9. An Examination of Hotdogs
Where’s the brain bleach when you need it?
Luke
There was this nice little moment when I went into the kitchen to grab some Gatorade and my thoughts were on nothing heavy or important. I was wondering who was going to be in the World Series, and whether we had any chocolate chip cookies, and who had better legs: Zach or Ryan. And if I said Ryan, which I was kind of leaning towards, would Zach believe me and get pissed off, which would be awesome, or would he think I was biased?
Was there a way I could get a panel of experts to say Ryan had better legs?
I enjoyed the moment, being able to think about Ryan’s awesome legs while keeping all the other thoughts of what had happened between us lately out. And then Dad walked into the kitchen and I spent a wistful second saying goodbye to the image of Ryan’s legs because I was banished from thinking about them while a parent was in the room for my own peace of mind.
“Son, let’s talk,” Dad said, hovering across from me while I stood by the fridge. “You can talk to me.”
Kind of busy thinking about guys’ legs here Dad, which was a sentence I would never tell him ever. “Okay,” I said instead because while I would never say what I just thought to my dad, my thoughts were otherwise occupied with thoughts of dude’s bodies, so it wasn’t like I had anything else to offer.
Dad and I stared at each other blankly. I had been having a relatively nice day so far. The weekend was here and I didn’t have to work and I hadn’t done or thought of anything important all day. It was like after the thing with Ryan and me and his roommate, my brain had just shut down. This was power saving mode, where any thoughts that required concentration or effort or pain were just not able to run.
Were things about to get weird or terrible? Dad kept looking at me. Maybe Dad was about to tell me I was adopted; that would be weird since I had his chin. Or maybe he was going to say he tried, but he really couldn’t handle this whole bi thing after all. We were making slow progress and maybe he was about to end it all. That would be terrible.
Maybe he was going to tell me he couldn’t handle this bi thing and so it was time I finally knew the truth. I was adopted even though I had his chin and things were going to get both terrible and weird at the same time, which was just my luck.
“Are you not gonna start?” Dad asked after we stared dumbly at each other for a few moments while I tried to banish all thoughts of shapely legs and bad news from my mind.
“Technically, you started. Saying let’s talk is talking.” We stared at each other again. “Uh, I’m not sure what’s going on.” My brain struggled to return to optimal performance settings. Proud of myself for just knowing computers had optimal performance settings.
“We’re having a conversation,” he explained, only that didn’t explain anything at all. Seeing my confusion, he elaborated. “You know, father to son. Man to man.”
He definitely thought he was telling me something. I just had no clue what that was. “Uh, again, what’s going on?” I leaned back against the counter and silently applauded myself for trying to be nonchalant because it took a lot of effort and I needed someone to appreciate it, even if that someone was me.
“I just explained that to you.” Then we did the dumb staring thing again.
Life had a lot of awkward, uncomfortable moments in store for me these days, but this day had been blessedly short of them and I had really appreciated that. So maybe that’s why I couldn’t do this anymore.
I leveled with my father. “My boyfriend is already weird and awkward, so I don’t need any more of that in my life.” Wait, was that too rude? “I mean, talking to me is good.” An important step in the right direction and I loved it, I didn’t want that to change. “Yay dialogue, thanks for trying. Just, the position has already been filled.”
“Apparently not correctly,” Dad muttered.
… My brain couldn’t handle that while coming back online, so it overheated, and now a small fire had erupted. In my brain. I made a hysterical noise. I got Dad’s weird behavior now. He apparently wanted to have some of kind of sex talk. No, some kind of gay sex talk.
I laughed even though nothing was funny. The small brain fire in my head was turning into an inferno. Someone call the firefighters. “How do you even—" This was another dream. He didn’t know about this. I was going to wake up any moment.
“You and Lydia talk loudly sometimes,” Dad informed me.
“What, no way—” We did a lot of frantic whispering. And Lydia said all her insults at full volume but that wouldn’t have clued him in to anything unusual.
Dad sighed. “Plus, you can hear everything in your room perfectly if you’re in the laundry room with the machines turned off.” The laundry room was under mine but still…
Nope, did not compute. “No, that’s not true.” A guy needed privacy in his own room!
“We never told you so we could always catch you trying to sneak out,” Dad explained with a dry look. “How did you think we always caught you?”
“Because you’re secret ninjas.” Duh. Dad looked like he didn’t understand, so I elaborated. “From a long and proud line of secret ninjas and you’ve been waiting to tell me about our secret ninja lineage until I turned 18.” I had really been looking forward to that. Maybe he would tell me now and be proud of me for figuring it out myself. Maybe I would become king of the secret ninjas. Did they have kings?
“I’m sorry to tell you that’s not happening because you’ve obviously put some thought into that,” Dad said. “But that’s not happening.” Now, not only was my birthright taken away, but I was still having this terrible conversation with my father. Dad shook his head. “Let’s just, let’s get back to the point.”
Which was what? “Are you trying to have a sex talk with me?” He could say no, that would be really cool. I got things wrong sometimes, like with the secret ninjas, and I would love to be reading this wrong too.
He winced. “We don’t have to use that word.” That wasn’t no.
