I was at college, however, I had no choice but to face the community. Unfortunately for me, these people were even less accepting than the ones back home. When I got to Hampden-Sydney, they already knew I was gay. It was on my Facebook, after all. I didn’t think it would be a problem.

            Now my fears of being gay had been realized. People here don’t just ignore me like the people back home. Now people go out of their way to call me faggot, queer, homo. I get pushed as I walked by people. I can’t make friends.

My roommate was occasionally hostile, even to the point where I had to switch rooms for fear of my safety. I felt alone. I had a few friends, but they were pretty much all gay, themselves. The only reason, it felt, that we bonded is because we were in the same boat.

            And even within my group of gay friends, I was further put out of the crowd. These guys were the gays that people talked about: fashion-obsessed, bitchy, and snobbish. They treated ‘gay’ more like a lifestyle than a way of life. I had nothing against them, but since I was none of those things, they often picked on me as well. I was alone and trapped.

            I dropped S off at her dorm. I even walked her inside and passed her off to her roommate, who thanked me for bringing her back safely. The drive back to my school was short, but plenty long to think about everything. What did I actually want? Would I ever be able to figure myself out?

            I thought about how the day had gone. I thought about how, when I went to turn in a paper earlier, a group of guys had called me names. That paper had me so proud. I didn’t bother remembering their faces. I didn’t listen to their torment. I was past that.

            I left. I left the paper sitting in the box outside my professor’s office with those guys who called me faggot, who threatened me with words. My breath drew short as I thought about my paper. I raced to my professor’s office to check on the paper. It was there. But it wasn’t in the box outside his door. It was on the floor. Balled up. Like trash for the janitor to find in the morning.

            I picked the trash up, folding open my desecrated pride. Scrawled across the front in black ink was the word FAG in large letters. I turned with the paper and began to walk back to my room. I was shaking and crying before I even realized. I had been vandalized. This work that I was so proud of had been attacked. It hurt worse than if they had actually hit me. The product of several nights’ worth of digging through painful memories had been vandalized, balled up, and discarded as though my work didn’t matter.

            I could always print out another copy. I told myself that over-and-over, but still…. I shook violently and cowered behind a bush. I was afraid. I looked down at the paper. “It Can Wait”, I read. “’So where do you want to go before prom?’”

            At that very moment, there was nothing more I wanted than to go back to that point. prom. When the most important thing was where I wanted to take L to dinner. I read my paper. It felt like an old story. Uncompleted. It ended. Without an end. There was no real resolution. It left the reader wanting. I had had no more to write, but now, after what happened, I felt like I had an ending.

This paper has taught me to be strong. I can endure through the issues I’ve been presented. I know I’m gay. I know it’s hard to deal with, but I believe I’m strong enough to survive the trials. I never thought I’d be able to say that to myself, but I finally have. I know that there will still be hate against me. There will probably be more violent acts to come. But I will have to deal with them when they come.

            I wiped my tears and marched back to my room. I went directly to my computer, and began to write. I had to get it all down while it was still fresh in my mind. When I was done, I went to sleep. In the morning, I typed these last few sentences to wrap it up. In a minute, I will print it and turn it in.  

Becoming The King

        At the end of the 2011 fall semester, auditions were held for the Spring production of Steve Martin’s play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. I will readily admit that Steve Martin’s work had never really attracted my attention much—Cheaper by the Dozen was the only film I could remember him from, and I thought that was a rubbish film. I knew that the spring semester would be a busy time for me: I fully intended to take 6 classes—18 credit hours worth of work. I didn’t foresee myself having much time to devote to theatre, so I elected to skip out on auditions. Toward the end of the semester, though, I was emailed by the director, MD, asking if I could fill in a small role. “It’s Elvis. Our other Elvises have left the building, so to speak.” A small role, I thought I could manage. Against my judgment about my time, I decided to take the role; I’ve worked with MD in the past, and I always have a hard time saying no. I expected it to be an easy process, but I quickly realized how wrong I was.

        I grabbed a script from MD before I headed home for Winter break. I had no plans for break, you see. Typically I just work a lot, but my job didn’t need me back this winter, so I was out of luck. Instead, I spent a lot of time visiting friends and family, playing video games, doing holiday shopping, and ignoring the script for Picasso. It was always on my mind, though. One of the first things I did when I came home was tell my parents that I would be playing Elvis in the Spring production. “You better tell my mother, then,” my mother had said. “You know how much she loves Elvis.” Except I didn’t know. I had no idea that my grandmother liked Elvis, or that anyone in my family liked him, for that matter. There are people in my country-western bluegrass family who love The King? This realization was quickly followed by another: I knew nothing about Elvis, myself!

        Toward the end of break I finally read the script. It was amusing, but it seemed a bit random and scattered. I didn’t like it. It was a small part, though, so I wasn’t too worried about it. I barely had any lines; all I had to do was show up on stage, let people be amused by the fact that I was Elvis, and then that was about it. The last line of the play was mine, too, so that’s cool. When I came for the first rehearsal, though, the play really came alive for me. Reading it to myself, it didn’t really make much sense, but with the group reading all of their parts, everything was suddenly hilarious. That first rehearsal got me pumped for the show and encouraged me to give it my all. There was still a problem, though: I still knew nothing at all about Elvis! To remedy this issue, MD brought a professor in to give a historical presentation about Elvis.

        It never occurred to me that this man was so big! I know that he made a girl swoon in the play, but I thought it was just for comedy: I didn’t realize that the real Elvis actually did that all the time! This was a man who was larger than life—his memorabilia sells for small fortunes, hundreds of people make a living out of being Elvis-impersonators. How could I ever hope to present a worthy model of a character that was—is—so much larger than life than I am? For the first time in my acting history, I found myself getting nervous. Normally, acting is care-free to me: the characters whom I portray are things of fiction and my renditions of them will be appreciated. But with Elvis, everyone has pre-existing expectations. People know Elvis. If I screwed up, I would be disrespecting a legend. This pressure that I put on myself terrified me. The task that I thought would be a breeze suddenly became the most daunting part of my semester.

        I took some solace in the direction I received, though. MD assured me that I did not need to be Elvis—instead, he urged the idea that I only needed to be a suggestion of Elvis. Not a caricature, but a representation. This made sense to me. The King, in his time, was a corporeal man: he may have been larger than life, but he was a man, all the same. After his death, though, he was granted immortality—he now exists as an icon, something that can’t be replicated, only impersonated. In order to pay homage to The King, I would have to stand in as a symbolic representation of the idea of Elvis, not the man of Elvis. With that in mind, I began to piece together a character that would best represent Elvis.

        I began listening to his works over and over again so that I could best emulate the accent of his voice—a sort of slow, southern drawl with a bit of a charm that escaped the lips along with it. I realized that, in changing my voice to get close to his, I was actually falling back on my own native accent—an accent that I had struggled for years to abandon. I started to watch recordings of Elvis’s performances. The man could move. I, however, was not a very graceful person. I spent countless hours working to emulate a simple, Elvisian hip-swing. I fell down countless times, and almost gave up, but I eventually got the hang of it. That sexy signature of his, though—the snarl—was possibly the hardest part to imitate. I grew to hate my face with how often I stared at myself in a mirror trying to get a lip curl to coincide with a wink. This was a gesture that could literally make women faint when he used it. I had to become a master of this, if I was ever going to be happy with the product of my work.

        By the time the production came together, though, and we performed, I had it all together. I donned my Elvis-suit, and waited for my entrance every night. Cue-line, then lights, then cue fog machine, cue lights, cue entrance—brush stardust off shoulders, inspect bar, inspect picture, swivel hips, and presto!—my character is formed. Without a word and before a line is even said, hints of The King were already identifying my character. For those in the crowd who were a bit slow on the uptake, though, the accent helped to tie it together. Now, I may not have been the right size for the part—I am a bit scrawny—and my hair was definitely not a black pompadour, but people knew that I was Elvis. Then the ending: “Isn’t it funny how the play lasted exactly between the time that the lights went up, and the lights came down?” After the shows, I received praise. I was told that I “stole the show.” I was congratulated over and over. Even when the production was over, for a couple weeks, people came up to me and said that I did a good job. People asked me to swing my hips, or “use the Elvis voice.” I felt, for those weeks after the performance, like a star—like The King, himself! It started to dawn on me after a while, though, that I was changed. I walked and moved differently. My accent had shifted slightly into a more southern drawl. I found myself winking more often at people. The show—this process of becoming The King—it had changed me more than I thought. Before, this would’ve terrified me: I don’t want to even slightly resemble some fat, sparkle-wearing pomp who played old-timey rock-and-roll: I liked being myself! But now that I have an appreciation and understanding of the man—nay, The King—I’m totally okay with being more like Elvis: I am totally okay with being a legend.

A Hat's Tale

        My partners in crime dropped it into my hands one day. We were standing in the local Wal-Mart—hangout spot for all the Bedford kids—and we were browsing through the clothing section. “Wear it. It suits you.”

        It was a red baseball cap—solid red with a lightning bolt insignia on the front. The lightning bolt is the brand of many popular companies and people; from Lady Gaga to sports racing, ACDC to Harry Potter.

        “You want me to wear a Gatorade hat? I don’t even drink Gatorade!”

        “Are you serious? This is the symbol of The Flash. THE FLASH!” And so it began… I donned the hat of this second-rate superhero and was changed forever.

        I was never too popular in the early years of secondary school. I kept mostly to myself. I had social anxiety problems and my love of rules and academics made it difficult for anyone to see me as a worth-while friend. I eventually joined a group of other outcasts, a couple of nerds who, likewise, had issues making friends. As time passed we got close, but I always felt like I had this…emptiness—a lack of identity that I couldn’t seem to fill.

        “Please don’t cut your hair,” L whined. It was my senior year of high school and my hair was about six inches long. “The Magical Mystery Mullet”, I call it nowadays. It wasn’t a real mullet, but it occasionally looked like it. L, who was a year younger than me, had the biggest crush on me and loved the hair. The trouble was, it was too long, and I couldn’t keep it under my hat.

        “Lose the hat, then!” she would tell me. It wasn’t that simple though. It should’ve been. I’ve committed many a fashion-sin by wearing it: according to most fashion gurus, complementary colors match. But the complement of a hat as red as mine is…green. I didn’t know it then, but apparently wearing red and green together is an unholy abomination. It made me look like an elf.

        I never wore the hat for fashion, though. Instead, I stuck to its original purpose. In the early days of baseball, teams would all wear these caps that were designed to block out the sun. Their shared cap logos created a sense of identity and belonging, bringing them closer together. I wore my hat, with its Flash logo, as a way of joining a family. Men and hats have a long standing tradition—an understanding, so to speak. They don’t always work for us, but they also serve to dominate personalities. It’s quick to recognize popular figures by what type of hat-wear they are. Cowboy hat are worn by rugged men, fedoras by the classy, top hats by the posh, berets by artists, chullos by potheads—the things that we wear on our heads often identify who we are and they can drop us into stereotypical roles.

        When I started wearing the hat I became someone different. Instead of the old names people called me—weirdo, loser, faggot—the hat gave me a new name: “Flash.” The new nickname gave me a place from which I could build a self-defense for myself. People could insult me, but I had a secret-identity now. I began to model parts of my life after the superhero himself. A true underdog, often ridiculed for being the “fastest man alive,” the Flash was a scientist who was struck by bolt of lightning, giving him the ability to move at super-speeds. My favorite incarnation of The Flash was always the youngest: Bart Allen. He was just a teenager, like me, but he always felt out of place in time. His friends treated him like he was dumb, when in actuality, he only acted dumb. Bart was a kid who was quick to love, quick to stand up for himself, and quick to make decisions: everything I wanted to be.

        Like the Flash, my life began to move at speeds I’d never known before. Classes flew by. I became involved in plays. I made friends. I was branded King of the Nerds. The hat made me stand out—a beacon that signaled my entrance into any building. I became popular. I made mistakes. I became a teenager.

        I started living.

        Since the use of my nickname “The Flash” has become widespread and commonly used, I found that I have a point from which I can now defense myself. I’ve never really stood up for myself too much, but nowadays, when people insult me, they insult The Flash. And when they insult The Flash, then I take it personal. It should be pointed out, btw, that The Flash is not a spaceman from cheesy sci-fi adventure comic strips—that’s Flash Gordon. Every time someone makes that mistake, I want to hit them. The Flash is a DC Comics character. He’s had many incarnations, too many to describe, but he’s always been an underdog like me. And he’s always had a home: The Justice League.

        With my new name, there came, as well, a new home. My own, personal Justice League began to form around me. The members of my group all shared certain qualities and characteristics as some other characters that the Flash might’ve had: there was the cold, and standoffish Batman of the group, my do-gooder best friend Superman, and the friend-who-could-down-ten-glasses-of-water-at-a-single-meal-sitting Aquaman. We formed our own little Justice League, and within that, I found a group of people that I could consider both home, and family.

        This hat, though, began to consume my life. Like a leech feeding off of its host, the hat took my identity away. I was no longer that shy kid that no one liked. It was transforming me in a very horrific way. I remember being terrified as people started to actually like me and pay attention to me. Because the hat gave me a name, others thought they could give me names like “Club President,” “honors student,” or “boyfriend.” What was the hat’s game? What is it trying to prove? It would just sit up there, atop my head, and leech my brain, turning me into its hat-slave.

        Well I would show that hat who was boss. I tried a few days to just not wear the hat. A bizarre phenomenon occurred, though. Without the hat, I felt empty. Impure. Like something was missing. Had so much of my soul been put into the hat that I could no longer survive without it? Or did I rely too much on the hat to characterize me? My friends now associate me with The Flash, and The Flash with me. Whenever something pops up that is related to the character, the images or videos are immediately sent to the various forms of social media that I subscribe to. Am I the new Flash? Is that who I am? Has Walter died and been replaced with some sort of alternate version? Who am I?

        I’ve never considered the concept of “soul” seriously. I prefer to believe in “essence” and “being”, which are more personal and malleable versions of the same general idea. I believe that my essence has become fused to this hat. I began to worry about myself. Was I really relying on that hat so much for my personality?

        Nirvana is a state of mind where the soul has been liberated from the effects of karma and bodily existence. I’m not particularly religious, but this idea of a perfect state—of Nirvana—has always appealed to me. I’ve always been alone, left to take care of myself, practically, until that hat and my friends came along. Now that it consumes my life, I feel too attached to it. So to give it up—to lose the hat…



        I gave the hat to L. It was one of the hardest decisions that I have ever made in my life. I know that that probably sounds sad, but in those says, it was a big deal for me. From the moment I met her, I knew that we were in love. It wasn’t the type of sexual love that many people think of or feel. Like most of the complicated emotions in my life, this was…different. The term “soul-mate” gets thrown around a lot. I reserve this term for L. That’s why I gave her the hat. If it is, indeed, my soul, then who better to keep it?

        I’m not sure she understood the significance of my action. I’m not even sure I understand these things. That hat made me a person, and I gave it away. It’s always meant so much to me, and I allowed it to slip away. I didn’t feel this “nirvana” when it happened, though. I ended up buying a new hat, but I don’t think it has changed anything.

        In the end, I’ve only learned one thing. Growing up with a possession, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can completely change a life. For you it may be that teddy bear your dad gave you before you left for war or that first merit badge from scouts. These things bring us a type of comfort that you can’t find anywhere else. For me, it was this hat that was given to me by my first friends. This hat that made me the man I am today—it is my comfort. It is my heart and soul, and plays as much a role to my life as a body part or a significant other may play in yours. Without that hat, I probably would’ve grown to attach to something else, but the hat transformed me, and it has made me all the better.

Disaster Boy

        I once knew a kid who was his own greatest threat.

        When I say this, I mean it. Throughout his life, it seemed like he was invincible. Accidents often happened near him. Catastrophe followed him around, creeping close, but never quite touching him. When things did happen to him, he would walk away, barely injured. This Disaster Boy was either the luckiest guy in the world, or the unluckiest. But he never thought anything of it.

        To this day, Disaster Boy has been hit by a car on three separate occasions. The first was a suburban backing out of a driveway as he walked by—it knocked him a few feet, but he got back to his feet and kept going. The second was a side-swipe from a Durango hauling ass down a residential street—a few bruises and a cut down his arm, but nothing serious and no charges pressed. The most recent time was on purpose; Disaster Boy made many careless friends who could goad him into doing some seriously dumb things—the truck hit him square on at 15 mph. 15 miles per hour doesn’t sound bad, but it’s enough to knock a boy a couple yards to the ground. In addition to this, he has been inside a car that ended up underneath a truck. He even managed to flip his own car—a worn down 1988 Subaru—off of a 50 foot embankment: he survived without a scratch and his car was running again the following day.

        Disaster Boy has avoided being struck by lightning as many times as he’s been hit by cars. Each strike is a little closer. The first struck a few yards from him, demolishing a tree nearby. The second hit a car he was riding in (a car which no longer runs). Most recently, the lightning struck mere feet from where he had just been setting up audio equipment for a concert—the storm came from nowhere, and people called it a miracle that he escaped unscathed.

        Disaster Boy has been pushed through a window by his older sister. He has jumped off of houses to the ground without injury. He has been stung by a swarm of poisonous jellyfish. He has nearly drowned on two separate occasions. He survived pediatric pneumonia. No, the world may want to hurt Disaster Boy, but something protects him.

        Disaster Boy does have a weakness, though: himself. It started out as shyness. He was always a “shy” boy growing up. He’d shrink in fear from meeting new people, and often couldn’t operate well in classes. Everyone wrote it off as typical childish behavior, though, so Disaster Boy was pushed over and over until he had to get over it. Disaster Boy managed to become more attuned to operating in public, but even to this day he has a fear of newness. It would be many years before he would search for answers or for a cure. It wasn’t a real issue, though. He could—as his parents would tell him—get over it.

        It was in High School that the real problems started. Disaster Boy would find himself spacing out in class. He would find that words on paper would shake violently and fly away, leaving him unable to read. He would find gaps of his memory disappearing. He’d wake up and be ready to leave for school, only to find that he’d actually just returned from school that day. Despite his crowd of friends, he found himself sad and alone. He thought dark thoughts—the darkest thoughts—and sought escape.

        Disaster Boy became his own tragedy. The cars and lightning of the world may not be able to hurt him, but he could hurt himself. His acknowledgement of his own worthlessness drove him to make bad decisions. His poor self-image became the subconscious cause of his anorexia nervosa. His issues consumed him, dragging him into darkness until he sought escapes through knives, drugs, and guns. He very nearly found his way out, but a light finally saved him: a counselor.

        It was a sickness, she told him. That’s not true, though. Disaster Boy knew that sadness was an emotion, not a sickness. Sicknesses make people cough or throw up. A disorder, then, if you prefer. A disorder? What was wrong with Disaster Boy?

        After several counseling sessions, his counselor found the cause to be obvious: Bipolar II disorder. Bipolar II disorder is characterized by cycling moods. Unlike Bipolar I disorder, Bipolar II disorder cycles between “normal phases”, “hypomanic phases”, and “manic depression.” What Disaster Boy had just survived was a “manic depression”: the disorder is triggered by chemicals in his brain becoming misbalanced, resulting in slower functioning—other symptoms, such as the ones Disaster Boy exhibited, include low energy, loss of pleasure, depressed mood, feelings of worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide.

        It wasn’t all terrible, though. The counselor explained that his hypomanic episodes seem much more frequent, and overall his “normal phases” would be dominant. In a hypomanic state, Disaster Boy would find his brain running too fast: his thoughts and speech may blur together, he may feel hyper-energized, and—in all likelihood—people would find him hilarious to be around.

        Disaster Boy was given mood stabilizers to help his problems. Lithium, Lamictal, Zoloft: none helped, though. Since they were having no effect, he was taken off of the medications, and was given exercises to practice for when he entered one of his “moods”. Ultimately, he found a balance, but it wasn’t long before other problems arose.

        Disaster Boy graduated from high school, all prepared for college. That summer, he went on vacation to a foreign town, though, and quickly found himself lost and separated from his family. All around him there were new faces. No one he knew could help him. He perceived the people around him as hostile elements. If one of them attacked, there would be no way of getting help. He remembered his chest growing tight. He remembered the choking feeling, the dizziness, and the nausea. He trembled as he sought out his family, separated only moments before. But then he blinked and found himself in their hotel room.

        Another trip to the doctors revealed the second of the internal threats to Disaster Boy’s invincibility: Panic disorder. Disaster Boy, as it turned out, wasn’t just shy or afraid of newness. As it should so happen, he was agoraphobic: physically and mentally afraid of being in situations where escape is impossible or help may not be available. Years of suppressing his fears had only aggravated his symptoms, pushing him to the point of blacking out in the streets of Gatlinburg, TN. Agoraphobics often find themselves physically immobilized by their irrational fears—you may find them frozen on bridges or in a crowd.

        To help Disaster Boy prepare for college, he underwent cognitive-behavioral therapy. He met with a counselor several times a week all summer. He learned ways to cope with the situation. He was taught that his paranoid fears were ungrounded. He took trips to the mall, and mingled with crowds to get used to the atmosphere. When things got to be too much, Disaster Boy learned how to “draw lines” between himself and others: he could picture an imaginary boundary between himself and others—something like the lip of a stage or a desk in the front of a room—and put it between himself and his “foes.”

        College would present entirely new issues for Disaster Boy. A new disorder peeked its head: anxiety. Perhaps one of the most common illnesses that college students encounter, Anxiety disorders revolve around stress levels and feelings of fear, unease, and worry. Disaster Boy’s anxiety attacks caused hyperventilation and more memory gaps. He was fighting a losing battle, and had no idea what he could do to be saved.

        Throughout his college career, Disaster Boy would continue to see therapists and counselors, doctors and physicians, but no one gave him much in way of a cure. He tried not to bother his parents with his problems: they had money issues, and they had never been very receptive in the past. His new college friends were there, but Disaster Boy was too scared to tell them about his problems—if he scared off these new friends, he would have no one. He was able to gentle his disturbing thoughts to an extent, but he found himself losing hope.

        Something sparked in him, though. One day, he went to a Wal-Mart. Part of his training to ward off his agoraphobia is to expose himself to crowds as often as possible. To do this, he’d often just go and walk around shopping centers. While in Wal-Mart on one particular day, he happened past the office supplies section and found a journal. It was just a simple, leather journal. Empty. The pages were waiting for him to fill it.

        And he did. Disaster Boy started pouring words upon words into this journal. He wrote down everything that he was thinking. He wrote about people he met, things that troubled him. He wrote about his classes, his friends, his family. He wrote about games he played or trips that he took. All of this writing helped him to focus away from his issues, and soon it began to feel like he didn’t have them. Now that Disaster Boy had something to focus on, he worried less about his issues.

        The problems didn’t go away, though. His newfound love for writing helped him discover things about himself that he had never known. He actively pursued answers to the questions that had never been answered for him. The most important question for his search though, was Why me?

        And so he looked and looked for the causes to his mental distresses. He learned that it is most likely genetic. His mother suffers from depression, like her mother before her. His mother’s father suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder—a result of seeing his shipmates blown to bits in an attack during Vietnam. He learned that, on his father’s side, he could have much worse coming for me. Early-onset Alzheimer’s syndrome may very well await him in the near future. In addition, the men of his family are genetically at high risk for Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which (on top of spawning outburst of rage) can cause tumors in the eyes, ears, pancreas, kidney, brain, and spine. 

        The truth is… I am Disaster Boy. You probably saw that coming. When I look at my past and all the complications that plagued me growing up, it seems like I am someone else, entirely. I’m no longer that same boy who starved himself so that he wouldn’t be fat. I’m not that same guy who lay in bed dying of swine-flu for three days because his stress levels destroyed his immune system. No—I’m informed now. I understand most of what I’ve gone through. It seems funny to me that so many things could’ve killed me—all that lightning, the car wrecks, the drowning—but they didn’t; instead, the closest thing that has come to killing me is something locked inside my DNA—the thing that has come closest to killing me is something that I can’t avoid, no matter how hard I might try.

        I often wonder where I should go from here. My disease is incurable. It’s treatable, but it is never going to go away. In a sense, it is what has made me who I am today: a disaster waiting to happen. I’m persevering, though. There are days when I wake up and realize how much work I still have to do. This triggers my stress disorder, which off-balances my hormones, which trigger my bipolar depression, which slows my immune system, which makes me more susceptible to sicknesses like my re-occurring bouts of mono which keeps me from working, which makes me realize how much more work I have to do—and then the cycle repeats. Yes, I have considered many times that I am in an endless rut, and that there is no hope. But there really is hope. That day back at Wal-Mart, when I picked up that journal, I knew that someday I would write about the boy I used to be—that boy who was ready for disaster to strike. But no more. I’ve made it this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m giving up without a fight!

Writing is Like Living and Loving

Introductions

I always find myself stumped when it comes to writing an introduction. What could I possibly say that could make a person want to read what I have to write? What do I have to write, anyway? This is obviously not my standard type of writing: I mean look at it! There are personalized subjects, there’s a sarcastic voice, and it’s all coming directly from me, as a character. This isn’t the fiction I’m used to weaving… no, this is something different. It’s life that I’m writing now.

Have you ever noticed how much life is like writing a paper? When you’re in school and preparing yourself for “the real world” (whatever that is supposed to be) it’s like you’re doing some prewriting. I’m brainstorming what I will be doing for the rest of my life while I’m sitting here writing this paper. Where will it take me? Will the words that I’m typing now ever mean more than the paper they will become?

The whole daunting task of writing is also quite similar to the fearsome process of entering into a relationship with someone. Writing is like living and loving someone. The brainstorming of a relationship is where we get to know this person, become friends with him or her, and learn about the person. The body of our relationship paper is the actual relationship part, where we go out to eat or out to concerts, and we get all lovey-dovey and whatnot. Then there’s that part that we never want to actually write, and we have a hard time doing it: conclusions, where we pretend to understand what we’ve written.

We’ll talk more about conclusions later, though. Let’s worry instead about how I’m introducing this paper. If you haven’t guessed yet, it is an essay about writing. But it’s not just about writing. You see, I made the decision to write about a specific person, and I told that person that I would. So I’m going to write about this person, but I’m also going to write about writing. I’m also going to write to that person directly, so when I’m writing to “you” you (the reader) should know that I may be talking to “you” (the reader) or “you” (my special person).

I only tell you this so that you don’t get too confused about what I’ll be doing. Without further ado, I suppose we should start.

Prewriting

Do you remember that time when we were in the parking lot? We had just gotten back from that failed attempt to see a movie. You had forgotten your wallet, so I drove us back, and we made the decision to go see it later? Do you remember that? Of course you do.

Do you remember what I told you I was going to do though? I said that I was going to write a story about you. I told you it wasn’t going to be fiction, either. I told you that I was going to write the truth about you and me and us. I told you it would be like an essay or a memoir.

You remember, then, how I told you it would work. I told you that I would set our story inside an essay. I told you that I’d write about us, but I would also be interjecting details about my past, and how I met you.

I remember telling you that I was going to mix up the chronology of our story. Do you remember why I was doing that?

“Our love is timeless and has no chronology,” you said, and I agreed.

Well this is the story that I promised you….


Rough Draft

I was in a bad place with X. He was abusive both physically and mentally. He always put me down, and whenever he got angry, he wouldn’t hesitate to beat me up. I only stuck with him so long because he was the only one I had. When I finally found the guts to dump him, my loneliness almost drove me back to him.

Then Y came along. He managed to help get back on my feet. We became quick friends, and I found myself drawn in by his smiles, and his energetic spirit. When Y and I started dating, he taught me how to stand up for myself. He helped me open up and become more accepting of the gay man that I am.

Of course, we had to fight the discrimination that comes with the whole “gay package.” People gave us dirty looks when we would go out places, and we’d occasionally be called names. But all of the things that used to bother me before didn’t bother me as long as I was with him.

Because of that time together, I’ve become a completely different person from that reclusive kid that I used to be.


Feedback

I don’t know about most people, but I know that, for me, I often get about halfway through an essay, and wonder, “Gee, I wonder how well that will come off….” It’s great to have purpose and desire when you’re writing, but sometimes the things you write become an issue. Specifically in nonfiction writing, the truth can be almost impossible to capture. Things in the writer’s past may be haunting, and devastating to talk about. The truth isn’t easy.

The audience can be a problem too. You may not be writing for the crowd that you actually want to write for. Your audience may be completely against your life and what you are writing about. Your truth may not be the same as their truth.

Consider, for example, that you’re a gay man writing about a gay relationship for a class at one of the most anti-gay colleges in the country. Yikes. Perhaps the writer might want to rethink his choice of topic as well as his strategy. In fact, I can remember one time specifically where a paper that I wrote (one with gay themes) was vandalized with the word “FAG” written across the front.

When considering the difficulties of writing for an audience, you have to look deep into yourself. The audience may be as gentle as a receptive partner listening to your story, or they may be as hostile as my parents were when I came out to them. Sure, I could turn around and write about something else, but if my heart is really into it, and I’m daring enough, then I may just be able to make it through to my reader.


Refining

You remember all those times we sat together watching Doctor Who episodes.

I know you remember the first time that I said “I love you” without actually meaning to. I had been holding back, trying to wait to actually say it so that I didn’t scare you off. I remember the first time you replied in kind.

We both remember that night where we stayed up for hours playing Halo together. We got through a few levels, but we both know we were only staying up until your roommate went to sleep so that we could be together uninterrupted on the couch.

Do you remember when I told you that I thought this would work out? I told you that I believed we could continue to be a “we” for a long time. Well I remember.

I remember that you agreed.


Clarifying

It came without warning. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was on the way home from seeing him, even. Looking back, I can see the signs, but when Y actually called that day to tell me that we couldn’t see each other anymore, I lost it.

I could try to describe how awful it felt to me, but I’m sure that you’ve probably experienced a bad break-up before. If not, just take my word for it that like an earthquake on the heels of a train wreck.

Apparently Y came out to his dad, and things didn’t go well. He was moving to Myrtle Beach, to his mother’s house. Obviously the distance would be too much for us to deal with, he said. Too much for him to deal with.

I would spend the next couple of months trying to get over him. I ended up crawling back to X again, but then that fell through as well. There were a few hopefuls along the way, but I never really got over Y.

Editing

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just rewrite parts of our lives like we could edit our papers? I guess in some ways, life isn’t like a written piece of work. No matter what we do, we can’t go back and change the facts. Things that have happened are solidly placed in the past.

Or are they?

We can learn from our mistakes, of course. It’s not always so easy though. Sometimes we’re just doomed to repeat mistakes over and over again. The beauty of writing, though, is that it helps us understand our mistakes.

Editing is a magical thing in writing, because you can do a lot with it that you can’t do in life. For example, I can rearrange the chronological order of my work. I can mix up the pattern, or present a different ideas related to other ideas. If I didn’t like the way that I was writing before, I can change it.


Writer’s Block

It was the first week of Winter break when I saw Y again. He had moved back to Virginia and was renting a place with a friend. He invited me to a Christmas party that he was hosting. There would be drinking, music, and fun.

I went, of course. I’m not really a party guy or a drinker—though I did try a few drinks that night—but I definitely had hopes that we might be able to get back together. The party was a bust from the get-go, though. Not very many people showed up. When an hour had dragged by I was bored. The worst part was I could already tell that Y was only interested in using me as a party-filler. He had no intention of actually getting back together with me. But my self-esteem was so low that I deleted that draft of my life.

Then he showed up. Z.

I did not want him there. It was obvious from the start that there was something going on between Z and Y. I was ready to get out of there, but I was already a few drinks in at this point, so I wasn’t going anywhere.

So instead, we played Kings. I sat there are enjoyed watching Z get sick after only a few drinks. I enjoyed watching Y make a fool of himself.

And then I realized I was drunk, too.


Finishing Touches

Do you remember that time, Z, that I was drunk at Y’s party? You kept me from taking my self-loathing to too far a level. You were there for me when I needed someone. And you didn’t even know me.

Do you remember passing out on the couch with me? It wasn’t even because of the alcohol. It was because we stayed up all night just talking to each other. I remember how bitter I felt during that entire party. I remember wanting you dead. I remember telling you all of this, too. Do you remember how you felt when I told you? I remember you asking me out on our first date. I’ve remembered every date since then, too.

You may not have been the one that I was after that night. You certainly weren’t what I was expecting. But you ended up being the person that I needed.


Conclusions

Conclusions suck. They’re hard to write. What can you really say to end a piece that leaves the work tied up neatly? You don’t want to just repeat the theme. You don’t want to summarize, but you also don’t want to introduce an entirely new argument.

The conclusion of a relationship can also be hard to deal with. A lot of the time, we just don’t want things to end. Sometimes they end in ways that we aren’t expecting, as well. But that’s just the funny thing about expectations: reality will trump them every time. I never would’ve guessed that I would end up with Z, and not Y, but that’s the way these things work.

Z is nice to me in a way that I’ve never experienced before. He’s gentle and thoughtful; exciting but occasionally reserved—he gives me space in which I can be myself, but is always there when I need him. In a way, meeting Z is a conclusion: my relationship with him means no more abuse and no more feeling alone. We’re both out and proud, but we’re not loud about it: our families accept us being together, even if they don’t want to see us that way; they see that we’re happy though, and that’s all that matters.

Reality trumps expectations every day. Even in writing. Sometimes you set out to write one thing, but the completed result may turn out to be completely different. This, of course, isn’t necessarily bad, and often it’s actually a good thing. I never expected to find someone quite like the man I’m with, but I did, and it has made all the difference.

Winter Nights at the Fun-N-Games

        The Fun-N-Games arcade is located in the remote corner on the second tier of Bridgewater Plaza. It rests right below one bar, and directly above another. During the summer, Bridgewater is thriving with tourists coming off the lake; they chat about how they’ll spend their days, whine about the heat, and drip ice cream on the decks. In the winter season, however, the plaza dies. The bars remain open for their loyal patrons—both the Franklin County locals and the Bedford bums from across the lake—but the Ice Cream Cottage, Harbortown Golf, and the Mousetrap all close down. Aside from the bars, it is only the Fun-N-Games arcade that stays open.

        That arcade holds many memories for me. It used to be my favorite place to go as a kid. It was owned and run by my best friend’s step-dad, so I usually got away with being able to redeem my tickets for extra prizes. Sometimes I would even get extra quarters. During my teenage years I would work there. The Fun-N-Games was my first experience as a part of the work force: four years of minimum wage work where I dealt with screaming children and broken arcade games. Time passes and places change, though. Memories come and go; some remain in stasis while others alter—for better or worse.

Child’s Play

        My earliest memory of the arcade isn’t the memory of my first visit there: I can’t quite recall the first time my mom took me and my siblings to Bridgewater. No, my first memory was on a winter night. Mom and Dad had been loud that night, which would’ve normally been upsetting, but then Mom said we could go to the arcade. We barely had time to put on shoes before she rushed us out the door—she must’ve been as excited as I was.

        We pulled into the parking lot, and my mom handed me a twenty.

        “Split this with your brother, okay?” she said. I nodded enthusiastically, and took off down the stairs, brother in tow.

        We pushed straight through the glass double doors into the warmth of the game room. The games blinked and whistled all around us, drawing us in. I can remember going up to the woman at the counter to exchange the cash for quarters.

        “Little Walter!” she blurted. “How ya been?” Anne had worked in the arcade ever since it had opened, so she knew my brother and me pretty well. I remember that she was always joking with us, but every time we’d walk away, she’d get a sad look in her eye. I never thought too much of it at the time: the games were calling for me, after all!

        My brother and I were always very strategic about the way we played the games. It was a redemption arcade, so some of the games would give you tickets based on the points you earned. You could then spend those tickets to win prizes from Anne. Jon—my brother—and I would hone in on the games that had the highest ticket payoff: Spin-to-Win, Storm Stopper, and Bonus Jackpot. In the end, we’d collect our tickets at the counter, and get our prizes. We’d always load-up on candy because our parents never let us get any at home.

        When we were done, Anne waved goodbye to us with a smile, and Jon would race me up the stairs to Moosie’s Bar. I remember this particular trip so well, though, because when we stepped in the bar, my mother was nowhere to be seen. We looked all around, but we couldn’t find her. Eventually, the bartender asked what a ten year old was doing in his bar. He told us that she had just left, so Jon and I went to look for the car. It was where Mom had parked, so we decided to go wait in the arcade for her; she would come to get us.

        Anne shook her head, puzzled, when we came back in. “Didn’t I already see you gentlemen in here tonight? Don’cha know I was just about to close up?” we told her that we were just waiting on Mom, so she let us stay while she shut down the games and counted the money for the day. Five minutes became ten which became thirty, but my mother still hadn’t shown up. Anne had begun to get worried, and had insisted that we call home, just to make sure she was coming.

        “No,” I told her. “Mom was upstairs and the car is still here. And if we call home, Dad’s just gonna get madder!” After more persistence, though, I caved and called home. I kept getting the answering machine, though, and started to cry. I didn’t know why, but I assume it was from frustration. I ended up calling my grandmother, who picked up immediately. I told her where we were, and she said that she’d come get us. Within minutes (she lived right across the bridge) she arrived and led us out to the car. She went back over to the arcade though, and started talking to Anne. As my brother fell asleep in my grandma’s van, I watched the two women talk. Anne kept looking over at the van with that same sad look in her eyes. My grandmother had it too, as I recall. It wasn’t until years later that I actually realized what had happened.

All Work and No Play

        I started working at the Fun-N-Games while I was in high school and spent four years on their payroll. Summers were always busy, and I made plenty of cash, but the winters were cold in more ways than one: my hours were cut to only weekends, and then, only weekend nights. It was only Anne and I during winter because the owner couldn’t afford to keep more of us on, and I worked nights because Anne didn’t feel comfortable doing it.

        Most nights I sat alone doing homework at the counter. I might occasionally walk around and play a game or two, but I had lost that childhood interest in the place the same year I started working there.

        We usually had a customer or two every night. More often we had older couples stumbling in from one of the bars to play Mrs. Pacman. The alcohol heavy on their breath, they’d come to me asking for quarters; when I redirected them to the change machine, I’d watch in silent bemusement as they fumbled to get the dollar in.

        Aside from the occasional customers, though, I was alone. Despite the happy music playing from the games, or the brightly colored lights all around, I could feel a deep-seated despair in my heart. This place used to be so cool. The games were fun, and the prizes were neat, but now—now I could see how run down the place was getting. The walls were grey and there were a few stains in the ceiling: remnants of kitchen floods from the bar above. There was a constant fight to keep many of the games running, but it was a losing battle. I became suddenly aware of the duck-tape fixes and the improbability of winning the high-stakes games. I grew dismay for the people who would come in and blow $20 on games, just to win a few packs of Skittles.

        Closing up was even harsher. When I flip the breakers to turn everything off, there is sudden silence. There is no fade-out—just silence. Every night I’d count what little money had been made, log it, and lock it up. I’d wipe down the games, pick up any trash that might’ve magically spawned during the day, and restock the prizes for the next day. Then I finish the routine: grab bag, grab trash, set alarm, lock door.

        The plaza is silent on winter nights. The arcade stays open almost as late as the bars do: a place to babysit their kids while they escaped their troubled home-lives in the comfort of a drink. Some nights I’d find my mother outside of Moosie’s, crying on the bench. I’d take her keys and lead her, without words, to my car. Nights like that I would drive her home in near silence—quiet, save the sound of an occasionally pout. I’d take her to her bed in the “guest room” and tuck her in. The next day I’d wait around the house and endure the awkward silence between my parents. When I leave for work, I take her along so she can get her car.

        Anne would know the days that I come in after one of those nights. She remembered that time when I came as a kid and my parents were fighting; she told me that my dad had come to get Mom, but he hadn’t realized that my brother and I were with her. Anne would always have that same sad look in her eyes. I had it too, by then. She knew then—as she knew before—what I’d been through that night…all those nights. Some things, after all, never change.

Round Three

        Fun-N-Games switched ownership during my last year there. Anne wished me luck in college, and told me that she was retiring: her fibromyalgia was preventing her from working any longer. The new owners were making changes, so that meant a change in staff, too. But that was fine. I had school to attend, anyway.

        I came back to the arcade again, though, as I’ve always done. My first winter home from college and nothing has changed; in 18 years of living in that place, nothing ever changed. I need save no space for memories of home because I can relive any moment at any time. The first week back, my parents drank and fought. They yelled at me and my brother. I left. I never knew before what it was about that arcade that would always draw me back, but it always beckoned to me: in my time of need, when home life was colder than the world outside, I’d find myself crossing that bridge again; I’d find myself staring at the double-doors smudged with fingerprints; I’d find myself pulling them wide and entering the cacophony of familiar sounds.

        But things do change at the arcade. My home may be static, but the Fun-N-Games has evolved since I left. The walls look like Easter Bunny came in and exploded, smearing pastel greens and purples all over the walls. Newer games have replaced the old, and there was no duck tape in sight. Instead of Anne’s warm greeting, I’m greeted only by the slightest nod of some punk high-schooler hiding behind his laptop. I investigate the changes and see things that wouldn’t have flown under the previous ownership: coin jams and trash on the floors; finger-print smeared windows and games with empty ticket dispensers.

        Despite the flaws that I see, there’s still a small gathering of the typical winter clientele: fat balding middle-aged men playing Pacman, middle aged women that reek of cigarette smoke and booze paying little attention to their kids running amok, and stoner teenagers with nothing better to do in the boons of Franklin County than hang out in a noisy arcade.

        I can’t stand the changes for too long, and I leave to walk along the docks by the lake. The moon reflects on the still waters making it light enough to see the docks since the street lights are out. I can see the neon signs from the arcade shining up at me from the freezing water as well. These reflections, to me, are just like the arcade itself. The Fun-N-Games is a place for nostalgia—it is the home of memory and reminiscence. As a child, I built my memories there; it protected me from the reality of my home life that I couldn’t understand at that age. When I grew up, the memories changed and were replaced by blurred reflections of the originals: the arcade became a place that reminded me of the harshness of reality; it pulled up those repressed memories of my childhood. Now that I’m back again, I can see that the arcade brings back memories for everyone. People come back here to relive their pasts and to build new futures. These middle aged drinkers want to forget their problems, so they stifle them with booze and video games—the keys to their past. They bring their kids here to hide their innocent souls from the marital problems of their parents. The Fun-N-Games arcade may have changed and my memories may have been spoiled by experience, but at least the memories are still there. On the corner of the second tier of Bridgewater Plaza, situated beneath one bar, and above another, the Fun-N-Games stands as a constant reminder that, no matter how bad things get for me, there’s still a place in this abysmal Hicksville in which I can hide on a winter’s night—there’s always a place there where I can drown my sorrow away in sweet nostalgia.